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"I disagree. It sets up the commenter as a martyr, and indicates they are commenting from an adversarial position." But why should I, as a responder or moderat

by js8 10y ago

"I disagree. It sets up the commenter as a martyr, and indicates they are commenting from an adversarial position." But why should I, as a responder or moderator, care? Imagine a comment with 10 statements, 9 are great points but 10th is logical fallacy (in our case, appeal to emotion). Should such comment be downvoted? I think NO, because each comment should be evaluated based on its merits, not its flaws. "Taking care to limit language that short-circuits reflection is important to constructive, positive discussion." If you, in the above example, just downvote without commenting, how can the author figure out what he did wrong? It's like a punishment without an explanation - a stupid, medieval idea.

grzm 10y ago
I think we may be talking past each other. I understand you believe downvoting in general is a bad idea, in particular downvoting without also providing an explanation. Further, I think it's likely that you'd rather there be little or no downvoting at all, with all interaction happening via comments. That's a viewpoint I've heard others espouse as well, and that's a discussion that interests me, though not one I'm interested in having right now. In my initial comment, I've only described the voting behavior of some HN members, not expressed any opinion on it, in the hopes that the author can take that into account when commenting in the future. Separate from voting behavior, the HN guidelines specifically call out mentioning downvoting: Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or proclaim that you expect to get downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html My second comment is specifically in response to your assertion that mentioning downvoting is not detrimental to the conversation. You've continued to discuss downvoting mentioning downvoting, while apparently missing that I've been doing exactly as you recommend: commenting explicitly on what I believe the commenter has done wrong. Thank you for sharing more of your thoughts on whether to downvote and how you think comments should be evaluated. I'm purposely not addressing them as that's too large a discussion which will go too far afield (even more so than this has already gone), and as I mentioned above, not one I'm willing to have right now.
- js8 10y ago
  > I think we may be talking past each other. Ah OK, I understand. I actually agree that mentioning downvoting matters for the reader (it's an irrelevant thing that takes away his time), but I don't think it should matter for people who choose to participate, either by replying or moderation. I also agree with the HN guidelines that you quoted, although of course without downvoting those wouldn't be neccessary. > I've been doing exactly as you recommend I appreciate that. > I'm purposely not addressing them as that's too large a discussion which will go too far afield That's fine, I agree it's offtopic. Unfortunately, HN doesn't seem to provide good forum for these matters. Even in general I think this is a hard to solve problem, how to avoid discussions to turn into irrelevancy, which can be given by fleeting nature of these discussions. I am thinking, maybe someone in the future will apply some NLP learning to automatically mark threads that become offtopic (and collapses them or moves them elsewhere); that could perhaps solve the problem for reader that downvoting intends to solve.

by js8 10y ago

grzm 10y ago

I think we may be talking past each other. I understand you believe downvoting in general is a bad idea, in particular downvoting without also providing an explanation. Further, I think it's likely that you'd rather there be little or no downvoting at all, with all interaction happening via comments. That's a viewpoint I've heard others espouse as well, and that's a discussion that interests me, though not one I'm interested in having right now. In my initial comment, I've only described the voting behavior of some HN members, not expressed any opinion on it, in the hopes that the author can take that into account when commenting in the future. Separate from voting behavior, the HN guidelines specifically call out mentioning downvoting: Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or proclaim that you expect to get downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html My second comment is specifically in response to your assertion that mentioning downvoting is not detrimental to the conversation. You've continued to discuss downvoting mentioning downvoting, while apparently missing that I've been doing exactly as you recommend: commenting explicitly on what I believe the commenter has done wrong. Thank you for sharing more of your thoughts on whether to downvote and how you think comments should be evaluated. I'm purposely not addressing them as that's too large a discussion which will go too far afield (even more so than this has already gone), and as I mentioned above, not one I'm willing to have right now.

js8 10y ago
> I think we may be talking past each other. Ah OK, I understand. I actually agree that mentioning downvoting matters for the reader (it's an irrelevant thing that takes away his time), but I don't think it should matter for people who choose to participate, either by replying or moderation. I also agree with the HN guidelines that you quoted, although of course without downvoting those wouldn't be neccessary. > I've been doing exactly as you recommend I appreciate that. > I'm purposely not addressing them as that's too large a discussion which will go too far afield That's fine, I agree it's offtopic. Unfortunately, HN doesn't seem to provide good forum for these matters. Even in general I think this is a hard to solve problem, how to avoid discussions to turn into irrelevancy, which can be given by fleeting nature of these discussions. I am thinking, maybe someone in the future will apply some NLP learning to automatically mark threads that become offtopic (and collapses them or moves them elsewhere); that could perhaps solve the problem for reader that downvoting intends to solve.