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Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I really wish that HN required you to comment in order to downvote. Or even just required that a comment had replies before it could be downvoted; I don't care so much that every single person justifies their downvote as that the person getting downvoted gets an explanation.

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I think this could backfire. Toxic/trolling comments do not need to be dignified with a response, and requiring one may increase the incentive to write inflammatory posts (assuming that at least some people do this—consciously or not—to instigate reactions).

For well-intentioned posts that are factually incorrect, it seems that there are usually replies that explain the reason for the downvote. When a comment is wrongfully banished to the grey nothingness, oftentimes others step up and defend it. The community immune system functions well as is.

Also, I adore the fade-to-grey side effect of the downvotes. It’s like spritzing a cat with water for scrounging on the counters—an ultimately harmless but super effective reprimand.

Posts like that should be flagged for moderation, not voted on. A community site should have guidelines that everyone can reference, and if something is in violation, there should be a way to flag that post.

That only incentivizes people who have all the time in the world to disagree on the internet. Most users with expertise just don't have that kind of mental-bandwidth to spare. Just as it is not worth your time to get into a verbal argument with flat-earthers, its not worth your time to comment on most posts that you disagree with.

I like that a comment requires at least one comment before a downvote. Maybe not a comment for each downvote, since that might encourage dogpiling. Imagine a new user makes a social faux pas and suddenly receives ~4 relatively negative comments.

I initially really liked this idea. I think the only problem is that it could lead to requiring more moderation. It's very hard to enforce quality. Right now I'm imagining a bandwagon chain of "You suck!" or other low quality comments just for the price of downvoting. I guess you could impose a minimum character requirement. At any rate, the idea of it being visible only to the user being downvoted is somewhat novel as well.

Having to work harder at moderation seems acceptable to me. And it'd be fairly simple to implement a "You can't just say 'you suck' when downvoting. If you do, you lose your downvoting privileges permanently." policy.

Removing content from a discussion IS moderation. That's why the idea is tying a 'reason for moderation' (the reply, or any reply existing at all at least) to the moderation action.

Such a moderation comment might be anything, but the more egregious examples:

Illegal content (of some sort); A threat upon persons or property (E.G.); Hate Speech; other things that a reasonable person would agree do not belong with a discussion; or just being Wildly off-topic.

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