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Re:New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity by Crito on Friday April 03, 2015 @05:16PM (#9318594)
Downvotes not being for disagreement is an absurd redditism. Upvotes are used for agreement, so it is only natural that downvotes are used for disagreement.

PG has stated in the past that downvoting things you disagree with is proper usage on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691

I don't know if 'dang has changed this policy, but if so I haven't heard about it.

Re:New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity by Retra on Friday April 03, 2015 @09:28PM (#9319515)
I would think that it would be fairly obvious that trying to assert that down-votes are not for disagreement is extremely futile. It's human nature to react to things they disagree with, and if down-votes don't mean disagree... then what? People aren't allowed to disagree? The only way to disagree is to actually invest significant amounts of your time?

Sounds great in theory. But then a small number of zealots can derail just about every thread with minimal effort. I image it would really degrade a community in a heartbeat. So it's probably a good thing nobody has found a way to enforce such a policy.

Re:New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity by Dylan16807 on Saturday April 04, 2015 @05:34AM (#9320450)
You can downvote zealotry and flawed arguments without downvoting mundane disagreement.