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Perhaps a better system would be to tally both up and downvotes rather than upvote-downvotes. This way comments with a score of 0 might still have 1000 upvotes

Perhaps a better system would be to tally both up and downvotes rather than upvote-downvotes. This way comments with a score of 0 might still have 1000 upvotes and a 1000 downvotes, showing that it is both a popular as well as a polarizing opinion.

chrischen 17y ago
That's a good idea. I think the central issue with the voting system is that it's supposed to be a mechanism for determining quality, but it's being used for determining popularity of viewpoints. And popularity does not correlate with validity. So some way to clearly define and separate mechanisms for these purposes would resolve the issue.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  popularity does not correlate with validity. On the other hand, if this site was seeded initially with thoughtful participants (as I believe it was before I got here, and as I believe it continues to be by visitors who come here from pg's personal website), being popular (upvoted) rather than unpopular (downvoted) may be a fairly reliable mark of a comment worth reading. Everyone here reads a lot of the best of what is on the Web, and observes the behavior of other users here, and I think there are many examples here of highly upvoted comments (or, from another point of view, participants with high karma) being signals of good quality. It may be that there are some equally clear examples here of comments with many downvotes, all the way down to the system-imposed limit of a score of -4, or users with very little karma, being examples of poor quality. After edit: so my assertion, in friendly disagreement with you, is that popularity DOES correlate with validity to a useful degree here, so even if not every popular comment is factually valid, and not every factually valid comment is popular, noting popularity can still be a guide to busy readers here about what to devote time to reading.
  - jazzdev 17y ago
    my assertion, in friendly disagreement with you, is that popularity DOES correlate with validity to a useful degree here Unfortunately, this doesn't scale. It is true now and that makes HN valuable. As HN grows there may be more people who express opinions that are not thoughtful and well reasoned, and then popularity no longer corresponds with useful. I think that's the problem that pg is trying to solve.

chrischen 17y ago

That's a good idea. I think the central issue with the voting system is that it's supposed to be a mechanism for determining quality, but it's being used for determining popularity of viewpoints. And popularity does not correlate with validity. So some way to clearly define and separate mechanisms for these purposes would resolve the issue.

tokenadult 17y ago
popularity does not correlate with validity. On the other hand, if this site was seeded initially with thoughtful participants (as I believe it was before I got here, and as I believe it continues to be by visitors who come here from pg's personal website), being popular (upvoted) rather than unpopular (downvoted) may be a fairly reliable mark of a comment worth reading. Everyone here reads a lot of the best of what is on the Web, and observes the behavior of other users here, and I think there are many examples here of highly upvoted comments (or, from another point of view, participants with high karma) being signals of good quality. It may be that there are some equally clear examples here of comments with many downvotes, all the way down to the system-imposed limit of a score of -4, or users with very little karma, being examples of poor quality. After edit: so my assertion, in friendly disagreement with you, is that popularity DOES correlate with validity to a useful degree here, so even if not every popular comment is factually valid, and not every factually valid comment is popular, noting popularity can still be a guide to busy readers here about what to devote time to reading.
- jazzdev 17y ago
  my assertion, in friendly disagreement with you, is that popularity DOES correlate with validity to a useful degree here Unfortunately, this doesn't scale. It is true now and that makes HN valuable. As HN grows there may be more people who express opinions that are not thoughtful and well reasoned, and then popularity no longer corresponds with useful. I think that's the problem that pg is trying to solve.