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-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a sp

-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a specific user, instead of constructive criticism. If someone downvotes you, you tend to downvote them. At the least, it should be a privilege to down vote, like SO and HN do. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down

joshmanders 11y ago
Coincidentally you're being downvoted for stating this.
- mrharrison 11y ago
  Yeah, I thought that was funny. Guess I wrote a horrible comment.
  - mrharrison 11y ago
    This comment is now getting downvoted. To be clear, so people stop downvoting this comment, this parent comment was initially downvoted to -1, it obviously isn't anymore.
joepie91_ 11y ago
I just want to elaborate on this a bit more: Implementing a downvote button is inviting baseless disagreement. It makes it socially acceptable to say that you disagree, without ever providing an argument or being expected to do so - this is precisely what you don't want, on what is supposed to be a constructive platform. This will (indirectly and directly) lead to populism, where unpopular opinions get dismissed out of hand without even considering them. Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind.
- Lazare 11y ago
  > Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind. It seems ironic you'd post this on a platform that has a downvote button.
  - matthuggins 11y ago
    Says the guy commenting on HackerNews, which also offers a downvote button. :)
    - mrredbit 11y ago
      There is nothing irony, you are saying people living in totalitarianism country can't fight for democracy. We are not just using the system, we use the system here to improve the system itself that's why people call it constructive community.
  - joepie91_ 11y ago
    Where's the irony?
  - ritchiea 11y ago
    It's not ironic. Votes here are used to push the best content to the top. On Github you're not looking for the best content you're collaboratively building software so the tools should be designed to foster collaboration.
    - Lazare 11y ago
      > On Github you're not looking for the best content That seems like an odd assertion. Are you looking for the worst content then, or...? I can see an argument that voting would not highlight the best content, at least in some cases; I don't understand an argument that we aren't looking for the best content. Conversely, HNews is intended as a constructive platform. Should the tools we use here not be designed to foster collaboration and constructive debate? Disclaimer: I'm skeptical of voting both here and on Github. But I feel like the argument that the differences between the platforms are major and fundamental needs a lot more fleshing out.
ywecur 11y ago
How would privilege to down vote help?
choward 11y ago
It's also lame that you can thumbs up and thumbs down the same comment.
gkoberger 11y ago
Agreed 100% for Facebook or even Hacker News, however on GitHub it would be really useful for voting. If you ask "Should we add this feature?", it's hard to understand what favorites mean if you don't have an anchor. Does 10 thumbs-up mean unanimous support, or is it just a small minority? It'd be nice to say "Oh, 10 upvotes... but there's 90 downvotes, so we won't do it." FB and Hacker News are a marketplace of relatively-inconsequential ideas and thoughts. However, changes discussed on GitHub Issues can potentially have an impact on your company and livelihood.
- hayksaakian 11y ago
  on facebook they say "like if you want A and share if you want B" obviously this is a 'viral marketing' ploy, but something similar would be simple for github just write: thumbs up if you want A smile if you want B problem solved
  - gkoberger 11y ago
    Or they could just have a thumbs-down button, and expect a higher level of discourse than Facebook.
    - jdoliner 11y ago
      Or they could have trigger warnings for thumbs downs like tumblr. Best of all worlds.
- rtpg 11y ago
  Internally when voting (informally) on things we do +1, +0, -0, and -1. Super helpful to be able to ask for everyone's opinion while they can also express the strength of their opinion. Feel like that would be very useful
  - gkoberger 11y ago
    For what it's worth, the "thumbs down" emoji is named ":-1:".
mrharrison 11y ago
This comment is basically a down vote of github's down vote. Comments should be the down vote, because someone needs to explain why a suggestion, answer, code change, submission, etc... is not a good option. If that comment (down vote) is a good idea, it will then be up voted.
- jbrooksuk 11y ago
  Why should you never have to explain why you're in agreement with something? What kind of culture do we have if you only have to explain why you disagree with something?
  - frigo_1337 11y ago
    The "positive" things about the issue/pull request etc. is presumably already explained by the author. "Issue 1234: We need this feature because reasons A, B and C." If you don't think that A, B and C justifies the change, send a downvote and/or explain why A, B and C aren't good enough reasons. An upvote is sufficient to say that "Yes, I agree with A, B and C. Do it." Of course, if you agree with the change but for reasons other than A, B or C, you can leave a comment to start a discussion. It has nothing to do with culture. It's just a way to minimize the redundant "Yes, I agree with what you just said".
- xentronium 11y ago
  But there could already be a reasonable explanation for -1 vote in the thread. Are you suggesting to repeat it or write "agree with @foobar on his comment"? That's more noise.
  - bryanlarsen 11y ago
    You upvote the negative comment.
jakobegger 11y ago
I think that the -1 button definitely has a place on Github. I use Github a lot for discussing future feature development, and in that context it is really valuable to see how many people think a feature is useful or not. Github isn't primarily a social network. In a professional context it is essential that you can also express disagreement, or that you think something is a bad idea.
- rlidwka 11y ago
  In a professional context it is essential that people can express disagreement provided they write exact reasons why they disagree. You know, "+1" usually has only one meaning: - "I agree with whatever you're saying". "-1" has however two separate meanings: - "I disagree with whatever you're saying because I believe that blah-blah-blah (reasons here)" - "I disagree with whatever you're saying because fuck you that's why" And "-1" button doesn't distinguish between those two cases.
  - bunkat 11y ago
    If somebody gives your comment a -1 without a reason, and you are of the opinion that disagreement is only valid given a precise argument - can't you just ignore the -1's? I'm not sure why this is such an emotional topic. Maybe I just have thick skin, but some random stranger on the internet giving me a down vote is not really even going to give me a moment of pause. Let alone so much that I feel that I have to demand rationalization from every person that cares to disagree with me.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    You know, "+1" usually has only one meaning: Nonsense. - Agreement: "I agree with whatever you're saying" - Contributory : "I don't agree with what you're saying, but you elaborated your point *very* well and contributed to the discussion" - Mercy: "I don't agree with what you're saying, but the hivemind punished you for no good reason, have an upvote" - Popularity: "I like you and will +1 anything you write" - Thanks: "I like what you did even if this post isn't relevant" The second and third one are very common on sites like HN, certain places on Reddit, and Stack* Downvotes have: - Disagreement: "I disagree with what you're saying" - Anger: "Fuck you, have a downvote" - Doesn't contribute: "I might agree, but you're not helping the discussion" - Incorrect: "This isn't about agreement, your advice is wrong and/or harmful"
toomim 11y ago
You just contradicted yourself. You're giving a -1 on giving -1s.
- kmm 11y ago
  No they don't, because they're giving an actual argument. They're probably not again disagreement, but against mass disagreement without requiring to substantiate that disagreement.
makecheck 11y ago
There has to be some way to register negative feedback so that you can find out what is widely unpopular. The key is to lower the power of individual down-votes so that an idea can’t be easily trashed to the point where most visitors won’t even consider reading it. (I find myself doing this sub-consciously in review sites and app stores for instance, where once something falls to about 3 stars I don’t even want to see what the fuss is about, I just skip it.) One thing I’ve never seen is a vote that accounts for the number of unique visitors, or the total time that visitors spend on a page, or even contributor status, before weighing feedback. An issue that isn’t immediately important to a lot of people should require some time to decide popular/unpopular status. A page shouldn’t show up/down status to anybody* until a significant amount of feedback has been collected, either. This would prevent knee-jerk down-votes of ideas that seem unpopular to everyone based on a few early down-voters. A proposal should stand on its own, at first. After a certain time period, the page could reveal whether or not an idea has really turned out to be popular, and at that point the cost of up-vote/down-vote could change (e.g. maybe only comments are allowed at that point, and no simple clicks).
barce 11y ago
I think thoughtful comments with advice on how to refactor is a way better indicator than giving my PRs over to the mob. Ya thumbs down or any reaction with code is a mistake.
Pxtl 11y ago
I do find that non-anonymous downvotes go better than anonymous ones, particularly w small communities. Downvotes are particularly relevant for feature requests that may have substantial negative impact. I'd actually implement downvotes/upvotes as zero-length comments so that they can be moderated and replied to.
philliphaydon 11y ago
I shall respectfully disagree. Not wanting down votes is just a way of saying "I'm offended please don't offend me I can't handle down it's it makes me sad" It's 2016, can we stop worrying about if someone disagrees with you and just accept the fact they wanted to down vote on an issue rather than say nothing or leave a comment.
- echelon 11y ago
  It's usually the case that it's cheap to disagree. It would be more beneficial to the review process to have those with dissenting opinions lay out a logical case presenting their concerns rather than enable them to do quicker, drive-by review. Haven't you had feedback along the lines of, "but did you take into consideration what impact the heat death of the universe will have on your design?" ?
- nv-vn 11y ago
  No, it's because downvotes actively censor unpopular opinions based on the fact that they're unpopular rather than their merit. Check out reddit some time and you'll see this happen a lot.
Wintamute 11y ago
It depends on how the PR, project or comment thread interprets the -1s. If a vote has been specifically requested then the +1/-1s are super useful. Otherwise they could be safely ignored by maintainers as at most low value ambient info ... well worded constructive criticism will always carry more weight that a -1. Also, this is fundamentally different to SO/HN ... there is no ranking, the up-vote/down-vote ratio has zero effect aside from incrementing a counter - any meaning applied is subjective.
bradgessler 11y ago
Combining +1 and -1 is a mistake. It would be useful to see thumbs-up separate from thumbs-down to get a gut feel for contention.
- CM30 11y ago
  Yeah, that's definitely the best way of handling a rating system. The one I use on my sites (the XenForo mod one) counts likes, dislikes, agrees, disagrees and all the other ratings individually and displays that count under every post. GitHub should have done the same here.
inopinatus 11y ago
I'm not sure this is a downvote. It's a vote in favour of a negative and unlike HN-style downvoting, is tallied separately. You can even react with both thumbs-up and thumbs-down to the same issue. With a tallied up/downvote system a la HN you can't tell, numerically, if a score of 1 meant "only one person cared" or "hundreds cared and there was furious disagreement". Actually I'd be interested in a "top 100 most polarising comments" feed :-)
Ensorceled 11y ago
Disagreement should not be restricted to only those who are willing to stick their neck out and publicly disagree and state their reasons. Imagine this scenario. Linus Torvalds posts an utterly inane pull request. Who is willing to deal with the backlash of "disagreeing with Linus". Sure, many are, but many are not.
nv-vn 11y ago
Still not a fan of how it's done on SO. To me the best solution is not to include it at all. If you have something negative to say about a PR or Issue, it makes more sense to explain why you feel that way instead of outright saying no. The +1 makes it very clear that you're saying "this covers my use-case." What does -1 mean here, other than "I don't want this"? Because not wanting something is not a reason not to include it when everybody is using a project for a different use-case.

joshmanders 11y ago

Coincidentally you're being downvoted for stating this.

mrharrison 11y ago
Yeah, I thought that was funny. Guess I wrote a horrible comment.
- mrharrison 11y ago
  This comment is now getting downvoted. To be clear, so people stop downvoting this comment, this parent comment was initially downvoted to -1, it obviously isn't anymore.

joepie91_ 11y ago

I just want to elaborate on this a bit more: Implementing a downvote button is inviting baseless disagreement. It makes it socially acceptable to say that you disagree, without ever providing an argument or being expected to do so - this is precisely what you don't want, on what is supposed to be a constructive platform. This will (indirectly and directly) lead to populism, where unpopular opinions get dismissed out of hand without even considering them. Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind.

Lazare 11y ago
> Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind. It seems ironic you'd post this on a platform that has a downvote button.
- matthuggins 11y ago
  Says the guy commenting on HackerNews, which also offers a downvote button. :)
  - mrredbit 11y ago
    There is nothing irony, you are saying people living in totalitarianism country can't fight for democracy. We are not just using the system, we use the system here to improve the system itself that's why people call it constructive community.
- joepie91_ 11y ago
  Where's the irony?
- ritchiea 11y ago
  It's not ironic. Votes here are used to push the best content to the top. On Github you're not looking for the best content you're collaboratively building software so the tools should be designed to foster collaboration.
  - Lazare 11y ago
    > On Github you're not looking for the best content That seems like an odd assertion. Are you looking for the worst content then, or...? I can see an argument that voting would not highlight the best content, at least in some cases; I don't understand an argument that we aren't looking for the best content. Conversely, HNews is intended as a constructive platform. Should the tools we use here not be designed to foster collaboration and constructive debate? Disclaimer: I'm skeptical of voting both here and on Github. But I feel like the argument that the differences between the platforms are major and fundamental needs a lot more fleshing out.

ywecur 11y ago

How would privilege to down vote help?

choward 11y ago

It's also lame that you can thumbs up and thumbs down the same comment.

gkoberger 11y ago

Agreed 100% for Facebook or even Hacker News, however on GitHub it would be really useful for voting. If you ask "Should we add this feature?", it's hard to understand what favorites mean if you don't have an anchor. Does 10 thumbs-up mean unanimous support, or is it just a small minority? It'd be nice to say "Oh, 10 upvotes... but there's 90 downvotes, so we won't do it." FB and Hacker News are a marketplace of relatively-inconsequential ideas and thoughts. However, changes discussed on GitHub Issues can potentially have an impact on your company and livelihood.

hayksaakian 11y ago
on facebook they say "like if you want A and share if you want B" obviously this is a 'viral marketing' ploy, but something similar would be simple for github just write: thumbs up if you want A smile if you want B problem solved
- gkoberger 11y ago
  Or they could just have a thumbs-down button, and expect a higher level of discourse than Facebook.
  - jdoliner 11y ago
    Or they could have trigger warnings for thumbs downs like tumblr. Best of all worlds.
rtpg 11y ago
Internally when voting (informally) on things we do +1, +0, -0, and -1. Super helpful to be able to ask for everyone's opinion while they can also express the strength of their opinion. Feel like that would be very useful
- gkoberger 11y ago
  For what it's worth, the "thumbs down" emoji is named ":-1:".

mrharrison 11y ago

This comment is basically a down vote of github's down vote. Comments should be the down vote, because someone needs to explain why a suggestion, answer, code change, submission, etc... is not a good option. If that comment (down vote) is a good idea, it will then be up voted.

jbrooksuk 11y ago
Why should you never have to explain why you're in agreement with something? What kind of culture do we have if you only have to explain why you disagree with something?
- frigo_1337 11y ago
  The "positive" things about the issue/pull request etc. is presumably already explained by the author. "Issue 1234: We need this feature because reasons A, B and C." If you don't think that A, B and C justifies the change, send a downvote and/or explain why A, B and C aren't good enough reasons. An upvote is sufficient to say that "Yes, I agree with A, B and C. Do it." Of course, if you agree with the change but for reasons other than A, B or C, you can leave a comment to start a discussion. It has nothing to do with culture. It's just a way to minimize the redundant "Yes, I agree with what you just said".
xentronium 11y ago
But there could already be a reasonable explanation for -1 vote in the thread. Are you suggesting to repeat it or write "agree with @foobar on his comment"? That's more noise.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  You upvote the negative comment.

jakobegger 11y ago

I think that the -1 button definitely has a place on Github. I use Github a lot for discussing future feature development, and in that context it is really valuable to see how many people think a feature is useful or not. Github isn't primarily a social network. In a professional context it is essential that you can also express disagreement, or that you think something is a bad idea.

rlidwka 11y ago
In a professional context it is essential that people can express disagreement provided they write exact reasons why they disagree. You know, "+1" usually has only one meaning: - "I agree with whatever you're saying". "-1" has however two separate meanings: - "I disagree with whatever you're saying because I believe that blah-blah-blah (reasons here)" - "I disagree with whatever you're saying because fuck you that's why" And "-1" button doesn't distinguish between those two cases.
- bunkat 11y ago
  If somebody gives your comment a -1 without a reason, and you are of the opinion that disagreement is only valid given a precise argument - can't you just ignore the -1's? I'm not sure why this is such an emotional topic. Maybe I just have thick skin, but some random stranger on the internet giving me a down vote is not really even going to give me a moment of pause. Let alone so much that I feel that I have to demand rationalization from every person that cares to disagree with me.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  You know, "+1" usually has only one meaning: Nonsense. - Agreement: "I agree with whatever you're saying" - Contributory : "I don't agree with what you're saying, but you elaborated your point *very* well and contributed to the discussion" - Mercy: "I don't agree with what you're saying, but the hivemind punished you for no good reason, have an upvote" - Popularity: "I like you and will +1 anything you write" - Thanks: "I like what you did even if this post isn't relevant" The second and third one are very common on sites like HN, certain places on Reddit, and Stack* Downvotes have: - Disagreement: "I disagree with what you're saying" - Anger: "Fuck you, have a downvote" - Doesn't contribute: "I might agree, but you're not helping the discussion" - Incorrect: "This isn't about agreement, your advice is wrong and/or harmful"

toomim 11y ago

You just contradicted yourself. You're giving a -1 on giving -1s.

kmm 11y ago
No they don't, because they're giving an actual argument. They're probably not again disagreement, but against mass disagreement without requiring to substantiate that disagreement.

makecheck 11y ago

There has to be some way to register negative feedback so that you can find out what is widely unpopular. The key is to lower the power of individual down-votes so that an idea can’t be easily trashed to the point where most visitors won’t even consider reading it. (I find myself doing this sub-consciously in review sites and app stores for instance, where once something falls to about 3 stars I don’t even want to see what the fuss is about, I just skip it.) One thing I’ve never seen is a vote that accounts for the number of unique visitors, or the total time that visitors spend on a page, or even contributor status, before weighing feedback. An issue that isn’t immediately important to a lot of people should require some time to decide popular/unpopular status. A page shouldn’t show up/down status to anybody* until a significant amount of feedback has been collected, either. This would prevent knee-jerk down-votes of ideas that seem unpopular to everyone based on a few early down-voters. A proposal should stand on its own, at first. After a certain time period, the page could reveal whether or not an idea has really turned out to be popular, and at that point the cost of up-vote/down-vote could change (e.g. maybe only comments are allowed at that point, and no simple clicks).

barce 11y ago

I think thoughtful comments with advice on how to refactor is a way better indicator than giving my PRs over to the mob. Ya thumbs down or any reaction with code is a mistake.

Pxtl 11y ago

I do find that non-anonymous downvotes go better than anonymous ones, particularly w small communities. Downvotes are particularly relevant for feature requests that may have substantial negative impact. I'd actually implement downvotes/upvotes as zero-length comments so that they can be moderated and replied to.

philliphaydon 11y ago

I shall respectfully disagree. Not wanting down votes is just a way of saying "I'm offended please don't offend me I can't handle down it's it makes me sad" It's 2016, can we stop worrying about if someone disagrees with you and just accept the fact they wanted to down vote on an issue rather than say nothing or leave a comment.

echelon 11y ago
It's usually the case that it's cheap to disagree. It would be more beneficial to the review process to have those with dissenting opinions lay out a logical case presenting their concerns rather than enable them to do quicker, drive-by review. Haven't you had feedback along the lines of, "but did you take into consideration what impact the heat death of the universe will have on your design?" ?
nv-vn 11y ago
No, it's because downvotes actively censor unpopular opinions based on the fact that they're unpopular rather than their merit. Check out reddit some time and you'll see this happen a lot.

Wintamute 11y ago

It depends on how the PR, project or comment thread interprets the -1s. If a vote has been specifically requested then the +1/-1s are super useful. Otherwise they could be safely ignored by maintainers as at most low value ambient info ... well worded constructive criticism will always carry more weight that a -1. Also, this is fundamentally different to SO/HN ... there is no ranking, the up-vote/down-vote ratio has zero effect aside from incrementing a counter - any meaning applied is subjective.

bradgessler 11y ago

Combining +1 and -1 is a mistake. It would be useful to see thumbs-up separate from thumbs-down to get a gut feel for contention.

CM30 11y ago
Yeah, that's definitely the best way of handling a rating system. The one I use on my sites (the XenForo mod one) counts likes, dislikes, agrees, disagrees and all the other ratings individually and displays that count under every post. GitHub should have done the same here.

inopinatus 11y ago

I'm not sure this is a downvote. It's a vote in favour of a negative and unlike HN-style downvoting, is tallied separately. You can even react with both thumbs-up and thumbs-down to the same issue. With a tallied up/downvote system a la HN you can't tell, numerically, if a score of 1 meant "only one person cared" or "hundreds cared and there was furious disagreement". Actually I'd be interested in a "top 100 most polarising comments" feed :-)

Ensorceled 11y ago

Disagreement should not be restricted to only those who are willing to stick their neck out and publicly disagree and state their reasons. Imagine this scenario. Linus Torvalds posts an utterly inane pull request. Who is willing to deal with the backlash of "disagreeing with Linus". Sure, many are, but many are not.

nv-vn 11y ago

Still not a fan of how it's done on SO. To me the best solution is not to include it at all. If you have something negative to say about a PR or Issue, it makes more sense to explain why you feel that way instead of outright saying no. The +1 makes it very clear that you're saying "this covers my use-case." What does -1 mean here, other than "I don't want this"? Because not wanting something is not a reason not to include it when everybody is using a project for a different use-case.