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I agree with only allowing upvoting as _the_ metric to measure the quality of a post or comment. All posts and comments could be recognized as 'default incoming' content or 'approaching exceptional' content.

+1 for disabling downvoting.

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I disagree. Being able to downvote comments to -4 (and no farther) seems like an excellent system to me, as it allows us to punish comments that are detrimental to discussion while preventing comments from being so downvoted that they have no hope of redemption (in the case of controversial but contributory comments). I'm curious - if downvoting were done away with, how would you suggest that we flag comments which are contrary to the spirit of HN?

With the flag button that already exists?

The instant you let somebody's comment be worth less than neutral value, you've built a mechanized system that makes people feel excluded. That means anybody who wants to can make anybody else feel alienated from this community. Not that I speak from experience.

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