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I think it depends on the website. I used Reddit between 2012-2020 and I believe that website's community was ruined by the upvote/downvote system. For me, wha
by pugets 5y ago
I think it depends on the website. I used Reddit between 2012-2020 and I believe that website's community was ruined by the upvote/downvote system.
For me, what it always comes back to is this: A downvote is meant to indicate "this comment does not contribute to the conversation," but many website userbases misuse downvotes to say "I disagree." If upvotes/downvotes are proxies for agrees/disagrees, then the comment sections can get ugly.
I believe HN thrives despite the upvote/downvote system because this website is a little more mature than others.
- forbiddenvoid 5y agoIt doesn't hurt that new users also can't downvote by default, and that it takes nontrivial contributions to get that ability.
- asiachick 5y agoThe HN downvote is also for disagreement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314
- astrange 5y agoReddit's comment quality is actually better than it used to be, though I don't understand what changed. It's true that the #1 comment on every post used to be wrong or a series of unfunny jokes, and then maybe #2 was good. Currently their main problem (which is unsolvable) is just that everyone uses it and so there's new teenagers to ask trivial gender war questions on AskReddit every week.