Yes, it seems without a cost, nothing deters incumbent power users from gatekeeping against newer users. 

grayruby

Speaking of Reddit, it seems to be an incredibly noob unfriendly place.  I can't count the number of times I went on some subreddit to ask an innocent question, and it immediately gets downvoted or even moderated, with no explanation as to why.

I like how on SN, both upzapping and downzapping cost you something.  Even though it's only a little, it keeps things more honest, as far as I can tell.



SimpleStacker

Do you Downzap?

looks like there is a 10:1 ratio of stackers that zap vs downzap.

in march, nearly 1,000 stackers zapped content, and nearly 100 downzapped.

i wonder what the ratio on hacker news or reddit is… i think SN has the better system where it’s harder (but still possible) to push down other people’s content.

if it is too easy to downzap, it becomes easy to weaponize the feature and discourage all debates about a topic.