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Comment by ordinaryperson | Hacker News Reader

Makes sense to me.

No open platform, as far as I can tell, has solved the problems of vitriol, but the down-voting is absurd (as attested by some of the experiences described in this comment thread) and can absolutely by addressed by changes like the one you propose or some other system.

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Imagine if Facebook had a “dislike” button.

Now imagine if that thumbs down was anonymous and what that would do to the atmosphere. That’s SO.

Isn’t that also HN? I don’t think the existence of the down button is a factor as much as the moderation. FB is a nightmare without a downvote, SO is like a dysfunctional family, and HN seems to mostly work.

In a way it is. But I think it works much better for comments/discussion as on HN, than getting downvotes for your cat picture or SO questions. Perhaps it's because even though HN downvotes should be on quality not content - that's not what the majority of downvotes are, they are disagreement. And people accept disagreement.

I completely agree that anonymous downvotes are an unfettered negative _in systems of discussion and opinion_.

I remember a friend's grown adult brother was learning Python and just entering into programming and I was commending him and encouraging him and what not as a professional software developer. I did a mental dump of resources to use that could help him out in his first months of struggle and what not. At one point I told him to post questions to SO and I literally watched his body language become perturbed and he cringed with a tinge of fear at being brutalized over there. He immediately said something along the lines of "no thanks those guys seem pretty brutal over there", something like that. I thought he may have been a bit too sensitive but over time I've seen some harsh things on the site and could see where he was coming from.

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