[Nicksil]

>The "downvote due to disagree" thing really annoys me.

Absolutely. I agree with everything else you bring up as well.

I would love to see down-voting vanish completely and the flagged/dead threshold increased dramatically. It is too easy to drown out otherwise thoughtful, quality contributions to discussion. Instead we see two to three word witty quips float by unscathed. It is the antithesis of the type of discussion described in the guidelines and runs counter to the curation of substantive, meaningful discourse.

[pedalpete]

I think downvote could be more valuable if it required a comment explaining why it as downvoted. I sometimes find I read comments that have been downvoted, and I'm wondering why, potentially the downvoter had a good reason I wasn't understanding.

[stephenr]

I used to think this too.

/. had this back in the day (I guess still does?). Lobste.rs has this too.

The problem is people just substitute "downvote without a reason" with "downvote as 'trolling'" for any opinion they disagree with.

[zodiakzz]

StackOverflow solved this by charging karma for each downvote you make.

[stephenr]

Charging "internet points" doesn't really solve the problem. I am apparently in the top 2% of SO, largely based on four answers provided a decade ago.

[pedalpete]

I'd figure this is pretty easy to get around if you are potentially being downvoted for not providing good feedback as to why you are downvoting.

[busymom0]

Is there any details on what the current flagged/dead threshold is?

[Nicksil]

>Is there any details on what the current flagged/dead threshold is?

No idea. I suspect the details are kept so as to avoid abuse, but I've not read either-or from an authoritative source.