I would like to know your comments!
Can we just skip all the meta-debates, and focus on interesting hacker news? So what if you have 50 less karma than you think you should? So what if there are 4 articles that you think aren't hacker news? (Just don't click on or upvote them).
The various approaches to karma, when well applied, have the ability to mitigate some pretty challenging social problems (trolling, etc). Math applied to meatspace issues seems like a geeky topic with the power to make a real difference in peoples lives. To wit: http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
My point is that hacker news is to share knowledge or ideas and if you are going to say that you don't like a post then you should share with the community your point of view so we can learn from each other.
This is not the third grade, and our discussions are not chewing gum or a note being passed. If someone has something to add, they will. This is already possible. Everyone can comment on any comment.
You are asking to formalize something that already exists, and to do so in a stupidly paternalistic manner. Personally, I don't come to HN to provide feedback on every dumbass post that I think is dumb. (Though I very, very, rarely downvote. I'm far more likely to call something stupid in a comment and explain why...but I don't think anyone should be forced to explain why they think something is stupid. A downvote is a much more concise and efficient way to say it. I just happen to be a blowhard that enjoys the sound of my own voice, and so I comment a lot more than I vote.)
And, I agree with the above: Meta-discussion about karma and voting is just annoying. Stop doing it. It's irritating, and this kind of suggestion comes up every couple of weeks or so and gets shouted down because most of us disagree pretty strongly with it...just as this one has been.
Would a private reply that only the submitter can see be valuable? It would help the community give direct feedback to the submitter or commenter without adding noise.
That would provide incentive for the downvoting user to comment so that people would have a chance to mod him up to recover it.
Yes, yes, I know "don't pay attention to your karma", but it's one of the primary pieces of information about our posts/comments that we're given by reddit/this system.
The site would function identically if article, comment, and user karma values were all hidden. I wonder what the impact would be on the dialog.
Charge money for voting. For example: every 2 votes costs 1 Karma point.
There are lots of other interesting Karma suggestions in the main Requests thread:
I do, however, upvote to agree. If I disagree but I think it's a legitimate comment, I don't do anything.
Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
ericwaller 21 days ago | link | parent | flag
It'd be interesting if a down vote were actually a special case of reply and required an explanation.
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aswanson 374 days ago | link | parent | flag
You could make down votes more expensive by forcing someone to type a rationale of why