I believe it would be an interesting implementation for HN. I rarely comment, but when I do, I think it would be interesting to read the comments of users who upvoted or downvoted, potentially gauging the reaction behind their vote, especially if they choose not to reply. I don’t know of a website that does something similar, and flaws might exist, such as commenters retaliating against recurring downvotes from specific individuals. However, implementing something like a timeout for downvoting the person who has downvoted could be considered. Even seeing who is upvoting whom could be interesting, and I’m sure collecting and analyzing such data would be useful for mods to prevent abuse of the voting system if not already done. Another ideal situation is to have a comment field that could be required for downvoting to possibly inform why.
