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> 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 lo

> 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.
  - detaro 7y ago
    Has the downside though that now a genuinely bad comment takes much more space in the comment section, because of all the comments necessary to justify its downvotes, and all the comments arguing with those comments (I'd expect that to descend into flamewars very quickly).
    - laumars 7y ago
      That is certainly one possible outcome. However HN already supports tools to minimize the pain there via comment folding and/or hiding down voted comments (the option for that is in your profile). Optimistically speaking another outcome is also possible, fewer people feel the need to down vote comments so topics where people are using moderation to suppress an unpopular opinion (rather than moderate an objectively bad comment) might see fewer flamewars. Of course incorrect posts should still receive moderation but this also ensures that errors are accompanied with corrections -- which doesn't always happen at the moment. HN's moderation system certainly isn't the worst I've seen. Far far from it!! But I do think now is a golden opportunity to review it's moderation system to see if any tweaks could enhance the experience. Doing nothing is sometimes just as bad as doing the wrong thing. :)

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.
- detaro 7y ago
  Has the downside though that now a genuinely bad comment takes much more space in the comment section, because of all the comments necessary to justify its downvotes, and all the comments arguing with those comments (I'd expect that to descend into flamewars very quickly).
  - laumars 7y ago
    That is certainly one possible outcome. However HN already supports tools to minimize the pain there via comment folding and/or hiding down voted comments (the option for that is in your profile). Optimistically speaking another outcome is also possible, fewer people feel the need to down vote comments so topics where people are using moderation to suppress an unpopular opinion (rather than moderate an objectively bad comment) might see fewer flamewars. Of course incorrect posts should still receive moderation but this also ensures that errors are accompanied with corrections -- which doesn't always happen at the moment. HN's moderation system certainly isn't the worst I've seen. Far far from it!! But I do think now is a golden opportunity to review it's moderation system to see if any tweaks could enhance the experience. Doing nothing is sometimes just as bad as doing the wrong thing. :)