&gt; Honestly I think HN would be better without downvoting at all.<p>I don&#x27;t <i>entirely</i> agree with this statement. If you&#x27;re going to be doing threaded conversations, having a system that can influence the sort order of those conversations isn&#x27;t necessarily a bad thing.<p>I&#x27;ve been thinking about HN&#x27;s downvotes for a while now, and I kinda think -based on my overwhelmingly positive experience with the Pre-SJW Metafilter- that HN should either have strict time-based ordering for threads with up&#x2F;downvotes only serving to give you Whuffie, <i>or</i> have up&#x2F;downvotes control sort order, but <i>not</i> grey out comments that are below 1.