zlacker

Outside of the UI difficulties in keeping a clean look, would different ways of providing response to a post or topic not help to solve this? For instance if there was some way to mark something as repetitious that could be contrasted against e.g. upvotes to get dynamic and 'automatic' feedback on the perceived 'freshness' of a topic.

In general downvotes seem like a relatively poor feedback mechanism because there's no shared agreement on how they should be used. This [1], perhaps ironically flagged, post offered feedback on why people downvote, and it's just all over the place. Even if there are guidelines, people will be people. At least with something like clear adjectives, the percent of 'intended' feedback would be higher.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23997697