Sometimes the ten characters minimum I would enter would be "You're a fucking moron." Since that's probably either unproductive due to incorrectness or unproductive because the person is not in a position to do anything about it or counter-productive because nothing good can from such a comment, the downvote is much better. I can allow the button to proxy for voicing the opinion "You're a fucking moron" and move on.

By extension the downvote as proxy covers lots of other cases which would add little of benefit to HN.

If the comment in question constituted destructive behaviour, go ahead, vote it down.

Let's assume now it was not destructive.

Error on the side of doubt that maybe you are wrong. If you can convince yourself with reasons that what is said is wrong, state your reasons. If you can't, don't down-vote.

That you are thinking "You're a fucking moron." is a big problem it itself. You are not alone with this problem, and it haunts HN.

On what basis have you come to believe that you are well positioned to offer reasoned advice in regard to how I, or anyone else should vote and comment on HN?

I didn't offer advice but judged you.

I judged you as I did to help make comments on HN suitable for having critical, rational, constructive and respectful discussions.

My basement is your comment.

And, being "well positioned" is not necessary for giving reasoned advice.

It already is suitable for those things. Downvoting in lieu of wrestling pigs in mud puddles is, in my experience is one reason why. [1] Complaining about karma and its mechanisms is a dead end from both a metaphysical and literary point of view.

Downvotes avoid turning disagreements into excuses to accuse other people of character flaws, as in your comments toward me.

[1] Though here apparently I cannot avoid the invitation.

    It already is suitable for those things.

Suitableness is not binary.

    Downvoting in lieu of wrestling pigs in mud puddles is, in my experience
    is one reason why.

Downvoting is often used on controversial comments. That blocks controversial discussion.

I think we should not block a controversial discussion if it's serious, rational and constructive.

    Complaining about karma and its mechanisms is a dead end from
    both a metaphysical and literary point of view.

Here you are overstating. It depends on the participants.

You can avoid that from happening by being constructive, respectful and serious, and stoping the discussion if the other is not.

    Downvotes avoid turning disagreements into excuses to accuse
    other people of character flaws, as in your comments toward me.

I see more options than either

(1) to downvote to disagree or

(2) to accuse other people of character flaws.

The attitude of thinking of other people one disagrees with as "fucking morons" is problematic independently on whether one downvotes for disagreement or not. It's not accusing a character flaw, it's simply criticizing one specific attitude.

I think you should be told. So, if nobody else would have said it, I would have done it anyway.

Downvotes are not only misused for expressing disagreement.

For example, this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9489042 of mine had in the beginning several downvotes.

Several people on HN downvote you for saying something is not understandable for you and asking for a transcript.

Is this really how we want HN to be?

Stop misusing downvotes.

You're describing something like Slashdot's moderation system, and we all know how well that worked out.

At +5, It is the best moderation system ever published. Immune to brigades, and reader-tunable to their individual preference level for jokes and flames.

Pretty well?

So each bad comment would require a large comment thread? Seems like the opposite of what you'd want.

It could be displayed much more compactly, or not displayed at all to third parties.

A way to give feedback to the poster on inconsequential details such as language/spelling/typos/grammar/etc that isn't displayed to anyone else would be useful.