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Replying to myself because I can't add an edit: It's interesting that I'm being downvoted without many comments arguing that I may be wrong in some way, it fee

Replying to myself because I can't add an edit: It's interesting that I'm being downvoted without many comments arguing that I may be wrong in some way, it feels like a downvote-of-disagreement. I thought HN meant downvote for irrelevance, not for disagreement. That's what comments are for. Is it truly not worth even considering? Is our tech worship that strong? We talk of dystopias in every other thread, about Amazon owning the economy, Facebook owning our communication, and Google owning a lot of things, and we talk about the dangers of these; is it forbidden to be suspect of a billionaire experimenter when it pertains to a society who could arguably get no vote in such a city?

jholman 9y ago
> I thought HN meant downvote for irrelevance, not for disagreement. That's what comments are for. Why do you believe those things?
- PostOnce 9y ago
  meta about hn's comment systems, but: why else would you ban low-karma accounts from downvoting? It seems like upvote-only systems make for better comment sorting, thus why downvoting is not even allowed by low karma accounts. Still, trolls and total irrelevance need to be policed to keep the quality of discussion high, so high karma users will police the trolls and irrelevant posters, rather than down-sorting things they disagree with, but which contribute to the discussion? I thought I had read this somewhere on here, that it's all about relevance and inciting conversation, rather than sort-by-mob-rule and prevailing opinion?
  - spraak 9y ago
    I think the above poster is being sarcastic...
  - jholman 9y ago
    The Guidelines don't support any of this theorizing. Reddit's "reddiquette" has a rule like the one you suggest for HN. I think the fact that this rule has failed to show up in the published Guidelines, after a decade or so, even through Guidelines edits, is (weak) evidence that HN does not use Reddit's rule. As far as I can tell, downvotes are for whatever you want them to be for. I mean, I mostly only use my downvotes according to the rule you propose. But I think your claim that this is the "meaning" of downvotes is unsupported by evidence. And, from the Guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. As such, one thing I do downvote for: unconstructive complaining about downvotes.

jholman 9y ago

> I thought HN meant downvote for irrelevance, not for disagreement. That's what comments are for. Why do you believe those things?

PostOnce 9y ago
meta about hn's comment systems, but: why else would you ban low-karma accounts from downvoting? It seems like upvote-only systems make for better comment sorting, thus why downvoting is not even allowed by low karma accounts. Still, trolls and total irrelevance need to be policed to keep the quality of discussion high, so high karma users will police the trolls and irrelevant posters, rather than down-sorting things they disagree with, but which contribute to the discussion? I thought I had read this somewhere on here, that it's all about relevance and inciting conversation, rather than sort-by-mob-rule and prevailing opinion?
- spraak 9y ago
  I think the above poster is being sarcastic...
- jholman 9y ago
  The Guidelines don't support any of this theorizing. Reddit's "reddiquette" has a rule like the one you suggest for HN. I think the fact that this rule has failed to show up in the published Guidelines, after a decade or so, even through Guidelines edits, is (weak) evidence that HN does not use Reddit's rule. As far as I can tell, downvotes are for whatever you want them to be for. I mean, I mostly only use my downvotes according to the rule you propose. But I think your claim that this is the "meaning" of downvotes is unsupported by evidence. And, from the Guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. As such, one thing I do downvote for: unconstructive complaining about downvotes.