[plugnburn]

I honestly think the entire idea of downvoting available only for selected users creates a mass conciousness manipulation tool. When some "authority" decides what's good and what's bad.

Why can't I use the downvote button? It either must be available to everyone, or not available at all.

And if you, HN founders, are afraid that newcomers can be smarter than you, then remove the ability to downvote altogether. Whoever dislikes a post, can just ignore it.

P.S. The entire user rating system here contradicts the resource name. Hackers do not believe in karma.

[pavornyoh]

I honestly think the entire idea of downvoting available only for selected users creates a mass conciousness manipulation tool.

Downvoting is available to anyone who has 500 karma points or more and is not for the selected few. That ability has to be earned so to speak..

[coreyp_1]

Do you realize that you just said, in essence, that you have to be popular in order to dissent? That's like saying only celebrities should be allowed to voice their opinion.

[plugnburn]

So again, is this Hacker News or Karma-Jerkin-Conformist News?

It seems that in order to "earn" that "ability" one has to praise Lisp, Rust and Haskell and publicly hate JS. Isn't that mass conciousness manipulation?

The selected few or a crowd thinking the same thought - what's the actual difference? The only difference is that in the second case all fresh and independent ideas get downvoted much faster.

Any karma-based resource suffers from this plague.

Ochlocracy at its worst.

[anexprogrammer]

In the main the karma and downvoting works pretty well here. It's one of the few places it does.

If something has had enough downvotes to go invisible it's nearly always because offensive, smartass, or spam.

The problem with downvote for everyone, including sock puppet accounts, is it becomes Reddit: "I disagree, have a downvote"

[plugnburn]

> If something has had enough downvotes to go invisible it's nearly always because offensive, smartass, or spam.

Why does someone has more right than me to decide what's offensive, smartass or spam? Either leave that to the administration, or give that to everyone.

> The problem with downvote for everyone, including sock puppet accounts, is it becomes Reddit: "I disagree, have a downvote"

YMMV but I'm experiencing absolutely the same here.

Btw, when I agree, I upvote. Why can't I downvote when I disagree?