I have the opposite impression of Quora, really, and I think their voting design is brilliant. It's designed to maximize viewer utility and poster enjoyment at the expense of transparency. I get how it's infuriating to a certain type of user, but in doing so they've removed a lot of opportunities for negative interactions.

How does poster enjoyment figure? I don't think it's very gratifying when an answer with fewer upvotes than mine is ranked higher, because downvotes are offsetting the difference in upvotes.

They might as well just hide the points. After all, people only post on the site to help others - not to discuss matters like on Hacker News - so biting the hand that feeds you in this way seems self-defeating.

Getting upvoted is a positive experience. Getting downvoted is a negative one. If you don't know that you've been downvoted, you can't get upset about it. It's true that if you go back to a question, look for your relative position, and do the math, you may also have a negative experience, but that's much rarer.

Note that voting isn't the only thing than ranks answers. They also have some subtle reputation system going on.

I was responding mainly to his comment on downvoting. At 200+ answers I've seen some moderation, but never been on the receiving end of it.

Having been a Wikipedia admin, I'd say Quora's doing a reasonable job. Moderation always feels arbitrary to people on the receiving end of it. And bureaucratic, too, if more than a few people do the moderating.

I accidentally hit the downvote button on your comment. Sorry about that. Someone else can feel free to counter it by upvoting the comment. I completely agree with what you are saying, by the way.