[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.