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News Guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguid

by kick 7y ago

News Guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Paul Graham: I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

rainyMammoth 7y ago
Good point, I removed it.
badfrog 7y ago
It's not obvious that an 11 year old comment from somebody who's not really involved in the community anymore should be taken as gospel.
- manigandham 7y ago
  It's natural though. Consensus is that votes are for both post quality and agreement. HN seems to be generally good at focusing on the former.
- wglb 7y ago
  It has been regularly reinforced by dang.
sjg007 7y ago
I think people should get points for sparking discussions. So since you generate a lot of replies you should get some points for that. You can have a 1 point thread that has 10+ comments on it.
- jiveturkey 7y ago
  Agreed. Been wanting to post this comment for some time now: When comments are downvoted, sometimes to oblivion, yet have many and deep set of replies, doesn't that indicate something wrong with the downvotes? The point is to have a substantive discussion and in the case (which is common) I'm noting, the downvoted comment has done just that. I think any comment should get implied/automatic upvotes for each reply, on a power scale. Say a floor of 2 or maybe 3, then after that 1 or more points for each child comment increasing as the number of comments increase. I realize that system is subject to abuse, but does it really matter? Whereas OTOH it prevents the echo chamber for hot button topics. At this time, the now actually dead GP comment has 30 children! It is by definition a worthy comment.
  - kick 7y ago
    Not all discussion is good discussion. Quality over quantity, as 'dang has said in the past.
    - sjg007 7y ago
      That only makes sense in this case if the parent comment is a troll comment but there are cases which clearly are not.
      - kick 7y ago
        A parent comment can be a bad comment without being trolling, which is important to remember.
  - sjg007 7y ago
    I think you'd get 1/2^n for replies, where n is the level depth.
- taneq 7y ago
  Since we're getting meta here - I've always thought voting should be based on whether a comment contributes meaningfully to the conversation. Maybe if it's blatantly wrong and misleading it should get a downvote (unless a follow-up comment sets this straight and would get buried if the parent gets nuked) but otherwise I really don't like the "downvote = disagree" trend I've seen recently.

by kick 7y ago

rainyMammoth 7y ago

Good point, I removed it.

badfrog 7y ago

It's not obvious that an 11 year old comment from somebody who's not really involved in the community anymore should be taken as gospel.

manigandham 7y ago
It's natural though. Consensus is that votes are for both post quality and agreement. HN seems to be generally good at focusing on the former.
wglb 7y ago
It has been regularly reinforced by dang.

sjg007 7y ago

I think people should get points for sparking discussions. So since you generate a lot of replies you should get some points for that. You can have a 1 point thread that has 10+ comments on it.

jiveturkey 7y ago
Agreed. Been wanting to post this comment for some time now: When comments are downvoted, sometimes to oblivion, yet have many and deep set of replies, doesn't that indicate something wrong with the downvotes? The point is to have a substantive discussion and in the case (which is common) I'm noting, the downvoted comment has done just that. I think any comment should get implied/automatic upvotes for each reply, on a power scale. Say a floor of 2 or maybe 3, then after that 1 or more points for each child comment increasing as the number of comments increase. I realize that system is subject to abuse, but does it really matter? Whereas OTOH it prevents the echo chamber for hot button topics. At this time, the now actually dead GP comment has 30 children! It is by definition a worthy comment.
- kick 7y ago
  Not all discussion is good discussion. Quality over quantity, as 'dang has said in the past.
  - sjg007 7y ago
    That only makes sense in this case if the parent comment is a troll comment but there are cases which clearly are not.
    - kick 7y ago
      A parent comment can be a bad comment without being trolling, which is important to remember.
- sjg007 7y ago
  I think you'd get 1/2^n for replies, where n is the level depth.
taneq 7y ago
Since we're getting meta here - I've always thought voting should be based on whether a comment contributes meaningfully to the conversation. Maybe if it's blatantly wrong and misleading it should get a downvote (unless a follow-up comment sets this straight and would get buried if the parent gets nuked) but otherwise I really don't like the "downvote = disagree" trend I've seen recently.