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Guidelines are clear on what downwotes are: a tool for pushing down and marking irrelevant comments, not a "disagree" button. But the fact is it's hard for som
by gkya 10y ago
Guidelines are clear on what downwotes are: a tool for pushing down and marking irrelevant comments, not a "disagree" button. But the fact is it's hard for someone unskilled in discussion to distinguish disagreeable comment from an irrelevant one. Also, usually it's hard for most people to accept the falsety of their own thought against a counterargument. These skills, that are objective open mindedness and the incentive to accept criticism and counterarguments require a sort of literacy that's different from tech literacy, which's what I guess the HN crowd does indeed have in abundance. Discussion skills and discussion culture are not things that come with birth or tech knowledge though, they are a separate group of skills that you achieve on its own. Being able to take those actions that you quote require a certain maturity of such skills. HN being publicly accessible and popular to a certain extent, it's impossible to expect everyone to have them. And even a handful of this sort of commenters are enough to spoil the harmony of a discussion group. Further, if there are points earnable on internet, people will want to earn them. This sort of incentive pushes commenters to adopt a more populist style that can gain upvotes with punchy lines and populist comments instead of complete and coherent arguments or well-founded criticisms. Ultimately this is an illness of voting in itself, not specific to HN. See Brexit, Trump, etc. for up-to-date examples.
edits: grammar.
- jrs235 10y agoAre the guidelines clear on downvotes? I think there's a misconception that they are, especially pertaining to up and down voting. I just reread the guidelines[1] and see little mention of up and down voting. The only mentioning is don't complain about or bait for down votes. In the past pg has said it's okay to use votes for agreement/disagreement[2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 Edits: formatting
- gkya 10y agoWhoops, mistaken on that one. Sorry. Though there are people who think similarly here and I am reluctant to make a Lykurgos out of Mr. Graham.
- veddox 10y agoSorry, this is off-topic, but PG on graffiti is simply brilliant: "In this respect trolling is a lot like graffiti. Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world."
- gkya 10y agoYou didn't have to call me incompetent. Nor was I trolling. I'm really offended by this.
- veddox 10y agoI'm very sorry, gkya, I did not in the least mean to offend you - actually, I wasn't even referring to you! I simply read PG's essay that was linked above and came across this quote that I found really good and wanted to share. It had nothing whatsoever to do with your previous comments (which is why I clearly labeled it as off-topic). In fact, if you scroll to my comments further up in the discussion, you will see that we have a very similar opinion as far as downvoting is concerned. Again, my apologies if I have inadvertently caused offense, I certainly did not mean to.
- gkya 10y agoI appreciate your apology, thank you, and I'm sorry for my confusion, just that in the context I interpreted your comment as if you were referring to me. I've read your comment on the topic too, clearly put. Again, thanks for your kind apology.
- DanBC 10y ago> Guidelines are clear on what downwotes are: a tool for pushing down and marking irrelevant comments, Please could you link to where they say that?