[unabst]

Upvotes need no further abstraction for their purpose. Good can be good. But if we are to police and shame bad, justice deserves more nuance than this. Downvotes hinder the discussion experience, and it limits participants to those with agendas or characters who can withstand that experience.

Downvotes help you avoid confrontation and discussion. You get to slap anyone on the wrist without them knowing it was you, or why. It's self-policing by censorship that directly counteracts free speech and free thinking. It's too convenient, too powerful, too disrespectful, too arbitrary, and too anonymous. Here comments literally fade out. You're voting to "cancel" a comment.

Why respectfully reply when you run the risk of being downvoted yourself? Being wrong and downvoted is one thing, but what if you were not wrong? The votes are a measure of opinion and sentiment, not fact. And we can police comments, but we cannot police the downvotes. To then call this tally "karma" and equate this with your worth on a platform is a sure way to encourage thought alignment, not debate.

[unabst]

Bottom-line, if anyone feels they've been unjustifiably downvoted, or even "sour" for being downvoted, the feature is being followed by a negative experience for the user. If there is nothing that can be done to improve the experience, then that is the price you pay for the positives that feature brings (in this case moderation), but if there is something that could be done, then you have no excuses not to do them, if you are to put the user experience first.

What I would immediately do to improve the experience on HN:

1. As others have suggested, add a score for upvote/downvote total. So 50 upvotes and 51 downvotes = 101 points. Any points cancelled out could even be double Karma, or just the negative flipped to a positive. Engagement is worth valuing, and an upvote/downvote pair is healthy intellectual drama.

2. I would have a small list of keywords to select from displayed next to the comment title AFTER you click downvote. Downvoting should be a rare occasion (and I think it is), and adding one more step to add nuance to the downvote should be positive for the downvoter and the downvoted.

So a comment after downvotes would look like:

unabst 16 hours ago [–] troll 1 tone 2 incorrect 4 flagged dead

This could be done for upvotes too, but maybe make the selection optional.

I have a feeling on HN the shaming and bitterness of downvoting is not a bug but a feature. It's democratic, it's power to the user, it's fair, yada yada yada.

Personally, at this point I am certain downvoting features lead to polarization, toxicity, bullying, group think, hesitation of substantive discourse, and a lot of negativity with the experience. And all the notable platforms with downvote features have suffered.