[enchiridion]

I disagree with the parent post about the use of Greek letters, but it seems like a valid point worth of discussion. Certainly in the spirit of HN.

I’ve seen an increasingly worrying trend of using downvotes to voice disagreement, rather than as the intended purpose as a kind of crowd-based moderation. And before anyone lambasts me for complaining about downvotes, I’m complaining about the trend, where the above comment is just a exemplar.

[tzs]

> I’ve seen an increasingly worrying trend of using downvotes to voice disagreement, rather than as the intended purpose as a kind of crowd-based moderation.

Actually Paul Graham did intend downvotes to express disagreement. The theory was that if people could express disagreement by downvoting there would be less people posting insubstantial comments to disagree.