4 comments

[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] thread
"In order to vote something down, you need to give a reason."

THAT is what Hacker News needs ( and Reddit and Facebook and everywhere else ).

Because "Don't like the facts in your comment" is the reason for 90% of downvotes here.

Rather remove the downvote function completely, because it is mostly misused and stimulates the "lower instincts" of people.
Better? I made a few posts about my work some years ago an met significantly more naggers and nitpickers than on HN; I didn't see a downvote function (in contrast to the author of the article), but flagging was obviously misused a lot.