4 ms·
Ask HN: No downvote without explanation?
When I'm downvoted I never know why I'm downvoted. Did I say something wrong? Did I offend somebody? Was I off topic? I think it would be very helpful and constructive if anyone who downvotes is required to leave a brief explanation why they downvoted. What do you think?
- dang 8y agoIt would lead to a surge in noise and quarrels on the site, so we're not going to do it. Getting downvoted doesn't feel good, but it happens to everyone. What works is to look over your comment as objectively as you can and try to find what might have evoked a downvote. If you find something, correct it for next time. If you don't, remember there's such a thing as a misclick. Usually—not always, but at least 2/3 of the time—it's fairly obvious to a neutral observer why a comment was downvoted. Try to be a neutral observer in your own case.
- kjeetgill 8y agoAbsolutely agree, explainations might be useful for the poster but not the community. Does karma do anything past something like 500? I think a lot of people see voting as curation more than punishment. Humor get buried pretty readily because it's fluffy and "reddity" not because OP is a monster. Or factually incorrect statements. Even made in good faith they usually get buried if the answer is in a sibling but not when the answer is in a child post. It's not always personal.
- Sylos 8y agoI think, the reality is that lots of people just downvote, because they disagree with an opinion and don't feel like arguing their position. So, if this explanation would only be visible to you, I imagine you'd get lots of "explanations" just saying that you're wrong/dumb/etc. This could be a decent solution, though, if their explanation would need to be public. Basically leave a comment in order to downvote (with an indication that this comment was made in connection with a downvote), and therefore then also the ability for others to vote on this person's reason to downvote you.
- stareatgoats 8y agoNo, it fine the way it is. Losing karma because of a comment is not the end of the world, and there is usually an obvious reason. Maybe because the comment was too absolutist or similar. Sometimes because people misunderstood, and sometimes because people simply disagree. Sometimes it's just the dynamic of the thread that results in a down-vote. Sometimes it's just impossible to understand, without assuming that some people use their down-voting privileges frivolously, but it's all part of the socialization process here to try and understand which, and just deal with it. For this reason I sometimes wish that people could stop complaining (with varying level of irritation) about being down-voted without been given reason, a fairly common occurrence. OTOH, helpful people will sometimes (probably not the down-voter) provide a reasonable explanation, which is OK too.
- dictum 8y agoCherish your downvotes. There's boundless fun in being a determined contrarian crank. If "everyone else is wrong" is not your thing, cherish your downvotes too: we're all wrong sometimes.
- jitl 8y agoThis is how similar site Lobste.rs works. From the “About Lobste.rs” page (https://lobste.rs/about https://lobste.rs/about) > ## Downvote Explanations > Often on other sites, a user would have his or her comment downvoted without explanation and then edit their comment to ask why they were downvoted. On this site, voters must choose a reason before downvoting comments and those votes are tallied and shown to the original commenter. > For submitted stories, downvoting is done through flagging (also requiring a valid reason) and these flag summaries are shown to all users. I like the limited cardinality of Lobsters downvote options because it reminds me of acceptable reasons of downvoting, because “I disagree but don’t want to write a comment” isn’t a choice.
- dang 8y agoOn HN, downvoting for disagreement has always been fine. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314
- oldmancoyote 8y agoI was once down voted 3 times for pointing out that two abusive political comments looked to be computer generated. There should be consequences for down voting to suppress abuse of the privilege. If explanations of down votes are not acceptable, then a cost of say 100 reputation votes per down vote would discourage misuse of the privilege.