4 ms·

People don't downvote dissenting views. They downvote comments that lack value to the discussion.

• mrvc 15y ago
  That is the wish, I do believe the reality is quite different in my experience.
• ColinWright 15y ago
  That was once the case, but I think it's no longer true. Of late I've seen relevant and constructive comments down-voted, and I've been able to discern no reason other than the view expressed was an unpopular one. If there's a mechanism to indicate a comment is inappropriate, people will use it to indicate disapproval. If there's no mechanism to indicate a comment is inappropriate, inappropriate and off-topic will abound. Removing down-votes might help, but I doubt it.
  • mrvc 15y ago
    Isn't that what the flagging system is for? Removal of spam and inappropriate comments. With upvotes acting as a counter force to filter good content up...?
    • JoachimSchipper 15y ago
      There's a difference between "int i = INT_MAX + 1 is legal C" (appropriate but factually wrong) and "fsck off, you moron".
      • saurik 15y ago
        ...but then, what is the difference between an opinion you disagree with (a "dissenting view") and one that you believe to be factually incorrect? I feel like downvoting the former "factually wrong" comment leads to the behavior that ColinWright is describing: where people downvote anything they disagree with. (One might even argue that this is a fundamental bug in having downvoting as a mechanism.)
        • ColinWright 15y ago
          People do down-vote anything they disagree with, and there's nothing that can stop that. You can't change people's behavior. However, removing the ability to down-vote won't really change anything in this regard, except that it will stop people from feeling attacked when they get a down-vote. What would change is that there would be no feedback about genuinely inappropriate comments, and I think that would be bad. The only thing I can think of is to separate "down-vote" (meaning "of little value") from "inappropriate", label them clearly as such, and have the consequences of a "down-vote" less apparent and less severe. Then you can only trust that the behavior will sort itself as the "community" decides on the meaning of "inappropriate" and "of little value."
          • JoachimSchipper 15y ago
            I think the "canonical" solution is changing the audience by migrating to a new site...
            • ColinWright 15y ago
              That may yet happen/be happening.
        • JoachimSchipper 15y ago
          "Dissenting view" is "Ruby is badly-engineered", "the poor remain poor chiefly because of a lack of discipline" or "PHP is extremely useful": you may or may not agree, but there are serious arguments to be made for those positions (and there is some degree of truth to each of them), and reasonable people can and do disagree on these issues. On the other hand, "int i = INT_MAX + 1" is factually wrong, and you could link to the standard to prove it. Similarly, "the Sun orbits the earth" is factually wrong (to the extent that it's meaningful, at least). Yes, there are edge cases, and yes, people tend to think that what they believe in is "obviously" the only right thing to believe in; but that doesn't mean that there's no difference at all.
  • jinushaun 15y ago
    Time and time again, Slashdot's voting system shows that it's superior to these simple up/down voting systems. Not all up votes are equal, nor are all down votes simply because you disagree with the content.
    • ColinWright 15y ago
      I, and I'm sure many others here also, am unfamiliar with SlashDot's system. Could you point to a summary? Perhaps simply edit your comment to include one. Thanks.
      • thomasz 15y ago
        "Randomly selected moderators assign points of either −1 or +1 to each comment, based on whether the comment is perceived as either normal, offtopic, insightful, redundant, interesting, or troll (among others)."(Wikipedia) Interesting approach...