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Because I really do honestly think that if you want to downvote a comment that seems low-quality... and yet you hesitate, wondering if maybe you're downvoting j

Because I really do honestly think that if you want to downvote a comment that seems low-quality... and yet you hesitate, wondering if maybe you're downvoting just because you disagree with the conclusion or dislike the author... then nine times of ten, I bet, nine times out of ten at least, it is a comment that really is low-quality. Five years on Reddit (and a few more on HN) has proven beyond any possible doubt for me that downvotes are used "9 times out of 10" more for disagreement rather than an honest value judgement on quality. It's simply far too easy to mentally conflate "this comment is wrong (because of my own biases)" with "this comment is low quality", especially in the midst of a heated discussion. Speaking of biases, the author here clearly has his own. He lives in a world where groupthink/hiveminding/circlejerking (pick your favorite term, they are all synonymous) doesn't exist, where astroturfing never happens, where moderators never abuse their power, where karma is always used for its stated purpose, and where censorship isn't a documented and heinous thing. ..which is pretty hilarious when you remember this is an article about moderation apologia.

krapp 11y ago
I honestly believe that "quality" always correlates with personal biases and collective norms. Even the guideline for posting here - "anything that good hackers would find interesting" - assumes that 1) you should be a "hacker" (a subjective term, especially on a site with as diverse a community as this) and qualifies this with "good" (another subjective term.) Are we to assume that stories which are popular (high karma) are necessarily posted by better hackers than those which aren't? One should post "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity," implicitly provided one has the correct sort of intellect. While this is designed to bias the site in favor of high karma posters (and, obviously, whatever the mods happen to want) the end result is that quality is in the eye of the beholder. It's all arbitrary and it's all subjective.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  I don't think the problem is the subjectiveness as much as the knee-jerk reaction. If you're in a heated argument with someone, most any human's first reaction given the ability to "punish" their opposer will be to click the downvote button. The mental heuristic, in our case "anything that good hackers would find interesting", just never gets run. It's effectively dead code, because the stack of "do I agree with this" if/then blocks happens a few hundred lines up. It takes a lot of effort to override that reflex.

krapp 11y ago

I honestly believe that "quality" always correlates with personal biases and collective norms. Even the guideline for posting here - "anything that good hackers would find interesting" - assumes that 1) you should be a "hacker" (a subjective term, especially on a site with as diverse a community as this) and qualifies this with "good" (another subjective term.) Are we to assume that stories which are popular (high karma) are necessarily posted by better hackers than those which aren't? One should post "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity," implicitly provided one has the correct sort of intellect. While this is designed to bias the site in favor of high karma posters (and, obviously, whatever the mods happen to want) the end result is that quality is in the eye of the beholder. It's all arbitrary and it's all subjective.

Karunamon 11y ago
I don't think the problem is the subjectiveness as much as the knee-jerk reaction. If you're in a heated argument with someone, most any human's first reaction given the ability to "punish" their opposer will be to click the downvote button. The mental heuristic, in our case "anything that good hackers would find interesting", just never gets run. It's effectively dead code, because the stack of "do I agree with this" if/then blocks happens a few hundred lines up. It takes a lot of effort to override that reflex.