This is all really interesting, @enjar. Great food for thought.

I think there are indeed political reasons and fear of retaliation reasons for people to not want to downvote over-compensated posts by powerful people. (My brother-in-law, @preparedwombat, learned the hard way what can happen.) I get why HF21 incorporates the free downvote feature, and it’s a great experiment. But I personally think the rebalancing is going to have to happen some other way. Google has figured out how to not only reward good content using algorithms, but how to punish abusers, so we know it can be done. It shouldn’t be left up to the whims and moods And subjective views of individuals, in my humble opinion. Upvoting is different. Saying “hey, I like what did” is very different from making a judgment call that someone’s work has been over-rewarded and taking it into your own hands to set things straight. That is simply going to go badly some measurable portion of the time, and the rest of the time it’s easy to fear that it will. My two cents!