Quora/Stackoverflow/etc have all been destroyed by opinionated idiots abusing the downvote system.

I notice that the monks appear to have succumbed to the popularity gods and implemented a similar system.

In all seriousness: there are only 2 kinds of readers:

  1. . Folk who know their stuff, understand the situation, and properly cast a ++ vote.
  2. . Ev everyone else - especially including trolls, angry fools, idiots who don't-know-shit, folk who do not like the subject itself or happen to have a different opinion to it, haters who dislike the poster or their alias, and so forth.
The *problem* is that the group of #2 outweigh the group of #1 by at least 100:1 - which means that the entire usefulness of the voting system is destroyed: the actual voices of wisdom are downed out entirely by the idiots.

I propose to delete the -- option entirely.

Think really carefully about this:
a) what kind of person do you need to be in order to be qualified to cast a "++" vote?
b) what kind of person do you need to be in order that your casting of a "--" vote is on-topic and useful to the conversation and deserving to decrement the vote of person (a) ?

See my point? There's no possible way to ensure that only skilled down-voters are counted, so not counting any downvotes at all actually sovles the problem. Garbage still ends up with "zero" reputation as it properly deserves, and all the gems are all but guaranteed to float to the top - without risk of being scuttled by fools.

In reply to Controversial!! - Get rid of the -- vote option. by cnd

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