Force someone to justify a downvote and you'll get some useful feedback. You'll also likely get a 'because your mom' bunch, unless you annotate the downvote with the username downvoting, and that's a big leap and would discourage downvotes.
Downvotes are a useful tool. If you can only ever upvote something, that is when the site-value is vulnerable to brigading - HN is probably not interested in lowering the signal-to-noise if farming accounts to upvote (and only upvote) is an option.
Also, a lot of downvoting on the internet is just "I disagree with you", or "I don't like what you're saying". It can be personal, and not necessarily useful to the original poster.
In other words, I disagree with you. Though I won't downvote (flag, I guess on posts) you. This time :)
[aside: I'm not some apologist for HN. I'd love to post my own pet-project [1] but I've linked to it too often in posts where I though it was relevant, and now HN won't accept any post with that URL. Caught by my own ignorance and actions, but it's still their right to run their site as they see fit]
1: (I'm assuming that HN-links are ok :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50151036#50151160
Downvotes are a useful tool. If you can only ever upvote something, that is when the site-value is vulnerable to brigading - HN is probably not interested in lowering the signal-to-noise if farming accounts to upvote (and only upvote) is an option.
Also, a lot of downvoting on the internet is just "I disagree with you", or "I don't like what you're saying". It can be personal, and not necessarily useful to the original poster.
In other words, I disagree with you. Though I won't downvote (flag, I guess on posts) you. This time :)
[aside: I'm not some apologist for HN. I'd love to post my own pet-project [1] but I've linked to it too often in posts where I though it was relevant, and now HN won't accept any post with that URL. Caught by my own ignorance and actions, but it's still their right to run their site as they see fit]
1: (I'm assuming that HN-links are ok :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50151036#50151160