[19eightyfour]

Yeah, when you talk and track people's facial expressions in real time, you can see which particular things they disagree with, so you have useful feedback. A down vote is sort of like someone running up behind you and king hitting you, for something you said in some other group earlier, and maybe you don't know why. It's not always so non-specific...but not being able to respond to a downvote...makes it an incredibly potent tool to control discourse.

[_0ffh]

Yeah, I think being denied the opportunity to find out _why_ you are being downvoted, and maybe argue the point, makes you feel exposed and powerless.

Maybe one could even argue that at least a short reply should be a mandatory precodition for downvoting.

[19eightyfour]

Definitely. And I can't downvote back...so I don't like that asymmetry.

[_0ffh]

I think there might be a potential problem there in that retaliatory downvoting might be used as a weapon to disincetivise criticism, especially when (unavoidably) defensive retaliatory downvote cliques form.

So I think I would be okay with a mandatory anonymous reply as a precondition for downvoting.

[19eightyfour]

Oh no I didn't mean it in a retaliatory sense specifically, I meant it like everyone having the option to do it, or no one except the few ( the mods? the ones who have objective standards ) having the options.

I meant like they can downvote me, and I can't downvote them, or anyone, at any time, because I don't have that whatever the requirement is ( mod level, karma level ) yet...so it's like this asymmetry that doesn't exist in the real world.

I don't feel any restriction talking to any human in real life. Nothing they can do to me I can't do back to them. So it's balanced. I'm safe. We're equal. I understand other people may feel differently, this is how I feel.

But on HN, I can't downvote. So there's this asymmetry. To me, it's a perversion. Because in the real world, only the State has a monopoly on legal violence. Only the state can use violence, legally. But on HN, downvotes don't only come from mods or police, they come from whoever has accrued sufficient karma -- and I don't equate this with a sort of objective, regulated, principle-based State level power.

So the state has a (correct, IMO) asymmetric monopoly on legal violence and can dish it out to people as it sees fit, but people cannot do the same, without either expecting to get the same in self-defense, or getting consequences from the state. But on HN, any random Jo with enough karma has the analogous asymmetry power.

That's what I meant. It's not necessarily about retaliating, it's about having that option on the table, rather than some people having it and others not having it.

Or no one having it except the State ( the mods, I guess ).

[Flenser]

I think the downvoter should have to highlight the part(s) of the comment that caused them to downvote. This could provide useful signal to HNs moderators and moderation algorithms on the downvoted and the downvoters to help them calibrate the system. It could also be shown to the downvoted, or to everyone so it was clearer what the downvoting was targeted at.