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How about this radical idea: Once in a while, a moderator marks a comment which is reasonable but contains an unpopular opinion as a 'trap'. Anyone who mods it down gets a zap of -100 karma. Will make people think about their downmoding before doing it.

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What if one person's idea of 'reasonable' isn't the same as someone elses'? They could be 'zapped' for downmodding not because the disagree, but becasue they don't believe the comment adds anything to the discussion. That's exactly why we have modding in the first place: so all of us can benefit from the collective filtering of the good comments. If it was a completely unsubjective judgment then having a single moderator would be the solution.

If posters have good opinions that they don't want downmodded, they should learn to communicate better. People shouldn't be punished for disliking your opinion.

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