4 ms·

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 y

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.
hoaw 8y ago
> I believe they also say please don’t comment explaining why you downvoted. You shouldn't comment why you downvoted, so much on why you disagree in the first place. The thing is that there are always someone who disagrees. Especially when judging something based on a few sentences. I would say at least 10% of my comments where someone responds they have something else in mind than I did when writing it. Disagreeing over click doesn't make much sense.
- whiddershins 8y ago
  Say someone downvotes because they disagree, but they misunderstood what you wrote ... At what point do you take responsibility for writing something easily misunderstood? I'm not meaning this as any form of snark. I think anyone who writes anything has to consider to what extent it can be misconstrued and where the line is after which they won't be even more pedantic, just to avoid being read poorly.
  - hoaw 8y ago
    It is almost impossible to have something mean the same to everyone. That it doesn't is sort of the point of having a discussion in the first place. There are plenty of evidence on hacker news that people will have different, let's say perspectives, on even the most carefully crafted articles. What I think mostly happens instead is that you start adapt what you write to please the crowd. Sometimes that is a good thing, if it leads to things like being more polite or making better argument, but often it means being either more controversial or writing more vaguely to balance upvote and downvotes. When the primary concern should really be writing decent comments, even if only one person might find it interesting and some small percentage of the crowd disagrees.

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.

hoaw 8y ago

> I believe they also say please don’t comment explaining why you downvoted. You shouldn't comment why you downvoted, so much on why you disagree in the first place. The thing is that there are always someone who disagrees. Especially when judging something based on a few sentences. I would say at least 10% of my comments where someone responds they have something else in mind than I did when writing it. Disagreeing over click doesn't make much sense.

whiddershins 8y ago
Say someone downvotes because they disagree, but they misunderstood what you wrote ... At what point do you take responsibility for writing something easily misunderstood? I'm not meaning this as any form of snark. I think anyone who writes anything has to consider to what extent it can be misconstrued and where the line is after which they won't be even more pedantic, just to avoid being read poorly.
- hoaw 8y ago
  It is almost impossible to have something mean the same to everyone. That it doesn't is sort of the point of having a discussion in the first place. There are plenty of evidence on hacker news that people will have different, let's say perspectives, on even the most carefully crafted articles. What I think mostly happens instead is that you start adapt what you write to please the crowd. Sometimes that is a good thing, if it leads to things like being more polite or making better argument, but often it means being either more controversial or writing more vaguely to balance upvote and downvotes. When the primary concern should really be writing decent comments, even if only one person might find it interesting and some small percentage of the crowd disagrees.