I think the system on stackoverflow.com works well. There, making a downvote on somelne else costs you something in your vote total, whereas upvotes are free. The result is that genuinely wrong answers get a few net downvotes, presumably from very high karma individuals who don’t mind the expense, and who also are presumably a good choice for “arbiter” type roles given their very high karma. stackoverflow.com karma system is pretty detailed, with priveleges and permissions coming at higher and higher personal karma levels, but I would say “charging” for downvotes is the most relevant feature for the most improvement here on lesswrong.com.
Currently there is (as far as I know) a downvoting limit of 4x your total karma, which seems to serve the same purpose. It’s possible, of course, that this limit needs to be lower. But if, say, the limit were half your total karma, then it wouldn’t change much to additionally charge karma for downvotes: all karma would remain the same to within a factor of 2.
Of course, charging karma for downvotes would probably also discourage downvoting, because people don’t like their numbers going down. I’m not sure if this is a good thing, though; incentives mainly work well for people who are already using the system as intended, so this would discourage legitimate downvoting while leaving retributive downvoting alone.
I think the system on stackoverflow.com works well. There, making a downvote on somelne else costs you something in your vote total, whereas upvotes are free. The result is that genuinely wrong answers get a few net downvotes, presumably from very high karma individuals who don’t mind the expense, and who also are presumably a good choice for “arbiter” type roles given their very high karma. stackoverflow.com karma system is pretty detailed, with priveleges and permissions coming at higher and higher personal karma levels, but I would say “charging” for downvotes is the most relevant feature for the most improvement here on lesswrong.com.
Currently there is (as far as I know) a downvoting limit of 4x your total karma, which seems to serve the same purpose. It’s possible, of course, that this limit needs to be lower. But if, say, the limit were half your total karma, then it wouldn’t change much to additionally charge karma for downvotes: all karma would remain the same to within a factor of 2.
Of course, charging karma for downvotes would probably also discourage downvoting, because people don’t like their numbers going down. I’m not sure if this is a good thing, though; incentives mainly work well for people who are already using the system as intended, so this would discourage legitimate downvoting while leaving retributive downvoting alone.