7 ms·

I would agree with this sentiment, I find it immeasurably frustrating when I spend twenty minutes writing a cogent and thoughtful response to someone to only ge

by Ixiaus 17y ago

I would agree with this sentiment, I find it immeasurably frustrating when I spend twenty minutes writing a cogent and thoughtful response to someone to only get downvoted with no refutation/counter argument. I can agree with downvoting when there are pointless one-liners that don't add any value, like "This post sucks" or "What was the author thinking?"; but not at all when someone has spent time constructing a chain of arguments.

boredguy8 17y ago
Lots of words does not an argument make, and I'd bet often a downvote on a long post reflects that. Nor does length equal quality: a good one or two line post can speak volumes more than a poor wall of text.
dasil003 17y ago
Just because you spent time constructing an argument doesn't mean it's cogent. In some cases it may be indistinguishable from a troll. But even conceding that popular opinion will tend to suppress valid arguments, I think it's just a fact of human nature that no community can escape no matter how much the members may pride themselves on their [relative] objectivity.
- elblanco 17y ago
  There's a well known relationship between comment length and comment quality. In general, longer comment have more thought and effort put into them. http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/09/29/comments_size_does_matter/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/09/29/comments_size_does_... In other words, you can only snark or troll for so long; there's only so many ways to call somebody an idiot.
  - dasil003 17y ago
    what does this have to do with my comment?
    - elblanco 17y ago
      It's in response to: >Just because you spent time constructing an argument doesn't mean it's cogent. I'm (perhaps mistakenly) equating time spent constructing an argument with argument length, since longer posts tend to take more time to write. It's also fairly well established that longer posts tend to be of higher quality on most message boards, and I'm equating cogent with quality (again, perhaps mistakenly). time -> length -> quality, therefore invoking the law of transitivity time -> quality.
evgen 17y ago
You may think it a cogent and thoughtful response (and you might be correct) but others may disagree even though they do not have the time to spend in a point-by-point refutation of your thesis. Voting is a filtering mechanism, and by downvoting without comment we collectively filter out "noise" from "signal"; what those two terms mean varies from person to person and may in fact have wildly different meaning to the people voting up or down, but that seems to be the intended effect of the voting arrows. Sometimes just saying "no/yes, I (dis)agree with you" is sufficient and the site is better served by encapsulating these statements into up and down votes rather than encouraging the equivalent of "+1 I agree" messages you see on some mailing lists. I do not visit HN to argue epistemology or ethics and have little use for back-and-forth discussions between two people that nest twelve layers deep and which you can see after the first exchange are never going to end until they grow bored talking past each other and move on to some other comment thread. I would much rather that these disagreements and conflicting positions are handled in a way that does not take up space for other interesting arguments or points of discussion -- downvoting without a reply serves this purpose.
- elblanco 17y ago
  If you don't have time to post even a single sentence in response "I disagree, particularly on point...", you don't have time to be reading the post anyways. Better to keep off the site entirely until you get some proper time.
  - evgen 17y ago
    I disagree, particularly on the point where you suggest that scanning through ten or twenty comments and being able to recognize and vote on those comments which are cogent/useful/correct and those which are not takes an equivalent amount of time to hitting the reply button, setting focus on the reply entry form, composing a well thought-out and cogent response, and then hitting the reply button. Perhaps if we limit ourselves to snarky two-sentence replies it might be possible, but it seems that the parent was requesting more thoughtful responses than you have afforded me in this case.
    - 17y ago

by Ixiaus 17y ago

boredguy8 17y ago

Lots of words does not an argument make, and I'd bet often a downvote on a long post reflects that. Nor does length equal quality: a good one or two line post can speak volumes more than a poor wall of text.

dasil003 17y ago

Just because you spent time constructing an argument doesn't mean it's cogent. In some cases it may be indistinguishable from a troll. But even conceding that popular opinion will tend to suppress valid arguments, I think it's just a fact of human nature that no community can escape no matter how much the members may pride themselves on their [relative] objectivity.

elblanco 17y ago
There's a well known relationship between comment length and comment quality. In general, longer comment have more thought and effort put into them. http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/09/29/comments_size_does_matter/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/09/29/comments_size_does_... In other words, you can only snark or troll for so long; there's only so many ways to call somebody an idiot.
- dasil003 17y ago
  what does this have to do with my comment?
  - elblanco 17y ago
    It's in response to: >Just because you spent time constructing an argument doesn't mean it's cogent. I'm (perhaps mistakenly) equating time spent constructing an argument with argument length, since longer posts tend to take more time to write. It's also fairly well established that longer posts tend to be of higher quality on most message boards, and I'm equating cogent with quality (again, perhaps mistakenly). time -> length -> quality, therefore invoking the law of transitivity time -> quality.

evgen 17y ago

You may think it a cogent and thoughtful response (and you might be correct) but others may disagree even though they do not have the time to spend in a point-by-point refutation of your thesis. Voting is a filtering mechanism, and by downvoting without comment we collectively filter out "noise" from "signal"; what those two terms mean varies from person to person and may in fact have wildly different meaning to the people voting up or down, but that seems to be the intended effect of the voting arrows. Sometimes just saying "no/yes, I (dis)agree with you" is sufficient and the site is better served by encapsulating these statements into up and down votes rather than encouraging the equivalent of "+1 I agree" messages you see on some mailing lists. I do not visit HN to argue epistemology or ethics and have little use for back-and-forth discussions between two people that nest twelve layers deep and which you can see after the first exchange are never going to end until they grow bored talking past each other and move on to some other comment thread. I would much rather that these disagreements and conflicting positions are handled in a way that does not take up space for other interesting arguments or points of discussion -- downvoting without a reply serves this purpose.

elblanco 17y ago
If you don't have time to post even a single sentence in response "I disagree, particularly on point...", you don't have time to be reading the post anyways. Better to keep off the site entirely until you get some proper time.
- evgen 17y ago
  I disagree, particularly on the point where you suggest that scanning through ten or twenty comments and being able to recognize and vote on those comments which are cogent/useful/correct and those which are not takes an equivalent amount of time to hitting the reply button, setting focus on the reply entry form, composing a well thought-out and cogent response, and then hitting the reply button. Perhaps if we limit ourselves to snarky two-sentence replies it might be possible, but it seems that the parent was requesting more thoughtful responses than you have afforded me in this case.
  - 17y ago