[Someone1234]

You could easily design around that.

With like/dislike and flag, you could restrict them from replying or voting on replies which they flagged. Meaning they cannot argue with someone they just flagged, if they want to argue all they can do is "dislike" (which is how dislike SHOULD be used).

[nucleardog]

This is towards what Slashdot does (did? haven't been there in a while). When you're given moderation points, you can only use them in a discussion you don't take part in. If you reply in a discussion that you'd moderated, your moderation is undone.

[IanCal]

Yeah, I've always quite liked that idea. Combined with marking things in different ways (funny vs informative, for example) I thought it worked pretty well.

There will always be issues with anything like voting, but it's an interesting approach.

HN also stops you from downvoting someone who replies to you, I think, which is another good idea.

[icebraining]

With like/dislike and flag, you could restrict them from replying or voting on replies which they flagged. Meaning they cannot argue with someone they just flagged, if they want to argue all they can do is "dislike" (which is how dislike SHOULD be used).

One of the common complaints around here are about "anonymous downvoters", since the other user is often left wondering why they were downvoted. Should we enforce this as a rule?

[gedrap]

In ideal case, yes, but there's nothing to prevent from just downvoting things that are against your personal opinion. Therefore, it would be abused/ignored.

It's not that most of the people are rational and self-critical - many people think that their personal opinions are right and others are nonsense :)

You can't design system on the assumption that people are rational.