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I actually disagree with the "It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." I've seen plenty of cases where the interesting discussion was in response t

I actually disagree with the "It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." I've seen plenty of cases where the interesting discussion was in response to a "why the downvotes?" question. It seems like it's a fairly safe bet that at least sometimes the interesting discussion was actually sparked by the "why the downvotes?" comment, and, without it, people might not have been motivated to actually articulate their thoughts. I think the complaint that people are often trying to raise is that, while downvotes for comments that are actually hostile seem like a reasonable mechanism for keeping up the quality of conversation, the semi-official sanctioning of using the downvote button to register your displeasure with an opinion you don't agree with, without having to actually share your own opinion, encourages at least some thoughtful discussion to be replaced with knee-jerk reactions. Some folks who've been on HN since early on see it as the driver of a sort of "endless summer" effect, and are perhaps nostalgic for a time when the social conventions around this button were a bit different, and served to foster more civil, thoughtful discussion.

loceng 5y ago
Upvotes-only system will drive quality contents towards the top and give them more exposure. Downvotes should just be gone, it rewards laziness and I suppose keeps lazier people who just enjoy/need a quick hit of dopamine to feel like they've contributed somehow - so probably keeps more people addicted and coming back, people who otherwise would get bored and not come back as much; it makes me wonder what quality of comments people who downvote also make, I wonder if the less downvotes people do the higher quality comments (need to define what attributes would be part of quality)? Dang/HN doesn't seem to be open to experimenting either.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  I've sometimes wondered a similar thing. Maybe keep the votes (even the down), but eliminate most the ways they're displayed aside from how they influence sorting. I don't see any problem with having a community moderation system. It's the aspects of gamification and public shaming that are troublesome. Do I really benefit from seeing my karma at the top right of every page? Does the community at large benefit from me seeing it? I'd be interested if sorting could be done better, too. The way that posts accumulate votes according to zipf's law together with a feedback effect where people mostly only read (and vote on) the top few comments means that there's a strong bias toward the discussion being dominated by the earliest posts. Ones that have had a chance to benefit from and be informed by points raised in earlier comments are at a bit of a disadvantage in the karmic rat race.
  - spiralx 5y ago
    Slashdot's moderation system was amazingly effective given the complete hands off policy to comments on the site and anonymous posting was allowed without signing up. It's features were: * comment scores clamped between +5 and -1 * anonymous user comments started at 0 * comments at -1 were hidden by default (although you could set the threshold to whatever you wanted) * required a reason for moderation (Insightful/Interesting/Funny or Flamebait/Troll IIRC) * only gave out 5 "moderation points" at a time to users on a random basis * mod points expired after a few days, and IIRC not using them lowered your chance of receiving them in future * the pool of users who could receive mod points excluded the 10% most active posters on the site * you couldn't moderate in an article you'd commented in * if you commented in an article you'd moderated in, all those moderations were undone * there was a meta-moderation system where you could rate anonymous moderations as "fair" or "unfair", which would influence the chance of the moderating user receiving future mod points It was a complex system overall, but not really from the user's POV. The big difference was the idea of requiring moderation points in order to up- or down-vote comments, but I think clamping the lower-bound of comment scores would be an improvement even in systems where anyone can vote. They originally showed your total karma but changed it to a descriptive term to address karma whoring, anything over 50 was just "Excellent".
- robbrown451 5y ago
  I would not like upvote only, it does nothing to discourage certain "bad behavior" which ruins so many forums. Divisive comments (such as the toxic political comments that dominate in so many forums) get lots of upvotes from people "on their side" but without a downvote button, they ruin forums. That said, I would like to see such things as preventing you from downvoting more than you upvote and/or comment. I'd love to see more experimentation.

loceng 5y ago

Upvotes-only system will drive quality contents towards the top and give them more exposure. Downvotes should just be gone, it rewards laziness and I suppose keeps lazier people who just enjoy/need a quick hit of dopamine to feel like they've contributed somehow - so probably keeps more people addicted and coming back, people who otherwise would get bored and not come back as much; it makes me wonder what quality of comments people who downvote also make, I wonder if the less downvotes people do the higher quality comments (need to define what attributes would be part of quality)? Dang/HN doesn't seem to be open to experimenting either.

mumblemumble 5y ago
I've sometimes wondered a similar thing. Maybe keep the votes (even the down), but eliminate most the ways they're displayed aside from how they influence sorting. I don't see any problem with having a community moderation system. It's the aspects of gamification and public shaming that are troublesome. Do I really benefit from seeing my karma at the top right of every page? Does the community at large benefit from me seeing it? I'd be interested if sorting could be done better, too. The way that posts accumulate votes according to zipf's law together with a feedback effect where people mostly only read (and vote on) the top few comments means that there's a strong bias toward the discussion being dominated by the earliest posts. Ones that have had a chance to benefit from and be informed by points raised in earlier comments are at a bit of a disadvantage in the karmic rat race.
- spiralx 5y ago
  Slashdot's moderation system was amazingly effective given the complete hands off policy to comments on the site and anonymous posting was allowed without signing up. It's features were: * comment scores clamped between +5 and -1 * anonymous user comments started at 0 * comments at -1 were hidden by default (although you could set the threshold to whatever you wanted) * required a reason for moderation (Insightful/Interesting/Funny or Flamebait/Troll IIRC) * only gave out 5 "moderation points" at a time to users on a random basis * mod points expired after a few days, and IIRC not using them lowered your chance of receiving them in future * the pool of users who could receive mod points excluded the 10% most active posters on the site * you couldn't moderate in an article you'd commented in * if you commented in an article you'd moderated in, all those moderations were undone * there was a meta-moderation system where you could rate anonymous moderations as "fair" or "unfair", which would influence the chance of the moderating user receiving future mod points It was a complex system overall, but not really from the user's POV. The big difference was the idea of requiring moderation points in order to up- or down-vote comments, but I think clamping the lower-bound of comment scores would be an improvement even in systems where anyone can vote. They originally showed your total karma but changed it to a descriptive term to address karma whoring, anything over 50 was just "Excellent".
robbrown451 5y ago
I would not like upvote only, it does nothing to discourage certain "bad behavior" which ruins so many forums. Divisive comments (such as the toxic political comments that dominate in so many forums) get lots of upvotes from people "on their side" but without a downvote button, they ruin forums. That said, I would like to see such things as preventing you from downvoting more than you upvote and/or comment. I'd love to see more experimentation.