zlacker

>>sharps+(OP)
I think news.yc has a 5th troll behavior and it's down modding a comment because they disagree with it. I have been down modded a number of times not for saying something rude or stupid just something that others don't agree with.

I tend to down mod rude and aggressive people on here and I also up mod people who I think have been down modded unfairly.

I am not sure if I am alone with my way of thinking.

>>Darren+t
I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

>>pg+R
It might be interesting to experiment with two axes of rating: one signifying agreement/disagreement, the other quality/abuse.

Whether it's worth the added complexity, I'm not sure, but it would resolve an ambiguity in the signals sent to commenters.

(To squeeze into the existing UI and mental model of this sort of site, I might make the current up/down mean quality -- should more people see this or should it recede from view? -- and add a right/left for agreement, giving posts tiny little inline spot polls, of a sort. Maybe it could even be a sparkline or two-tone percentage-bar.)

>>gojomo+g1
The problem is that the two axes may get confused in one's head. If I disagree with something (especially ideologies), it's often enough because I feel the opposing viewpoints are not thought out, and the post may set off the same internal growling as rudeness. Someone on your side may seem like a virtuous knight as you watch them engage the opposition in debate; the other side may view them as an harsh aggressor.