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Wonderful post. I'm looking forward to an enlightening discussion about this. I was disappointed by the end, however, because it suggested that downvoting was

Wonderful post. I'm looking forward to an enlightening discussion about this. I was disappointed by the end, however, because it suggested that downvoting was a way of managing trolls. I think downvoting means different things to different people: some downvote to merely show disagreement, for example. So a downvoted comment on Hacker News does not necessarily mean that it is likely a troll comment. Therefore, downvotes can't achieve the necessary shared awareness. (I will disagree with myself and note that comments that have been voted all the way down to -4 tend to be trollish, so maybe it works to an extent.)

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
You raise an important point. About a year ago, on a community website I run [1], I implemented a group moderation system like the one I described in this essay and it worked pretty much as described. However, there are certainly some cases of people voting against comments on the basis of disagreement rather than comment quality - which goes against the comment voting guidelines [2]. This issue does occasionally come up among regular commenters. Interestingly, simply pointing out that someone was downvoted for expressing an opinion that was unpopular rather than illegitimate seems at least partially to reverse the effect (unlike HN, users can change their vote after making it). Again, this seems to suggest that as community moderation becomes internalized as an important value, it becomes more effective at preserving quality discussion. [1] http://raisethehammer.org/ http://raisethehammer.org/ [2] http://raisethehammer.org/article/874/ http://raisethehammer.org/article/874/
- epochwolf 17y ago
  Is it really possible to have people vote on quality? I've noticed most people don't understand how to be objective. Worse still is unless you are familiar with excellence you will be very poor at judging it. Perhaps this is because of differing measures of excellence people use or the result of ignorance. I think a system that accepts fuzziness in measurement would be better than one that tries to be exact.
epochwolf 17y ago
I too am looking for a good discussion. I think down votes are enough for shared awareness. It's not the perfect system because you can get downvoted simply for disagreeing with the community at large. However, being downvoted for having a different opinion isn't heavily stigmatized on HN. I rarely see a -4 rating on a comment that isn't trollish, off topic, or a joke that backfired. Most social interaction has this kind of fuzziness. It works most of the time which is good enough.
misuba 17y ago
If disagreeable opinions are just as likely to cause the negative effects of trolling as "real" troll comments, don't you need the same countermeasures in place?
- techiferous 17y ago
  I don't think that offering a point-of-view that many people disagree with would cause any negative effects. However, if there is a culture that doesn't tolerate a diversity of dissenting opinions, then the group's reactions to the differing point-of-view may have negative effects.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

You raise an important point. About a year ago, on a community website I run [1], I implemented a group moderation system like the one I described in this essay and it worked pretty much as described. However, there are certainly some cases of people voting against comments on the basis of disagreement rather than comment quality - which goes against the comment voting guidelines [2]. This issue does occasionally come up among regular commenters. Interestingly, simply pointing out that someone was downvoted for expressing an opinion that was unpopular rather than illegitimate seems at least partially to reverse the effect (unlike HN, users can change their vote after making it). Again, this seems to suggest that as community moderation becomes internalized as an important value, it becomes more effective at preserving quality discussion. [1] http://raisethehammer.org/ http://raisethehammer.org/ [2] http://raisethehammer.org/article/874/ http://raisethehammer.org/article/874/

epochwolf 17y ago
Is it really possible to have people vote on quality? I've noticed most people don't understand how to be objective. Worse still is unless you are familiar with excellence you will be very poor at judging it. Perhaps this is because of differing measures of excellence people use or the result of ignorance. I think a system that accepts fuzziness in measurement would be better than one that tries to be exact.

epochwolf 17y ago

I too am looking for a good discussion. I think down votes are enough for shared awareness. It's not the perfect system because you can get downvoted simply for disagreeing with the community at large. However, being downvoted for having a different opinion isn't heavily stigmatized on HN. I rarely see a -4 rating on a comment that isn't trollish, off topic, or a joke that backfired. Most social interaction has this kind of fuzziness. It works most of the time which is good enough.

misuba 17y ago

If disagreeable opinions are just as likely to cause the negative effects of trolling as "real" troll comments, don't you need the same countermeasures in place?

techiferous 17y ago
I don't think that offering a point-of-view that many people disagree with would cause any negative effects. However, if there is a culture that doesn't tolerate a diversity of dissenting opinions, then the group's reactions to the differing point-of-view may have negative effects.