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It is valuable, and I appreciate your response. It may not surprise you to know that I fundamentally disagree with downvoting in general- I feel like there a d

It is valuable, and I appreciate your response. It may not surprise you to know that I fundamentally disagree with downvoting in general- I feel like there a difference between signaling "this is low quality content" and "I disagree with your point". In HN there's no way to make that distinction, so if you want to express a viewpoint that's unpopular (which we should encourage in debate) you have to be willing to pay a karma penalty.

Pfhreak 5y ago
I feel the same, actually. I'm a Marxist. I often get downvoted for mentioning something about socialism or social justice in general. I believe many of those downvotes are because the community here is not particularly fond of that ideology. I get it. I'm not particularly fond of lots of ideologies. But I don't have tools here to differentiate between, "I disagree" and "Your comment is structurally bad (rude/breaks the rules/is low effort/etc." I think we'd both benefit from breaking the coupling between those two reasons to downvote. (And yes, I'm aware that downvoting because you disagree is against the rules, but I don't think that stops anyone. :D )
- tptacek 5y ago
  Downvoting because of disagreement is specifically allowed here, and pretty much always has been.
  - Pfhreak 5y ago
    You know, I could have sworn I read in the guidelines somewhere that downvotes aren't to be used just to signal that you disagree, but in diving a bit deeper I think that's just one of those things that people say, but doesn't actually ground to any specific rules/guidelines. And in fact, an early post says the opposite -- downvoting because you disagree is fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
    - jimmux 5y ago
      You might be thinking of the Reddit guidelines, where this rule is famously never observed.
tptacek 5y ago
Please stop going on about downvoting. The guidelines specifically ask you not to.

Pfhreak 5y ago

I feel the same, actually. I'm a Marxist. I often get downvoted for mentioning something about socialism or social justice in general. I believe many of those downvotes are because the community here is not particularly fond of that ideology. I get it. I'm not particularly fond of lots of ideologies. But I don't have tools here to differentiate between, "I disagree" and "Your comment is structurally bad (rude/breaks the rules/is low effort/etc." I think we'd both benefit from breaking the coupling between those two reasons to downvote. (And yes, I'm aware that downvoting because you disagree is against the rules, but I don't think that stops anyone. :D )

tptacek 5y ago
Downvoting because of disagreement is specifically allowed here, and pretty much always has been.
- Pfhreak 5y ago
  You know, I could have sworn I read in the guidelines somewhere that downvotes aren't to be used just to signal that you disagree, but in diving a bit deeper I think that's just one of those things that people say, but doesn't actually ground to any specific rules/guidelines. And in fact, an early post says the opposite -- downvoting because you disagree is fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
  - jimmux 5y ago
    You might be thinking of the Reddit guidelines, where this rule is famously never observed.

tptacek 5y ago

Please stop going on about downvoting. The guidelines specifically ask you not to.