"What if we knew who downvoted whom, what would be the result?"
I love that idea, but extend it also to upvoting, and use it to create a killer social network and/or dating site.
If you and I love the same ideas and hate the same ideas, than we should meet. We may not enrich each others worldview, but that's what HN is for. You and I, in such a scenario would probably get along really well and be great friends. A great way to find that out is a "similarity heuristic" in voting patterns on a site such as this one.
Then we would care [a little?] more about the person commenting and less about the content of the comments. Perhaps content would still win but people would be influenced with decisions like "he downvoted me" or "she believes Y" (where Y is orthogonal to the issue) or dimiss salient point based on past arguments.
The data would be pretty confusing, without analysis. I'm also assuming people with enough of a life that they wouldn't try.
Instead of (or in addition to) raw upvote/downvote data, you get a "compatibility score", where 100 means you're soul mates, and -100 means you're mortal enemies!
I love that idea, but extend it also to upvoting, and use it to create a killer social network and/or dating site.
If you and I love the same ideas and hate the same ideas, than we should meet. We may not enrich each others worldview, but that's what HN is for. You and I, in such a scenario would probably get along really well and be great friends. A great way to find that out is a "similarity heuristic" in voting patterns on a site such as this one.