More like this/Less like this makes sense for top posts, but is it helpful for comments?
It’s ok to keep an imperfect system—LW is nowhere near groupthink levels of subreddits or slashdot.
However—it seems to me that stealing HackerNews / Stackoverflow model of removing normal downvote, and keeping only upvote for comments (and report for spam/abuse, or possibly some highly restricted downvote for special situations only; or one which would count for a lot less than upvote) would reduce groupthink a lot, while keeping all major benefits of current system.
Other than “not fixing what ain’t broken”, are there any good reasons to keep downvote for comments? Low quality non-abusive coments will sink to the bottom just because of not getting upvotes, later reinforced by most people reading from highest rated first.
Disclaimers:
I’m obviously biased as a contrarian, and as someone who really likes reading a variety of contrarian opinions. I rarely bother posting comments saying that I totally agree with something. I occasionally send a private message with thanks when I read something particularly great, but I don’t recall ever doing it here yet, even though a lot of posts were that kind of great.
And I fully admit that on several occasions I downvoted a good comment just because I though one below it was far better and deserving a lot of extra promotion. I always felt like I’m abusing the system this way. Is this common?
More like this/Less like this makes sense for top posts, but is it helpful for comments?
It’s ok to keep an imperfect system—LW is nowhere near groupthink levels of subreddits or slashdot.
However—it seems to me that stealing HackerNews / Stackoverflow model of removing normal downvote, and keeping only upvote for comments (and report for spam/abuse, or possibly some highly restricted downvote for special situations only; or one which would count for a lot less than upvote) would reduce groupthink a lot, while keeping all major benefits of current system.
Other than “not fixing what ain’t broken”, are there any good reasons to keep downvote for comments? Low quality non-abusive coments will sink to the bottom just because of not getting upvotes, later reinforced by most people reading from highest rated first.
Disclaimers:
I’m obviously biased as a contrarian, and as someone who really likes reading a variety of contrarian opinions. I rarely bother posting comments saying that I totally agree with something. I occasionally send a private message with thanks when I read something particularly great, but I don’t recall ever doing it here yet, even though a lot of posts were that kind of great.
And I fully admit that on several occasions I downvoted a good comment just because I though one below it was far better and deserving a lot of extra promotion. I always felt like I’m abusing the system this way. Is this common?