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A major pet peeve are downvotes on perfectly polite comments from people who have different opinions about the topic you are commenting on. If downvotes were me

by yholio 8y ago

A major pet peeve are downvotes on perfectly polite comments from people who have different opinions about the topic you are commenting on. If downvotes were merely used to order comments, I could understand trying to deprioritize unpopular or factually incorrect views. But if downvoted comments are effectively hidden away, a downvote becomes a tool of censorship, a political weapon to punish and banish opposing views. It turns the community to an echo chamber and discourage me to contribute any view that might offend the mainstream groupthink - which is not a unique emergent spirit of the community, but heavily influenced by the demographics of the site. Many of my votes are upvotes to unfairly downvoted, high effort comments.

baragiola 8y ago
So much this. Downvotes are not for disagreements, they should be used for trolls, shills and bigots. If the comment adds a view you don't agree with, write an answer or ignore it. Downvoting in this case doesn't adds value. Reddit suffers the same problem.
- superasn 8y ago
  Which is why it would make sense to write a reason why you're downvoting. A lot of people wouldn't have energy to write an explanation when downvoting on a knee jerk reaction.
  - goalieca 8y ago
    There's another site similar to hackernews and their downvote button requires a reason. One of: off-topic, incorrect, me-too, troll, spam. I bet though a lot of people would still use incorrect for disagreements. I always thought slashdot had a great moderation system where +5 was the max a post could get and everyone only had a few votes every few weeks so you had to be careful. The upvotes also had reasons like (insightful, funny, interesting ..) so a user could sort by those.
    - DrScump 8y ago
      One of: off-topic, incorrect, me-too, troll, spam I suggested such a metric for flags to dang over a year ago, and I wouldn't assume that I was the first to do so.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    People in general care about karma points and don't like the score to go down. People also take downvoting personally, and when someone comments and explains why they downvoted, they're susceptible to "revenge downvoting" by several accounts (owned by or related to the one who was originally down voted) on many of the downvoter's comments across threads. This in turn would cause distress to the downvoter. As long as HN has a number assigned to everyone that people interpret as significant, I'm completely for downvoting without any explanations. The fact that both upvoting and downvoting are anonymous (to the one getting the votes) ties directly with this, IMO.
  - j45 8y ago
    This could be a neat experiment, especially at lower karma/patience levels. Drive by downvoting is often by people who aren't willing to pause and share their why. It might not be easy to reflect on whether one is as open minded or comfortable to look at their own views, or openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't their own. Innovative and disruptive thought may not exist in agreeable form even for a place as forward thinking as HN may imagine itself to be.
- Bayart 8y ago
  Sort by controversial
- dorgo 8y ago
  Would be nice to be able to vote at two dimensions: quality and agreement/disagreement.
dooglius 8y ago
In your profile, you can set "showdead" to "yes" in order to see all comments. Admittedly, you still can't respond at that point, but I think this gets pretty close to the "merely used to order comments" situation.
- dorgo 8y ago
  I have showdead enabled. Dead comments are rare, surprisingly non-trollish and higher quality than normal comments on other websites.
whiddershins 8y ago
The rub here is that the guidelines specifically say a downvote can indicate simple disagreement. I believe they also say please don’t comment explaining why you downvoted. I think this is tied to the insight that the quality of the discussion tends to be inversely proportional to comment depth. Hacker News posts also drop in rankings if the comments start to exceed the upvotes. I think all of these ideas interact to make Hacker News different from other discussion boards, and although it may be counterintuitive, it seems to have had an overall positive effect. Edit: either I misremember the guidelines, or they have been updated. I may have conflated Paul Graham’s essay about Hacker News, and various other discussions, with the “official” guidelines. Either way I think what I wrote above reflects underlying patterns/guidance that has influenced Hacker News.
- otterley 8y ago
  The current HN guidelines don’t say anything about how to vote on comments.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    The site owner (pg) has previously indicated that he encourages downvoting to indicate disagreement. One of many things I disagree with re structure of HN. I too upvote valuable/thoughtful/insightful comments that I disagree with. Personally I want a range of opinions, and specifically desire to hear opposing opinions; deterring well made opposing comments goes against that.
    - otterley 8y ago
      > The site owner (pg) has previously indicated that he encourages downvoting to indicate disagreement. Do you have a link handy?
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        This is _not_ the instance of support for disagree->downvote that I recall, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18408095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18408095 links to another instance and recent citing of that use of downvotes by "dang" (main overt moderator AFAICT). dang also linked "things pg said about downvotes", it might be one of those: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314. I've been around here longer than it seems (lost account); we used to have visible vote scores too, which I preferred, some comments on this subject mention what I'd call right-voting, which is no longer easy.
bberenberg 8y ago
I don't know what the aggregate behavior is, but I rarely see hidden comments, and so they are an automatic "must see" for me. I would say that I am more likely to see a hidden comment than a low voted one.
13415 8y ago
To me, the fact that HN is one of the few remaining community-driven sites worth reading is proof enough that its system of downvoting and flagging works very well. Other sites with similar, though less rigid moderation systems have fallen deep. Slashdot is a good example. I know it since it was founded and it used to be great. But starting from 2012 or so it went into a downwards spiral. For a while, during the US election cycle, it was almost completely overtaken by bots and trolls, and even though they've been fighting hard to improve the signal-to-noise ratio by tweaking their moderation assignment algorithms, it is barely worth visiting nowadays. I'd rather let my ego be hurt a little bit by being unfairly downvoted from time to time than having to deal with hundreds of opinion posts. People tend to overestimate the value of their opinions, and the vast majority opinion posts are redundant anyway. I like HN because it keeps political discussions away and focuses more on informative content and discussions among adults than on opinions. There are also certain topics that simply seem to be impossible to discuss on the Internet. Frankly speaking, in the 25 years or so I'm on the Internet, I cannot remember a single meaningful or insightful discussion of US politics, hate speech, religious faith vs. science, gun laws, abortion, and climate change. I've also never experienced a good discussion of political positions in general on the Internet and also have no desire to participate in such discussions. Maybe there was some information, some useful link to statistics or literature here and there, but overall the quality of the discussion of such topics is abysmal. If it's already hard to have fruitful conversation about an issue face to face, then the topic for sure will not work on the Internet, and I can gladly do without these discussions on social media sites.
myrandomcomment 8y ago
I up vote comments that add data or insight to the topic. I downvote comments that are rude, show the commenter did not read the link, or are clearly factually incorrect in a demonstrable way. I try very much to avoid giving a down vote because I just plan disagree. I have my perfectly reasonable comments downvoted in the past becase someone did just not agree and I do find that frustrating.
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  I don't vote very often, but when I do it's usually based on tone more than anything else. I'm much more likely to upvote a comment with which I strongly disagree that's well-presented than I am a comment in agreement.

by yholio 8y ago

baragiola 8y ago

So much this. Downvotes are not for disagreements, they should be used for trolls, shills and bigots. If the comment adds a view you don't agree with, write an answer or ignore it. Downvoting in this case doesn't adds value. Reddit suffers the same problem.

superasn 8y ago
Which is why it would make sense to write a reason why you're downvoting. A lot of people wouldn't have energy to write an explanation when downvoting on a knee jerk reaction.
- goalieca 8y ago
  There's another site similar to hackernews and their downvote button requires a reason. One of: off-topic, incorrect, me-too, troll, spam. I bet though a lot of people would still use incorrect for disagreements. I always thought slashdot had a great moderation system where +5 was the max a post could get and everyone only had a few votes every few weeks so you had to be careful. The upvotes also had reasons like (insightful, funny, interesting ..) so a user could sort by those.
  - DrScump 8y ago
    One of: off-topic, incorrect, me-too, troll, spam I suggested such a metric for flags to dang over a year ago, and I wouldn't assume that I was the first to do so.
- newscracker 8y ago
  People in general care about karma points and don't like the score to go down. People also take downvoting personally, and when someone comments and explains why they downvoted, they're susceptible to "revenge downvoting" by several accounts (owned by or related to the one who was originally down voted) on many of the downvoter's comments across threads. This in turn would cause distress to the downvoter. As long as HN has a number assigned to everyone that people interpret as significant, I'm completely for downvoting without any explanations. The fact that both upvoting and downvoting are anonymous (to the one getting the votes) ties directly with this, IMO.
- j45 8y ago
  This could be a neat experiment, especially at lower karma/patience levels. Drive by downvoting is often by people who aren't willing to pause and share their why. It might not be easy to reflect on whether one is as open minded or comfortable to look at their own views, or openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't their own. Innovative and disruptive thought may not exist in agreeable form even for a place as forward thinking as HN may imagine itself to be.
Bayart 8y ago
Sort by controversial
dorgo 8y ago
Would be nice to be able to vote at two dimensions: quality and agreement/disagreement.

dooglius 8y ago

In your profile, you can set "showdead" to "yes" in order to see all comments. Admittedly, you still can't respond at that point, but I think this gets pretty close to the "merely used to order comments" situation.

dorgo 8y ago
I have showdead enabled. Dead comments are rare, surprisingly non-trollish and higher quality than normal comments on other websites.

whiddershins 8y ago

The rub here is that the guidelines specifically say a downvote can indicate simple disagreement. I believe they also say please don’t comment explaining why you downvoted. I think this is tied to the insight that the quality of the discussion tends to be inversely proportional to comment depth. Hacker News posts also drop in rankings if the comments start to exceed the upvotes. I think all of these ideas interact to make Hacker News different from other discussion boards, and although it may be counterintuitive, it seems to have had an overall positive effect. Edit: either I misremember the guidelines, or they have been updated. I may have conflated Paul Graham’s essay about Hacker News, and various other discussions, with the “official” guidelines. Either way I think what I wrote above reflects underlying patterns/guidance that has influenced Hacker News.

otterley 8y ago
The current HN guidelines don’t say anything about how to vote on comments.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  The site owner (pg) has previously indicated that he encourages downvoting to indicate disagreement. One of many things I disagree with re structure of HN. I too upvote valuable/thoughtful/insightful comments that I disagree with. Personally I want a range of opinions, and specifically desire to hear opposing opinions; deterring well made opposing comments goes against that.
  - otterley 8y ago
    > The site owner (pg) has previously indicated that he encourages downvoting to indicate disagreement. Do you have a link handy?
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      This is _not_ the instance of support for disagree->downvote that I recall, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18408095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18408095 links to another instance and recent citing of that use of downvotes by "dang" (main overt moderator AFAICT). dang also linked "things pg said about downvotes", it might be one of those: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314. I've been around here longer than it seems (lost account); we used to have visible vote scores too, which I preferred, some comments on this subject mention what I'd call right-voting, which is no longer easy.

bberenberg 8y ago

I don't know what the aggregate behavior is, but I rarely see hidden comments, and so they are an automatic "must see" for me. I would say that I am more likely to see a hidden comment than a low voted one.

13415 8y ago

To me, the fact that HN is one of the few remaining community-driven sites worth reading is proof enough that its system of downvoting and flagging works very well. Other sites with similar, though less rigid moderation systems have fallen deep. Slashdot is a good example. I know it since it was founded and it used to be great. But starting from 2012 or so it went into a downwards spiral. For a while, during the US election cycle, it was almost completely overtaken by bots and trolls, and even though they've been fighting hard to improve the signal-to-noise ratio by tweaking their moderation assignment algorithms, it is barely worth visiting nowadays. I'd rather let my ego be hurt a little bit by being unfairly downvoted from time to time than having to deal with hundreds of opinion posts. People tend to overestimate the value of their opinions, and the vast majority opinion posts are redundant anyway. I like HN because it keeps political discussions away and focuses more on informative content and discussions among adults than on opinions. There are also certain topics that simply seem to be impossible to discuss on the Internet. Frankly speaking, in the 25 years or so I'm on the Internet, I cannot remember a single meaningful or insightful discussion of US politics, hate speech, religious faith vs. science, gun laws, abortion, and climate change. I've also never experienced a good discussion of political positions in general on the Internet and also have no desire to participate in such discussions. Maybe there was some information, some useful link to statistics or literature here and there, but overall the quality of the discussion of such topics is abysmal. If it's already hard to have fruitful conversation about an issue face to face, then the topic for sure will not work on the Internet, and I can gladly do without these discussions on social media sites.

myrandomcomment 8y ago

I up vote comments that add data or insight to the topic. I downvote comments that are rude, show the commenter did not read the link, or are clearly factually incorrect in a demonstrable way. I try very much to avoid giving a down vote because I just plan disagree. I have my perfectly reasonable comments downvoted in the past becase someone did just not agree and I do find that frustrating.

LyndsySimon 8y ago
I don't vote very often, but when I do it's usually based on tone more than anything else. I'm much more likely to upvote a comment with which I strongly disagree that's well-presented than I am a comment in agreement.