Re: We should elminate: Anonymous, and DOWN-voting

[wazoox]

in reply to We should elminate: Anonymous, and DOWN-voting

I disagree completely with you, and I have two examples of other communities where downvotes exist and work well:

• reddit
• hacker news

It's too bad that it's not possible to take back a downvote on PM, though, like you can on reddit (but not on hacker news; furthermore HN small arrows make it very easy to miss, particularly on touch devices).

I didn't downvote you, because I don't downvote people I disagree with on matters of opinion, and I think it's wrong to downvote you for this. However, downvotes are extremely useful to express the "crowd wisdom" on technically wrong messages. I don't think you to be technically wrong, only misguided.

[Anonymous Monk]

Down-voting is inherently destructive and serves no purpose what-so-ever other than to catalyse the group-mind to marginalise and single out individuals ripe for a group banging session.

[wazoox]

It definitely works this way on unmoderated sites, but certainly not on carefully moderated sites such as Perlmonks.

[Anonymous Monk]

Your starting with the assumption that a site needs a hierarchy, that certain users need to be trusted with power over their fellow users. This theory is faulty, we can write software which works in a more egalitarian way. I have already perfected the theorem of how such a system works, and I will provide proof of concept in the fullness of time.

[Anonymous Monk]

“Carefully moderated? ? ?”

Heh...   It might be, perhaps, if the technology in question were actually “up to snuff,” but ... let the record show that it just might not be.

“Let the record show, and for whatever arcane technical reason,” this web-site has dutifully (and technically) downgraded me to the status of Anonymous Monk through no intent nor action of my own.   Therefore, all of us would do very well not to presume that any “anonymous” actions, whatsoever, are “intentional!”

...