While you're correct, IMHO, this type of post is getting more and more common too. Do none of you complainants realise that filtering is a life skill? ;)
> "The reason HN doesn't need downvotes is that HN, unlike Reddit, kills lame articles. On Reddit, users need downvotes as a way of saying an article is lame. Downvoting is the only way you can get a (nonspam) submission off the frontpage. But on HN you can flag it and if it's bad the editors will kill it.
We can thus safely assume a nonlame set of articles, and we also (so far at least) assume nonlame voters. And if you only have nonlame voters voting on nonlame articles, upvotes should be enough to pick the winners."
That was written almost two years ago, though. Does anybody know if there has been a more recent discussion?
Thanks for the clarification. I'm somewhat surprised though that people use the down vote when they disagree with something quite subjective. I usually down vote comments when they are factually wrong or out of place.
From what I've seen in the last 6 months, a lame submission just gets quickly overlooked and lost in the new ones that are coming. Now there might be good ones which roll of the page due to the flood of submissions, but many HN users RSS and read them anyways. Hence it seems to be working.
