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Ask HN: Should we eliminate downvoting on HN?

21 points by claytongulick 6y ago

I've been thinking a lot about community moderation systems and user feedback, and I'd like to float an idea, along with my thinking to the HN community. With content moderation, there are a couple different signals that are both important, but that shouldn't be conflated. 1) The comment is on-toptic relevant, and adds value to the discussion (quality). 2) Whether a user personally agrees or disagrees with the content of a comment (content). Downvotes are a negative signal. There isn't a clear way to distinguish between "this comment is low quality" (quality moderation) and "I disagree with it" (content feedback). Downvoting has the aggregate effect of suppressing speech. In the case of low quality, this is a good thing. In the case of disagreement, it runs the risk of discouraging expression and diverse ideas. Perhaps people have ideas they'd like to discuss, but don't want to risk "losing points" because the idea may be unpopular. I know that I have personally experienced this, and stopped myself from expressing an idea because I've been pretty sure it wouldn't be popular. Given the overall high quality of discussions on HN, this chilling effect is disturbing. Have others experienced it? Upvotes are a positive signal, it seems to me that the risk of conflating positive signals is less than that of conflating negative signals, since it doesn't have a suppressive effect, it has an uplifting effect. Would it make sense, and improve the community, to eliminate downvotes and to only have positive signals? To be clear, I'm not suggesting getting rid of flagging a comment, just downvotes.

tsjq 6y ago
I kinda agree with this
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
> Perhaps people have ideas they'd like to discuss, but don't want to risk "losing points" because the idea may be unpopular. I know that I have personally experienced this, and stopped myself from expressing an idea because I've been pretty sure it wouldn't be popular. This is a problem with your mindset, not the HN system. You should not place significant concern on collecting Internet karma. I currently have over 18,000 karma, and I happily and regularly have expressed thoughts and opinions that get me -4'd. (Basically, as low as you can go on a given comment.) Doing so has not hurt me in any meaningful capacity, or even, obviously, in a meaningless HN karma capacity. Post unpopular views. I'm mostly aware that a certain crowd will downvote anytime I point out that Section 230 should be repealed, that we'd all be better off as a society if Google stopped existing as a website and corporate entity tomorrow, or that unlimited data is a bad thing for ISPs to offer, etc. Sometimes I am surprised when I make a comment I expect to be unpopular, and it ends up somewhat popular! The problem you run into is that many people feel that a comment they disagree with is low quality. Encouraging flagging over downvotes would actually increase censorship: Instead of downvoting, users would flag a lot more comments, and they'd be more likely to be hidden by the site.
- claytongulick 6y ago
  > This is a problem with your mindset, not the HN system. That very well may be true. > Encouraging flagging over downvotes would actually increase censorship That's a good point. Flagging seems a bit more objectively defined than downvoting though.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    > Flagging seems a bit more objectively defined than downvoting though. I think I get what you mean, but if you give people only one really strong negative signal, they'll be tempted to use it whenever they have negative feelings about something, thereby devaluating it. This may very well have been why downvotes were added in the first place.
minimaxir 6y ago
The only major complaint I have with the downvote system is the comment-graying. The design goal is to dissemphasize downvoted comments, but in practice it biases a reader toward downvote bandwagoning, anecdotally. (if comment scores were made public again I could quantitatively verify this, ahem) IMO comment graying should only start after a comment hits -2, instead of graying after a single downvote.
- jolmg 6y ago
  > instead of graying after a single downvote. It currently grays after 2 downvotes. You start at 1, one downvote puts you at 0, then another puts you at -1, and that's when you're grayed.
  - minimaxir 6y ago
    I just checked one of my comments at 0 and that is not correct (there are different levels of graying depending on score, but the graying indeed starts at 0).
    - jolmg 6y ago
      Just checked one of my comments and you're right. I wonder if that changed or if I've always been mistaken about that.
- zzo38computer 6y ago
  I also dislike the comment-graying (my opinion is that it should never apply), but it is easy enough to fix by apply user CSS.
  - jolmg 6y ago
    > but it is easy enough to fix by apply user CSS. That doesn't fix the bandwagoning issue mentioned. Though, personally I don't think it matters in terms of points/karma, though it is annoying to have that bias other readers' opinion on one's comment. One starts off reading with the preconception that it's a bad comment, even if the downvotes are from a disagreement. It's also annoying to be silenced from a disagreement. Graying seems equivalent so responding to someone with a "shut up" which I think anyone would agree is rude.
Nicksil 6y ago
Yes, absolutely. Or, at the very least, remove the graying-out of the comment text; it's childish and demeaning and serves no purpose other than to highlight what some people have considered to be "wrong." dang (and whomever else may moderate) already has the ability to collapse comments if the subject-matter is especially egregious. Some people down-vote when they simply disagree with whatever is being conveyed. This behavior is not conducive to a thoughtful, substantive conversation. Beyond signaling a post/comment is of low quality or off-topic, I do not see any use for the down-vote; the 'flag' option exists for this purpose. I also believe the bar for the flagging privilege be set higher.
- moistly 6y ago
  IMO only dang & cohort should be able to grey a comment, precisely to signal their quality standard. Flagging is good, and should be a privilege removed from those who abuse it. Voting should not exist, period. Voting killed several online social communities that had previously thrived.
  - jolmg 6y ago
    Reviewing all comments to see if they meet a quality standard would be an absurd amount of work to ask of a couple of people.
    - moistly 6y ago
      No one said that. Don’t strawman.
      - jolmg 6y ago
        Didn't say that? Then what did you say? Your suggestion seems only meaningful if most if not all are reviewed. Otherwise it seems pointless, and I think reviewing even 10% would be overburdening the moderators/admins. Happy New Year's, by the way.
        6y ago
rasengan 6y ago
It would be interesting if there could be a comment requirement with downvotes.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  While people always seem to "want to know why they were downvoted", a comment requirement would likely just encourage a low quality comment to receive more low quality responses. Especially since every person who potentially wanted to downvote something had to write a response to it. (Imagine the opposite, if everyone who upvoted your comment had to reply "I agree" or something similarly useless.)
  - Normille 6y ago
    >a comment requirement would likely just encourage a low quality comment to receive more low quality responses >Imagine the opposite, if everyone who upvoted your comment had to reply "I agree" or something similarly useless.) I suppose it could be done Slashdot style where [AFAIK. I've not been on there for years] you don't have to write a reason for an up- or downvote. You just select from a series of icons representing; "insightful", "funny"... etc. A system like that wouldn't add much overhead to voting on a submission, but would give an indication as to why the voting had gone that way.
    - antisthenes 6y ago
      I think that's a good idea. Adding an extra step would give people pause before downvoting and perhaps make them think about the OPs perspective for a second. In theory it should reduce the number of knee-jerk reactionary downvotes.
zzo38computer 6y ago
I don't care about the voting system. However, I would want the option (in the user profile) to ignore them for the purpose of sorting, and to always display everything in chronological order.
blargathon 6y ago
I agree. A downvote has more chance to be done as a result of our disgust response. As I understand it, the disgust response preempts our reason center. Obviously, that does not lend itself to a better discussion. Reasonable and rational dissent to an idea seems like a better idea than a knee jerk response.
- underseacables 6y ago
  It could a number of reasons. We are human, after all, and as such we cannot be trusted to logically and fairly evaluate anything. Better to let the computer stop us from suppressing speech simply because we (insert emotional response here).
moistly 6y ago
Over, ugh, 35 years of participation in discussion-based online communities, voting was ultimately the death of several of them. Quality moderation—including via social feedback—was the single most important factor in their pre-voting success (and, to be fair, for several years post the change to a voting system). Basically, the community gets out what it allows to be put in.
hfkldjsjfkdj 6y ago
Can we at least not fade out downvoted comments?
- majewsky 6y ago
  This can easily be fixed with user CSS.
  - hfkldjsjfkdj 6y ago
    The issue is that anything that is faded causes negative bias towards that comment not that it is actually hard to read.
Normille 6y ago
>Downvoting has the aggregate effect of suppressing speech... Whatever else HN is, it isn't a platform for free speech. There is definitely an 'orthodoxy' of opinion on here, stepping outside of which is liable to lead to shadow-banning and post killing.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  There are a number of "free speech" platforms that exist, but there's a reason they generally devolve into hate and bigotry.
  - Normille 6y ago
    Aye, but there's the rub. Are you only in favour of free speech if it's expressing views that you don't find abhorrent? For all that we in the West love to criticise countries like China, Russia [and formerly the USSR], etc. for not allowing dissent, we have pretty much arrived at the same situation in the so-called free speech embracing west. There are points of view and opinions which are effectively censored off the internet, or illegal to express. Now a lot of people in the west say [as you effectively did] "Yes. But that's different. We only ban hatred and bigotry" Well, the people running those regimes we love to feel superior to would express similar sentiments "We only suppress comment that threatens the country or causes social disharmony". They find that kind of thing just as nasty as we find our 'wrong speak'. I don't think we can have it both ways. We either believe in free speech. In which case, with a few exceptions such as inciting violence, etc. people should be able to express, without censure, opinions others may find abhorrent. Or we believe in moderated speech. In which case we need to stop pretending we in the west are in some way superior in this regard, to countries like China, Russia, etc.
- claytongulick 6y ago
  Given that this article was climbing up the front page, and suddenly disappeared it makes me wonder if you're right about this. I'm scratching my head over it.
  - grzm 6y ago
blakesterz 6y ago
I'm fine with the current system, and it seems to work quite well most of the time. I kinda feel like "works quite well most of the time" is about all I can hope for on most things. It usually buries "bad" (yes, that's a subjective word) comments here. It's not perfect, I've seen perfectly reasonable things get grayed out sometimes, but these things happen. It's not a perfect system, but it usually gets the job done. That being said, I do think your criticisms are good, but I just don't think those are reasons to get rid of downvoting here on HN.
oramit 6y ago
I completely disagree. Downvotes and upvotes are the entire reason why I come here. They are not perfect but it's a relatively simple way to moderate content. I don't want to see every article submitted to this site or read inane comments. As a niche site there is still a good signal to noise ratio with the discussion here. Generally speaking the community does a good job of policing itself and I can't see how removing the downvote feature will improve anything. I agree that downvotes are crude so instead of removing them you could improve them. How about when you downvote you have to choose a reason eg: 1. Comment is off-topic 2. Poor argument / source 3. Combatitive / abusive Side note - there is no internet discourse more eye-rolling than whining about how you can't express an "unpopular" idea. Just say what you want to say - I swear you are significantly less edgy than you think. Also, you're not allowed to downvote this comment. That would be suppressing my speech and such a chilling effect is disturbing.
- claytongulick 6y ago
  Why would I downvote? I think it contributes, and I also happen to agree with a lot of your points, if not perhaps, the tone.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  You don’t come here for upvotes and downvotes, much less the entire reason. You come here for well-moderated discussion by whatever instrument appropriate. Why the hyperbole?
- grzm 6y ago
  > you're not allowed to downvote this comment 'claytongulick can't downvote the comment regardless: just as one can't downvote a reply to a comment, a submitter can't downvote top-level comments on their submission.
DanBC 6y ago
Several people are suggesting that the graying is removed. How else will you know that a comment has been unfairly downvoted and needs a corrective upvote? Upvotes are available to many more people than downvotes, so when a comment is downvoted and stays downvoted it means one person disagreed with it enough to downvote it, but many people read it and didn't think it deserved an upvote.
- underseacables 6y ago
  Show the votes. Why were they hidden in the first place? You can see someone’s karma, it seems strange to hide comment vote numbers.
  - krapp 6y ago
    I think karma should be hidden too. Once you give people a number, they'll start to game that number, leading to low quality karma-farming comments. When a measure (in the case of karma, of quality) becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure.
rektide 6y ago
I lose points a lot & I don't mind that. But I do think there are, often, some very biased negative idealogues who vote down interesting & valuable opinions, regularly, & mercilessly, because they don't jive with the image of the world as the downvoter wants to believe it. I think it's very frustrating. And unfortunate. And I think that usually it's the ungenerous zero-sum view of the world people that tend to be mass downvoters. There are other generally unpopular or unsupportable opinions that get down voted too, which I think is more in the cards, more regular, & especially in the contested/hot threads up top. My main concern is not this, not people getting blown out of the water in hot spots, but a lot of interesting voices getting chilled & sent down. My ask is: more data. Show upvoted & downvoted separately when one hovers over the net points of a post. I also like the opinion that downvotes ought include a reason, a cause: off topic, bad content, bad whatever, slashdot style.
Rochus 6y ago
Fully agree. I would even suggest to have separate values for agree/disagree and high/low quality. Flagging might be justified in many cases but unfortunately can be misused (i.e. allows arbitrary suppression of valid opinions). EDIT: flagging could e.g. increment a visible counter and serve as a trigger to the admin; assuming the admin is a neutral arbiter assessing the compliance of the post with HN and legal requirements he/she could remove the post or comment, and leave a rationale for his/her decision; that could prevent arbitrariness.
underseacables 6y ago
Absolutely agreed. Downvoting does not add to the discussion, it takes away, and the bar to dead seems ridiculously low. Instead of a downvote, add more muting functionality, ways to personally shut off speech not welcomed, but not in a way that prevents others from seeing it. Personally, I believe all opinions should behave the opportunity to be heard, no matter how crazy, and should not be suppressed because a handful of people don’t like it.
superasn 6y ago
How about adding a comment when you downvote? This should stop the knee jerk downvotes and otoh also tell the OP the reason why the post got downvotes. If somebody makes a downvote with a comment like "sgsgsgsfwfwg" the OP can flag it and the downvoter gets his downvote privileges revoked on 10 flags or something. Just an idea.
loopz 6y ago
Downvotes are feedback. If you are afraid of it, you will never find your voice.
deleted 6y ago
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dirtyid 6y ago
Does HN have reddit equivalent of controversial? I always thought controversial "+" badge is an alternative validation system outside of points. Not validation in terms of karma/points but contribution. I guess HN equivalent would be highlighting dead comments brought back via vouch. Should even be default sort option for topics that gets suppressed due to inflammatory subject matter, or maybe have comment threads with most controversial index be pinned at top.
deleted 6y ago
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onecommentman 6y ago
That surprises me. I think of graying out more as “the poster hit a nerve”, quite often a good thing and thus a good post. Graying out to me isn’t the same as striking through someone’s text. In polite conversation, the poster would “self-gray-out” their comment in some way, after having made their uncomfortable point to the relevant audience. Agree with the comment about somehow getting greater refinement in negative feedback. The idea should be to create a cultural norm that a downvote is about relevance, clarity, accuracy and not personal taste, political affiliation, cultish taboos. But much like the everpresent need to change someone’s copy, there should be a way to allow certain people to vent that irrepressible urge to say “You’re wrong!”, just in a different manner. More interesting to me is the psychological impact of the downvote. Folks, especially the young, can take it much more seriously than it was meant to be. This might be their first “adult” conversation, so to speak, and the idea is not to squelch them but not to drag down the general tone of discussion either.
- jolmg 6y ago
  > Folks, especially the young, can take it much more seriously than it was meant to be. Most of the time, we can't know people's ages from their comments, so your apparent conclusion that this is age-related confuses me. > This might be their first “adult” conversation, so to speak, and the idea is not to squelch them but not to drag down the general tone of discussion either. In the adult conversations I've had, people generally show enough respect to give equal weight to all appropriate contributions to the conversation. Dismissively silencing a participant with no explanation is something more exclusively seen among children. > the psychological impact of the downvote. I wouldn't call it a psychological impact. It's just a surprise we all get over. The surprise comes because we seemingly are having a good conversation going as we might in real life. However, the casual graying out seems like a big disparity with etiquette in face-to-face conversations. Personally, I understand it's just a difference that comes with the different medium. The way I see it, flagging is for inapproriate comments like something containing porn, or indisputable hate speech, etc. Graying out is for comments that are not inappropriate but have low signal-to-noise ratio, like "That's cool!", or that go against the guidelines. Upvoting is for conversation subthreads one is interested in, to get them higher and hopefully with more participants. Use of the upvote and downvote are not standardized though, so people use those buttons with different reasons. Same happens with StackExchange.
  - claytongulick 6y ago
    > Use of the upvote and downvote are not standardized though, so people use those buttons with different reasons. I think that strikes to the heart of why I question the value of keeping downvotes. Without a clear guideline, it's a mixed signal. Since that signal can be suppressive, it seems to me like in its current state, it detracts from open discussion.
    - jolmg 6y ago
      I think the existence of the downvote is good so the community has a tool to self-regulate and avoid the guideline-breaking-but-not-inappropriate comments, like the low signal-to-noise ones. I am against the use many people give it to silence people they disagree with, but the problem is, what's a good alternative UX? I think keeping the functionality while presenting it as something different than the opposite of the upvote might do (maybe use an alternative counter, too?), but on the other hand it seems to just overcomplicate things. The functionality as-is might not be perfect, but it might be better than any alternative I can come up with.
      - claytongulick 6y ago
        Does sorting by upvotes solve it without needing downvotes? Sorting would be at sibling level.
        jolmg 6y ago
        But what do propose to do with the graying out feature? Discard it? or make it like the flagging feature, which doesn't have an opposite action? I think it's useful for it to have an opposite action, but then that would mean we have votes for sorting and separate votes for graying out. That seems needlessly complicated, which is what I meant.
        claytongulick 6y ago
        My initial inclination is to abandon the graying out. Upvotes may cause the post / comment to float up in relation to it's siblings, but that's about it, other than flagging. I also think it would be interesting to have a separate agree/disagree signal that's independent of quality rating. I can disagree strongly with a well thought out and quality comment, and vice versa. It would be nice to have independent signals, so I could conveniently communicate "I disagree with you, but value the discussion"