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My current strategy is to never downvote (not counting the rare accidental misclicks that I don’t know about). Instead, I try to upvote other things that deserv

My current strategy is to never downvote (not counting the rare accidental misclicks that I don’t know about). Instead, I try to upvote other things that deserve to stand out. Leaving something at 0 upvotes is still a signal, although it’s less distinguishable from “no one saw this”. This approach makes the decision of voting binary (to upvote or not) rather than one with 3 choices, which reduces mental overhead. It also allows me to focus on positivity and finding comments that provide value, and pay less attention to ones that don’t. In the end, I think there can be value in downvoting, but I personally just don’t feel that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.

undecisive 6y ago
I mostly feel the same, but I think there are differences in context - for example: - HN: Some really repugnant attitudes from time to time need to be downvoted. For example, personal attacks and things that would have been moderated out of existence on other platforms. - Stack Overflow et al: Answers that are objectively and dangerously wrong. And I don't mean answers that just misread the question - those actually might be useful for someone else who stumbled on the page looking for exactly that thing. I mean answers that are dangerous, vulnerable, misleading, or represent an extreme viewpoint as fact ("buhh object orientation is dangerous, you must write C++ using functional paradigms, it's the only way to make good programs") I worry that if stuff like this doesn't get downvoted by some, these things will be considered valid - or even acceptable - by others.
- js8 6y ago
  "Answers that are objectively and dangerously wrong." I don't think anybody reading an Internet discussion has so little time not to add to the downvote: "This part of your comment is horribly wrong, I warn others against doing it." Actually, I think I would be more convinced to be careful with that sentence than just seeing bunch of downvotes.
  - undecisive 6y ago
    Absolutely. Usually there's no problem in doing both (hence, I guess, the OP) But commenting without downvoting skews the ordering algorithms, and of course if someone else has already made a similar enough comment that you wouldn't be adding materially to the conversation, adding a similar comment just makes the post look busy an therefore, potentially, interesting.
    - js8 6y ago
      In my other comment here, I suggested a solution to the duplication problem - you can downvote only if you either create a reply or upvote an existing reply (as a sign of agreement).
      - undecisive 6y ago
        That would be a nice feature. Or much like a "report" button on some platforms, if clicking downvote meant you had to say why you had disliked, and it gives you the usual moderation options, all the other comments that it could auto-upvote, or a free-text field that automatically creates a comment... that would probably be the least-friction way of dealing with it.
      - FalconSensei 6y ago
        That would be great! I agree with parent comments that sometimes downvoting without commenting serves no purpose. You got a downvoted comment with no replies. Now, why was it downvoted? You can reread it and see if you were rude/offensive, but besides that...
- loceng 6y ago
  There's a report option. If something is dangerously wrong, then put the effort into saying so - perhaps explaining why; the person who posted the content that's "dangerously wrong" won't learn that either if no one shares it with them.
- leonardteo 6y ago
  Re: Stack Overflow, while I agree with you, most of my experience with SO downvoting has purely to do with other members thinking "I feel this is a stupid question so I will downvote you". Usually SO is a last resort for me once I have done enough research and read through lots of documentation for hours trying to understand why something does not work as expected. I ask a question on SO, and rather than being answered, am downvoted and belittled in the comments. It has made SO a toxic place where honest questions that are researched prior are punished. I do understand why it happens though because for every honest question, there's probably thousands of questions from people who obviously don't do any research. Then having your "Thank you for answering my question" comment removed by SO moderators because they don't want thank you's on the platform... It's just turned into too much of a toxic place and is an absolute last resort. IMO. Others experiences may be different :) The point is that people generally downvote for whatever reason they want. Even with community standards that help to educate people, by empowering people to downvote, they just exercise that right and it has consequences for the community.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    > Re: Stack Overflow, while I agree with you, most of my experience with SO downvoting has purely to do with other members thinking "I feel this is a stupid question so I will downvote you". This has been my experience too. For someone like me who's a non-professional programming hobbyist, SO has been one of the most toxic and unhelpful communities. My only helpful experiences there are with the people who also happen to have their real names for their user ids. I've had questions downvoted because I omitted something that "should have been there", downvoted because I included some things that "should not have been there", downvoted because I "asked for a suggestion" (eg: which type of DB is better for this kind of data?), or because I asked for something "that has been asked elsewhere", even though the two questions might have different tech stacks and use cases altogether. I recommend most beginner programmers to go to reddit instead, where there's a less barrier to entry and visibility for questions. People are happy to answer you in Reddit for some karma, while on SO, the people who answer correctly have to subtly beg the questioner to mark the answer as correct.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  Since when is avoidance of OOP an extreme viewpoint? Few pieces of advice have served me as well as that. It seems fine to disagree - but if that is your standard of “extreme” or “dangerous” it makes you seem like a crank and makes your justifications for downvoting seem very biased and wrong.
  - undecisive 6y ago
    (love the fact that this comment was downvoted! Sorry for the effect that has on your karma though) The dangerous part is presuming that no good software can come from OO. A comment like "I would prefer to see this in a functional paradigm, with as few side effects as possible" is absolutely fine. The statement that all OO is bad makes an absolute out of a subjective, rubbishes the work and effort of millions and may cause a relative beginner to ignore learning a paradigm that is fundamental to their growth and learning as a developer. Now then, that said... if you wanted an argument over avoiding OOP, I would argue any statement that categorically says "Avoid X" is an oversimplification. Everything is a balance of strengths and weaknesses, and there are times when OO is the right tool for the job. You are welcome to disagree, and I wouldn't downvote you for doing so _in this context_, but in a Stack Overflow context, depending on how you say it, I very well might if I considered your words dangerous enough. (i.e. Silver bullets kill more than just werewolves)
    - bostonsre 6y ago
      It seems lame to downvote due to a debatable disagreement. It stomps out unpopular ideas in a forum where they should be allowed and discussed/debated. I don't agree with the viewpoint that OOP should be avoided, but I would like to hear why some people are opposed to OOP.
      - undecisive 6y ago
        Again, I agree, but only in context. On Hacker News, I totally agree that downvoting debatable views that are expressed poorly is totally unnecessary. If it isn't a statement that is outright dangerous or intentionally hurtful, my bar for downvoting here is very high. I would trust the audience to discern for themselves. On Stack overflow, you are essentially there to teach people something. "Don't ever do X" is not going to teach something. Unpopular ideas (and even some popular ones) should be backed up with cogent reasoning, and I think downvoting (with an explanation) is the best way to tell future visitors "this is (probably) not the answer you are looking for".
- watwut 6y ago
  > HN: Some really repugnant attitudes from time to time need to be downvoted. For example, personal attacks and things that would have been moderated out of existence on other platforms. What are things that are moderated out of existence on other platforms and not on HN?
- briefcomment 6y ago
  > Some really repugnant attitudes from time to time need to be downvoted. I disagree. Just call them out. I don't like it when anything is disappeared
vannevar 6y ago
Yes, in contrast to the upvote, the downvote button is overloaded: it can signify disagreement, or it can signify a violation of community standards. I think the former is a poor use of the downvote, as it adds little or no value. What good is it to say you disagree with something, if you offer no reasoning? The whole point of a discussion site like HN is to explore ideas and learn. Downvoting to disagree does nothing to further the goals of the site. I think HN would be improved by simply eliminating the downvote entirely and rely on upvoting alone, as the parent suggests.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  I don't have enough points or whatever they're called to downvote anyway, but I can't think of anything I wanted to downvote. Either update, ignore, or flag it for moderation (I can't do that on HN either but apparently some can). If it's not egregious enough for flagging just ignore it and it'll sink to the bottom. No need to downvote.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  I liked Slashdot's qualified votes ("Interesting", "Insightful", ..) or Facebook's "reactions" for that as it gives an indication on the meaning of the vote. And sometimes I just want to read the trolls for the lolz.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  Getting rid of downvoting in the sense of violating standards without also getting rid of upvoting in terms of agreement would result in popular opinions being promoted, without regard to their value (as an argument, or truthiness). As much as HN is far from perfect, I still think there's some healthy disagreement visible and bad faith arguments don't get promoted.
  - vannevar 6y ago
    ...would result in popular opinions being promoted, without regard to their value... I believe that's the case now. The only difference would be that, if you felt the existing top response was incorrect and there was no better post for you to upvote to try to overtake it, you would have to write one. I think that would be a positive development.
mdiesel 6y ago
The key thing you've said though is "comments that provide value", a metric by which both up and down votes are important. In the perfect world, I'd come to HN and the top 2 voted comments would be the most succinct and well argued sides to the discussion (assuming there's a traditional for+against), then the top voted comments the tier down would be the best refutations of those points. That way I can read both and get to my own balanced view quicker. If all the voting system tells me is "this is what the average HN reader agrees with" that's far less valuable.
- Ajedi32 6y ago
  That gives me an idea. Given enough data, might it be possible to create a system that automatically identify "sides" to a controversial discussion based solely on how people are voting, and adjusts the sorting algorithm appropriately to counteract groupthink? For example, if a group of people who tend to vote the same way on certain things all downvote a particular comment, but a smaller group of people with a different voting history vote a different way on the same comment, the system could mark that comment as a minority opinion rather than simply a "bad comment" and give less weight to downvotes from users of the opposing position when sorting that comment.
  - names_are_hard 6y ago
    That's a great idea. Made me think of Amazon, I think, that categorized reviews and highlighted the top positive and top negative views. So combining your idea with your parent's, HN could determine the "sides" and highlight the most upvoted of each as top comments.
  - mdiesel 6y ago
    I know what you're saying, but for some reason it makes me uneasy. I guess because anything trying to categorise people as either X or Y is fundamentally tribal. The HN readers are good at moderation overall, not perfect but definitely good. Maybe it would be enough to have an "agree/disagree" button as well as a "good/bad" button.
contravariant 6y ago
I reserve downvotes for comments that harm the discussion. Usually this is because of spam or needlessly inflammatory remarks. Though some people have managed to present arguments that are not otherwise objectionably but so utterly wrong I'll downvote them anyway.
FpUser 6y ago
Same here. Never downvoted a single post. What I did notice though it looks like sometimes if someone does not like a particular post that someone will go wild and downvote few other totally unrelated posts from the same author.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
My strategy is to not vote at all — both because I'm never thinking about it and it's simply wasted energy, and because I dislike the existence of such systems. I much præfer discussion fora that lack a voting system. The order of comments and submissions can purely be determined by last reply bumping whatever tree had it to the top.
bnralt 6y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that people who are judicious in their use of upvotes/downvotes are going to have much less impact than those who haphazardly upvote/downvote. Such is the nature of giving people limitless votes (and comments, for that matter). Platforms like this (and Reddit, and a large portion of social media) are structured in such a way that they give an outsized voice if people behave in a way most would find problematic. Another issue is that places like HN and Reddit only show the total score, and not the upvote/downvote breakdown. I saw a topic here where all the comments on one side were downvoted and grayed out, but when someone put up a poll asking for the opinions that side got about 40%. It's hard to know if a greyed out comment is because the community as a whole feels the comment is bad, or if it's simply in an emotionally charged discussion where the opposition has a slight majority.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  Are there any major platforms that give users a limited number of votes? How does this work? Are votes rationed constantly or by site usage (ie for every twenty comments you read you get one vote credit)?
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    Slashdot did this (maybe still does). I don’t know the exact mechanism for determining how many. They also had meta-moderation where they’d give you a list of posts and votes and ask if you thought the voting was fair. Doing that was supposed to make it more likely you got votes. I got them regularly and then one day never got them again. I suspect it was because I “failed” in the meta-moderation voting, but I had also been critical of the site and there were rumors of a blacklist.
cycomanic 6y ago
I have the same strategy. I also try to only vote rarely and not use voting as an indication of "I agree, disagree".
dahart 6y ago
It’s nice to hear that others have this strategy too. I’ve never used the downvote on HN (unless I bumped the teeny tiny arrow accidentally on my iPad while trying to upvote), and the main reason is because receiving downvotes feels so harsh to me, and upvoting good things mostly has the same overall effect on the order of the conversation. It made me see clearly the good reasons why downvoting privileges are withheld from new accounts, that period did help me learn how to be more positive and constructive in my comments. But - lately I’ve been second guessing myself and wondering whether there’s any virtue in continuing to not use this feature, which is sometimes useful. There are a minority of comments that should be downvoted and I agree with downvotes they receive even if I don’t hand any out. One reason I’ve been questioning my personal policy is because I’ve recognized that - in the spirit of the article here - that downvotes on HN are given for a wide variety of legitimate reasons that don’t necessarily amount to disagreement. Sometimes comments are very off-topic, sometimes they make assumptions, sometimes they’re polite and nice but factually wrong, sometimes they’re jokes that aren’t funny. I’ve started to view downvotes as being symmetric to upvotes, and I give upvotes liberally and for a huge number of reasons. There’s nothing really wrong with downvotes being seen in the same light... other than negative feelings it might cause and the times it leads to destructive responses rather than constructive responses. I’d love to hear what others thing, should I start using downvotes now, or continue to abstain?
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  > other than negative feelings it might cause and the times it leads to destructive responses rather than constructive responses. Well there are two good reasons, maybe they're good enough?
  - dahart 6y ago
    Agreed, and they’ve been good enough so far for me. Its just that I’ve come to recognize there are cases when downvotes are appropriate, and won’t lead to escalation, as well as cases where downvotes send the right signal and lead to overall constructive behavior. The downvotes I’ve received have helped me introspect and learn. Even if my immediate reaction wasn’t constructive, it has helped me become more constructive in the long run. I think I’ve seen this happen with others here. Without downvotes feeling harsh, I might not have worked as hard to see the positive in other comments and to say the positive in my own.
ben_w 6y ago
> not counting the rare accidental misclicks that I don’t know about Relevantly, I have found myself accidentally tapping the downvote button a few times on mobile — if you tap and hold on Safari, it brings up a link preview which has the same effect as [up/down/flag] voting deliberately.

undecisive 6y ago

I mostly feel the same, but I think there are differences in context - for example: - HN: Some really repugnant attitudes from time to time need to be downvoted. For example, personal attacks and things that would have been moderated out of existence on other platforms. - Stack Overflow et al: Answers that are objectively and dangerously wrong. And I don't mean answers that just misread the question - those actually might be useful for someone else who stumbled on the page looking for exactly that thing. I mean answers that are dangerous, vulnerable, misleading, or represent an extreme viewpoint as fact ("buhh object orientation is dangerous, you must write C++ using functional paradigms, it's the only way to make good programs") I worry that if stuff like this doesn't get downvoted by some, these things will be considered valid - or even acceptable - by others.

js8 6y ago
"Answers that are objectively and dangerously wrong." I don't think anybody reading an Internet discussion has so little time not to add to the downvote: "This part of your comment is horribly wrong, I warn others against doing it." Actually, I think I would be more convinced to be careful with that sentence than just seeing bunch of downvotes.
- undecisive 6y ago
  Absolutely. Usually there's no problem in doing both (hence, I guess, the OP) But commenting without downvoting skews the ordering algorithms, and of course if someone else has already made a similar enough comment that you wouldn't be adding materially to the conversation, adding a similar comment just makes the post look busy an therefore, potentially, interesting.
  - js8 6y ago
    In my other comment here, I suggested a solution to the duplication problem - you can downvote only if you either create a reply or upvote an existing reply (as a sign of agreement).
    - undecisive 6y ago
      That would be a nice feature. Or much like a "report" button on some platforms, if clicking downvote meant you had to say why you had disliked, and it gives you the usual moderation options, all the other comments that it could auto-upvote, or a free-text field that automatically creates a comment... that would probably be the least-friction way of dealing with it.
    - FalconSensei 6y ago
      That would be great! I agree with parent comments that sometimes downvoting without commenting serves no purpose. You got a downvoted comment with no replies. Now, why was it downvoted? You can reread it and see if you were rude/offensive, but besides that...
loceng 6y ago
There's a report option. If something is dangerously wrong, then put the effort into saying so - perhaps explaining why; the person who posted the content that's "dangerously wrong" won't learn that either if no one shares it with them.
leonardteo 6y ago
Re: Stack Overflow, while I agree with you, most of my experience with SO downvoting has purely to do with other members thinking "I feel this is a stupid question so I will downvote you". Usually SO is a last resort for me once I have done enough research and read through lots of documentation for hours trying to understand why something does not work as expected. I ask a question on SO, and rather than being answered, am downvoted and belittled in the comments. It has made SO a toxic place where honest questions that are researched prior are punished. I do understand why it happens though because for every honest question, there's probably thousands of questions from people who obviously don't do any research. Then having your "Thank you for answering my question" comment removed by SO moderators because they don't want thank you's on the platform... It's just turned into too much of a toxic place and is an absolute last resort. IMO. Others experiences may be different :) The point is that people generally downvote for whatever reason they want. Even with community standards that help to educate people, by empowering people to downvote, they just exercise that right and it has consequences for the community.
- fakedang 6y ago
  > Re: Stack Overflow, while I agree with you, most of my experience with SO downvoting has purely to do with other members thinking "I feel this is a stupid question so I will downvote you". This has been my experience too. For someone like me who's a non-professional programming hobbyist, SO has been one of the most toxic and unhelpful communities. My only helpful experiences there are with the people who also happen to have their real names for their user ids. I've had questions downvoted because I omitted something that "should have been there", downvoted because I included some things that "should not have been there", downvoted because I "asked for a suggestion" (eg: which type of DB is better for this kind of data?), or because I asked for something "that has been asked elsewhere", even though the two questions might have different tech stacks and use cases altogether. I recommend most beginner programmers to go to reddit instead, where there's a less barrier to entry and visibility for questions. People are happy to answer you in Reddit for some karma, while on SO, the people who answer correctly have to subtly beg the questioner to mark the answer as correct.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
Since when is avoidance of OOP an extreme viewpoint? Few pieces of advice have served me as well as that. It seems fine to disagree - but if that is your standard of “extreme” or “dangerous” it makes you seem like a crank and makes your justifications for downvoting seem very biased and wrong.
- undecisive 6y ago
  (love the fact that this comment was downvoted! Sorry for the effect that has on your karma though) The dangerous part is presuming that no good software can come from OO. A comment like "I would prefer to see this in a functional paradigm, with as few side effects as possible" is absolutely fine. The statement that all OO is bad makes an absolute out of a subjective, rubbishes the work and effort of millions and may cause a relative beginner to ignore learning a paradigm that is fundamental to their growth and learning as a developer. Now then, that said... if you wanted an argument over avoiding OOP, I would argue any statement that categorically says "Avoid X" is an oversimplification. Everything is a balance of strengths and weaknesses, and there are times when OO is the right tool for the job. You are welcome to disagree, and I wouldn't downvote you for doing so _in this context_, but in a Stack Overflow context, depending on how you say it, I very well might if I considered your words dangerous enough. (i.e. Silver bullets kill more than just werewolves)
  - bostonsre 6y ago
    It seems lame to downvote due to a debatable disagreement. It stomps out unpopular ideas in a forum where they should be allowed and discussed/debated. I don't agree with the viewpoint that OOP should be avoided, but I would like to hear why some people are opposed to OOP.
    - undecisive 6y ago
      Again, I agree, but only in context. On Hacker News, I totally agree that downvoting debatable views that are expressed poorly is totally unnecessary. If it isn't a statement that is outright dangerous or intentionally hurtful, my bar for downvoting here is very high. I would trust the audience to discern for themselves. On Stack overflow, you are essentially there to teach people something. "Don't ever do X" is not going to teach something. Unpopular ideas (and even some popular ones) should be backed up with cogent reasoning, and I think downvoting (with an explanation) is the best way to tell future visitors "this is (probably) not the answer you are looking for".
watwut 6y ago
> HN: Some really repugnant attitudes from time to time need to be downvoted. For example, personal attacks and things that would have been moderated out of existence on other platforms. What are things that are moderated out of existence on other platforms and not on HN?
briefcomment 6y ago
> Some really repugnant attitudes from time to time need to be downvoted. I disagree. Just call them out. I don't like it when anything is disappeared

vannevar 6y ago

Yes, in contrast to the upvote, the downvote button is overloaded: it can signify disagreement, or it can signify a violation of community standards. I think the former is a poor use of the downvote, as it adds little or no value. What good is it to say you disagree with something, if you offer no reasoning? The whole point of a discussion site like HN is to explore ideas and learn. Downvoting to disagree does nothing to further the goals of the site. I think HN would be improved by simply eliminating the downvote entirely and rely on upvoting alone, as the parent suggests.

names_are_hard 6y ago
I don't have enough points or whatever they're called to downvote anyway, but I can't think of anything I wanted to downvote. Either update, ignore, or flag it for moderation (I can't do that on HN either but apparently some can). If it's not egregious enough for flagging just ignore it and it'll sink to the bottom. No need to downvote.
johannes1234321 6y ago
I liked Slashdot's qualified votes ("Interesting", "Insightful", ..) or Facebook's "reactions" for that as it gives an indication on the meaning of the vote. And sometimes I just want to read the trolls for the lolz.
rhn_mk1 6y ago
Getting rid of downvoting in the sense of violating standards without also getting rid of upvoting in terms of agreement would result in popular opinions being promoted, without regard to their value (as an argument, or truthiness). As much as HN is far from perfect, I still think there's some healthy disagreement visible and bad faith arguments don't get promoted.
- vannevar 6y ago
  ...would result in popular opinions being promoted, without regard to their value... I believe that's the case now. The only difference would be that, if you felt the existing top response was incorrect and there was no better post for you to upvote to try to overtake it, you would have to write one. I think that would be a positive development.

mdiesel 6y ago

The key thing you've said though is "comments that provide value", a metric by which both up and down votes are important. In the perfect world, I'd come to HN and the top 2 voted comments would be the most succinct and well argued sides to the discussion (assuming there's a traditional for+against), then the top voted comments the tier down would be the best refutations of those points. That way I can read both and get to my own balanced view quicker. If all the voting system tells me is "this is what the average HN reader agrees with" that's far less valuable.

Ajedi32 6y ago
That gives me an idea. Given enough data, might it be possible to create a system that automatically identify "sides" to a controversial discussion based solely on how people are voting, and adjusts the sorting algorithm appropriately to counteract groupthink? For example, if a group of people who tend to vote the same way on certain things all downvote a particular comment, but a smaller group of people with a different voting history vote a different way on the same comment, the system could mark that comment as a minority opinion rather than simply a "bad comment" and give less weight to downvotes from users of the opposing position when sorting that comment.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  That's a great idea. Made me think of Amazon, I think, that categorized reviews and highlighted the top positive and top negative views. So combining your idea with your parent's, HN could determine the "sides" and highlight the most upvoted of each as top comments.
- mdiesel 6y ago
  I know what you're saying, but for some reason it makes me uneasy. I guess because anything trying to categorise people as either X or Y is fundamentally tribal. The HN readers are good at moderation overall, not perfect but definitely good. Maybe it would be enough to have an "agree/disagree" button as well as a "good/bad" button.

contravariant 6y ago

I reserve downvotes for comments that harm the discussion. Usually this is because of spam or needlessly inflammatory remarks. Though some people have managed to present arguments that are not otherwise objectionably but so utterly wrong I'll downvote them anyway.

FpUser 6y ago

Same here. Never downvoted a single post. What I did notice though it looks like sometimes if someone does not like a particular post that someone will go wild and downvote few other totally unrelated posts from the same author.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

My strategy is to not vote at all — both because I'm never thinking about it and it's simply wasted energy, and because I dislike the existence of such systems. I much præfer discussion fora that lack a voting system. The order of comments and submissions can purely be determined by last reply bumping whatever tree had it to the top.

bnralt 6y ago

One thing to keep in mind is that people who are judicious in their use of upvotes/downvotes are going to have much less impact than those who haphazardly upvote/downvote. Such is the nature of giving people limitless votes (and comments, for that matter). Platforms like this (and Reddit, and a large portion of social media) are structured in such a way that they give an outsized voice if people behave in a way most would find problematic. Another issue is that places like HN and Reddit only show the total score, and not the upvote/downvote breakdown. I saw a topic here where all the comments on one side were downvoted and grayed out, but when someone put up a poll asking for the opinions that side got about 40%. It's hard to know if a greyed out comment is because the community as a whole feels the comment is bad, or if it's simply in an emotionally charged discussion where the opposition has a slight majority.

names_are_hard 6y ago
Are there any major platforms that give users a limited number of votes? How does this work? Are votes rationed constantly or by site usage (ie for every twenty comments you read you get one vote credit)?
- cgriswald 6y ago
  Slashdot did this (maybe still does). I don’t know the exact mechanism for determining how many. They also had meta-moderation where they’d give you a list of posts and votes and ask if you thought the voting was fair. Doing that was supposed to make it more likely you got votes. I got them regularly and then one day never got them again. I suspect it was because I “failed” in the meta-moderation voting, but I had also been critical of the site and there were rumors of a blacklist.

cycomanic 6y ago

I have the same strategy. I also try to only vote rarely and not use voting as an indication of "I agree, disagree".

dahart 6y ago

It’s nice to hear that others have this strategy too. I’ve never used the downvote on HN (unless I bumped the teeny tiny arrow accidentally on my iPad while trying to upvote), and the main reason is because receiving downvotes feels so harsh to me, and upvoting good things mostly has the same overall effect on the order of the conversation. It made me see clearly the good reasons why downvoting privileges are withheld from new accounts, that period did help me learn how to be more positive and constructive in my comments. But - lately I’ve been second guessing myself and wondering whether there’s any virtue in continuing to not use this feature, which is sometimes useful. There are a minority of comments that should be downvoted and I agree with downvotes they receive even if I don’t hand any out. One reason I’ve been questioning my personal policy is because I’ve recognized that - in the spirit of the article here - that downvotes on HN are given for a wide variety of legitimate reasons that don’t necessarily amount to disagreement. Sometimes comments are very off-topic, sometimes they make assumptions, sometimes they’re polite and nice but factually wrong, sometimes they’re jokes that aren’t funny. I’ve started to view downvotes as being symmetric to upvotes, and I give upvotes liberally and for a huge number of reasons. There’s nothing really wrong with downvotes being seen in the same light... other than negative feelings it might cause and the times it leads to destructive responses rather than constructive responses. I’d love to hear what others thing, should I start using downvotes now, or continue to abstain?

names_are_hard 6y ago
> other than negative feelings it might cause and the times it leads to destructive responses rather than constructive responses. Well there are two good reasons, maybe they're good enough?
- dahart 6y ago
  Agreed, and they’ve been good enough so far for me. Its just that I’ve come to recognize there are cases when downvotes are appropriate, and won’t lead to escalation, as well as cases where downvotes send the right signal and lead to overall constructive behavior. The downvotes I’ve received have helped me introspect and learn. Even if my immediate reaction wasn’t constructive, it has helped me become more constructive in the long run. I think I’ve seen this happen with others here. Without downvotes feeling harsh, I might not have worked as hard to see the positive in other comments and to say the positive in my own.

ben_w 6y ago

> not counting the rare accidental misclicks that I don’t know about Relevantly, I have found myself accidentally tapping the downvote button a few times on mobile — if you tap and hold on Safari, it brings up a link preview which has the same effect as [up/down/flag] voting deliberately.