The real problem imho is that votes, and in particular downvotes, shouldn't be visible, they should be implied by the ranking. While HN doesn't publicly show the votes of a given post it turns grey posts with more than 4 downvotes which has the same effect. Downvoted posts should automatically trickle to the bottom without any visual clue and there should be a minimum and a maximum for downvotes and upvotes respectively. Another problem that arises often (most evident on reddit) is that top posts get the most attention and thus the most upvotes and the tone and argument of the discussion is decided only by the first few comments. A solution would be to stop counting upvotes after a certain quota so as to let newer posts to bubble up to the top.
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The real problem imho is that votes, and in particular downvotes, shouldn't be visible, they should be implied by the ranking. While HN doesn't publicly show the votes of a given post it turns grey posts with more than 4 downvotes which has the same effect. Downvoted posts should automatically trickle to the bottom without any visual clue and there should be a minimum and a maximum for downvotes and upvotes respectively. Another problem that arises often (most evident on reddit) is that top posts get the most attention and thus the most upvotes and the tone and argument of the discussion is decided only by the first few comments. A solution would be to stop counting upvotes after a certain quota so as to let newer posts to bubble up to the top.