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In general I wouldn't mind downvoting, except for the fact that the text gets lighter as you go below zero. I know I often skip over such text, not because I k

In general I wouldn't mind downvoting, except for the fact that the text gets lighter as you go below zero. I know I often skip over such text, not because I know its been downvoted, but it gets much harder to read (although on occassion I'll highlight it to make it easier to read). If we got rid of the font effect and maybe did something like just put the karma score for comments below one, I would be almost completely indifferent to downvotes.

demallien 15y ago
The strong tendency to downvote ad-hominen / abusive comments on HN has really improved my ability to write comments that are informative and non-inflammatory. That's the good news. The bad news is that the comments that I make that get lots of votes tend to be on bike-shedding topics - things that everyone has an opinion on, such as sexual harrassment in the community, or military toys, or HN meta-discussions. Posts that I consider authoritive (and there are _some_ subjects on which I can talk authoritively!) rarely get many points, typically just 3 or 4. In my opinion, it is this tendency that drives the reddit-isation of social news sites. So, how can we keep the good effects of points (keeping the tone polite), and get rid of the bike-shedding? Well, personally I think it would be good if you got a point for each comment/subcomment made off of your comment. Comments can be flagged with a category:inflammatory/abusive/off-topic. Each flag loses you a point. Points are only visible to the author of a comment. Flag categories are tracked separately so that the author of a comment can see if they are getting flagged for being off-topic, or poor tone, or whatever. I would like to be able to say that we shouldn't care about points, but they really have helped me in making my posts more informative and less inflammatory, so I think they do have some benefit. It's just that the current system has some negative unintended consequences...
- raganwald 15y ago
  That’s really insightful, thank you.
- yid 15y ago
  Social news voting reflects the opinions of the masses. A specialist's authoritative, reasoned opinion is unlikely to be recognized as such, unless it happens to go along with the momentum of public opinion. It's hardly a problem unique to social news -- see Wikipedia, general elections, cable news commentary, prediction market failures, etc. When everyone's vote counts the same, the most popular opinion wins.

demallien 15y ago

The strong tendency to downvote ad-hominen / abusive comments on HN has really improved my ability to write comments that are informative and non-inflammatory. That's the good news. The bad news is that the comments that I make that get lots of votes tend to be on bike-shedding topics - things that everyone has an opinion on, such as sexual harrassment in the community, or military toys, or HN meta-discussions. Posts that I consider authoritive (and there are _some_ subjects on which I can talk authoritively!) rarely get many points, typically just 3 or 4. In my opinion, it is this tendency that drives the reddit-isation of social news sites. So, how can we keep the good effects of points (keeping the tone polite), and get rid of the bike-shedding? Well, personally I think it would be good if you got a point for each comment/subcomment made off of your comment. Comments can be flagged with a category:inflammatory/abusive/off-topic. Each flag loses you a point. Points are only visible to the author of a comment. Flag categories are tracked separately so that the author of a comment can see if they are getting flagged for being off-topic, or poor tone, or whatever. I would like to be able to say that we shouldn't care about points, but they really have helped me in making my posts more informative and less inflammatory, so I think they do have some benefit. It's just that the current system has some negative unintended consequences...

raganwald 15y ago
That’s really insightful, thank you.
yid 15y ago
Social news voting reflects the opinions of the masses. A specialist's authoritative, reasoned opinion is unlikely to be recognized as such, unless it happens to go along with the momentum of public opinion. It's hardly a problem unique to social news -- see Wikipedia, general elections, cable news commentary, prediction market failures, etc. When everyone's vote counts the same, the most popular opinion wins.