6 ms·

I agree with you 100%, I love HN and have been here for years but the downvoting feature disgusts me. Either allow a post or don’t, but this weird “fading” of s

by rcurry 5y ago

I agree with you 100%, I love HN and have been here for years but the downvoting feature disgusts me. Either allow a post or don’t, but this weird “fading” of someone’s post just because some people don’t agree with what someone has to say strikes me as petty and cheap. HN should be bigger than that.

FalconSensei 5y ago
And to prove your point, your comment is faded with no replies, even though you didn't say anything wrong, but only expressed your opinion.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  That's the horse of twenty-somethings, and their "older" cohort, who think being a jerk is funny. I've definitely done that way too much here at times, oops. Still, it falls on the creators and maintainers of HN to do something about it. I'd be interested to read any discussion in suport of down votes from the crew who run the site.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    Horse. Deary me. I meant horde.
huffmsa 5y ago
I've long held that you should have to reply to the comment when downvoting. Even if it's just a "no", that's better than the ability to hide a comment you don't agree with
- sizt 5y ago
  Narcissists love a system of no downvotes, and other forms of passive aggressive, group think.
- strken 5y ago
  The problem is that extremely low-quality comments (e.g. anything from "agree" and off-topic memes to irrelevant political sledging to the kind of thing that will get the user banned when a moderator sees it) are the majority of downvoted comments. Requiring a reply would give them long chains of unnecessary comments until they hit the threshold to be hidden.
BelmundoRegal 5y ago
I have come to see this "fading" as highlighting. Here as well as in the world at large. To be fair, most of the time the downvoted comment here is trash in one way or another, but sometimes it's gold. Often times it's neither and should be left alone. See also ; https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/ https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/
smogcutter 5y ago
I see what you mean, but I think the “fading” is meant to systematically steer downvotes away from meaning plain disagreement. Whether it succeeds is another issue. The fading indicates that what an HN downvote means is “I think people shouldn’t see this/this shouldn’t be part of the thread”. Whether it’s bc the post is off topic, flame bait, trolling, just plain boneheaded, etc., is kind of beside the point, although ideally it isn’t simply disagreement. But that means replying to a post you downvote makes no sense. Why further a conversation you’re trying to bury? Also, if an opinion is so unpopular it gets downvoted into oblivion, maybe a forum based on votes just isn’t the right venue for it. Start a blog.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  It's more about the opinion relative to the overall context of the thread. As an example, if you try to defend or contextualise Facebook (the company's) actions in a thread about how much they suck, you'll get downvoted. The same opinion in a different thread will probably just be ignored, because people self-select into threads based on what they care about, and the FB dislikers won't be so concentrated. Nastiness and "can't you just" statements tend to get downvoted regardless of context though.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
It gets faded to signal to other people "this has been downvoted" because you can't see the karma score next to the comment anymore like you could in the early days. One of the things this signal does is it provides the opportunity for corrective upvotes by people who feel "That didn't deserve to be downvoted" which is one of the cultural traditions here. I think the downvote system here works remarkably well. It's a very big problem to never allow any kind of signal of disagreement or whatever and the system here is intended to keep singal-to-noise ratio high. It's a big forum and anyone can join. There is no fee to join. You don't need an invitation to join. You need mechanisms for helping people learn "This is not welcome on HN. This is not how we do things here." to try to keep Eternal September down to a dull roar so HN can do what HN does better than any other forum I have ever seen, which is why I hang here so much even though it's never been an easy thing for me to be here.
- hooande 5y ago
  if you don't mind my asking, why isn't it an easy thing for you to be on here?
  - jldl805 5y ago
    I can't speak for the person you are talking to but this site has much less tolerance for deviation from cultural norms - which is both a good and bad thing. Compared to even niche subreddits there is much less room for "freewheeling" (can't think of a better term for it) comments. It has costs but what for what you pay, you gain in a more serious and sober environment.
    - 6510 5y ago
      Its not serious at all, its a news aggregator that by very silly means filters stuff to the top that is worth reading. Serious is when you have skilled professionals pick the topics and an interesting debate is when preferably everyone disagrees.
      - DoreenMichele 5y ago
marrs 5y ago
Couldn’t agree more. I also find it rude for other people to presume I need to be told what to read. And this regardless of the fact that downvoted comments are often more nuanced and interesting than the content surrounding them

by rcurry 5y ago

FalconSensei 5y ago

And to prove your point, your comment is faded with no replies, even though you didn't say anything wrong, but only expressed your opinion.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
That's the horse of twenty-somethings, and their "older" cohort, who think being a jerk is funny. I've definitely done that way too much here at times, oops. Still, it falls on the creators and maintainers of HN to do something about it. I'd be interested to read any discussion in suport of down votes from the crew who run the site.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  Horse. Deary me. I meant horde.

huffmsa 5y ago

I've long held that you should have to reply to the comment when downvoting. Even if it's just a "no", that's better than the ability to hide a comment you don't agree with

sizt 5y ago
Narcissists love a system of no downvotes, and other forms of passive aggressive, group think.
strken 5y ago
The problem is that extremely low-quality comments (e.g. anything from "agree" and off-topic memes to irrelevant political sledging to the kind of thing that will get the user banned when a moderator sees it) are the majority of downvoted comments. Requiring a reply would give them long chains of unnecessary comments until they hit the threshold to be hidden.

BelmundoRegal 5y ago

I have come to see this "fading" as highlighting. Here as well as in the world at large. To be fair, most of the time the downvoted comment here is trash in one way or another, but sometimes it's gold. Often times it's neither and should be left alone. See also ; https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/ https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/

smogcutter 5y ago

I see what you mean, but I think the “fading” is meant to systematically steer downvotes away from meaning plain disagreement. Whether it succeeds is another issue. The fading indicates that what an HN downvote means is “I think people shouldn’t see this/this shouldn’t be part of the thread”. Whether it’s bc the post is off topic, flame bait, trolling, just plain boneheaded, etc., is kind of beside the point, although ideally it isn’t simply disagreement. But that means replying to a post you downvote makes no sense. Why further a conversation you’re trying to bury? Also, if an opinion is so unpopular it gets downvoted into oblivion, maybe a forum based on votes just isn’t the right venue for it. Start a blog.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
It's more about the opinion relative to the overall context of the thread. As an example, if you try to defend or contextualise Facebook (the company's) actions in a thread about how much they suck, you'll get downvoted. The same opinion in a different thread will probably just be ignored, because people self-select into threads based on what they care about, and the FB dislikers won't be so concentrated. Nastiness and "can't you just" statements tend to get downvoted regardless of context though.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

It gets faded to signal to other people "this has been downvoted" because you can't see the karma score next to the comment anymore like you could in the early days. One of the things this signal does is it provides the opportunity for corrective upvotes by people who feel "That didn't deserve to be downvoted" which is one of the cultural traditions here. I think the downvote system here works remarkably well. It's a very big problem to never allow any kind of signal of disagreement or whatever and the system here is intended to keep singal-to-noise ratio high. It's a big forum and anyone can join. There is no fee to join. You don't need an invitation to join. You need mechanisms for helping people learn "This is not welcome on HN. This is not how we do things here." to try to keep Eternal September down to a dull roar so HN can do what HN does better than any other forum I have ever seen, which is why I hang here so much even though it's never been an easy thing for me to be here.

hooande 5y ago
if you don't mind my asking, why isn't it an easy thing for you to be on here?
- jldl805 5y ago
  I can't speak for the person you are talking to but this site has much less tolerance for deviation from cultural norms - which is both a good and bad thing. Compared to even niche subreddits there is much less room for "freewheeling" (can't think of a better term for it) comments. It has costs but what for what you pay, you gain in a more serious and sober environment.
  - 6510 5y ago
    Its not serious at all, its a news aggregator that by very silly means filters stuff to the top that is worth reading. Serious is when you have skilled professionals pick the topics and an interesting debate is when preferably everyone disagrees.
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago

marrs 5y ago

Couldn’t agree more. I also find it rude for other people to presume I need to be told what to read. And this regardless of the fact that downvoted comments are often more nuanced and interesting than the content surrounding them