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Ask HN: Thoughts on HN's “whining about down votes” policy
There are many flaws to HN, I think this is the biggest.
Regardless of your rebuttle, questioning why a comment is being down voted is apparently breaking HN policy. Moderator @dang made me aware of this recently.
"Breaking policy"??? Really? Everyone who questions a downvote is breaking policy? This either is the most stupidest "unquestionable" policy or the holier than thou attitude on HN has gotten out of hand.
Do we really believe here that every knows what the purpose of a downvote button is or we just pretend to be better than Reddit?
A lot of people here just downvote because they come from a different school of thought from the opinion or do not agree with the comment. But is that the purpose of the downvote button? I hope not. I thought it was to penalize irrelevant contributors not punish alternate but relevant opinions.
And what happens when you question the premise of down votes? The mods tell you you are the one breaking policy. Perhaps the mods ought to look more into what is being downvoted rather than just shoving canned responses to those who stand their ground.
It is sad that right or wrong has been reduced to majority rule on a supposedly accommodating platform like HN.
To the mods, you really need to do better moderating and maintaining the principle behind expression on this platform, otherwise why are you here?
- notjtrig 9y agoSomething like this, I would downvote but that might mean less people get to see your opinion. Downvoting is not a good way to start a conversation or share information. If this post is downvoted to oblivion, it robs you of your time and effort you put in and ends the conversation.
- oldmancoyote 9y agoA down vote should carry an obligatory justification. Down voting without responsibility is destructive of community.
- vorg 9y agoIt would be nice if downvoters had to add a compulsory comment, though I suspect many users would create a special login they use just for downvoting. HN is a lot better than other sites though, such as Reddit, where some subreddit moderators often delete comments after you've replied to them, leaving your own reply as an invisible orphan.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> It would be nice if downvoters had to add a compulsory comment. It would directly defeat the purpose of downvoting in terms of reducing the prominence and visibility of non-productive comments if large # of downvotes mandated that a comment become the branching point of a heavy subthread.
- chrisbennet 9y agoI, personally, don’t downvote comments I just disagree with but it’s perfectly acceptable to use the down arrow like that. Most of us have been on the receiving end of a downvote we didn’t think we deserved but clearly, the HN “formula” is working overall. No one is grading your work here so let the occasional downvote slide. On the other hand, if you get a lot of them, some introspection might be warranted.