| > It wounds me every time I get a downvote I love that you said this out loud because it's candid and vulnerable. I feel the same way, and spend disproportionate amounts of time worrying and feeling insecure about down votes, when I hardly even think about up votes. Especially if I really truly try to contribute something and use a positive tone and get downvoted without any visible disagreement or explanation. I have yet to cast a down vote because of this - I noticed how much it affected me inexplicably, and I don't want to pass that around, even if most people are impervious to it. I don't think I'm somehow being virtuous by not down voting -- some ugly comments I'm delighted to see being downvoted. But I'm not sure down votes are a necessary part of the system since things percolate to the top with up votes. Maybe getting people to downvote less was the intent of the down vote karma threshold. Maybe it's working really well, I don't know. But that also makes receiving down votes sting just a tiny bit more. What's funny about this to me is that it's meaningless. Why do I even care about karma? I have no idea. Once you have down vote power, what does it earn? Not much. > I'd much rather everything just be anonymous. That would be easier. I'd like to hear more about this. My working assumption has long been that anonymity makes bad behavior worse and more frequent overall, both comments and downvotes. Is it because you'd care less about your own profile & karma, or because you've seen anonymity produce more civility, or something else? |