It also means that downvoting doesn’t just signal that a comment is bad/too highly ranked, which is what I’ve been using it to do; it also reduces a commenter’s ability to help filter and rank comments by quality, even though that’s often easier than making a high-quality comment and even though my reasons for downvoting don’t always reflect strongly on my general opinion of a user.
Edit: I’ll assume losing karma doesn’t cancel any downvotes I’ve already cast, although it makes me slightly worried.
Edit 7/10: In naive terms, every time I downvote a bad post I might be effectively upvoting four other equally bad posts.
It also means that downvoting doesn’t just signal that a comment is bad/too highly ranked, which is what I’ve been using it to do; it also reduces a commenter’s ability to help filter and rank comments by quality, even though that’s often easier than making a high-quality comment and even though my reasons for downvoting don’t always reflect strongly on my general opinion of a user.
Edit: I’ll assume losing karma doesn’t cancel any downvotes I’ve already cast, although it makes me slightly worried.
Edit 7/10: In naive terms, every time I downvote a bad post I might be effectively upvoting four other equally bad posts.