In a community like this one, or maybe even just this one, I came to regard downvotes as constructive criticism most of the time. I’ve never seen someone being downvoted to oblivion, in fact even a -2 is pretty rare to come across. And when people ask for clarification, there’s usually someone who answers genuinely instead of finger waving some kind of silly ‘do not discuss the downvote’ convention.

This was demonstrated in the thread about terminals, where you made a terse remark about resizing: “it doesn’t work”. I disagreed with what you said, and disagreeing isn’t enough to merit a downvote for as far as I’m concerned - but because you did not take the time to explain what you meant at all and just left it at “it doesn’t work”, I found the comment itself to be unsubstantiated, unproductive, and as such, incorrect as well.

Incorrect because resizing works fine for me and incorrect because you didn’t care to explain - those two combined - were my reason for downvoting.

Sometimes being downvoted happens to me, too - but whenever I get downvoted, I assume sincerity and apply introspection. Although I actually don’t even care whether the downvoter was sincere or just in a grumpy mood - there’s always something fruitful to take out of it that makes downvotes a useful and valuable.

Lobste.rs facilitates interaction between its members. The quality of interaction depends on the amount of care people put into their comments, and as was demonstrated so beautifully by the reactions you received when you asked for clarification regarding your downvote, over here people usually do their best to maintain a higher level of quality than on other places where elitism, moral high grounds, self-proclaimed authority or trolling have become the norm.

To me, a lack of introspection resulting in these kinds of suggestions degrade discussion quality a heck of a lot more than downgrades themselves. I wish you would have read the responses people gave for why you were downvoted and continued the dialog there, instead of requesting removal of the downvote functionality not just for yourself, but for everyone site wide. Luckily the dialoge, both there and here, can still be resumed.

I think complaints about down votes degrade the discussion much more than the down votes do.

I think I like open downvoting, even on stories. I think my highest-voted lobste.rs comment is pointing out that this recent story was substantially wrong, despite initial upvotes that presumably came because people thought the claim seemed important if true: https://lobste.rs/s/cp7bd3/your_license_use_react_js_can_be_revoked_if

Wrongness isn’t a flag reason, and seems like it shouldn’t be because moderators removing incorrect stories would leave them with some difficult calls that involve opinion and will make some folks mad. But the average opinion of lobste.rs users, including ones that don’t like it, seems useful enough to sort by.

Maybe the current hide threshold is harsh, or along with the reason menu we could show a little blurb about liking good-faith discussion? But downvotes seem too useful to do away with.

I like the current system, which prompts you for a reason. It’s enough of an extra barrier to prevent some amount downvoting, and it also helps explain to the downvotee why people disliked the post.

I’ve seen systems with only upvotes, and they seem to work pretty well. Downvotes often only serve as a landslide “remove this disgusting filth” behaviour, where a few people would downvote a comment and then it is seen as the will of the community, so the comment just keeps being downvoted by people automatically. At least that’s how it happens on reddit.

Here there is also the problem of graying out “unwanted” comments. I don’t particularly care about downvotes per se, but lobste.rs actively makes downvoted comments extremely annoying to read. Why? Let people form their own opinions instead of indulging in pavlovian conditioning.

Another good thing would be to hide comment ratings until you vote on them. Or just for a time, like reddit does it.

I disagree, and question your motive.

The quality of discussion has much to do with the effort put into communication; the lack of which spurred your thorough downvoting. …And before you assume I was one of your detractors, or that I’m otherwise protecting my right to downvote you, the only votes I made were “up”, for those brave souls who attempted to squeeze meaning from your words.

I like this idea. Besides the other upsides mentioned (upsides, heh) I think it would make the community feel friendlier.

Also, I notice that so ridiculously often on other websites, comments that are perfectly true/accurate but are inconvenient, are downvoted. This happens especially often in cases where an authority or leader of some sort is being questioned (on very reasonable, but “inconvenient” grounds), and it seems to promote groupthink.

Couple mentions about this in this thread, but having downvotes requiring a “reason” might be interesting. Then downvotes could actually become constructive criticism (a little like the Slashdot system?).

Downvote -> [ Irrelevant | Being too much of a Jerk | Disagreeing a lot | Other ]

This lets us be a bit more honest about why we’re doing it? With a nebulous “Other” to allow downvoting anyways.

You could keep “Disagreeing” to be honest about why some downvotes happen, or maybe you remove it so that when we downvote, we can think about our own motivations.

This recent post From eevee is relevant (TL;DR is “don’t be a jerk” is a pretty good rule).

I agree. I often notice comments are downvoted for not being politically correct. It’s a shame!