[forgetsusername]

>or at least the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless.

I think I agree. The culture has changed a bit here, which is fine (or at least unavoidable). But now there's much more down-voting of things with which the voter merely disagrees (case-in-point, your comment: down-voted with no replies at the time of my writing). It reenforces the hive-mind.

[dalke]

Changed? When was it otherwise? There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down-voted%20%20no%20replies&s... .

Here's an AskHN from 7 years ago titled "Ask HN: Downvote for disagreement in some cases?" The top answer is "This comes up all the time here. Most people use downvotes for disagreement. Gotta live with it." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612 . Others express other opinions.

Back in 2008 pg said "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

How do you know that the hivement changed in the last 8 years in this regard?

[forgetsusername]

>There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years

I don't recall saying that there were no downvotes-for-disagreement in earlier times. I said it feels like it has increased.

I think it's quite obvious how this affects the hive-mind; "un-popular" opinions become hard to read (greyed-out), which diminishes argument.

[rootlocus]

Not a personal attack, but from your profile page I see you've been a member for a little over a year. I don't know if that's enough time to observe a change in culture.

Personally, I've been lurking for a little over three years, and haven't seen much of a change.

[forgetsusername]

>but from your profile page I see you've been a member for a little over a year

I've been around much longer than that. As someone who doesn't really care about "karma", I reset my social media accounts on occasion.

[icebraining]

> The culture has changed a bit here

Did it, though? As the other commenter said, pg himself said 8 years ago that downvoting for disagreement was fine.

I don't think the culture really changed, it was just never a settled issue, sometimes it's just more visible.

[philbarr]

Completely agree. We should also be allowed to talk about downvoting (in the appropriate place, whatever that is) without fear of reprisal!

Downvoting should be for comments that don't add to the discussion, not for disagreement. I know pg said years ago that you could use downvotes for disagreement, but I propose that we revisit that...