5 ms·

Too bad it doesn't have a section on when and how to vote up/down. For example, "V1:voting down because you have no sense of humor and the poster made a joke"

Too bad it doesn't have a section on when and how to vote up/down. For example, "V1:voting down because you have no sense of humor and the poster made a joke" "V2:voting down because you nonspecifically disagree with the poster and don't actually have anything useful to say in response, in other words you downvote because you are angry at yourself."

jodrellblank 17y ago
V3: voting down because the comment is not relevant to the thread, through accidental posting in the wrong place or complete misunderstanding. V4: downvoting proper - You have a reason in mind, e.g. post is very aggressive, comment is incoherent, comment is trivial and could be answered with a Google query, yet the only way to express your desire for "fewer comments like this on HN" is funnelling through a single downvote, so that's what you do, because explanations all the time would add a lot of noise, and you accept that it's imperfect but will probably sort itself out if enough people vote.
- elblanco 17y ago
  It is a small, but special source of pride, to see comments like my post, discussing the problems with the downvote, be downvoted into oblivion thus entirely confirming my statement.
  - mquander 17y ago
    I downvoted your post because I viewed it as insubstantial and somewhat bitter. The two reasons you provide are obviously (?) not serious reasons; they're just caricatures, so it provides a pretty poor platform for a sincere discussion about why people downvote things. I don't really see how you can characterize it as "discussing the problems with the downvote." I would characterize it instead as "taunting people who downvote things."
    - elblanco 17y ago
      I appreciate the explanation, thereby you are not in violation of notional guideline V2. I am dead serious about both of those. I'm actually convinced that HN is absolutely and completely devoid of humor. I've actually never seen anything like it. Given that the topic of downvotes constitute the vast majority of this entire topic and most of the threads, and that the only place pg has bothered to respond was regarding the brokeness of downvoting, it's quite obviously not an insubstantial point I was trying to make.
      - mquander 17y ago
        Sure, but it's different to say "people downvote humor" (which is mostly true) and "people have no sense of humor" (which is mostly an insult.) I think I have a sense of humor, but I downvote fluff jokey comments unless they're screamingly funny. A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't terrible, although it was only a little bit funny. I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually interested in. I believe the problem with throwaway jokes is that they're so easy. Among 1,000 average readers, perhaps 5 of them have an insightful comment about, i.e. a new feature in R6RS Scheme, but 500 of them could easily post a silly joke about parentheses. Result? If you try to talk about Scheme you get 495 jokes for every piece of expert commentary. Not cool. (Realistically, there are many other kinds of comments that are problematic in this way. For example, it's easy to religiously stick to one big general paradigm and zealously apply it to everything, so you wind up with some of that. It's easy to attack people instead of confronting complicated ideas, so you wind up with some of that. I think it's just a consequence of less-informed but social people trying to find an angle by which to contribute. Sometimes I'm guilty of this myself!) Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff.

jodrellblank 17y ago

V3: voting down because the comment is not relevant to the thread, through accidental posting in the wrong place or complete misunderstanding. V4: downvoting proper - You have a reason in mind, e.g. post is very aggressive, comment is incoherent, comment is trivial and could be answered with a Google query, yet the only way to express your desire for "fewer comments like this on HN" is funnelling through a single downvote, so that's what you do, because explanations all the time would add a lot of noise, and you accept that it's imperfect but will probably sort itself out if enough people vote.

elblanco 17y ago
It is a small, but special source of pride, to see comments like my post, discussing the problems with the downvote, be downvoted into oblivion thus entirely confirming my statement.
- mquander 17y ago
  I downvoted your post because I viewed it as insubstantial and somewhat bitter. The two reasons you provide are obviously (?) not serious reasons; they're just caricatures, so it provides a pretty poor platform for a sincere discussion about why people downvote things. I don't really see how you can characterize it as "discussing the problems with the downvote." I would characterize it instead as "taunting people who downvote things."
  - elblanco 17y ago
    I appreciate the explanation, thereby you are not in violation of notional guideline V2. I am dead serious about both of those. I'm actually convinced that HN is absolutely and completely devoid of humor. I've actually never seen anything like it. Given that the topic of downvotes constitute the vast majority of this entire topic and most of the threads, and that the only place pg has bothered to respond was regarding the brokeness of downvoting, it's quite obviously not an insubstantial point I was trying to make.
    - mquander 17y ago
      Sure, but it's different to say "people downvote humor" (which is mostly true) and "people have no sense of humor" (which is mostly an insult.) I think I have a sense of humor, but I downvote fluff jokey comments unless they're screamingly funny. A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't terrible, although it was only a little bit funny. I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually interested in. I believe the problem with throwaway jokes is that they're so easy. Among 1,000 average readers, perhaps 5 of them have an insightful comment about, i.e. a new feature in R6RS Scheme, but 500 of them could easily post a silly joke about parentheses. Result? If you try to talk about Scheme you get 495 jokes for every piece of expert commentary. Not cool. (Realistically, there are many other kinds of comments that are problematic in this way. For example, it's easy to religiously stick to one big general paradigm and zealously apply it to everything, so you wind up with some of that. It's easy to attack people instead of confronting complicated ideas, so you wind up with some of that. I think it's just a consequence of less-informed but social people trying to find an angle by which to contribute. Sometimes I'm guilty of this myself!) Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff.