The purpose of downvotes is ill-defined; some people use it as a spam-control button, some people use it as a "this post doesn't contribute to the discussion" (which is itself subjective, and is a subset of:), some people use it as a "your opinion is wrong" button. All are valid use cases, IMO.
The third case is the most controversial one, but...we use the upvote arrow to say "your opinion is right", and nobody complains about it. In a scenario where it's invalid to say "your opinion is wrong", it's also invalid to say "your opinion is right", at which point we might as well just remove the up/downvotes and replace them with a single "flag" button, which will still get abused to minimize opinions people disagree with.
Really, what I think you're experiencing is just the growth of the readership, your own aging and the perspective that comes with it, and the natural tendency of online communities to trend towards middle-of-the-road, safe discussion. That can't really be fixed democratically, IMO, because it is the democratic nature of the system which enables those problems in the first place.
Unless you can figure out how to make the upvote button always mean "this post empirically contributes new thoughts or ideas to the discussion", and nothing else, then attempts to fix the downvote button will be half-measures at best.
Out of idle curiosity: Is anyone aware of a zero-sum karma system, where the total sum of karma in the system is roughly a function of the active userbase, and granting reputation to someone else costs you some of your own? That might make for a fun little economy-in-a-bubble.
The third case is the most controversial one, but...we use the upvote arrow to say "your opinion is right", and nobody complains about it. In a scenario where it's invalid to say "your opinion is wrong", it's also invalid to say "your opinion is right", at which point we might as well just remove the up/downvotes and replace them with a single "flag" button, which will still get abused to minimize opinions people disagree with.
Really, what I think you're experiencing is just the growth of the readership, your own aging and the perspective that comes with it, and the natural tendency of online communities to trend towards middle-of-the-road, safe discussion. That can't really be fixed democratically, IMO, because it is the democratic nature of the system which enables those problems in the first place.
Unless you can figure out how to make the upvote button always mean "this post empirically contributes new thoughts or ideas to the discussion", and nothing else, then attempts to fix the downvote button will be half-measures at best.
Out of idle curiosity: Is anyone aware of a zero-sum karma system, where the total sum of karma in the system is roughly a function of the active userbase, and granting reputation to someone else costs you some of your own? That might make for a fun little economy-in-a-bubble.