Assigning a Karma cost to down votes

2 points by djyaz1200 9y ago ↗ HN

If you want to down vote other people's comments that should cost you a point. I love Hacker News as an information source but also find many of the discussions toxic + negative in the extreme. Unlike real life there doesn't seem to be a cost in reputation/points for being totally dedicated to negativity. That's not constructive, and I doubt this will get any attention... and if it does it will probably just get negative attention... but there you go. Anyone have anything constructive to say about this?

2 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 14.2 ms ] thread

otrapersona 9y ago ↗

I disagree

benologist 9y ago ↗

Karma is earned for essentially nothing and it can be trivially replenished if you 'run out', charging a point won't help down votes be used sparingly or more effectively.

Accounts that consistently post bad comments quickly get banned so that nobody sees their comments unless people enable 'show dead' in their account settings.

Any time you see an inappropriate comment thread just flag it (have to click the comment date permalink) or drop a "paging @dang" reply - he enforces the standards without the ambiguity of silent down votes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang