I think it’s a hard tradeoff. I do think lots of people take psychological hits, but it is also genuinely important that people who are not a good fit for the site learn quickly and get the hint that they either have to shape up or get out. Otherwise we are at risk of quickly deteroriating in discussion quality. I do think this still makes it valuable to reduce variance, but I think we’ve already largely done that with the strong-vote and vote-weighting system.
Upvotes by senior users matter a lot more, and any senior user can you dig you out of multiple junior users downvoting you, which helps.
I think it’s a hard tradeoff. I do think lots of people take psychological hits, but it is also genuinely important that people who are not a good fit for the site learn quickly and get the hint that they either have to shape up or get out. Otherwise we are at risk of quickly deteroriating in discussion quality. I do think this still makes it valuable to reduce variance, but I think we’ve already largely done that with the strong-vote and vote-weighting system.
Upvotes by senior users matter a lot more, and any senior user can you dig you out of multiple junior users downvoting you, which helps.