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That is not a very valuable comment, though. You may have received a better score if you posted a not-so-valuable comment defending a popular position, but that

That is not a very valuable comment, though. You may have received a better score if you posted a not-so-valuable comment defending a popular position, but that doesn't mean that well-argued defences of unpopular positions receive the same treatment. Being downvoted has a much higher emotional impact than being upvoted, but it does help with sorting comments, obviously.

mrvc 15y ago
It does help in sorting, but i'd suggest it sorts by popularity, not by quality as we tend to assume. I don't know about you guys, but I'm here to read interesting perspectives on interesting topics. I don't really care to reaffirm a popular opinion, irrespective of quality or substance.
- JoachimSchipper 15y ago
  "Popularity, not quality" is the big problem of any social site. However, removing downvotes doesn't help: "anti-canonical" opinions won't gather many upvotes either. [EDIT: well, hopefully they will. But the trend is that they increasingly don't.]
- ColinWright 15y ago
  In that case, why do you care about the voting? You will always get the group-think out-voting the carefully reasoned but unpopular. All you need to do is read - perhaps simply skim - all the comments. Find users whose opinion seems to be worth reading, and then seek out their comments. Removing down-votes won't help the problem you've identified.
  - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
    That's what I increasingly find myself doing. The downside is that you get less and less exposed to new material; "old" HN would usually surface e.g. tptacek's comments, but there would also be some highly-voted and insightful comments by relative nobodies who were experts in the particular field being discussed. This still happens, but reading the highest-voted comments is becoming less and less worthwhile.
  - wnight 15y ago
    The problem is that down-votes have account consequences. They aren't the mirror opposite of an up-vote. Ten upvotes and a post is just popular, ten downvotes and you might get banned. If moderation was a flag that some people cared about but that left everything intact then people could ignore it if they wanted.
    - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
      Do you think you get banned for the downvotes, or for the comment? I don't think anybody (here) is proposing removing the "flag" button...

mrvc 15y ago

It does help in sorting, but i'd suggest it sorts by popularity, not by quality as we tend to assume. I don't know about you guys, but I'm here to read interesting perspectives on interesting topics. I don't really care to reaffirm a popular opinion, irrespective of quality or substance.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago
"Popularity, not quality" is the big problem of any social site. However, removing downvotes doesn't help: "anti-canonical" opinions won't gather many upvotes either. [EDIT: well, hopefully they will. But the trend is that they increasingly don't.]
ColinWright 15y ago
In that case, why do you care about the voting? You will always get the group-think out-voting the carefully reasoned but unpopular. All you need to do is read - perhaps simply skim - all the comments. Find users whose opinion seems to be worth reading, and then seek out their comments. Removing down-votes won't help the problem you've identified.
- JoachimSchipper 15y ago
  That's what I increasingly find myself doing. The downside is that you get less and less exposed to new material; "old" HN would usually surface e.g. tptacek's comments, but there would also be some highly-voted and insightful comments by relative nobodies who were experts in the particular field being discussed. This still happens, but reading the highest-voted comments is becoming less and less worthwhile.
- wnight 15y ago
  The problem is that down-votes have account consequences. They aren't the mirror opposite of an up-vote. Ten upvotes and a post is just popular, ten downvotes and you might get banned. If moderation was a flag that some people cared about but that left everything intact then people could ignore it if they wanted.
  - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
    Do you think you get banned for the downvotes, or for the comment? I don't think anybody (here) is proposing removing the "flag" button...