I rarely downvote on something but I think that having that option does no harm.
Maybe on reddit downvoters are more likely to be thoughtless, I don't think that is a problem with news.ycombinator readers.
It would help a lot to have the same statistics for downvoters on Y combinator.
If you rarely downvote and others allways downvote items they don't like, your opinion is going to be underrepresented. I think that is a harm. As I said elsewhere, downvotes are too ambiguous in meaning.
