Thanks, good question nf. When mk created Hubski he wanted it to not have the sort of "I want fake internet points" quality that other aggregators have. He eliminated down votes from the get go. When Hubski first started it looked like a blue version of Hacker News with no down votes and with the Hubski logo at the top of the page. The logo is something mk came up with years prior.

One night I had a dream that the Predator, from the old movie Predator had a hubwheel on his count-down watch that he uses at the end to blow up. When it counted down, the wheels propagated clock wise on it's device.

The next day at dinner with our wives, mk asked me to join him in creating Hubski and I agreed and told him my first idea.... using the hub-wheel as the voting mechanism. That's how it came to be.

Welcome to Hubski Grevor and nf!