[Karnickel]

IMO there are a lot of needlessly downvoted comments on HN these days. A few months ago I was trying to stem that tide and upvoted downvoted comments when I saw no reason for those downvotes. It really looks completely random many times, or at the very least "I disagree", but without any attempt of making a counter argument.

However, my voting rights were removed, and when I asked HN by contact email I was told I was behaving like a "troll" - the reasoning: I upvoted comments other people had downvoted, so I must be out to cause trouble! I gave up that account and don't care any more, I also hardly ever participate any more. I think the HN site admins contribute to this, being called a "troll" for doing what I still think was reasonable - I did not upvote a single comment that was in any way, shape or form objectively bad. They all had no insults, were no "cheap shots", not too short, not useless - they didn't even voiced troubling opinions. I still don't understand why they were dowvoted in the first place. The opinion of the site admin seems to be "you have to live with downvotes" and, at least in my case, when you try to work against what I think is clear downvote-abuse, you are assumed to be a "troll".

Okay, I think voicing a negative opinion about the site is going to go down well... but that's okay. I think this site would be better off with no voting at all, given that a sizable number of downvoted comments don't deserve it at all.

[fro0116]

FWIW I've always been of the opinion that HN would be better off without downvoting.

Most arguments for downvoting I've heard revolve around the desire to maintain a high signal to noise ratio, but in my view, the marginal increase in SNR downvoting offers over upvoting and flagging alone isn't worth the chilling effect it has on unpopular speech.

Even without downvoting, popular comments will rise up to the top and inappropriate comments will be flagged to oblivion.

Downvoting is just an additional layer of censorship on comments that express unpopular opinions. While the first layer of censorship (from popular comments getting bumped up by upvoting) can be justified because of its high marginal contribution to SNR over a system without any censorship mechanism other than flagging, I don't think the same can be said about downvoting in a system where upvoting and flagging already exists.

I feel downvoting has steadily been turning the HN comments section into yet another uninteresting, groupthinking hivemind with nothing provocative to offer, and will continue to do so until it gets reined in. And this is speaking as someone who doesn't get downvotes all that often.