4 ms·

I personally hate downvoting and can say with honesty I've never downvoted anyone on HN (although I've wanted to a few times). Downvoting promotes groupthink an

• krapp 8y ago
  >Downvoting promotes groupthink and mob rule. Yes, that's the entire point. But one person's groupthink and mob rule is another person's cultural last bastion against Eternal September. >but to maintain civility a downvote should require an explanation. I don't believe civility is something that can be engineered though a UI, it has to arise organically within the community, and be enforced through personal interactions, as it is within any real-life social group. And if someone could provide a reasoned, well thought out explanation as to why they would downvote a comment, they could just as well reply with that rebuttal, and the downvote wouldn't be necessary. Downvotes are only useful as a proxy for collective opinion, a means of adding dissent without effort. If someone is going to downvote and not bother with a reply, chances are their explanation wouldn't be worth reading to begin with.
  • joeax 8y ago
    > And if someone could provide a reasoned... That's my point. To promote civility, respond to a person with a rebuttal (just like you did) and not a drive-by downvote. A downvote shouldn't come to mean "I disagree". I will say that there needs to be some mechanism that says "This comment does not meet the standards of HN" i.e. when someone posts something inflammatory or offensive. But that mechanism shouldn't deduct rep points until a certain threshold is met.