Instead of having an arrow for downvoting comments (which has a different intended meaning on hn than on most other social newssites) couldn't we have a button next to "flag" that has a name on it, e.g. "content-free/snarky/witty but pointless comment/fanboy pseudo-argument", so that people have some clear guidance when to click on it?
And then would be very interesting to feed a Bayesian filter with this feedback, and see if that filter can pick up future "snarky" comments automatically.
If that works, then requiring a proof of work (a simple-ish logical puzzle) attached to a snarky comment could bring a scalable barrier.
Sometimes it can be difficult to reply to a comment without the possibility of being perceived as being snarky. For example a comment thread that I was involved in about jQuery recently:
Fortunately the person I replied to took the comment in the sense it was intended, but I also know that people can be really defensive in this area and can perceive a comment as snarky even though it wasn't meant to be.
I read it and do not find anything snarky in it. But the way you mentioned it made me wonder: there are "intentions" and there are "results" - are there a lot of the comments that are intentionally snarky ? Or, the snarkiness is just a way a person would communicate ? And if that, is it worth hinting to that person that their written communication conveys not what they intended ?
Slashdot has had this for over 10 years, I don't think it adds much value. Well, you can easily find the '+5, Funny' comments, which is good; but '+5, insightful' or '+5, interesting' becomes meaningless quite soon (maybe I'm missing the nuances of the system, I've never moderated or meta-moderated - ironically, mostly because the whole system seems so complex that I never bothered to get to know it).
I wasn't aiming at having a comment be tagged as funny or whatever. It was just supposed to tell people that they shouldn't click on on the downvote button because they disagree with the conclusion of a perfectly well argumented comment -- which is what downvotes mean, e.g., on reddit. That's why I suggested to replace the downvote arrow with a few links/buttons.
