I hope that flagging is used to consider when a user is shadow-banned and that down-votes just remove points.
> third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change.
I recently lost over 70 points across two posts. The first post was rightly down voted. (I would have preferred it to have been killed to stop losing votes) but the second post IMO was suffering from pile-on downvotes. Killing the first post would have prevented some of those follow-on downvotes. Without the context of the first postthe second post would have received some mix of votes.
Killing unpopular opinions might be too harsh, but people need to start applyimg corrective upvotes if they feel that strongly about minority opinions.
I always thought that downvoting was to be used for comments that were off-topic, not when you disagreed with someone, but I've learned otherwise I guess. I really wish I could read dissenting opinions or when someone says something wrong, instead of downvoting, I'd prefer someone explain why it's wrong. Downvoting because you disagree with someone always seems off-putting to me.
> third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change.
I recently lost over 70 points across two posts. The first post was rightly down voted. (I would have preferred it to have been killed to stop losing votes) but the second post IMO was suffering from pile-on downvotes. Killing the first post would have prevented some of those follow-on downvotes. Without the context of the first postthe second post would have received some mix of votes.
Killing unpopular opinions might be too harsh, but people need to start applyimg corrective upvotes if they feel that strongly about minority opinions.