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For the downvoters of the parent, here is the citation: PG: "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't

For the downvoters of the parent, here is the citation: PG: "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

lisper 10y ago
He wrote that back when downvoted comments didn't get greyed out the way they do today. Because of the grey-out, a downvote today is effectively a vote for, "No one should read this." IMHO, disagreement should not have that effect. There really ought to be a way to distinguish between "I disagree" and "This comment is not constructive and should be suppressed" -- and there is. If you disagree, you can post a comment to that effect. But whether PG intended it or not, a downvote today is suppression because of the way HN works.
- grzm 10y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the context of when the pg comment was made. I wasn't aware of this, and the comment makes more sense to me now. It also reinforces—for me at least—that having separate "agree/disagree" and "constructive/unproductive" button pairs may be a good idea. Open questions: - how they'd play into karma (probably just the constructive/unproductive points, maybe agree/disagree displayed as a pair but not contribute to karma) - whether this is would be too complex from a UX perspective - while I think "disagree" and "unproductive" can be usefully distinguished, whether "agree" and "constructive" would be useful. That said, if we want people to comment for disagreement (substantively, I would hope), I wouldn't want to see or encourage a bunch of "+1" or "me, too", or "this" comments. I think users want to show support for good comments, and up-votes are currently the only way to do this if you have nothing else to add.
  - lisper 10y ago
    Actually, HN already has a separate "flag" link. The only real change needed would be to dim based on flags rather than downvotes. Then downvotes could go back to their original meaning (disagree). I would abolish karma. It turns HN into a silly game.
    - grzm 10y ago
      I agree that dimming should be a function of constructiveness rather than agreement. If flag is to be used for that purpose, there's currently no way to express "I think this is a constructive comment", no way to balance "I think this is not a constructive comment". Having such a button is effectively the same as having "constructive/unproductive" buttons: the flag link would be subsumed. As for karma, I think it serves two purposes: it acts as a gating function to ensure members have contributed usefully before allowing them to behave in a potentially unproductive manner (e.g., creating throwaway accounts to down-vote or flag). It also encourages continued constructive contributions. Yes, it's artificial, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't serve that purpose. I don't think karma is perfect, but I think it is, on balance, a constructive feature on HN. If there are other methods of serving those two purposes more effectively and as simply as karma does (and I admit to ignorance here), I think they'd be worth exploring. I think there needs to be some pressure over the lifetime of an account to encourage constructive comments, non only on a per-comment basis.
      - lisper 10y ago
        "Agree" generally implies "constructive" so these are not orthogonal. You really need three options: agree, disagree but constructive, and non-constructive. Only the last one should count towards suppression. As for karma, you make a good point. Have an upvote :-)
        grzm 10y ago
        Back at ya! Very good point regarding {agree|disagree but constructive|non-constructive}. Which really just leads us back to up/down + flag, doesn't it? Then both up-voting and down-voting would count towards "un-dimming" while flagging would count towards dimming, I think. Thanks for working through this with me...er, bringing me around to your opinion :)
- aaron695 10y ago
  > This comment is not constructive and should be suppressed I can't think of any comments 'Dead' because of disagreement. I really think this is a non-existent issue. If anything the grey-out attracts users to read it. I read these more than middle comments.
  - lisper 10y ago
    If anyone is still paying attention here, can you help conduct this experiment by down-voting aaron695's comment to see what happens? I can't do it myself because you're not allowed to down-vote responses to your own comments.
  - grzm 10y ago
    I can't think of any comments 'Dead' because of disagreement. I've seen feedback from users that they feel that this is exactly why a comment was down-voted, whether it gets killed or not. I admit I don't have any dead comments at hand, and I don't think the search API returns dead comments. Granting the anecdatum, here's one that I came across: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190877
    - aaron695 10y ago
      As an example of [dead] due lack of value to the conversation? I think users blame downvotes on disagreement, but in reality it's often badly formed written viewpoints lacking in value or OT. But if it's a popular opinion people will be forgiving. Unpopular, not so much.
      - grzm 10y ago
        I think users blame downvotes on disagreement, but in reality it's often badly formed written viewpoints lacking in value or OT. I think that's often (but not always) the case. That said, I don't know how to convince those who think otherwise. One person's weakly argued comment might be someone else's disagreement. Compare with the Political Detox Week experiment: there was quite a bit of expressed disagreement as to what "politics" means. Or what constitutes civility. Or what's off-topic. It's not only whether the down votes are due to disagreement; it's also whether the commenter perceives the down-votes as such (which is the case of the example I provided). Edit to add: There will always be some percentage of members who won't agree, and they're more likely to be vocal. I'm not sure how to measure when the optimum is reached (most users feel the system is working as expected).

lisper 10y ago

He wrote that back when downvoted comments didn't get greyed out the way they do today. Because of the grey-out, a downvote today is effectively a vote for, "No one should read this." IMHO, disagreement should not have that effect. There really ought to be a way to distinguish between "I disagree" and "This comment is not constructive and should be suppressed" -- and there is. If you disagree, you can post a comment to that effect. But whether PG intended it or not, a downvote today is suppression because of the way HN works.

grzm 10y ago
Thanks for pointing out the context of when the pg comment was made. I wasn't aware of this, and the comment makes more sense to me now. It also reinforces—for me at least—that having separate "agree/disagree" and "constructive/unproductive" button pairs may be a good idea. Open questions: - how they'd play into karma (probably just the constructive/unproductive points, maybe agree/disagree displayed as a pair but not contribute to karma) - whether this is would be too complex from a UX perspective - while I think "disagree" and "unproductive" can be usefully distinguished, whether "agree" and "constructive" would be useful. That said, if we want people to comment for disagreement (substantively, I would hope), I wouldn't want to see or encourage a bunch of "+1" or "me, too", or "this" comments. I think users want to show support for good comments, and up-votes are currently the only way to do this if you have nothing else to add.
- lisper 10y ago
  Actually, HN already has a separate "flag" link. The only real change needed would be to dim based on flags rather than downvotes. Then downvotes could go back to their original meaning (disagree). I would abolish karma. It turns HN into a silly game.
  - grzm 10y ago
    I agree that dimming should be a function of constructiveness rather than agreement. If flag is to be used for that purpose, there's currently no way to express "I think this is a constructive comment", no way to balance "I think this is not a constructive comment". Having such a button is effectively the same as having "constructive/unproductive" buttons: the flag link would be subsumed. As for karma, I think it serves two purposes: it acts as a gating function to ensure members have contributed usefully before allowing them to behave in a potentially unproductive manner (e.g., creating throwaway accounts to down-vote or flag). It also encourages continued constructive contributions. Yes, it's artificial, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't serve that purpose. I don't think karma is perfect, but I think it is, on balance, a constructive feature on HN. If there are other methods of serving those two purposes more effectively and as simply as karma does (and I admit to ignorance here), I think they'd be worth exploring. I think there needs to be some pressure over the lifetime of an account to encourage constructive comments, non only on a per-comment basis.
    - lisper 10y ago
      "Agree" generally implies "constructive" so these are not orthogonal. You really need three options: agree, disagree but constructive, and non-constructive. Only the last one should count towards suppression. As for karma, you make a good point. Have an upvote :-)
      - grzm 10y ago
        Back at ya! Very good point regarding {agree|disagree but constructive|non-constructive}. Which really just leads us back to up/down + flag, doesn't it? Then both up-voting and down-voting would count towards "un-dimming" while flagging would count towards dimming, I think. Thanks for working through this with me...er, bringing me around to your opinion :)
aaron695 10y ago
> This comment is not constructive and should be suppressed I can't think of any comments 'Dead' because of disagreement. I really think this is a non-existent issue. If anything the grey-out attracts users to read it. I read these more than middle comments.
- lisper 10y ago
  If anyone is still paying attention here, can you help conduct this experiment by down-voting aaron695's comment to see what happens? I can't do it myself because you're not allowed to down-vote responses to your own comments.
- grzm 10y ago
  I can't think of any comments 'Dead' because of disagreement. I've seen feedback from users that they feel that this is exactly why a comment was down-voted, whether it gets killed or not. I admit I don't have any dead comments at hand, and I don't think the search API returns dead comments. Granting the anecdatum, here's one that I came across: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190877
  - aaron695 10y ago
    As an example of [dead] due lack of value to the conversation? I think users blame downvotes on disagreement, but in reality it's often badly formed written viewpoints lacking in value or OT. But if it's a popular opinion people will be forgiving. Unpopular, not so much.
    - grzm 10y ago
      I think users blame downvotes on disagreement, but in reality it's often badly formed written viewpoints lacking in value or OT. I think that's often (but not always) the case. That said, I don't know how to convince those who think otherwise. One person's weakly argued comment might be someone else's disagreement. Compare with the Political Detox Week experiment: there was quite a bit of expressed disagreement as to what "politics" means. Or what constitutes civility. Or what's off-topic. It's not only whether the down votes are due to disagreement; it's also whether the commenter perceives the down-votes as such (which is the case of the example I provided). Edit to add: There will always be some percentage of members who won't agree, and they're more likely to be vocal. I'm not sure how to measure when the optimum is reached (most users feel the system is working as expected).