[toddheasley]

Voting based on agreement/disagreement, rather than based on quality and relevance is thuggery. It's also human nature; we're passionate, lazy animals. The question is whether or not the problem is widespread enough to threaten the overall value of HN.

[gojomo]

Granting that it's human nature to want to send a 1-click agree/disagree signal, and that signal can then be noise which hides another valuable/punishable signal we want to collect, I'd like to see HN or another site like it try a two-axis voting system:

up-promote vs. down-demote: affecting order-of-presentation and karma

left-agree vs. right-disagress: a mini-poll per comment, with no censorious effect on presentation or numerical-reputational effect on karma