I've had my own encounters with the downmod problem (we all have) and I won't repeat them here in the interest of brevity. But here's a suggestion for handling it. Can't tell if it's pie-in-the-sky, so input's encouraged...
Most of us make it a habit to abide by the news.YC "guidelines," such as not changing the text of submitted headlines unless it's needed for clarification, and not adding comment signatures. And it's an easy thing to police because there's accountability. Case in point, I've only seen a signature once, and another user had pointed to the users' misstep by the time I noticed it.
But there's no accountability for downmodding. There really can't be, else you injure the chance for honest opinions from people afraid of the kickback. But what if there was a single line of text you needed to include with a downmod? Something short, like 25-40 characters, that explained your reason. The community would recognize anonymous feedback like "Trolling" and "Unnecessary personal attack" as reasonable motives for downmodding, and "Bad point" or "Stupid idea" as unreasonable.
It wouldn't eliminate the problem -- I don't think anything anonymous could -- but it might create some mechanism for policing indiscriminate downmods and encouraging fair use.
Of course where you'd display that information is another issue entirely...
The community would recognize anonymous feedback like "Trolling" and "Unnecessary personal attack" as reasonable motives for downmodding, and "Bad point" or "Stupid idea" as unreasonable.
Most of my downvotes are on comments which don't fall into any of these categories -- they fall into the category of "not even wrong". In my view, a comment which isn't even logically coherent has no business being here.
Comments
I've had my own encounters with the downmod problem (we all have) and I won't repeat them here in the interest of brevity. But here's a suggestion for handling it. Can't tell if it's pie-in-the-sky, so input's encouraged...
Most of us make it a habit to abide by the news.YC "guidelines," such as not changing the text of submitted headlines unless it's needed for clarification, and not adding comment signatures. And it's an easy thing to police because there's accountability. Case in point, I've only seen a signature once, and another user had pointed to the users' misstep by the time I noticed it.
But there's no accountability for downmodding. There really can't be, else you injure the chance for honest opinions from people afraid of the kickback. But what if there was a single line of text you needed to include with a downmod? Something short, like 25-40 characters, that explained your reason. The community would recognize anonymous feedback like "Trolling" and "Unnecessary personal attack" as reasonable motives for downmodding, and "Bad point" or "Stupid idea" as unreasonable.
It wouldn't eliminate the problem -- I don't think anything anonymous could -- but it might create some mechanism for policing indiscriminate downmods and encouraging fair use.
Of course where you'd display that information is another issue entirely...
The community would recognize anonymous feedback like "Trolling" and "Unnecessary personal attack" as reasonable motives for downmodding, and "Bad point" or "Stupid idea" as unreasonable.
Most of my downvotes are on comments which don't fall into any of these categories -- they fall into the category of "not even wrong". In my view, a comment which isn't even logically coherent has no business being here.