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Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
I have been curious about how other people parse their way through HN. I think new accounts can't even downvote. It is common to see people ask about the downvotes even though the second last rule on the guideline [0] says not to question it.
I try to not downvote to disagree. I downvote misinformation, statements that are egressive towards a person and not the point they are making, responses that say "This.".
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dazc 6y agoI was going to give you an answer but then I would likely get down-voted. See the problem?
- draw_down 6y agoBecause I think sometimes people make comments on here that aren’t very good.
- wcerfgba 6y agoI view downvotes as an incomplete feature. If you disagree with some content -- because it is misinformation, or useless, or maybe you just disagree with the argument -- you should be able to explain what's wrong with it. I would much rather have a system where a downvote required a reason, so instead of a downvote it would be more like a comment which can also -1 / 0 / +1 the karma of the parent.
- kylebenzle 6y agoThat post that blew up about Apple keeping their 30% cut after a refund was 100% made up. It was, sorry to say, "fake news". But my comment got downvoted. You idiots here on HN would rather read "news" that agrees with your already held opinions, that is why the downvote button is here, so idiots don't have to think too much.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bryogenic 6y agoThis has provided an opportunity for exercising my seldom used downvote button. How apropos. This comment violates the first guideline on comments: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
- ziddoap 6y ago>You idiots here on HN >so idiots don't have to think too much Do you really not understand why you might get down-voted if this is how you address people? Tone is important. How you address those reading your comment is also important.
- happytoexplain 6y agoWhy express hatred for such a petty reason?
- mikece 6y agoGiven the topic of this comment thread, it's hard to tell if this is an actual rant or an attempt at trolling...
- dang 6y agoWhat comment are you referring to? You should include a link so readers can make up their own minds, i.e. so they can see whether there might have been some other reason to downvote the comment. Generally a good, substantive comment explaining what's false in an article will get upvoted heavily. Sometimes, though, such a comment breaks the site guidelines at the same time as it includes correct information. That's particularly bad, because it actually discredits the truth: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20truth%20discredit&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... (While I have you: would you please stop breaking the site guidelines generally? You've done it a lot and, as you know, we ban accounts that do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
- kube-system 6y agoThe downvote button is not a disagree button. If you disagree with something, add your own comment. That's the point of a discussion board. Downvotes are for comments which are not worthy of a response because they are not honest attempts at discussion.
- hirundo 6y ago> The downvote button is not a disagree button. That's wishful thinking. In practice that's just what it is. I'd be in favor of some magical gui change that would fix that, but it doesn't exist.
- kube-system 6y agoThere are some GUI features that address this. For instance, there is no downvote button if you reply to someone, or if they reply to you. But ultimately, the use of the button is up to the community.
- the-dude 6y agoDoesn't /. have this?
- Jtsummers 6y agoYes. It's been a long time since I've been to /., but I used to be pretty active on it. You'd get 5 moderation points at a time, you'd only get those if you had good karma and you wouldn't get them very often. You applied them to comments and marked the reason for the up or down vote. They also did meta-moderation. You could choose to meta-moderate and you'd be shown a post (or posts) with their moderation and could select whether the moderation was appropriate or not. So a post like yours that got marked "off-topic" by someone (it's not, it's a fair and earnest question) would result in the moderator getting some kind of penalty in meta-moderation. Another thing I liked was that if you participated in the discussion your moderation points disappeared. So if I moderated your comment (up or down) and then replied elsewhere, your comment lost or gained a point.
- ThePadawan 6y agoI concur with all the points you already mentioned and will add "stray too far off-topic into bikeshedding". It only takes a handful of comments to go from meaningful discussions about the article to talking about vim vs. emacs etc.
- oftenwrong 6y agoI downvote comments that I think are bad. Comments that are useless, unhelpful, non-constructive, etc. For example, a few from the ruby post that was on the front page recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23990533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23990533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23991570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23991570
- jgwil2 6y agoI'm not sure why you are getting downvoted here - you have given concrete examples of comments that are bad. Whether one agrees with you or not, this is exactly the kind of answer that OP was looking for.
- happytoexplain 6y agoI think it's clear the downvoters probably didn't agree that those examples are bad enough to be downvoted. (I have no opinion).
- thedevindevops 6y agoI don't have the option to downvote yet but I don't feel it detracts from the experience.
- orliesaurus 6y agoA lot of times I decide not to contribute because I am afraid of being downvoted into the abysss, usually all it takes, is one reply to interpret my own comment wrongly or assuming things I don't specificy. Then the HN readers will read my comment and the disagreeing reply. At this point, I get downvoted (or upvoted) based on the interpretation of my comment by the reply. So if I don't spend 20minutes making sure my reply is perfect, I will get downvoted. Let's see if I get downvoted here too, as I wrote this on the go without checking all my facts.
- happytoexplain 6y agoI downvoted you to build up your tolerance :) (But let's say officially it was for this tiny grain of snark: "Let's see if I get downvoted here too, as I wrote this on the go without checking all my facts.") I feel the same way as you - not about strangers on HN, but rather about people whom I will interact with who might see what I write, which is why I don't use this handle anywhere else. But downvotes? Who cares if you get downvoted? It's bad in that your thought is disappearing, but emotionally and intellectually it's useful information: What you said rubbed the HN audience wrong at a high ratio. You can either get upset and fall into the trap of blaming "them" because they have bad politics or are snowflakes or whatever, or you can allow that information to simply make the world clearer for you and use the chance to try to re-read what you wrote from an outside perspective.
- orliesaurus 6y agoI care, if people misunderstand what I wrote and downvote me, it makes me sad. If I get downvoted for talking crap, it's ok.
- Grumbledour 6y agoSo, out of curiosity: Why do you care if you get downvoted? Are there negative repercussions when using the site? But you know, making sure your post is factual correct, nicely worded and thought out seems to be a good consequence. Reading that I actually wish I was afraid of downvotes so I put more effort into some of mine.
- iagovar 6y agoI downvote when I feel like a comment doesn't belong to HN, be it quality, insults, etc.
- cerberusss 6y agoOr stuff straight against the guidelines. Like shallow dismissals, or comments that try and pull people into arguments.
- Apreche 6y agoI downvote anything I don't like and I upvote what I do like. Most of the time I'm upvoting someone who already made basically the same comment I was going to make. No point in saying the same thing again in another comment, just upvote. If someone says the opposite of what I was going to say, I downvote. I never understood people acting like downvoting is some huge crime or being downvoted is some great slight. It's a little arrow on a web site. It makes a number in a database go up or down by 1. I don't care how many points my comments score, and neither should anyone else. Speak your mind, or don't, and move on with life.
- jdbernard 6y agoThe reason people frown upon the downvote is because we explicitly don't want people using it to express dislike. Rather, we should use it as a way for the community to self-police content that is not in line with our values as a community. Although it's unavoidable to some extent, I really don't want HN to develop a strong filter bubble where only things I agree with get shown. I want to see dissenting opinions and ideas. I often upvote things I dislike because they were well though out and challenged my thinking. It's not about scoring imaginary internet points, it's about deciding what is and isn't acceptable in our community. For me the bar for "unacceptable content" is a lot higher than just "dislike." As others have mentioned, if I disagree and think it's worth the time to engage, I'll respond and hopefully we have a fruitful discussion. Like/dislike doesn't really come into it. If I really dislike it I just close the tab or ignore the comment.
- teddyh 6y ago> we explicitly don't want people using it to express dislike I was led to believe that the opposite was true: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- kgwxd 6y agoI always liked the idea behind it and have tried to stick to it, but I think having only a single button to express a positive or negative reaction is a mistake (I only learned today that there is a way to flag comments but it's not part of the main UI for some reason). I'd like to see a wider range of options that have different effects on a post/comment like specific agree/disagree buttons that don't have the effect of making the comment move up/down or be lighter/darker, maybe just shows a count for both agree and disagree, not a single number that moves up for agree and down for disagree like votes do. Flag-like reactions should require some type of write-up, single-click actions are too convenient for users in a rage.
- codingdave 6y agoI downvote egregious misinformation, but not honest mistakes. A correction in a comment is more appropriate in those cases. Disagreement and differing opinions do not get downvotes from me - they are part of what makes the discussions interesting. But comments that are actively rude or try to take people down a peg do get my downvote. So do people who clearly are just pushing a personal agenda unrelated to the current discussion. I sometimes try to picture the comments as a real conversation... if you would have said the same thing in a group sitting together real life, would that have been a comment that fit into the conversation? Or would it make the group give you a 'WTF?' look and slowly back away? At the same time, when I receive downvotes, most of the time they are correct - if I post a comment when I'm in a bad mood, my tone gets snarkier and I get downvoted more often. And that is fair. So I tend to just accept them, move on, and try to be more aware of my communication habits in the future.
- happytoexplain 6y agoI consciously try not to downvote even if I strongly disagree with somebody or have negative emotions about their expression. I downvote if I think a comment is low-value. Examples include: - Inordinately combative, mocking, sarcastic, or otherwise negatively emotional comments. - Low value comments likely to provoke or distract. - Comments complaining about downvotes (e.g. "I'll be downvoted for saying this, but...", or, "Why am I being downvoted? Is it because [I'm right | they're irrational | they have the wrong politics | etc]". There's even an example in this thread! This is essentially self-victimization, underdogging, etc. For the same reason, when I am downvoted, I never comment on it - I just accept that that's how people feel about what I said and try to learn from it rather than be bitter about it.
- Grumbledour 6y agoThe one thing I don't like is when comments become "dead", which I understand happens after too many downvotes. The reason I dislike this, is that besides obviously racist or otherwise inappropriate comments, there are regularly normal seeming comments that are dead. Now, there may be reasons for this I am just not privy to, but I feel it hinders discussion when some opinions that don't seem problematic are just silenced like this. [Edit]: And rereading my own comment, I think I want to clarify that I am not talking about free speech issues or political discussions here, but I regularly encounter factual seeming or explanatory comments in technical discussions that are dead and it just baffles me.
- mlvljr 6y agoHighfive for that.
- Jtsummers 6y agoWhen you see a dead comment that you feel shouldn't be, vouch for it. With a couple of vouches it'll become live again and can be responded to. Usually when I see a perfectly good, but dead, comment I check out the user's history. I usually see one of two situations here: 1. It's clear that they have a pattern of making nasty, off-topic, often vulgar comments. I'll still vouch for their good comments, but at least I can understand why they were dead to begin with. 2. If their history is of mostly normal comments except one bad joke at the start of their posting history that got them hell banned, then I'll vouch for them and let them know what's happened.
- Grumbledour 6y agoThanks, that's actually a good point. I knew there was an option to vouch for comments but just assumed I did not have enough Karma to do so. But another comment in this discussion mentioned the "hidden" flag button, which you only see if you click the comments timestamp. And sure enough, the vouch button is just there. So the problem may just be that you have to know where to find it. Which I now do. And hopefully everyone who didn't and reads this now as well.
- qwerty456127 6y agoI never downvote anything anywhere ever. I don't understand how can downvoting make any constructive sense. You are meant to flag whatever is spam, offense or blatant misinformation anyway. I also believe many people would feel very bad if you downvote them so you should better have a serious reason. The fact you disagree or don't like them (let alone don't consider what they wrote interesting/useful for you) is not enough.
- kgwxd 6y agoI was about to say you can't flag comments so downvotes are the only option, but I realized I have only been assuming that for years and never really questioned it. Looks like if you click on the "n [minutes|hours|days] ago" link on a comment, there is a "flag" option there. Now I know. So the questions is, why even have a downvote button?
- jgwil2 6y agoProbably part of the reason people downvote is that the button is one click away, whereas the flag button for comments is two clicks away and probably many people aren't even aware of it.
- codegeek 6y agoI downvote for the following reasons: 1. Outright abusive language, personal attack on someone, sarcasm or obvious self promotion. 2. Irrelevant to the actual discussion even if it is otherwise well written. Some examples: humor/joke without any other valuable discussion, talking about a totally different topic. I never downvote even if I disagree with someone as long as they are not in one of the 2 categories above.I also don't downvote if someone makes an honest mistake or is wrong about something.
- non-entity 6y agoGenerally stuff that violates the commenting guidelines (which unfortunately can found in abundance each day now). I still think it would be an interesting experiment to remove voting from comments altogether. I actually dont see much value in voting comments in general, since the provide such a wealth signal, especially as highly political articles find acceptance on HN.
- WhompingWindows 6y agoPersonally, I never downvote based on whether I agree with someone. I only downvote for low-effort comments that do not contribute, things like "lol" or 5-10 word comments with no evidence/explanation. Even if someone needs citations, I'm not going to downvote them, I'll ask for further evidence/citations, which in itself often gets downvoted. I've been downvoted a number of times for posting well-written, thought-out responses which other people disagreed with. I've often been downvoted below zero within a minute of posting, just for playing Devil's Advocate. I think these downvoters react negatively to things they disagree with, and the downvote button for them is much simpler than actually dissecting and responding to an argument. Do we want to live in a society where even the most technically minded forum, where objective truth should stand triumphant, falls to reactionary downvoters and fake news?
- jonwalch 6y agoI think your last point is far bigger than just on HN. I think most people are this way, unfortunately.
- happytoexplain 6y agoNote: The parent was significantly edited while I was writing. >for posting well-written, thought-out responses which other people disagreed with I could write a well-written, thought-out argument in favor of segregating blacks. I'm not suspicious of you - I'm just saying, maybe you're making too much assumption about how valuable your writing is, since you've only used "well written" and "thought out" as evidence. >just for playing Devil's Advocate Do you announce that that's what you're doing? Do you think there is such thing as a comment that deserves downvotes, but that wouldn't if it was written the same word for word with the exception of being announced as a thought exercise? (Not rhetorical - I suspect my personal answer is yes). >within a minute A minute is a long time. > They are coddled and react negatively to things they disagree with This is a broad and specific accusation to level at people just because they downvoted you. It's also a very convenient way to convince oneself that one is "the better person".
- basch 6y ago
- gen25c391574a4a 6y agoThe great thing about the downvote feature is that is perfectly individually subjective, and thereby its affect on comments is an emergent property reflecting the subjective sentiment of the community. Perhaps more importantly, by only enabling downvotes after some period of time, new users are acclimated to the culture here (say, versus reddit), and thereby dampen culture swings. To the OP's question, since the aggregate effect of downvoting is suppressing the visibility of a comment, I think of a downvote as my personal "delete" button.
- happytoexplain 6y ago>its affect on comments is an emergent property reflecting the subjective sentiment of the community. Thank you for making this point - you stated it perfectly. Regardless of what you think downvotes "should be used for", the fact is that they are used to "downvote", whatever that means, and that alone is valuable.
- ryzvonusef 6y agoI only downvote trolls, it acts as more of a moderation feature for me
- CM30 6y agoGenerally, I try to avoid downvoting when there's been an honest attempt to add to/start a discussion, or when I merely disagree with someone. So the only things I generally downvote are literal spam (this makes up the vast, vast majority of content I downvote, however small that number is) and deliberate misinformation.
- exotree 6y agoI downvote for personal attacks, comments that are clearly off topic or add unnecessary snark or derisive language to the topic at hand, or very clear disinformation. That maybe leads to me downvoting maybe 1 out of... hundreds of comments I read on here a week.
- bena 6y agoI notice I get downvoted every time I bring up an uncomfortable situation with anything that touches on the ethical side of automation. I never get discussion on the issues I bring up. At best I get hand-waving. Even though I admit the questions are hard and the problems are going to be difficult. But it is concerning that we aren't even thinking about the issues that come with "near-automation". As for myself, I would like to think I only downvote people who seem to be unnecessarily combative. But, being a human, I'm willing to accept that my judgment may not be 100%. Or that I may have perceived the comment wrong. That would be my ideal, however.
- nscalf 6y agoI downvote primarily bad faith arguments. If I disagree, think you’re wrong, etc I tend to respond (or upvote quality responses). For instance, I downvoted a comment yesterday that said something along the lines of “you can get a cs degree and spend your life optimizing a companies ad revenue, or you can go into physics and work on problems like this” referring to an alternative gravity model passing some early tests for feasibility. Obviously not all cs degree holders work on ad revenue, some work on important, impactful things. And I personally know physics majors who work on designing plumbing systems for a small company renovating houses in my area. It’s a bad argument, and it detracts from the quality of the conversation.
- SwiftyBug 6y agoWait, you guys can downvote?
- AnonC 6y agoThat comment brought a smile to my face after seeing so many memes with that phrasing. To respond to the actual question though, sometime after you cross 500 karma points, you’ll be able to downvote comments too (posts cannot be downvoted).
- jimmyswimmy 6y agoAfter being a member here for years I recently got the ability to down vote after making a well timed post. I've only used this power a little bit, and I think only on way off topic comments or jokes. I hope over the years I've up voted a lot more, and mostly on things I found insightful, even when I disagree, because that's the community I want to be a part of. Voting to agree or disagree is not really the best way to foster effective exchange of ideas. I hope that is what HN is still for. I've learned a lot here over the years thanks to the insightful and differing viewpoints one can find here. I think I've also used this power to down vote completely incorrect information a few times. But I usually read when not signed in and then I can't vote at all. And honestly, I think it was a pg comment that talking about voting and karma is boring. Either the post is valuable or it's not.
- ilamont 6y agoI don't see many people admitting that they downvote opinions they disagree with, but I will. It's a simple way for me to assert "I disagree," even if the act will have no visible impact (unless many others do the same). It also lets me track which comments I've downvoted (via the "undown" tag) vs. those that I have upvoted. Sometimes it's difficult to decide whether I should upvote or downvote a comment. Opinions are often nuanced, and there are many cases where I may disagree with some points but agree with others, or recognize that even though I disagree with the commenter, that person has put forward a strong or well-articulated argument.
- happytoexplain 6y agoI never say this, but I'd genuinely love to hear the rationale for people downvoting a comment whose only apparent crime is saying "I downvote comments I disagree with". (I don't deny there may be another reason to downvote this comment aside from simply disagreeing with it, but I don't see anything that sticks out).
- lmilcin 6y agoI am pretty frustrated with downvotes, it seems a lot of users downvote for very different reasons that I do and so here are some reasons I downvote: - blatant misinformation, - posts that I feel are way off HN standards (for example just throwing expletives, writing "fr1st", generally wasting vertical space with no content), - focusing on HN voting mechanics and generally complaining about downvotes (no, I don't want to hear why you think your post is being downvoted, if you can't take downvotes as what it is -- voice of multitude of people that may be right or wrong, stop posting) - extremist claims with no proofs -- the truth is almost always somewhere between extremes. Claiming the truth is an extreme of universe of possibilities should be taken with huge caution and usually just means the person is blind and deaf. In my personal experience, people who really do know the topic will usually start their answers with "that depends" or "it is complicated", and there is very good reason for it. The world is complicated and here on HN we try to understand it a little bit better with all its gory details and not create groupthink closing asymptotically to extreme views.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago> generally complaining about downvotes (no, I don't want to hear why you think your post is being downvoted, if you can't take downvotes as what it is -- voice of multitude of people that may be right or wrong, stop posting) I sort of agree, but I also dislike comments being downvoted without any replies; it becomes a blind "people dislike and/or disagree with your comment, but good luck figuring out why".
- happytoexplain 6y agoI agree that people should engage more, to avoid the case where a comment is downvoted but it's not clear why from either the comment itself or its replies, but I think that case is somewhat rare. More importantly, complaining or positing reasons oneself that inevitably portray the downvoters as irrational doesn't help achieve that goal.
- HugThem 6y agoThis is an example of a comment that should be downvoted.
- happytoexplain 6y agoI vacillated, but then upvoted you because I love a good paradox.
- andrewtbham 6y agopg says you can downvote if you disagree. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 This was brought to my attention by the mods (dang) and they agree with it and enforce it yet they haven't documented it anywhere such as the guidelines. strange
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- KindOne 6y ago>I think new accounts can't even downvote You need 501 karma for downvoting, that exact number is undocumented on the FAQ page. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/master/README.md#downvoting-comments https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m... For anyone else that curious about undocumented stuff, here are some previous discussions with that github link. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 (Feb 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 (Feb 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 (June 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 (June 2020)
- deeg 6y agoI can't downvote (yet!) but if I could it would be rare and would be for one of these two reasons: 1) Extremely rude, disrespectful, or hateful. 2) Pushes conspiracy theories as truthful. Like anti-vaxxers. One of the reasons I value HN is to read opinions that are the opposite of mine. Sometimes they bring up points that I've never considered, other times they make me think more about my own positions. At the very least I might better understand the reasons for other opinions. I would rather read a news story on HN with the opinions than just read it on a "regular" news site, even something reputable like NYTimes. I feel I learn more about the topic.
- yodon 6y agoI don't have hard analytical data here but on highly partisan tech issues (Microsoft, Open Source and Licensing, Language strengths and weaknesses, etc) I've noticed there is often a significant swing in the direction of the voting over time with the first voters (who are presumably quickly refreshing the HN new page and responding immediately to everything) being the most hyper-tech-partisan, anti-Microsoft, pro-GPL, anti-TypeScript downvoters (but not commenters) pounding well-intentioned comments quickly into the gray, followed later in the day by the more mainstream HN voters and commenters who appear to be much less dogmatically anti-Microsoft, etc., and who commonly flip those initially grayed out comments back into positive territory and frequently well up into the comment rankings.
- ryandrake 6y agoI'd love to see visualizations over time for the voting on comments. What I've seen often is as soon as I post something, it gets immediately downvoted, often multiple downvotes. Doesn't matter what I post. It could be pro-Company, anti-Company, pro-Language, anti-Language, right, left, doesn't matter. Immediately down. Then throughout the day, gradually the upvotes come (presumably from people who actually read the comment), and the comment long-term ends up around 1 or 2. I've seen this initial drop followed by slow and steady upvotes over and over and over. The mods/admins must have tools to plot votes over time and I bet the visualizations are very interesting.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- notacoward 6y agoMost often for obvious bad-faith arguments, such as clinging to misinformation or logical fallacies despite having them pointed out as such. Sometimes for extreme rudeness toward another commenter (not a public figure). Never for mere disagreement. Also never for "not adding enough to the conversation" because I think the hostility toward short comments and "small talk" here drives every conversation toward pompous verbosity. There's nothing wrong with a "lighter" conversational style.
- simonsarris 6y agoI downvote sarcastic, jokey, snarky, or flippant comments. There are no shortage of sites where peanut gallery comments are the norm, and I think we should continue to discourage them here as much as possible.
- stareatgoats 6y agoNot sure if I can say any general reason why I downvote sometimes. Perhaps mostly when people complain about being down-voted ... I've come to the conclusion that one needs to have a healthy distance to ones points, and realize that it's just a gamification of discourse that is helpful up to a certain point, but that it quickly gets counterproductive when that's mostly all that people care about. I sense that many people are extremely strategic about what they submit or comment on, where they comment etc, and therefore get sensitive about the downvotes as well. Unfortunately it is a seemingly unavoidable consequence of introducing scores in any context. Better just accept that people downvote you for whatever reason, don't worry too much about your karma (what on earth for?). Care about the content instead.
- AnonC 6y agoWhy do I downvote? I downvote to do my part in making invisible the comments that I don’t want floating around here. Any voting system is meant for voters to help decide what’s important and what’s not. That’s the case with HN too. It’s all fine and dandy to say that downvotes shouldn’t be used for disagreements (which, on the other hand, pg himself has said is fine to do), but no voting based system can prevent that. Voting by the masses by itself is a flawed system that depends on the attitude, mindset and knowledge of the voter. There are many users on HN who downvote to express disagreement or dislike for certain comments. I too downvote some comments that I disagree with to prevent them from surfacing up because I do not value those comments. If upvoting is meant to help “useful content” (as perceived by the reader) surface to the top, then downvoting is meant for the opposite purpose. Whenever I see a downvoted comment whose content I believe I agree with or that others may have aggressively downvoted to express disagreement, I upvote them. Nobody, in my recollection, has ever said that upvotes shouldn’t be used to express agreement. So using upvotes to express agreement while saying that downvotes shouldn’t be used for disagreement makes no sense. We don’t live in utopia. Not every comment is worthy enough to stay visible in a black font with text replies to express disagreement and go on with lengthy arguments. We are not objective beings who don’t care about that number on the top right that has no tangible value. Looking only at the downvoted or flagged comments in this thread will show what the broader community wants or prefers. Edit: After having said all this and admitting that I do downvote comments that I disagree with, I also believe that downvoting for this purpose is probably not a good idea for one’s mental health and emotional quotient. Most of the time, I browse HN comments without logging in (so no voting at all), and that’s a way to just observe and experience HN.
- stunt 6y ago> I try to not downvote to disagree. I downvote misinformation, statements that are egressive towards a person and not the point they are making, responses that say "This.". I think vast majority of downvotes that I see on HN are more or less like that. Absolute trolls and disrespectful ones are on top of the list. Usually the ones that people complain the most about are off-topic comments that get downvoted. I see them specially happening when the post itself is also kind of off-topic. Those posts tend to be open ended discussions. And if you are late to the discussion it's possible that the discussion is already headed to a more specific sub-topic. Some new comments are then considered off-topic by some users. Upvote is more powerful. I personally try to use upvote to keep what I believe is relevant on the top. And that's what I see most of the users do as well. But, I also don't mind if my comment get downvoted. There is nothing negative about downvotes. It's just other users telling me that this is off-topic right now.
- ykevinator 6y agoThe honest answer is self righteousness