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What you mention here is why I disagree with the fact that you can up OR downvote here without commenting. A comment should be required before you can upvote or

by tabeth 10y ago

What you mention here is why I disagree with the fact that you can up OR downvote here without commenting. A comment should be required before you can upvote or downvote. All for similar reasons you raise here.

wonderous 10y ago
There are many times when someone already expressed what I wanted to say and liking what they said reduces the volume of text to read, but it's rare that I'm unable to prove beyond what's been expressed already that I in fact understand the topic and there's a reasoning behind my upvote.
- wonderous 10y ago
  Following is an update to the above comment since I'm unable to edit it and copy-and-pasted from another comment by me: "in case it's not clear, this would be a control for moderation, posting it as a comment for non-moderators to view would be optional."
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
I think upvoting is a good way to say "I agree but I have nothing more to add and I don't want to clutter the conversation." Whereas I believe a downvote function should at least encourage a user to explain why. Otherwise it's impossible to know whether the downvoter believed the comment was inflammatory, offensive, off-topic, or plain just incorrect, which one would assume would be a call to explain as to why it was incorrect...
- drusepth 10y ago
  You don't think a downvote function could also be a good way to say "I disagree but have nothing more to add and I don't want to clutter the conversation"? I suppose it could be argued that in that situation a comment explaining a downvote (that you agree with) would already exist, and that an upvote on that comment would serve a similar purpose to downvoting the comment it disagrees with. There are plenty of times I disagree with a comment that don't deserve a response, however. Less frequent here on HN, but trolls trolling within the rules (to preclude moderation-based solutions) are an easy example of something that'd actually be better to downvote without a comment.
  - jerf 10y ago
    "You don't think a downvote function could also be a good way to say "I disagree but have nothing more to add and I don't want to clutter the conversation"?" It absolutely could be, no sarcasm, but it would somehow have to be detached from "this comment is good/bad and should be promoted/demoted". "I agree/disagree" and "I think should be promoted/demoted" are certainly going to be correlated for as long as you are dealing with humans, but hard-wiring that correlation to 1.000 right in the design of the system is not going to produce good results. There is a reason all the successful upvote/downvote sites at least have a culture of explaining to people that the votes are not for agreement, even if it breaks down after a certain scale. And I've never seen a successful two-dimensional moderating scale. (I've been keeping my eye out, and I'd invite anyone who could show me one to reply and tell me about it, please.) Slashdot came closest with what was about a 1.2 dimensional system where you could upvote/downvote with a set list of one-word reasons, but there was still no "-1 Insightful" or "+1 Contrarian Opinion You Need To Hear" or anything. (Capping at +5 also limited things.)
  - js8 10y ago
    > You don't think a downvote function could also be a good way to say "I disagree but have nothing more to add and I don't want to clutter the conversation"? Can you give an example in what situation this could be useful? When you disagree, there are many ways to disagree. If you just want to drive-by disagree, without making a proper argument, then perhaps it would be better (for everybody) if you just didn't engage at all, and let other people deal with the situation. Think about who you're doing the moderation for: other people. It's your job, as a moderator, to explain and educate well-intentioned people that you disagree with why do you disagree with them, or what do you perceive to be wrong with their comments. Then, as an added bonus, community can judge also your moderation criteria, by moderating on your counterargument or explanation. > There are plenty of times I disagree with a comment that don't deserve a response, however. For obvious trolls, there should be flagging and eventual deletion. Update: Actually, it could be useful to "disagree but have nothing to add" when you already agree with some of the responses. So, IMHO, the rule should be, you can downvote a comment only if you either (a) added a response or (b) upvoted an existing response.
charred_toast 10y ago
I'm liking where this is going.
josefx 10y ago
have a "like" from every person that agrees with you. some forums I frequent added various like/dislike/sad/funny counters just to get rid of the noise of hundreds of contentless like posts.
smaddox 10y ago
Or you could have an actual moderation system a la Slashdot, instead of reddit-style voting. Though to be fair, voting here does seem to be be used as more of a moderation mechanism than an agree/disagree button.
Karellen 10y ago
+1
Klathmon 10y ago
I think a more useful solution is to move away from a binary "up/down" vote to a system which gives multiple options with differing meanings to each. Agree, useful/helpful, disagree, not relevant, spam, illegal, inflammatory, etc... Then you can apply different weights to different votes and maybe even allow people to sort by the different values. Even some "dark" UI patterns might work well like completely ignoring some values (like disagree) and leave them there as a way for some to express that without having it change anything. I haven't given much thought to the details, but it seems like this could help on the surface. I feel like a major problem would be getting people to actually vote. It's already hard enough IMO and I frequently forget to vote on comments which I very much enjoyed and we're very relevant (like your own until this moment), and needing to have many options to choose from and possibly multiple steps would make that bar even higher which means less votes overall. Also getting across the meaning of what each vote really is meant to represent would be tough as well...
- mikestew 10y ago
  Agree, useful/helpful, disagree, not relevant, spam, illegal, inflammatory, etc... Now limit the number of times I can vote within a given time period, and you've reinvented Slashdot.
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    But I want the opposite. Encourage people to vote as many ways as possible, as many times as possible, as much as possible. Check off not-relevant, agree, inflammatory. Or maybe disagree and relevant. No limits, maybe some weighting, but no limits. Just because some of the ideas have been done before doesn't mean it's just a reinvention.
    - mikestew 10y ago
      Encourage people to vote as many ways as possible, as many times as possible, as much as possible. Here's the magic of the Slashdot system: not everyone has all day to click voting buttons, but some people do. So what you'll end up with your proposition is voting dominated by people that make a career out of hanging out on one web forum, with the conversation consequentially dominated by them. The Slashdot system is more like jury duty: go in, do your civic duty by casting your five or ten votes, then go on about your day. I don't want a justice system dominated by people with nothing better to do than sit on juries every day.
tvchurch 10y ago
This is closer to what James was trying to get across in the article - how you do engagement means a lot. I also say this while happily wearing my Readertron t-shirt. He's right - the conversations we had on Reader were very, very good.

by tabeth 10y ago

wonderous 10y ago

There are many times when someone already expressed what I wanted to say and liking what they said reduces the volume of text to read, but it's rare that I'm unable to prove beyond what's been expressed already that I in fact understand the topic and there's a reasoning behind my upvote.

wonderous 10y ago
Following is an update to the above comment since I'm unable to edit it and copy-and-pasted from another comment by me: "in case it's not clear, this would be a control for moderation, posting it as a comment for non-moderators to view would be optional."

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

I think upvoting is a good way to say "I agree but I have nothing more to add and I don't want to clutter the conversation." Whereas I believe a downvote function should at least encourage a user to explain why. Otherwise it's impossible to know whether the downvoter believed the comment was inflammatory, offensive, off-topic, or plain just incorrect, which one would assume would be a call to explain as to why it was incorrect...

drusepth 10y ago
You don't think a downvote function could also be a good way to say "I disagree but have nothing more to add and I don't want to clutter the conversation"? I suppose it could be argued that in that situation a comment explaining a downvote (that you agree with) would already exist, and that an upvote on that comment would serve a similar purpose to downvoting the comment it disagrees with. There are plenty of times I disagree with a comment that don't deserve a response, however. Less frequent here on HN, but trolls trolling within the rules (to preclude moderation-based solutions) are an easy example of something that'd actually be better to downvote without a comment.
- jerf 10y ago
  "You don't think a downvote function could also be a good way to say "I disagree but have nothing more to add and I don't want to clutter the conversation"?" It absolutely could be, no sarcasm, but it would somehow have to be detached from "this comment is good/bad and should be promoted/demoted". "I agree/disagree" and "I think should be promoted/demoted" are certainly going to be correlated for as long as you are dealing with humans, but hard-wiring that correlation to 1.000 right in the design of the system is not going to produce good results. There is a reason all the successful upvote/downvote sites at least have a culture of explaining to people that the votes are not for agreement, even if it breaks down after a certain scale. And I've never seen a successful two-dimensional moderating scale. (I've been keeping my eye out, and I'd invite anyone who could show me one to reply and tell me about it, please.) Slashdot came closest with what was about a 1.2 dimensional system where you could upvote/downvote with a set list of one-word reasons, but there was still no "-1 Insightful" or "+1 Contrarian Opinion You Need To Hear" or anything. (Capping at +5 also limited things.)
- js8 10y ago
  > You don't think a downvote function could also be a good way to say "I disagree but have nothing more to add and I don't want to clutter the conversation"? Can you give an example in what situation this could be useful? When you disagree, there are many ways to disagree. If you just want to drive-by disagree, without making a proper argument, then perhaps it would be better (for everybody) if you just didn't engage at all, and let other people deal with the situation. Think about who you're doing the moderation for: other people. It's your job, as a moderator, to explain and educate well-intentioned people that you disagree with why do you disagree with them, or what do you perceive to be wrong with their comments. Then, as an added bonus, community can judge also your moderation criteria, by moderating on your counterargument or explanation. > There are plenty of times I disagree with a comment that don't deserve a response, however. For obvious trolls, there should be flagging and eventual deletion. Update: Actually, it could be useful to "disagree but have nothing to add" when you already agree with some of the responses. So, IMHO, the rule should be, you can downvote a comment only if you either (a) added a response or (b) upvoted an existing response.

charred_toast 10y ago

I'm liking where this is going.

josefx 10y ago

have a "like" from every person that agrees with you. some forums I frequent added various like/dislike/sad/funny counters just to get rid of the noise of hundreds of contentless like posts.

smaddox 10y ago

Or you could have an actual moderation system a la Slashdot, instead of reddit-style voting. Though to be fair, voting here does seem to be be used as more of a moderation mechanism than an agree/disagree button.

Karellen 10y ago

Klathmon 10y ago

I think a more useful solution is to move away from a binary "up/down" vote to a system which gives multiple options with differing meanings to each. Agree, useful/helpful, disagree, not relevant, spam, illegal, inflammatory, etc... Then you can apply different weights to different votes and maybe even allow people to sort by the different values. Even some "dark" UI patterns might work well like completely ignoring some values (like disagree) and leave them there as a way for some to express that without having it change anything. I haven't given much thought to the details, but it seems like this could help on the surface. I feel like a major problem would be getting people to actually vote. It's already hard enough IMO and I frequently forget to vote on comments which I very much enjoyed and we're very relevant (like your own until this moment), and needing to have many options to choose from and possibly multiple steps would make that bar even higher which means less votes overall. Also getting across the meaning of what each vote really is meant to represent would be tough as well...

mikestew 10y ago
Agree, useful/helpful, disagree, not relevant, spam, illegal, inflammatory, etc... Now limit the number of times I can vote within a given time period, and you've reinvented Slashdot.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  But I want the opposite. Encourage people to vote as many ways as possible, as many times as possible, as much as possible. Check off not-relevant, agree, inflammatory. Or maybe disagree and relevant. No limits, maybe some weighting, but no limits. Just because some of the ideas have been done before doesn't mean it's just a reinvention.
  - mikestew 10y ago
    Encourage people to vote as many ways as possible, as many times as possible, as much as possible. Here's the magic of the Slashdot system: not everyone has all day to click voting buttons, but some people do. So what you'll end up with your proposition is voting dominated by people that make a career out of hanging out on one web forum, with the conversation consequentially dominated by them. The Slashdot system is more like jury duty: go in, do your civic duty by casting your five or ten votes, then go on about your day. I don't want a justice system dominated by people with nothing better to do than sit on juries every day.

tvchurch 10y ago

This is closer to what James was trying to get across in the article - how you do engagement means a lot. I also say this while happily wearing my Readertron t-shirt. He's right - the conversations we had on Reader were very, very good.