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The down-vote feature (for those who didn't read the article: you have to provide feedback to down-vote) is something I've spent years saying HN badly needs. T

The down-vote feature (for those who didn't read the article: you have to provide feedback to down-vote) is something I've spent years saying HN badly needs. These days I just don't bother posting most of the time because while I shouldn't be bothered by abuse of negative rep; you can't help be pissed off when you've spent a short while including detail only for someone who doesn't understand the subject or has a personal bias in the subject to react with a knee-jerk down vote. It's not as bad when people reply because at least you gain context into their point of view (even if you don't agree with them) but it always felt, dare I say, "rude" to effectively fine a comment karma without explaining why you've done so. Also HN's model actively encourages burner accounts where people will say something they know to be contentious with an anonymous account so they don't burn their own karma. The problem with that is that can then sometimes lead to trolling too. After all, why sensor your opinion if you're now a burner account? There used to be so much good content posted in the comments but the quality seems to have diminished over the years and I honestly think that's in part due to more people reaching the karma threshold for down-voting. The more times a genuinely thoughtful or informative post gets a knee-jerk negative vote, the less people will feel inclined to give up their time writing thoughtful or informative comments.

deleted 7y ago
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Existenceblinks 7y ago
Down-voting sometimes increased my incentive to do trolling. I felt like they attacked me first for no good reasons.
o10449366 7y ago
Downvoting isn't the problem - it's spam flagging. There's no better tool for suppressing ideas and viewpoints you disagree with than flagging it. Only on HN can a story occupy #1 on the front page due to overwhelming upvotes, and 30 seconds later be sunk to the depths of page 2 or 3 by a handful of flaggers who disagree with the content that's presented.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  Nah, you can do that on Reddit as well...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - edgyquant 7y ago
    Reddit is a horrible place for discussion
- untog 7y ago
  Strongly agreed. If I recall HN also has some built in functionality that downranks posts when the comments on it come in at high volume, indicating some level of flame war. I get the motivations behind both, and in some situations it works great. But a lot of the time it helps to enforce a monoculture on the site: any disagreement, particularly strong disagreement, is seen as a negative signal and is vanished from the site. Next time you see a post about, say, women software engineers, you’ll be able to watch it happen in real time.
- slg 7y ago
  I have complained about this to moderators before. There are certain topics that are almost off limits on HN not due to the rules, but due to the heavy flagging they always receive. Articles by, about, and for women are one common example. These articles being flagged results in this community being pulled further into a dangerous realm of misogyny that already exist in some pockets of the tech world. EDIT: Another example of semi-banned topics is criticism of HN. This post was number 1 on the front page a few minutes ago. It is already down to 11 with several older posts with fewer points higher up on the front page. EDIT 2: And now this post is seemingly flagged killed. From number 1 to disappeared in roughly 10 minutes.
  - ColinWright 7y ago
    I'm not a mod and I don't have any inside track, but I've been around a while. I suspect that this item has fallen not because of flags, but because it's got 80 comments and only 75 votes. There is a mechanism as a proxy to detect flame wars, and is not necessarily because of flagging. If you think this has been sunk inappropriately then email the mods. They are quite open to getting honest, constructive comments and suggestions. If you think this item and this discussion is of value to the community, let them know and they might agree and remove the flame-war penalty.
samatman 7y ago
I think that a better solution, at HN scale, would be to limit the number of downvotes in a 24 hour period. Not clear what the ideal number is; maybe 5 at 500 karma, and 5 more per 500, possibly up to some limit (25?). Otherwise, 'you must provide a reason' is trivially gameable, it just means downvotes are two clicks instead of one. I suspect that the recent trend to low-quality downvotes is because 500 is a relatively low threshold with as much traffic as HN gets these days, and we have a bunch of newbs who were champing at the bit to inflict some punishment and go nuts with it when they get the ability. Limiting downvotes at first would train users to be more thoughtful in what they censure; eventually the limit becomes no practical barrier, but hopefully by then the habit is established.
- dbattaglia 7y ago
  > Otherwise, 'you must provide a reason' is trivially gameable, it just means downvotes are two clicks instead of one. I’d think if your reply was something low quality you’d end up with more downvotes than the parent you just down voted. Or am I misunderstanding something? My experience on HN is that getting 500 karma was not easy; it’s quite hard to get submissions past “new” and comment karma takes some time to accumulate. I think it took me about 7 years! Perhaps others have an easier time.
  - samatman 7y ago
    I'm not on lobste.rs, so I could be getting this wrong. But I believe the system is that you have to choose a reason for downvoting, which is shown to the person you downvote, but that you're not required to reply to the post, and the user doesn't know who in particular did the downvoting.
    - laumars 7y ago
      I'm not on lobste.rs either and if that's their system then that's not entirely what I had in mind. I'd want voting to be first class comments. That way bad moderation surfaces quickly and can be moderated on itself -- thus pushing the abuser below the threshold for access to negative voting. One thing I think HN does really nicely is that you cannot down vote someone who's replied to your comment. Only 3rd parties can. That too can be abused if there's an argument between 3 people but it's still a better system than not having one at all.
preommr 7y ago
I really liked this idea too until I realized that it's really easy to come up with an excuse like "this doesn't make any sense". Which often times, is the real reason. I don't think mods have time to investigate each little spat and confrontation if someone chooses to "abuse" the system. I think HN's current system of keeping a limited window open so that comments that in general are disagreed with will be downvoted makes sense. Honestly, I think it's even kind of brilliant, and I am not sure what system would be better.
- superasn 7y ago
  How about losing your own karma points to make a downvote like SO?
chrisdsaldivar 7y ago
Another reason for requiring feedback for downvoting is so others know why it was downvoted. There have been many times where I’ve seen a dead comment on a topic I’m not familiar. I know the general user disagrees with that statement but I have no idea what’s “wrong” with it. Conceivably it’s because it’s obviously wrong to anyone in that domain so nobody bothers commenting or it’s a contentious issue in that domain and people who agree or could provide further insight don’t think it’s worth the negativity to bother commenting. Either way I have no clue. I read a comment recently about setting up a graphics pipeline that seemed reasonable enough but was downvoted to hell. I would have liked to know why.
- dghughes 7y ago
  >Another reason for requiring feedback for downvoting is so others know why it was downvoted That will just lead to bickering. And really if that's the rule then you should also be forced to make a meaningful comment when upvoting. I find that there are times to downvote that don't or shouldn't require a comment. It will just spiral into a comment war tit for tat comments spiraling down into a hundred levels.
  - laumars 7y ago
    > I find that there are times to downvote that don't or shouldn't require a comment. It will just spiral into a comment war tit for tat comments spiraling down into a hundred levels. I'd be interesting to hear some examples. The only instances that sprung to my mind were instances where posts probably should be flagged instead anyway. However I'm open to the possibility I've overlooked some scenarios (as well as the possibility that flagging might get abused as a way of voting without commenting)
AlchemistCamp 7y ago
A better choice might be limiting upvotes or requiring a reason (as Slashdot did). There's already far too high a ratio of upvotes to downvotes IMO.
blondin 7y ago
hn should do away with the voting system. i fail to understand why some comments get down-voted. sometimes i am thinking the same thing the commenter got down-voted for. i sometimes ask myself if there is no language barrier at play at times? but i am usually not logged in, or on the phone, to comment. i seldom log in and yet has been around forever. i have accounts before that i forgot the password for. i think there are many of us that just hang around... now, other times, i fail to understand why some posts get to the front page. and they never fail to get there. the first few replies on those are "see previous thread", "discussed before", and so on. and there is so kind of popularity thing going on that makes some people auto-magically get to the front page.
raverbashing 7y ago
I would agree that having to give a downvote reason is more relevant at bigger communities. But I'm usually surprised at how "lighter" moderation/voting works better in HN/Reddit I remember the "Web 1.0" days of forums and slashdot where votes/moderation was more fine grained. But it seems cheap comments were more valued in these kind of environments than in the more modern ones (even if they're popular on Reddit, and I'm glad here it's toned down) Yes sometimes the community here will disagree with you and there's a bit of "echo chamber" effect, though I find my comments will usually have an ok number of votes after a while (sometimes my opinions won't match the community, sometimes I'll have a badly worded comment that's misinterpreted and goes to have a low score, well, you can't get it right always)
superasn 7y ago
HN can use one other thing, that is not showing the OP's name in the story. The OP can still reveal himself by a comment (maybe different color name of OP in comments) but there is no other way to know who submitted the story. This would greatly encourage upvotes by merit of article than people just following influencers.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Existenceblinks 7y ago

Down-voting sometimes increased my incentive to do trolling. I felt like they attacked me first for no good reasons.

o10449366 7y ago

Downvoting isn't the problem - it's spam flagging. There's no better tool for suppressing ideas and viewpoints you disagree with than flagging it. Only on HN can a story occupy #1 on the front page due to overwhelming upvotes, and 30 seconds later be sunk to the depths of page 2 or 3 by a handful of flaggers who disagree with the content that's presented.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
Nah, you can do that on Reddit as well...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- edgyquant 7y ago
  Reddit is a horrible place for discussion
untog 7y ago
Strongly agreed. If I recall HN also has some built in functionality that downranks posts when the comments on it come in at high volume, indicating some level of flame war. I get the motivations behind both, and in some situations it works great. But a lot of the time it helps to enforce a monoculture on the site: any disagreement, particularly strong disagreement, is seen as a negative signal and is vanished from the site. Next time you see a post about, say, women software engineers, you’ll be able to watch it happen in real time.
slg 7y ago
I have complained about this to moderators before. There are certain topics that are almost off limits on HN not due to the rules, but due to the heavy flagging they always receive. Articles by, about, and for women are one common example. These articles being flagged results in this community being pulled further into a dangerous realm of misogyny that already exist in some pockets of the tech world. EDIT: Another example of semi-banned topics is criticism of HN. This post was number 1 on the front page a few minutes ago. It is already down to 11 with several older posts with fewer points higher up on the front page. EDIT 2: And now this post is seemingly flagged killed. From number 1 to disappeared in roughly 10 minutes.
- ColinWright 7y ago
  I'm not a mod and I don't have any inside track, but I've been around a while. I suspect that this item has fallen not because of flags, but because it's got 80 comments and only 75 votes. There is a mechanism as a proxy to detect flame wars, and is not necessarily because of flagging. If you think this has been sunk inappropriately then email the mods. They are quite open to getting honest, constructive comments and suggestions. If you think this item and this discussion is of value to the community, let them know and they might agree and remove the flame-war penalty.

samatman 7y ago

I think that a better solution, at HN scale, would be to limit the number of downvotes in a 24 hour period. Not clear what the ideal number is; maybe 5 at 500 karma, and 5 more per 500, possibly up to some limit (25?). Otherwise, 'you must provide a reason' is trivially gameable, it just means downvotes are two clicks instead of one. I suspect that the recent trend to low-quality downvotes is because 500 is a relatively low threshold with as much traffic as HN gets these days, and we have a bunch of newbs who were champing at the bit to inflict some punishment and go nuts with it when they get the ability. Limiting downvotes at first would train users to be more thoughtful in what they censure; eventually the limit becomes no practical barrier, but hopefully by then the habit is established.

dbattaglia 7y ago
> Otherwise, 'you must provide a reason' is trivially gameable, it just means downvotes are two clicks instead of one. I’d think if your reply was something low quality you’d end up with more downvotes than the parent you just down voted. Or am I misunderstanding something? My experience on HN is that getting 500 karma was not easy; it’s quite hard to get submissions past “new” and comment karma takes some time to accumulate. I think it took me about 7 years! Perhaps others have an easier time.
- samatman 7y ago
  I'm not on lobste.rs, so I could be getting this wrong. But I believe the system is that you have to choose a reason for downvoting, which is shown to the person you downvote, but that you're not required to reply to the post, and the user doesn't know who in particular did the downvoting.
  - laumars 7y ago
    I'm not on lobste.rs either and if that's their system then that's not entirely what I had in mind. I'd want voting to be first class comments. That way bad moderation surfaces quickly and can be moderated on itself -- thus pushing the abuser below the threshold for access to negative voting. One thing I think HN does really nicely is that you cannot down vote someone who's replied to your comment. Only 3rd parties can. That too can be abused if there's an argument between 3 people but it's still a better system than not having one at all.

preommr 7y ago

I really liked this idea too until I realized that it's really easy to come up with an excuse like "this doesn't make any sense". Which often times, is the real reason. I don't think mods have time to investigate each little spat and confrontation if someone chooses to "abuse" the system. I think HN's current system of keeping a limited window open so that comments that in general are disagreed with will be downvoted makes sense. Honestly, I think it's even kind of brilliant, and I am not sure what system would be better.

superasn 7y ago
How about losing your own karma points to make a downvote like SO?

chrisdsaldivar 7y ago

Another reason for requiring feedback for downvoting is so others know why it was downvoted. There have been many times where I’ve seen a dead comment on a topic I’m not familiar. I know the general user disagrees with that statement but I have no idea what’s “wrong” with it. Conceivably it’s because it’s obviously wrong to anyone in that domain so nobody bothers commenting or it’s a contentious issue in that domain and people who agree or could provide further insight don’t think it’s worth the negativity to bother commenting. Either way I have no clue. I read a comment recently about setting up a graphics pipeline that seemed reasonable enough but was downvoted to hell. I would have liked to know why.

dghughes 7y ago
>Another reason for requiring feedback for downvoting is so others know why it was downvoted That will just lead to bickering. And really if that's the rule then you should also be forced to make a meaningful comment when upvoting. I find that there are times to downvote that don't or shouldn't require a comment. It will just spiral into a comment war tit for tat comments spiraling down into a hundred levels.
- laumars 7y ago
  > I find that there are times to downvote that don't or shouldn't require a comment. It will just spiral into a comment war tit for tat comments spiraling down into a hundred levels. I'd be interesting to hear some examples. The only instances that sprung to my mind were instances where posts probably should be flagged instead anyway. However I'm open to the possibility I've overlooked some scenarios (as well as the possibility that flagging might get abused as a way of voting without commenting)

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

A better choice might be limiting upvotes or requiring a reason (as Slashdot did). There's already far too high a ratio of upvotes to downvotes IMO.

blondin 7y ago

hn should do away with the voting system. i fail to understand why some comments get down-voted. sometimes i am thinking the same thing the commenter got down-voted for. i sometimes ask myself if there is no language barrier at play at times? but i am usually not logged in, or on the phone, to comment. i seldom log in and yet has been around forever. i have accounts before that i forgot the password for. i think there are many of us that just hang around... now, other times, i fail to understand why some posts get to the front page. and they never fail to get there. the first few replies on those are "see previous thread", "discussed before", and so on. and there is so kind of popularity thing going on that makes some people auto-magically get to the front page.

raverbashing 7y ago

I would agree that having to give a downvote reason is more relevant at bigger communities. But I'm usually surprised at how "lighter" moderation/voting works better in HN/Reddit I remember the "Web 1.0" days of forums and slashdot where votes/moderation was more fine grained. But it seems cheap comments were more valued in these kind of environments than in the more modern ones (even if they're popular on Reddit, and I'm glad here it's toned down) Yes sometimes the community here will disagree with you and there's a bit of "echo chamber" effect, though I find my comments will usually have an ok number of votes after a while (sometimes my opinions won't match the community, sometimes I'll have a badly worded comment that's misinterpreted and goes to have a low score, well, you can't get it right always)

superasn 7y ago

HN can use one other thing, that is not showing the OP's name in the story. The OP can still reveal himself by a comment (maybe different color name of OP in comments) but there is no other way to know who submitted the story. This would greatly encourage upvotes by merit of article than people just following influencers.