[veddox]

> A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one karma point.

That is such a good idea it has actually been integral to HN for, oh, I don't know, a pretty long time... From the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html):

''' How is a user's karma calculated?

Roughly, the number of upvotes on their stories and comments minus the number of downvotes. The numbers don't match up exactly, because some votes aren't counted to prevent abuse. '''

[yanjuk]

No, I mean downvoting costs both the downvoter and the downvotee one point each. People won't downvote comments they merely disagree with but they will still try to correct injustice and disruption. I'm no game theorist but that's my guess. It also reflects human psychology where righteous anger comes with a personal cost.

[veddox]

Ah, OK, now I get you ;-) An interesting hypothesis, I honestly don't know whether that would work. The biggest problem then is that there is a large percentage of HNers who see downvoting as a legitimate way of showing disagreement. One of them happens to be dang, so you would have some convincing to do...

(While I don't subscribe to their view, they do have some arguments in their favour. And what is more, this is an issue that gets debated at least once a month on HN, so good luck trying to push the balance :D )

[yanjuk]

Yeah I think it could only be implemented on a new forum, right at the start. No doubt it would bring a different set of problems for moderators.

To those people (not you) "who see downvoting as a legitimate way of showing disagreement" I would say that it's too lazy. Better instead to try to explain why something is wrong. Then we can look carefully and objectively at the explanation rather than at the score or the expert/layman status of the author. Also many disagreers would find themselves unable to explain why they don't like some idea and might even change their minds.

[tedmiston]

This is what Stack Overflow does. Since it "hurts" their own karma, people downvote less. One implication of that is that when threads stay at zero, it can be hard to differentiate the reason why. Sometimes it's just that the question is well written but obscure.

[NeutronBoy]

> Since it "hurts" their own karma, people downvote less.

Yes, so they just vote to close the question instead.

[yanjuk]

>This is what Stack Overflow does.

Thanks. Didn't know that.

>Sometimes it's just that the question is well written but obscure.

Could be that people regard the question as dishonourable.

[GrinningFool]

I think the downvotes referred to here is the number received, not given.