Policing strong downvotes better may be a relatively low-cost way to mitigate this. The status quo risks disincentivizes making comments to which a few people who are willing to use their strongvote hammers will react negatively.
With the caveat that underlying data are unavailable, I get the sense that some users are too trigger-happy on the strong downvote button for content with which they disagree. I’ve suggested requiring strong downvoters to check a box or enter text justifying their vote—which might serve as a “stop and think” moment against reflexive use of the button. The voting norms are relatively restrictive on what rises to the level of justifying a strong downvote, although these are not exclusive:
It contains many factual errors and bad reasoning
It’s manipulative or breaks our norms in significant ways (consider reporting it)
I wouldn’t be opposed to giving mods the power to downgrade strong downvotes to standard ones in certain circumstances. For example, where there is a significant number of upvotes on a post or comment, that discrepancy suggests that the strong reaction of a strong downvote may be outside the range of reasonable responses to the post or comment. Requiring that kind of objective indicator would prevent mods from downgrading strong downvotes willy-nilly.
Policing strong downvotes better may be a relatively low-cost way to mitigate this. The status quo risks disincentivizes making comments to which a few people who are willing to use their strongvote hammers will react negatively.
With the caveat that underlying data are unavailable, I get the sense that some users are too trigger-happy on the strong downvote button for content with which they disagree. I’ve suggested requiring strong downvoters to check a box or enter text justifying their vote—which might serve as a “stop and think” moment against reflexive use of the button. The voting norms are relatively restrictive on what rises to the level of justifying a strong downvote, although these are not exclusive:
I wouldn’t be opposed to giving mods the power to downgrade strong downvotes to standard ones in certain circumstances. For example, where there is a significant number of upvotes on a post or comment, that discrepancy suggests that the strong reaction of a strong downvote may be outside the range of reasonable responses to the post or comment. Requiring that kind of objective indicator would prevent mods from downgrading strong downvotes willy-nilly.