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Voting gives a sense of agency in that one can influence HN in a positive way. By upvoting, I am making HN more positive by promoting comments that I think add
by biot 10y ago
Voting gives a sense of agency in that one can influence HN in a positive way. By upvoting, I am making HN more positive by promoting comments that I think add to the discussion. By downvoting, I am making HN more positive by demoting comments that I think detract from the discussion.
That you think a downvote is focusing on negativity says more about you than those who downvote. To be honest, I find your attempts to convince others not to use a core feature of HN to be negative and, as such, I've voted accordingly.
- vmateixeira 10y agoThank you for your answer. I think you made my point actually. By commenting, you gave me the opportunity to discuss with you and we now can both learn from it. For me it became more than a downvote, it became positive.
- biot 10y agoI sometimes both downvote and reply when I feel that it would be helpful. At other times, the comment is self-evident as to why it was downvoted (and/or already has replies from others) and a reply only adds noise instead of signal. The signal I'm adding is "-1 fake internet points".
- vmateixeira 10y agoOk, I can see your point but why downvote other than leaving it as is, for the reasons I wrote down below? Edit: The reasons I wrote as a reply to user projectramo
- biot 10y agoIf nobody downvoted, then the author of the comment would be unable to distinguish between "the community doesn't value my comment" and "my comment was ignored". A downvote sends a clear signal vs. a lack of signal which is important to establishing/maintaining community norms. If we didn't have that signal, there might be reddit-style pun chains on HN and new users who see that might think it's accepted by the community since those threads are indistinguishable from other comments due to the scores being hidden. Seeing comments downvoted to grey is an important signal. Of course, replying is also a signal but it's not appropriate in every circumstance. It's redundant when sibling comments provide correct information vs. the downvoted comment's incorrect information and an in-context reading of the thread will make that apparent. Or when the downvoted comment is flamebait/trolling and you don't want feed the trolls. Or when the comment clearly doesn't fit the community norms. And, most importantly, I have neither the time nor the inclination to reply to every comment on HN offering constructive feedback so I pick and choose carefully when I do that... as I'm doing here. Long story short, HN deemed it acceptable to allow users with a minimum karma level to downvote. It's a feature, not a bug, and as long as it's used with discretion it sends a valuable signal to the comment's author. That feedback mechanism also confers positive benefits to the entire community.
- vmateixeira 10y agoThere were a few points you mentioned I wasn't considering altogether. You made it very clear. Thank you for you input!