Please help us create a community where people can exchange stories and opinions freely while still maintaining the quality of personalized "front page".
The problem isn't disagreement - it's not developing ethos, pathos, or logos into the appropriate argument. The more controversial the opinion, the more that one must work to develop these three qualities, rather than depending on just one.
I also work to expose the weaknesses of my own argument, admit them, but explain why they are superior to the more conventional alternative.
I find that when this fails for myself, it's often because my perspective is lacking, and I need to rethink my argument.
On reddit, I'll still usually find an unpopular opinion at 3 or 4 points. There's likely some downmodding done, but most people will leave it alone if it's a proper argument.
(Some arguments, of course, are out of bounds. The emotional appeal is too strong. Abortion in a pro-life forum, for example. I haven't had that problem in most major forums.)
How does it help when you want to post a story on reddit that you think is important but unfortunately is highly controversial? (Hacker News doesn't have downvote for stories for exactly this reason, thanks!)
How does it help when people are downvoting you not only for your opinion but for who you are?
Karma is a great tool to manage trolls and signal / noise. Unfortunately in real world it is also used to silence opponents. And it is pretty effective at that. I want to change that.
That is a lot of commitment, though. However, an argument can do more harm than good if it is not written for a general audience.
Either way, as I've mentioned before, guidelines are just that: you can't force someone to not downvote inappropriately. It's just the nature of this sort of community. I think if people focussed more on not posting things that are out of line that get hella-downvoted instead of worrying about whether they have hit four digits of positive karma, things might be a little more laid back and people wouldn't stress so much. Either way, as long as there is karma, people will bitch about it one way or another ;-)
(Note: not dissing four-digit karma. If you have that much, you've earned it. Just saying that maybe people worry a bit too much about getting positive karma instead of avoiding negative karma.)
Edit: whoever is downvoting this comment should check the definition of "irony"
I meant that on the social news site that I'm working on there are no posts about downvotes, because everybody is free to express their opinion with up and down votes as they wish and it doesn't hurt anybody.
Edit: Another solution would be to ask people to explain when they downvote. Please, what's wrong with THIS comment?
Compare it to the solution where there's a recommendation system that helps everybody involved: the ones downvoting the posts will form one cluster, the ones upvoting them will be in another. People that like stories like that will see more, people that do not will be spared from them.
edit: i posted this in feature requests thread
A better title would have been, "Are you sick of being downvoted for having a different opinion? Try ______." Ideally, this would have been a direct link to your site. At a minimum, the URL for it should have been included in the submission text. Having us click through to your user profile == bad usability!
That said, the blame does not fall squarely on your shoulders. There's some definite mob mentality going on here that is embarrassing for a community supposedly composed of free-thinking hacker-entrepreneurs.
I make a comment every now and again - if people want to vote on it, fair enough. Go ahead, that's what the system is for.
But please don't try to pretend this is anything other than an Internet forum. Semi-anonymous people hang out here and some of them are bound to be obnoxious. Down-votes for different opinions are par for the course. Get over it.
If everyone who has something against downvotes would like to respond to this comment I'll upvote you and maybe we can get it out of our system.
I have thicker skin than most though.
Great. That's what we all should be doing. Let us know as soon as you have something to show us. I'm not sure why you're posting this before then.
We have sliders for people so you can adjust your preference for their posts.