[logicrook]

Really? It seems to me that downvotes are used very negatively, as they are put a strong incentive (for most people) not to express unpopular opinions, even if they are good comments. If they were used only to discourage low quality posts, it wouldn't change a lot, since the most upvoted comments would still be to the top.

He suggests to remove lives for spam/harassment, not for shitposting. So basically, positive loop+ draconian enforcement of essential rules, and no negative loop.

[gkya]

I don't like downvotes because people mostly downvote what they disagree, not spam and whatnot. Having some ideas and habits contrary to what's popular, I experience this first-hand here on HN. And probably this is a reflex, most often when one sees someone disagree him, he feels a spontaneous whim and thinks that his argument is not reasonable. And only after a bunch of seconds does he understand that the other one actually poses a sound argument, criticism, etc. The HN's upvote-downvote sytem lacks undo, so unfortunately when you regret a downvote, there's nothing to do.

[enraged_camel]

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." -Mark Twain

I wonder how much karma Mark Twain would have if he had a Hacker News account...

Anyway, I, too, find downvoting very distasteful. IMO it should be reserved purely for low quality comments. When the crowd downvotes unpopular opinions, the place inevitably becomes an echo chamber, which is unquestionably harmful to honest, open debate and discussion.

[type0]

Not only unpopular opinions, but since here on hn we can receive down-votes for "low quality" comments, people who are not native english speakers might shy away from expressing their views (I speak from my own perspective here). I often find that anglophones can have lengthy posts ranting about the same stuff over and over, but when non english natives comment they tend to be more concise and thoughtful. I'm actually kind off miss grammatically incorrect sentences that have a valid point, those are much more common on other forums, in those cases the person didn't had to feel pressure to be down-voted just for bad grammar.

[kurtgb]

As a non-native speaker, I've observed this, too. Lengthy, well written posts get far more upvotes and are treated more leniently with respect to downvotes regardless of their content.

Actually interesting posts are often grumpy four liners written during a short break from actual work (e.g. while waiting for a compile to finish).