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I don't know if there's a consensus, but I doubt it. One way to think about downvotes is to keep them symmetric with upvotes. When I first came to HN, I expected downvotes to be asymmetrically reserved for people being wildly factually incorrect, or wildly negative. But, maybe if you upvote something on a whim because you lightly agree with it, it should be equally acceptable to downvote something because you lightly disagree with it. I don't do that, but I don't have any compelling reasons not to, aside from I don't like getting downvoted, it still feels more serious than upvotes. When do you upvote things? I upvote for a number of different reasons including but not limited to when someone says something funny, contributes something valuable or different than others, posts data or relevant links worth bookmarking, says something that I agree with, shows a high level of nerdery and/or expertise in a weird subject matter, has a great attitude or meaningfully positive spin on something, etc. And as long as it's tastefully done, I'll even upvote the occasional correction or sarcastic comment. I also tend to upvote people who engage with me, and respond to things I've said. Lately, it has been especially important for me personally to upvote people who are being critical or disagreeing with me, even if they're pushing my buttons. If my goal is for the conversation I start to bubble upward, then upvoting the thread is better than downvoting. So, I'm only one person and I don't even have a consensus myself about when to upvote. ;) I don't personally expect consensus on when to downvote, other than a general wish that people use it judiciously - and I have to say that by and large, that is what I see going on. It's uncommon that I see or experience unfair or unreasonable downvoting. > You need a certain level of karma to even give downvotes, so maybe the assumption is that people at "that level" should already know to how to use them. I can only speak from my own experience and say that my ideas about how to vote changed between when I first started here and when I finally earned the ability to downvote. Not having the ability to downvote for a while did help me learn how to say more things that contributed rather than get stuck in the eddies of Internet arguments. If I'd had the ability to downvote from day 1, I would have used it a lot. Since I didn't have it, by the time I got there, I now don't see the need to use it, and so I don't. |