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Ask HN: Why has the downvoting timelimit been reduced?

46 points by aaron695 10y ago

I feel like it makes people have to reply in a negative manner rather than just being able to lower the comment

superswordfish 10y ago
While we're on the topic, please eliminate downvoting, or at least the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless. Edit: Point proven. Two upvotes and seven downvotes in 12 minutes. Nothing short of a reply from `dang` will save it now! Bad commenter, toe the line if you seek discussion, lest you be banished to the graveyard of greydom. I'm baffled that nobody else sees how this is a problem.
- deleted 10y ago
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- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >or at least the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless. I think I agree. The culture has changed a bit here, which is fine (or at least unavoidable). But now there's much more down-voting of things with which the voter merely disagrees (case-in-point, your comment: down-voted with no replies at the time of my writing). It reenforces the hive-mind.
  - philbarr 10y ago
    Completely agree. We should also be allowed to talk about downvoting (in the appropriate place, whatever that is) without fear of reprisal! Downvoting should be for comments that don't add to the discussion, not for disagreement. I know pg said years ago that you could use downvotes for disagreement, but I propose that we revisit that...
  - icebraining 10y ago
    > The culture has changed a bit here Did it, though? As the other commenter said, pg himself said 8 years ago that downvoting for disagreement was fine. I don't think the culture really changed, it was just never a settled issue, sometimes it's just more visible.
  - dalke 10y ago
    Changed? When was it otherwise? There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down-voted%20%20no%20replies&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down-voted%20%20no%20replies&s... . Here's an AskHN from 7 years ago titled "Ask HN: Downvote for disagreement in some cases?" The top answer is "This comes up all the time here. Most people use downvotes for disagreement. Gotta live with it." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612 . Others express other opinions. Back in 2008 pg said "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 How do you know that the hivement changed in the last 8 years in this regard?
    - forgetsusername 10y ago
      >There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years I don't recall saying that there were no downvotes-for-disagreement in earlier times. I said it feels like it has increased. I think it's quite obvious how this affects the hive-mind; "un-popular" opinions become hard to read (greyed-out), which diminishes argument.
  - rootlocus 10y ago
    Not a personal attack, but from your profile page I see you've been a member for a little over a year. I don't know if that's enough time to observe a change in culture. Personally, I've been lurking for a little over three years, and haven't seen much of a change.
    - forgetsusername 10y ago
      >but from your profile page I see you've been a member for a little over a year I've been around much longer than that. As someone who doesn't really care about "karma", I reset my social media accounts on occasion.
- dijit 10y ago
  Downvoting serves a purpose. Off topic comments or populist statements come with some level of resentment. I agree that it's abused, but the notion of not contributing to the conversation should have some penalties.
- biot 10y ago
  This was discussed before [0] and I'll reproduce a comment of mine. TL;DR: downvoting promotes social standards thus it's neither antisocial nor pointless: If 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. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12070314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12070314
- mrleiter 10y ago
  >eliminate downvoting What you are asking here is to eliminate freedom of expression. By downvoting I voice my disagreement with your statement. Preferably there is a comment added, but that must not be necessary. Eliminating such a feature would give a distorted view of this community as a whole. One must live with the fact that not everybody has the same opinion. >It's antisocial and pointless. No, according to [0] antisocial is a behaviour that is contrary to the laws and customs of (a) society, in a way that causes annoyance and disapproval in others. In our society, or at least that is how I appreciate it, dissenting opinions are important and accepted. Yes, as mentioned above, a following argument would be nice, but isn't necessary. And also others must feel annoyed and be disapproving of it - not you. As to "pointless", see above. [0]: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/antisocial http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/antisoc...
  - gkya 10y ago
    Downvotes are not for disagreement. It's a tool against irrelevant, off-topic, apparently false comments. Disagreement is done via a refutation.
    - dang 10y ago
      That's never been the case on HN.
      - gkya 10y ago
        Neither my comment directly refers to HN in particular.
  - chmaynard 10y ago
    > By downvoting I voice my disagreement with your statement. There seems to be a consensus here that disagreement is not a sufficient reason to downvote a comment. However, I don't see anything in the Guidelines about this.
    - dalke 10y ago
- mrkgnao 10y ago
  Maybe make it so that a comment can't be downvoted until it has at least one reply?
  - douche 10y ago
    I don't believe that you can downvote a comment that you reply to - so you would have to downvote first, and then reply.
    - detaro 10y ago
      other direction: you can't downvote direct replies to you. You shouldn't see a downvote button on my comment, but on the comment above you.
- jasode 10y ago
  >the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless. In my experience, the greying of comments for "computer/programming" topics is usually accurate and lets me save time by skipping them. However, for non-technical topics discussed on HN such as economics, gender sociology, suburban housing, the grey text often is result of a larger group winning(downvoting) an ideological war. Ideally, the top 2 comments should be constructive comments representing opposite positions. However, the popular ideas are often at the top and the contrarian ideas are on the bottom and greyed out. It's not a perfect situation but since I view HN as a resource for technical topics (Techcrunch, Ars Technica, programming, etc) instead of the "soft" topics (NYT, The Atlantic, etc), I'm willing to outsource the disapproval of bad technical comments to the crowd because it has shown to be pretty accurate. I have finite reading time so evaluating every comment on its merits is a step backwards in productivity. The ability for the anonymous crowd to create a quantity of unproductive comments exceeds my capacity to filter every comment that isn't greyed out. For those who oppose grey text, please state your reading budget for discussion forums like HN. That would give me an idea of how you "manage" the signal-to-noise ratio.
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    I'm ok with greying, but I think it goes too far when the contrast gets so low you can't actually read it easily. Even selecting highly grayed text doesn't make it readable. I get that the point is to make it easier to skip over the downvoted text, but greying so far as to make it almost impossible to read is heavy handed, more like censoring then censuring. Maybe a continuum of first greying (but not too low contrast), then shrinking (but not too small), and finally striking out (for truly terrible stuff) would be better.
    - dang 10y ago
      If you want to read a faded-out comment, you can do so by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page. It's an extra hop, but only one.
- funkyy 10y ago
  Just to leave it here - use downvoting when the comment is NOT SUITABLE for conversation, not when you disagree with the statement. As long as the statement is nonoffensive, not a lie and not a trolling - do not downvote it.
- PeterWhittaker 10y ago
  I've long thought and occasionally argued that downvoting should be eliminated. But perhaps the problem isn't downvoting itself (occasionally I see abusive comments downvoted and think yeah, this is what it's for).... The problem is that downvoting has no cost. Anyone can downvote anyone anytime, at no cost to themselves. Contrast this with commenting, which has a cost in time, in mental effort, etc. - and occasionally in karma, when one's comments are downvoted...! IMHO the cost-free nature of downvoting encourages glib, quick, lazy downvoting. It encourages dislike and abuse. Let's make downvoting have a cost - and let's make the cost increase as one downvotes more frequently (if one self-appoints as a guardian of HN, increased cost will police the "guardian's" behaviour). For example, why not a Fibonacci sequence of downvote cost? The first downvote of a period T removes one karma point from the downvoter, the second removes one, the third removes 2, the fourth 3, etc. One's position in the sequence would be reset by not downvoting for some period. People who rarely downvote would incur no practical cost, but people who over downvote would incur a large cost.
- dang 10y ago
  Your original comment made a grandiose claim about a controversial topic that had no content other than borderline name-calling ("antisocial and pointless"). Far from proving your point, that seems like a good candidate for downvoting to me. You also broke the HN guidelines by going on about getting downvoted. When people do that as a rhetorical device, that's a marker of a low-quality comment.
  - superswordfish 10y ago
    I wrote a pretty decent reply to this, then realized that posting it here would be utterly self-defeating. The double standard you're pushing here is disgusting, and you know it. Time to find a less negative programming community, or one that's at least a touch self-aware.
    - tomhoward 10y ago
      Let's talk about self-awareness. Your account has been active for 158 days. HackerNews has existed for nearly 10 years – at least 3000 days. On pretty much every single one of those days, pg, dang and others have worked to build this site into something that reflects the wishes of its community – a community that continues to grow in number and quality as a result of their tireless efforts. The downvoting/greying feature has been developed, discussed, reviewed and refined steadily throughout the history of the site. That will continue as the community evolves, but right now, it reflects a status quo that the overwhelming majority of the community endorses, as evidenced by their continued engagement with the site and the particular feature. Any user is always welcome to suggest an improvement to the site and provide a thoughtful and articulate justification for it. You, on the other hand, have entered this discussion with just 158 days of history and 276 karma points, trashed a core feature of the site as "antisocial and pointless" and demanded its removal without suggesting an alternative, then broken the site guidelines by complaining about the community's response to your demand. Then when the site's administrator – a person whom the longest-standing and most positive contributors to the community respect and value as the thoughtful, fair and hard-working bedrock of this site – takes the trouble to explain why you've been downvoted, you abuse him as "disgusting". It's worth reflecting that dang often finds himself being attacked/abused by people on opposing sides of the one argument, with each of them complaining that he's favouring the other. If there's a community that welcomes the kind of behaviour you've exhibited here, you should most certainly defect to it right away.
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hga 10y ago
It looks like it's set to 8 hours or so, which for those of use who regularly sleep 8 hours, plus avoid HN while getting ready for it or don't immediately go to it on waking up, means we don't get a chance to downvote a lot of postings that otherwise might make sense for us to be able to do so. At the very least it was a jarring change.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  That's a good point. It also means there are windows when it's easier to make unhelpful comments without being downvoted as much.
Udo 10y ago
Barring different categories for downvotes, I strongly believe that a downvote should be reserved for cases where you think the comment does not contribute to the discussion. Disagreement should not be enough. If the issue is amenable to discussion, I'd much rather see someone type out a reply containing actual counterpoints than people simply downvoting (or worse: flagging) the parent. And if you find a well-written comment you disagree with, you might even upvote it and disagree in text form. I realize though that disagreement sometimes needs an outlet that can't be provided if a large number of replies already exist, but in that case you might just upvote the best existing reply that you feel captures your feelings. I would advocate that downvotes be reserved for instances where the post was a net negative to the discussion, and flags should be reserved for egregious violations of conduct that call the originating user accounts itself into question. Based on that, I think a score of -2 (is that the current limit?) and a few hours time limit is sufficient for the purpose of filtering the discussion. It should be ample time to weed out the low quality comments that should be sinking to the bottom. Once that basic weeding is done, upvoting is a much better signal to concentrate on.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  I think the problem is Eternal September. Some facts and patterns have been discussed exhaustively and truth has been found. At some point the community has to move on. The backlog is open, society or the web does not gain from duplication deluding every discussion. People can just lurk a bit if they fear downvoting and losing imaginary internet points. But I also like the strictness of the often critiqued stackoverflow moderation.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  I wish I could upvote this 100 times. Especially: "if you find a well-written comment you disagree with, you might even upvote it and disagree in text form." "disagreement sometimes needs an outlet ... you might just upvote the best existing reply that you feel captures your feelings. But AFAIK the HN guidelines (or pg?) say that disagreement is an acceptable reason for downvoting. It's really poor UX to have a single input that indicates wildly different things. dang - is there any chance this rule will change? Or any particular reason why we don't want to change it?
Alexey_Nigin 10y ago
From my experience, the votes are rarely a sign of a constructive comment. For example, my top comment is the one in which I basically said that learning natural languages is hard. Pretty original remark, huh? In my second most popular comment, I posted a link to a funny image that didn't have much to do with the conversation. And my most downvoted comment is a detailed explanation of why I'm not impressed with Twitter's plans to use advanced machine learning. I am not arguing that we should abolish votes, since I don't see an alternative. But tweaking the existing system to see if it becomes better is a sensible idea. Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring.
- funkyy 10y ago
  But mostly are. Lets assume 90th percentile rule - 90% of comments below half of the page are worse than comments on upper half of page. While some comments might be quite good below, if you have limited time and want to be more successful at cutting "crap" you will hover only around top comments. Not a perfect thing, but this is what makes this place different from Reddit - you can be almost sure top comments will be valuable, cleverly funny, starting some interesting thought and not funny image, joke or offensive.
- z3t4 10y ago
  i remember a HN parody witch was quite acurate, where u find the thougtful comments at the bottom, maybe even downvoted because someone did disagree. i do however think the hn comments holds supprisingly good quality compared to reddit and other forums.
- js8 10y ago
  I think if the votes are to be used to promote constructive discussion, then you need more information about the intent. Just plain good/bad won't cut it.
- veddox 10y ago
  > Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring. True. Which is why I make a point of scrolling down and reading them whenever I can ;-) Often those comments are simply made by people who came late to the discussion and didn't garner as many upvotes as the people who were there first, even though what they had to say was just as (or almost as) good.
mrleiter 10y ago
I also feel that moot a.k.a. Christopher Poole made a point for anonymity online. [0] In his talk he states that by eliminating voting mechanisms he ensures that every opinion has the same weight in a discussion, as simply chronology matters. The problem here is that power is shifted from the community to the moderators. But advantages are a)unpopular opinions aren't voted down into "inexistence" and b)the discussion starts out more unbiased as every opinion appears chronologically. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1UEAGCo30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1UEAGCo30
- ekianjo 10y ago
  How is that a valid approach? Without voting you end up with low quality commenters gaming the system for visibility.
  - krapp 10y ago
    with voting you also end up with low quality commenters gaming the system, because voting itself is an attempt to gamify culture. One only has to look at Reddit to see how "high visibility" and "high quality" don't often correlate. Sometimes they do, but not always. Also, with voting, you have meta-debates about voting, people complaining about voting, voting rings and brigading, etc. Voting also presents the problem of earlier posts persisting at the top regardless of their quality. Of course it's possible to gamify imageboard threads as well since they sort by the last comment, but a purely chronologically sorted thread wouldn't have any such issues.
9918279191 10y ago
The flagging of superswordfish's comment shows that people just abuse the feature.
- rootlocus 10y ago
  Did you make this account just to lament that people flagged your comment?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- funkyy 10y ago
  Can you link me to it please?
  - gkya 10y ago
    Here under this very post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330254
    - funkyy 10y ago
      Ah right, missed that. I thought it was from different thread what so ever. Thanks for pointing this to me.
- DanBC 10y ago
  That comment hasn't been flagged, it's been downvoted.
larsiusprime 10y ago
I have always felt that regardless of high minded intention, saying "don't downvote based on disagreement" is the equivalent of leaving out a bowl marked "please take only one candy" on Halloween.
k__ 10y ago
I think voting should be removed and hiding shown mor prominently. The news-page should by sorted by a KPI that is a mix of clicks/shares/comments/hides. Voting just distorts everything to "I vote down everyone who disagrees with me" Also, forced anon. ;)
dang 10y ago
I can't recall why we shortened the limit. We can probably put it back the way it was. Email hn@ycombinator.com if you want to remind me.

46 points by aaron695 10y ago

I feel like it makes people have to reply in a negative manner rather than just being able to lower the comment

While we're on the topic, please eliminate downvoting, or at least the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless. Edit: Point proven. Two upvotes and seven downvotes in 12 minutes. Nothing short of a reply from `dang` will save it now! Bad commenter, toe the line if you seek discussion, lest you be banished to the graveyard of greydom. I'm baffled that nobody else sees how this is a problem.

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forgetsusername 10y ago
>or at least the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless. I think I agree. The culture has changed a bit here, which is fine (or at least unavoidable). But now there's much more down-voting of things with which the voter merely disagrees (case-in-point, your comment: down-voted with no replies at the time of my writing). It reenforces the hive-mind.
- philbarr 10y ago
  Completely agree. We should also be allowed to talk about downvoting (in the appropriate place, whatever that is) without fear of reprisal! Downvoting should be for comments that don't add to the discussion, not for disagreement. I know pg said years ago that you could use downvotes for disagreement, but I propose that we revisit that...
- icebraining 10y ago
  > The culture has changed a bit here Did it, though? As the other commenter said, pg himself said 8 years ago that downvoting for disagreement was fine. I don't think the culture really changed, it was just never a settled issue, sometimes it's just more visible.
- dalke 10y ago
  Changed? When was it otherwise? There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down-voted%20%20no%20replies&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down-voted%20%20no%20replies&s... . Here's an AskHN from 7 years ago titled "Ask HN: Downvote for disagreement in some cases?" The top answer is "This comes up all the time here. Most people use downvotes for disagreement. Gotta live with it." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612 . Others express other opinions. Back in 2008 pg said "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 How do you know that the hivement changed in the last 8 years in this regard?
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    >There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years I don't recall saying that there were no downvotes-for-disagreement in earlier times. I said it feels like it has increased. I think it's quite obvious how this affects the hive-mind; "un-popular" opinions become hard to read (greyed-out), which diminishes argument.
- rootlocus 10y ago
  Not a personal attack, but from your profile page I see you've been a member for a little over a year. I don't know if that's enough time to observe a change in culture. Personally, I've been lurking for a little over three years, and haven't seen much of a change.
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    >but from your profile page I see you've been a member for a little over a year I've been around much longer than that. As someone who doesn't really care about "karma", I reset my social media accounts on occasion.
dijit 10y ago
Downvoting serves a purpose. Off topic comments or populist statements come with some level of resentment. I agree that it's abused, but the notion of not contributing to the conversation should have some penalties.
biot 10y ago
This was discussed before [0] and I'll reproduce a comment of mine. TL;DR: downvoting promotes social standards thus it's neither antisocial nor pointless: If 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. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12070314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12070314
mrleiter 10y ago
>eliminate downvoting What you are asking here is to eliminate freedom of expression. By downvoting I voice my disagreement with your statement. Preferably there is a comment added, but that must not be necessary. Eliminating such a feature would give a distorted view of this community as a whole. One must live with the fact that not everybody has the same opinion. >It's antisocial and pointless. No, according to [0] antisocial is a behaviour that is contrary to the laws and customs of (a) society, in a way that causes annoyance and disapproval in others. In our society, or at least that is how I appreciate it, dissenting opinions are important and accepted. Yes, as mentioned above, a following argument would be nice, but isn't necessary. And also others must feel annoyed and be disapproving of it - not you. As to "pointless", see above. [0]: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/antisocial http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/antisoc...
- gkya 10y ago
  Downvotes are not for disagreement. It's a tool against irrelevant, off-topic, apparently false comments. Disagreement is done via a refutation.
  - dang 10y ago
    That's never been the case on HN.
    - gkya 10y ago
      Neither my comment directly refers to HN in particular.
- chmaynard 10y ago
  > By downvoting I voice my disagreement with your statement. There seems to be a consensus here that disagreement is not a sufficient reason to downvote a comment. However, I don't see anything in the Guidelines about this.
  - dalke 10y ago
mrkgnao 10y ago
Maybe make it so that a comment can't be downvoted until it has at least one reply?
- douche 10y ago
  I don't believe that you can downvote a comment that you reply to - so you would have to downvote first, and then reply.
  - detaro 10y ago
    other direction: you can't downvote direct replies to you. You shouldn't see a downvote button on my comment, but on the comment above you.
jasode 10y ago
>the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless. In my experience, the greying of comments for "computer/programming" topics is usually accurate and lets me save time by skipping them. However, for non-technical topics discussed on HN such as economics, gender sociology, suburban housing, the grey text often is result of a larger group winning(downvoting) an ideological war. Ideally, the top 2 comments should be constructive comments representing opposite positions. However, the popular ideas are often at the top and the contrarian ideas are on the bottom and greyed out. It's not a perfect situation but since I view HN as a resource for technical topics (Techcrunch, Ars Technica, programming, etc) instead of the "soft" topics (NYT, The Atlantic, etc), I'm willing to outsource the disapproval of bad technical comments to the crowd because it has shown to be pretty accurate. I have finite reading time so evaluating every comment on its merits is a step backwards in productivity. The ability for the anonymous crowd to create a quantity of unproductive comments exceeds my capacity to filter every comment that isn't greyed out. For those who oppose grey text, please state your reading budget for discussion forums like HN. That would give me an idea of how you "manage" the signal-to-noise ratio.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  I'm ok with greying, but I think it goes too far when the contrast gets so low you can't actually read it easily. Even selecting highly grayed text doesn't make it readable. I get that the point is to make it easier to skip over the downvoted text, but greying so far as to make it almost impossible to read is heavy handed, more like censoring then censuring. Maybe a continuum of first greying (but not too low contrast), then shrinking (but not too small), and finally striking out (for truly terrible stuff) would be better.
  - dang 10y ago
    If you want to read a faded-out comment, you can do so by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page. It's an extra hop, but only one.
funkyy 10y ago
Just to leave it here - use downvoting when the comment is NOT SUITABLE for conversation, not when you disagree with the statement. As long as the statement is nonoffensive, not a lie and not a trolling - do not downvote it.
PeterWhittaker 10y ago
I've long thought and occasionally argued that downvoting should be eliminated. But perhaps the problem isn't downvoting itself (occasionally I see abusive comments downvoted and think yeah, this is what it's for).... The problem is that downvoting has no cost. Anyone can downvote anyone anytime, at no cost to themselves. Contrast this with commenting, which has a cost in time, in mental effort, etc. - and occasionally in karma, when one's comments are downvoted...! IMHO the cost-free nature of downvoting encourages glib, quick, lazy downvoting. It encourages dislike and abuse. Let's make downvoting have a cost - and let's make the cost increase as one downvotes more frequently (if one self-appoints as a guardian of HN, increased cost will police the "guardian's" behaviour). For example, why not a Fibonacci sequence of downvote cost? The first downvote of a period T removes one karma point from the downvoter, the second removes one, the third removes 2, the fourth 3, etc. One's position in the sequence would be reset by not downvoting for some period. People who rarely downvote would incur no practical cost, but people who over downvote would incur a large cost.
dang 10y ago
Your original comment made a grandiose claim about a controversial topic that had no content other than borderline name-calling ("antisocial and pointless"). Far from proving your point, that seems like a good candidate for downvoting to me. You also broke the HN guidelines by going on about getting downvoted. When people do that as a rhetorical device, that's a marker of a low-quality comment.
- superswordfish 10y ago
  I wrote a pretty decent reply to this, then realized that posting it here would be utterly self-defeating. The double standard you're pushing here is disgusting, and you know it. Time to find a less negative programming community, or one that's at least a touch self-aware.
  - tomhoward 10y ago
    Let's talk about self-awareness. Your account has been active for 158 days. HackerNews has existed for nearly 10 years – at least 3000 days. On pretty much every single one of those days, pg, dang and others have worked to build this site into something that reflects the wishes of its community – a community that continues to grow in number and quality as a result of their tireless efforts. The downvoting/greying feature has been developed, discussed, reviewed and refined steadily throughout the history of the site. That will continue as the community evolves, but right now, it reflects a status quo that the overwhelming majority of the community endorses, as evidenced by their continued engagement with the site and the particular feature. Any user is always welcome to suggest an improvement to the site and provide a thoughtful and articulate justification for it. You, on the other hand, have entered this discussion with just 158 days of history and 276 karma points, trashed a core feature of the site as "antisocial and pointless" and demanded its removal without suggesting an alternative, then broken the site guidelines by complaining about the community's response to your demand. Then when the site's administrator – a person whom the longest-standing and most positive contributors to the community respect and value as the thoughtful, fair and hard-working bedrock of this site – takes the trouble to explain why you've been downvoted, you abuse him as "disgusting". It's worth reflecting that dang often finds himself being attacked/abused by people on opposing sides of the one argument, with each of them complaining that he's favouring the other. If there's a community that welcomes the kind of behaviour you've exhibited here, you should most certainly defect to it right away.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

hga 10y ago

It looks like it's set to 8 hours or so, which for those of use who regularly sleep 8 hours, plus avoid HN while getting ready for it or don't immediately go to it on waking up, means we don't get a chance to downvote a lot of postings that otherwise might make sense for us to be able to do so. At the very least it was a jarring change.

DonHopkins 10y ago
That's a good point. It also means there are windows when it's easier to make unhelpful comments without being downvoted as much.

Udo 10y ago

Barring different categories for downvotes, I strongly believe that a downvote should be reserved for cases where you think the comment does not contribute to the discussion. Disagreement should not be enough. If the issue is amenable to discussion, I'd much rather see someone type out a reply containing actual counterpoints than people simply downvoting (or worse: flagging) the parent. And if you find a well-written comment you disagree with, you might even upvote it and disagree in text form. I realize though that disagreement sometimes needs an outlet that can't be provided if a large number of replies already exist, but in that case you might just upvote the best existing reply that you feel captures your feelings. I would advocate that downvotes be reserved for instances where the post was a net negative to the discussion, and flags should be reserved for egregious violations of conduct that call the originating user accounts itself into question. Based on that, I think a score of -2 (is that the current limit?) and a few hours time limit is sufficient for the purpose of filtering the discussion. It should be ample time to weed out the low quality comments that should be sinking to the bottom. Once that basic weeding is done, upvoting is a much better signal to concentrate on.

allendoerfer 10y ago
I think the problem is Eternal September. Some facts and patterns have been discussed exhaustively and truth has been found. At some point the community has to move on. The backlog is open, society or the web does not gain from duplication deluding every discussion. People can just lurk a bit if they fear downvoting and losing imaginary internet points. But I also like the strictness of the often critiqued stackoverflow moderation.
rahimnathwani 10y ago
I wish I could upvote this 100 times. Especially: "if you find a well-written comment you disagree with, you might even upvote it and disagree in text form." "disagreement sometimes needs an outlet ... you might just upvote the best existing reply that you feel captures your feelings. But AFAIK the HN guidelines (or pg?) say that disagreement is an acceptable reason for downvoting. It's really poor UX to have a single input that indicates wildly different things. dang - is there any chance this rule will change? Or any particular reason why we don't want to change it?

Alexey_Nigin 10y ago

From my experience, the votes are rarely a sign of a constructive comment. For example, my top comment is the one in which I basically said that learning natural languages is hard. Pretty original remark, huh? In my second most popular comment, I posted a link to a funny image that didn't have much to do with the conversation. And my most downvoted comment is a detailed explanation of why I'm not impressed with Twitter's plans to use advanced machine learning. I am not arguing that we should abolish votes, since I don't see an alternative. But tweaking the existing system to see if it becomes better is a sensible idea. Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring.

funkyy 10y ago
But mostly are. Lets assume 90th percentile rule - 90% of comments below half of the page are worse than comments on upper half of page. While some comments might be quite good below, if you have limited time and want to be more successful at cutting "crap" you will hover only around top comments. Not a perfect thing, but this is what makes this place different from Reddit - you can be almost sure top comments will be valuable, cleverly funny, starting some interesting thought and not funny image, joke or offensive.
z3t4 10y ago
i remember a HN parody witch was quite acurate, where u find the thougtful comments at the bottom, maybe even downvoted because someone did disagree. i do however think the hn comments holds supprisingly good quality compared to reddit and other forums.
js8 10y ago
I think if the votes are to be used to promote constructive discussion, then you need more information about the intent. Just plain good/bad won't cut it.
veddox 10y ago
> Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring. True. Which is why I make a point of scrolling down and reading them whenever I can ;-) Often those comments are simply made by people who came late to the discussion and didn't garner as many upvotes as the people who were there first, even though what they had to say was just as (or almost as) good.

mrleiter 10y ago

I also feel that moot a.k.a. Christopher Poole made a point for anonymity online. [0] In his talk he states that by eliminating voting mechanisms he ensures that every opinion has the same weight in a discussion, as simply chronology matters. The problem here is that power is shifted from the community to the moderators. But advantages are a)unpopular opinions aren't voted down into "inexistence" and b)the discussion starts out more unbiased as every opinion appears chronologically. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1UEAGCo30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1UEAGCo30

ekianjo 10y ago
How is that a valid approach? Without voting you end up with low quality commenters gaming the system for visibility.
- krapp 10y ago
  with voting you also end up with low quality commenters gaming the system, because voting itself is an attempt to gamify culture. One only has to look at Reddit to see how "high visibility" and "high quality" don't often correlate. Sometimes they do, but not always. Also, with voting, you have meta-debates about voting, people complaining about voting, voting rings and brigading, etc. Voting also presents the problem of earlier posts persisting at the top regardless of their quality. Of course it's possible to gamify imageboard threads as well since they sort by the last comment, but a purely chronologically sorted thread wouldn't have any such issues.

9918279191 10y ago

The flagging of superswordfish's comment shows that people just abuse the feature.

rootlocus 10y ago
Did you make this account just to lament that people flagged your comment?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
funkyy 10y ago
Can you link me to it please?
- gkya 10y ago
  Here under this very post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330254
  - funkyy 10y ago
    Ah right, missed that. I thought it was from different thread what so ever. Thanks for pointing this to me.
DanBC 10y ago
That comment hasn't been flagged, it's been downvoted.

larsiusprime 10y ago

I have always felt that regardless of high minded intention, saying "don't downvote based on disagreement" is the equivalent of leaving out a bowl marked "please take only one candy" on Halloween.

k__ 10y ago

I think voting should be removed and hiding shown mor prominently. The news-page should by sorted by a KPI that is a mix of clicks/shares/comments/hides. Voting just distorts everything to "I vote down everyone who disagrees with me" Also, forced anon. ;)

dang 10y ago

I can't recall why we shortened the limit. We can probably put it back the way it was. Email hn@ycombinator.com if you want to remind me.