The Value of Downvoting, or, How Hacker News Gets It Wrong

What would "it" be that HN is getting wrong? The point is to (a) have quality posts on the front page, and (b) encourage a community of people to congregate and share valuable advice/wisdom/information.

Design decisions are simply tools to accomplish these goals. Jeff says disallowing downvotes is "harmful to the community" and explains why he theorizes is the case, but why guess? We have HN, we can examine it and decide for ourselves if HN has been "harmed."

I am all for him beating his chest and extolling the virtues of his complicated system. But I do not see the merit of his comparison to HN: It strikes me as fairly run-of-the-mill Coding Horror-style link-baiting.

> We have HN, we can examine it and decide for ourselves if HN has been "harmed."

When a clearly political post about the drug war stays on the front page for two days, that's harm in my book. I expect you will see more and more of this over time as the community grows.

Sorry you feel that way about the post, reg. Just meant to be a discussion, and I went out of my way to say positive thingsa about HN. It feels almost like a personal attack the way you stated it here.