HN Explorer

Ask YC: Why can't you down-mod people's responses to you?

4 points by time_management ↗ HN
I understand the potential for abuse here, but I feel like the pros outweigh the cons, and I highly doubt that adding this ability would have a "chilling effect" on disagreements. Quite frankly, most of us don't care about karma enough that we would withhold disagreements for fear of a 1-point reprisal.

I usually up-vote people who disagree with me, actually, if I find that they're contributing to the discussion in a thoughtful way. It's the HN way, no?

But occasionally I get a reply that really deserves it, like this one, which I cannot down-mod: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=457222

5 comments

[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 21.5 ms ] thread
pg
It would tend to be done reflexively-- maybe not by you, but by a lot of users. Not allowing it seemed a way to filter out what would almost certainly be the least thoughtful subset of votes, thereby raising the thoughtfulness of the median vote.
alain94040
Agreed. It would be abused in 95% of the scenarios. For the 5% of legitimate uses, you'll have to believe that someone other than you will do the modding.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
steveplace
Helps information liquidity during debates.

Also, the your comment which is the parent to the aforementioned doesn't seem to be contributing much.

russell
I disagree. Sort of reminds me of the mess on ebay where buyers were afraid to down mod sellers because they were afraid of retaliation. Not quite the same here, but I trust the rest of the community to take care of any problems. If a poor comment stays there, it's probably because at least some agree with it.