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I don't know if these are popular opinions or not: 1: I really wish I could downvote Hacker News articles. 2: I really wish there was some friction to downvot

I don't know if these are popular opinions or not: 1: I really wish I could downvote Hacker News articles. 2: I really wish there was some friction to downvoting. Perhaps something like choosing among: disagree, factually wrong, mean, incoherent Regarding the downvoting of articles: For awhile I used to see a regular pattern of weird articles on the front page. The discussion would then predictably involve a mod defending the article. IMO, I think downvoting an article would help in this situation.

latortuga 6y ago
Didn't slashdot have a feature kind of like this? Reasons why something was upvoted or downvoted alongside their score.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Correct. SoylentNews goes one step further, and adds +0 agree and -0 disagree. I'm not sure if such votes have any real effect.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    I love the idea of +0 for Agree and -0 for Disagree. A comment’s score should be about how high quality it is, not how popular it is or how many people agree with it. Keep a separate agree/disagree count for users who are curious. Leave actual negative scores for low quality things like spam, flamebait and harassment.
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      > A comment’s score should be about how high quality it is, not how popular it is or how many people agree with it. It almost goes without saying, but that's how just about all online communities say the upvote/downvote buttons are to be used. Unfortunately no online community can be trusted to be mature enough to actually follow the rules. Not even HackerNews manages to robustly resist the downvoting of dissenting opinions. > Keep a separate agree/disagree count for users who are curious. That's an interesting idea, to my knowledge SoylentNews doesn't implement this. Having a two dimensional score, one for quality and one for popularity, might be effective in getting people not to abuse the quality feedback system.
- gwbas1c 6y ago
  Yeah, that's the one thing I miss from Slashdot while I'm here. I think it still has the feature... I just haven't used Slashdot enough over the past few years to moderate. But, one of the things I like here is that you can vote in the same thread that you're posting in. (IE, I upvoted you because you reminded me where my idea came from.)
systemvoltage 6y ago
Reduce the bandwagon effect. People see a slightly gray (0 points) comment and pile up on it without thinking. It affects their view and introduces a subconcious bias. Just don't grey out comments for 2 hours or so to allow people to vote. It's fine to greyout comments after that.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
I rather really wish there was no way at all to vote on comments. — what purpose does it serve? I very often see the top comment on the page to be a thoughtless one-line that is self-evident, but also not wrong nor easily disagreed with, and thus incurring the most upvotes from simply being quick to read.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I rather really wish there was no way at all to vote on comments. — what purpose does it serve? It serves both to manage the S/N ratio and to provide feedback to commenters on what the community sees as signal vs. noise. > I very often see the top comment on the page to be a thoughtless one-line that is self-evident, but also not wrong I don’t see that often on threads with substantial discussion. I suppose if that was a real problem, weighting upvotes by some measure of how relatively unfavorable the comment’s position is at the time upvoted would mitigate it.
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    > It serves both to manage the S/N ratio and to provide feedback to commenters on what the community sees as signal vs. noise. No, it provides feedback as to what the community wishes to see as to better help those who care conform to it. Absolutely useless, unimaginative comments that contribute nothing and state the obvious are seldom downvoted, so long as they not voice anything that disagrees with the voterbase, and may even be upvoted. > I don’t see that often on threads with substantial discussion. I suppose if that was a real problem, weighting upvotes by some measure of how relatively unfavorable the comment’s position is at the time upvoted would mitigate it. I went through your own list of comments and could find some greyed out comments that really had no business being greyed out and downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26815734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26815734 This is not noise, this is something someone disagreed with, for reasons I don't understand. I've seen quite a fair bit of greyed out comments on H.N. that were accurate and informative, as the comments that truly do not belong are most likely removed by the moderators to begin with. I believe that comments are most likely to be upvoted by users when they say something the user already agrees with without thinking, as such something that tells him nothing new. — the end result is that the least informative, most obvious comments tend to be the most upvoted.
dang 6y ago
That pattern still happens. At least I hope it does; we want HN to have weird articles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

latortuga 6y ago

Didn't slashdot have a feature kind of like this? Reasons why something was upvoted or downvoted alongside their score.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Correct. SoylentNews goes one step further, and adds +0 agree and -0 disagree. I'm not sure if such votes have any real effect.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I love the idea of +0 for Agree and -0 for Disagree. A comment’s score should be about how high quality it is, not how popular it is or how many people agree with it. Keep a separate agree/disagree count for users who are curious. Leave actual negative scores for low quality things like spam, flamebait and harassment.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    > A comment’s score should be about how high quality it is, not how popular it is or how many people agree with it. It almost goes without saying, but that's how just about all online communities say the upvote/downvote buttons are to be used. Unfortunately no online community can be trusted to be mature enough to actually follow the rules. Not even HackerNews manages to robustly resist the downvoting of dissenting opinions. > Keep a separate agree/disagree count for users who are curious. That's an interesting idea, to my knowledge SoylentNews doesn't implement this. Having a two dimensional score, one for quality and one for popularity, might be effective in getting people not to abuse the quality feedback system.
gwbas1c 6y ago
Yeah, that's the one thing I miss from Slashdot while I'm here. I think it still has the feature... I just haven't used Slashdot enough over the past few years to moderate. But, one of the things I like here is that you can vote in the same thread that you're posting in. (IE, I upvoted you because you reminded me where my idea came from.)

systemvoltage 6y ago

Reduce the bandwagon effect. People see a slightly gray (0 points) comment and pile up on it without thinking. It affects their view and introduces a subconcious bias. Just don't grey out comments for 2 hours or so to allow people to vote. It's fine to greyout comments after that.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

I rather really wish there was no way at all to vote on comments. — what purpose does it serve? I very often see the top comment on the page to be a thoughtless one-line that is self-evident, but also not wrong nor easily disagreed with, and thus incurring the most upvotes from simply being quick to read.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> I rather really wish there was no way at all to vote on comments. — what purpose does it serve? It serves both to manage the S/N ratio and to provide feedback to commenters on what the community sees as signal vs. noise. > I very often see the top comment on the page to be a thoughtless one-line that is self-evident, but also not wrong I don’t see that often on threads with substantial discussion. I suppose if that was a real problem, weighting upvotes by some measure of how relatively unfavorable the comment’s position is at the time upvoted would mitigate it.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  > It serves both to manage the S/N ratio and to provide feedback to commenters on what the community sees as signal vs. noise. No, it provides feedback as to what the community wishes to see as to better help those who care conform to it. Absolutely useless, unimaginative comments that contribute nothing and state the obvious are seldom downvoted, so long as they not voice anything that disagrees with the voterbase, and may even be upvoted. > I don’t see that often on threads with substantial discussion. I suppose if that was a real problem, weighting upvotes by some measure of how relatively unfavorable the comment’s position is at the time upvoted would mitigate it. I went through your own list of comments and could find some greyed out comments that really had no business being greyed out and downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26815734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26815734 This is not noise, this is something someone disagreed with, for reasons I don't understand. I've seen quite a fair bit of greyed out comments on H.N. that were accurate and informative, as the comments that truly do not belong are most likely removed by the moderators to begin with. I believe that comments are most likely to be upvoted by users when they say something the user already agrees with without thinking, as such something that tells him nothing new. — the end result is that the least informative, most obvious comments tend to be the most upvoted.

dang 6y ago

That pattern still happens. At least I hope it does; we want HN to have weird articles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html