>HN should require a reason to hit the downvote button
That's an interesting thought. What if there were an optional drop-down menu that allowed down-voters to provide canned feedback?
Either way, I think you'd enjoy the discussion more if you worried less about voting. Unless you're selling something, the popularity of the sentiment you're expressing isn't especially relevant.
I'm not super worried about voting per se. If I get downvoted to death and my account banned, I'll have my discussions elsewhere than HN, and I have plenty of venues to have intellectual debate of higher quality than being downvoted and gagged every time I speak an unpopular opinion. I'm still probably far from that based on my current karma, but I've seen a noticable change in the quality of the community in the past year or so.
It's just that I think it could be a great platform for controversial intellectual discussions, but the algorithm is designed to promote conformity rather than raising unpopular but well-backed opinions. For example, I've gotten my speech muffled by the algorithm every time I speak out against specific Apple practices, or against the current version of capitalism (not even capitalism as a general idea, which I agree with, just not the current implementation). Somehow saying something against Apple or contemporary American capitalism on HN is just like saying something against the leader in authoritarian regimes; you'll be flagged, beaten (downwvoted), muted, and banned by the community.
I definitely like the drop-down idea. "I disagree" would not be one of the options for downvote. Some of the valid options I can think of are:
Agreed. There's more than a few topics where I self censor. It isn't about the points. Most of these things are either beating a dead horse or the quality of the responses aren't worth engaging with. Some are just too contentious. Other times, I just can't resist.
It is disconcerting to see the popular or establishment view presented with different standards of evidence, sources or logic.
I'd leave "I disagree" as an option in this hypothetical. The down-voting user would have it as a shadow vote, without impacting the comment.
For scientifically inaccurate, I think they should be prompted to reply with a refutation.
Needs elaboration should just open a reply with "Could you please elaborate on..."
You don't understand HN. There's two buttons (once you have enough points, I guess): downvote, and flag. All of the "valid options" you list above, except maybe "irrelevant to parent comment", are better served with the flag button, which will cause the comment to be deleted (if enough people agree with you) (even thus deleted (a.k.a. "flagged") comments are still visible if you want them to be).
I always felt that these things tend to get blurred together especially when tensions flare. The ideal situation for a downvote may be something that doesn't add much to the discussion, whatever that means, be it somewhat off-topic, repetition of existing information, or groundless speculation. The vote helps move that conversation down and ideally allow better more 'additive' ones to float up. But on pure disagreement, it seems like a missed opportunity to discuss. This is unrealistic, but I'd love a middle option between downvote and super-downvote (i.e. flag), where you are required to reply. The extra effort would prevent knee-jerk reactions that silence acceptable comments, but maybe would foster some constructive disagreement now that your username needs to stand behind the downvote.
Exactly. One possible fix would be that you don't actually get to see a downvote arrow on anything unless you reply to it first.
Separately, I've had thoughtfully written responses flagged for what is presumably disagreement. So may be the "flag" button needs a dropdown and the downvote button not showing up until you reply would be a good combination solution.
That's an interesting thought. What if there were an optional drop-down menu that allowed down-voters to provide canned feedback?
Either way, I think you'd enjoy the discussion more if you worried less about voting. Unless you're selling something, the popularity of the sentiment you're expressing isn't especially relevant.