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> I've never figured out if up/down votes mean the content is good or that people agree with it? Most social sites have guidelines that downvotes are only supp

> I've never figured out if up/down votes mean the content is good or that people agree with it? Most social sites have guidelines that downvotes are only supposed to be used for comments that break their guidelines. On HN and Reddit it seems many people ignore this and readily downvote opinions they disagree with or comments they simply don’t want to hear. This is most obvious on posts about contentious topics (politics, police, social media, drugs) where well-written posts quickly accumulate downvotes if they don’t agree with the popular sentiment on on HN. It only takes a few instances of seeing your well-written, polite comments with citations being downvoted immediately to -3 to know that unpopular opinions aren’t welcome. That’s how the echo chamber is propagated.

skissane 5y ago
> Most social sites have guidelines that downvotes are only supposed to be used for comments that break their guidelines. On HN and Reddit it seems many people ignore this and readily downvote opinions they disagree with or comments they simply don’t want to hear. On HN they aren’t ignoring anything; the original HN guideline, set by pg himself, is that downvoting for disagreement is okay here. (I don’t necessarily agree with that guideline, but I didn’t start this site.)
jeppester 5y ago
I think a big part of the issue is that it's just too easy to downvote something. I wonder how it would change the situation if you had to defend/explain your downvotes.
- MMS21 5y ago
  Only allow downvotes to a post or comment after replying to it first perhaps
dahart 5y ago
> It only takes a few instances of seeing your well-written, polite comments with citations being downvoted immediately to -3 to know that unpopular opinions aren’t welcome. That’s how the echo chamber is propagated. While that might happen every once in a while, it is important to remember that politely worded comments with citations can (and often are) still rude, wrong, misguided, and/or spin. Unfair downvotes to death have even happened to me once or twice, but I don’t think HN is going to hell in a handbasket yet. I think I’ve seen a lot more people jumping to conclusions about why downvotes are cast than I have of actually positive and helpful comments being unfairly downvoted purely for harmless but unpopular opinions. Unless the downvoter explains their reasons, we don’t know why the downvotes were cast, so it’s not safe to assume it’s for popularity reasons just because it appears polite. HN threads are sometimes interesting because they can attract experts in the domain of the posted article, and it’s common for people who are curious but relatively ignorant to argue with people who really know what they’re talking about. Sometimes it’s not easy to tell who’s who. Either way, if you see comments that don’t deserve to be gray, upvote them!

skissane 5y ago

> Most social sites have guidelines that downvotes are only supposed to be used for comments that break their guidelines. On HN and Reddit it seems many people ignore this and readily downvote opinions they disagree with or comments they simply don’t want to hear. On HN they aren’t ignoring anything; the original HN guideline, set by pg himself, is that downvoting for disagreement is okay here. (I don’t necessarily agree with that guideline, but I didn’t start this site.)

jeppester 5y ago

I think a big part of the issue is that it's just too easy to downvote something. I wonder how it would change the situation if you had to defend/explain your downvotes.

MMS21 5y ago
Only allow downvotes to a post or comment after replying to it first perhaps

dahart 5y ago

> It only takes a few instances of seeing your well-written, polite comments with citations being downvoted immediately to -3 to know that unpopular opinions aren’t welcome. That’s how the echo chamber is propagated. While that might happen every once in a while, it is important to remember that politely worded comments with citations can (and often are) still rude, wrong, misguided, and/or spin. Unfair downvotes to death have even happened to me once or twice, but I don’t think HN is going to hell in a handbasket yet. I think I’ve seen a lot more people jumping to conclusions about why downvotes are cast than I have of actually positive and helpful comments being unfairly downvoted purely for harmless but unpopular opinions. Unless the downvoter explains their reasons, we don’t know why the downvotes were cast, so it’s not safe to assume it’s for popularity reasons just because it appears polite. HN threads are sometimes interesting because they can attract experts in the domain of the posted article, and it’s common for people who are curious but relatively ignorant to argue with people who really know what they’re talking about. Sometimes it’s not easy to tell who’s who. Either way, if you see comments that don’t deserve to be gray, upvote them!