[ColinWright]

It is odd. When there's a strange downvote people might then make more upvotes because they can see it was downvoted, but can't see when it's been corrected, because the scores are no longer visible. But voting is weird anyway. I don't take it personally, and I don't want to complain, but I genuinely get confused when there are downvotes I don't understand, and I want explanations purely so I can decide either that I was right and to hell with it, or I was wrong and I need to reconsider things.

With just a downvote I don't get the chance to learn.

Still, there we are.

[Svenstaro]

Conversely, if people could just upvote outright but to downvote would need to provide a minimum 10 character reason that was made public, would this break of improve the system?

[brudgers]

Sometimes the ten characters minimum I would enter would be "You're a fucking moron." Since that's probably either unproductive due to incorrectness or unproductive because the person is not in a position to do anything about it or counter-productive because nothing good can from such a comment, the downvote is much better. I can allow the button to proxy for voicing the opinion "You're a fucking moron" and move on.

By extension the downvote as proxy covers lots of other cases which would add little of benefit to HN.

[madez]

If the comment in question constituted destructive behaviour, go ahead, vote it down.

Let's assume now it was not destructive.

Error on the side of doubt that maybe you are wrong. If you can convince yourself with reasons that what is said is wrong, state your reasons. If you can't, don't down-vote.

That you are thinking "You're a fucking moron." is a big problem it itself. You are not alone with this problem, and it haunts HN.

[brudgers]

On what basis have you come to believe that you are well positioned to offer reasoned advice in regard to how I, or anyone else should vote and comment on HN?

[madez]

I didn't offer advice but judged you.

I judged you as I did to help make comments on HN suitable for having critical, rational, constructive and respectful discussions.

My basement is your comment.

And, being "well positioned" is not necessary for giving reasoned advice.

[brudgers]

It already is suitable for those things. Downvoting in lieu of wrestling pigs in mud puddles is, in my experience is one reason why. [1] Complaining about karma and its mechanisms is a dead end from both a metaphysical and literary point of view.

Downvotes avoid turning disagreements into excuses to accuse other people of character flaws, as in your comments toward me.

[1] Though here apparently I cannot avoid the invitation.

[QuercusMax]

You're describing something like Slashdot's moderation system, and we all know how well that worked out.

[sukilot]

At +5, It is the best moderation system ever published. Immune to brigades, and reader-tunable to their individual preference level for jokes and flames.

[plorkyeran]

Pretty well?

[guelo]

So each bad comment would require a large comment thread? Seems like the opposite of what you'd want.

[Dylan16807]

It could be displayed much more compactly, or not displayed at all to third parties.

[ibmthrowaway271]

A way to give feedback to the poster on inconsequential details such as language/spelling/typos/grammar/etc that isn't displayed to anyone else would be useful.

[brudgers]

It means that:

1. You didn't say what you thought you said,

:or

2. You said what you thought you said but didn't say it in a way that everyone understood.

:or

3. You said what you thought you said and someone didn't think it was worth saying.

:or

4. You didn't say what you thought you said and some didn't think what you said was worth saying.

:or

5. Karmic forces were at work.

It's worth assuming that the ones over which you have control are the reasons for a downvote, since those are the only ones from which you can learn. And given that everything else evens out statistically over time, it's not as if downvotes will ever stray too far from constructive criticism.