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Hmm. For me the dislike button was informative. If feels like they are trying to create a world where everything can only be good, better, even more better, whi

• notreallyserio 5y ago
  Removing downvotes from SO seems like it would be a net good. Instead of downvoting, people could be more encouraged to post better and more correct solutions. A good intermediate solution would be to only record downvotes that come with a comment.
  • politician 5y ago
    There's no salvaging what SO has become - the place where good complex questions are promptly closed by uninformed moderators. The place where questions about new versions of software are closed as duplicates of questions about older obsolete versions whose answers are no longer relevant. The place where popular questions with hundreds of upvotes and strong discussions are closed as off-topic.
    • manquer 5y ago
      If you see SO as community for developers these are all problems yes, however if you see it as a high quality wiki or KB, most of these issues are not problems for readers[1] . All knowledge repositories go through this problem, Wikipedia sites are equally notorious for making it very hard to contribute. As a KB grows older and larger, it becomes hard to balance the need to keep the current KB clean and enable creation of new content. Typically administrators respond by making it harder for the contributors rather than taking risk of poorer quality for the users, to contribute you have to become effectively professional and abide by institutional rules you may not agree with. Distributed editing tools only solves part of the problem and cannot not solve how to keep generating professional quality content without paying. Strong moderation is what differentiates SO from Quora, I rather live with SO style rules as a contributor than suffer poor Quora type content quality as a user. [1] I am cognizant of outdated version problems you raised, my anecdotal experience is in general the quality of answers that are present for a reader has not dropped massively in last 10 years.
      • notreallyserio 5y ago
        If you see SO as a high quality anything, I'm not sure what to say. It's filled with people answering the question they wish was asked instead of ignoring the question they're not satisfied with.
        • manquer 5y ago
          I don't know a platform today that has better content than SO for technical questions. My code throughput have reduced a lot in recent years with changing roles and I prefer reading the actual documentation, I am no longer solving a immediate/specific problem. Even then I still click search hits on SO few times a week, and most times after clicking through a few questions I can find what I need. Your(others) experience will vary from my mine of course, but I don't see anyone attempting a better model or better content short of source documentation .
          • eitland 5y ago
            Like Google their main competitor is their former selves. As the mix of us who knew early versions of Google and Stack overflow gets diluted year by year by new users who don't know how well these systems used to work this will become less and less of a problem for them so they can sleep well at work. Until someone disrupts them. I'm happy to say it feels we are getting close to that moment now ;-)
        • jokethrowaway 5y ago
          The best use of SO for me is: - Write an elaborate question about an apparently unsolvable problem - Realise the mistake while trying to explain it to the SO crowd - Close the website At some point I wanted to have a high score to see if it would affect my daily rate (it didn't) or if I could use it somehow (same as having tons of stars on GitHub - another useless errand). I started replying to a bunch of questions and the sheer stupidity of most of them made me realise I wasn't ready for that. Most of the content on SO is not great. There are definitely few gems in there and I certainly enjoyed "the <center> cannot hold", but most of the times the docs are better. On a side note. I never understood people that copy code from Stack Overflow. I can understand people who are not familiar with a programming language - but surely if you're a minimum proficient it would be faster to just write what you need to do or look for a library to do it?
  • manquer 5y ago
    It is likely I may know enough to judge a proposed solution is wrong or inadequate etc but not enough to write a better one. Vast majority of users who can down-vote would come under this category. Encouraging them to write their own solution or even a critique/comment is not necessarily better. You can also down vote questions not only answers, a question could be poor but it does not mean I can come up with a better one.
    • notreallyserio 5y ago
      IMO it's perfectly acceptable to not only not downvote but to ignore a question or answer if you don't know/don't want to put in more effort to figure it out. Maybe someone else has faced the problem and understands how the questioner came to write the question they did?
      • manquer 5y ago
        Many times it is not hard to figure out why the question was written in a bad way. Spending time in the review queue can give a good sense on bad types of content that are typical on the site. Common issues I come across are very vague statements without an actual question, very broad advisory /opinionated questions, very specific solve this bug in my day job/code , no examples/illustrations added, or a big log or code dump - i.e. no effort to separate out the actual problem statement, do my homework kind of questions, typically there will already be comments asking for improvements without much impact. I wouldn't down-vote a question that I don't fully understand ( I guess that is true for most users too), at the same time I want to make sure bad content is not encouraged. It is just internet points for both users, nothing to fret about.
  • tester756 5y ago
    >Removing downvotes from SO seems like it would be a net good. Instead of downvoting, people could be more encouraged to post better and more correct solutions. and way more spam, no thanks.
• daveoc64 5y ago
  Downvotes on Stack Overflow/Exchange require users to meet a reputation threshold (much like HN) and each downvote removes 1 reputation from the user that gives the downvote. Dislikes on YouTube and similar platforms don't have any cost or barrier to entry.
  • suyash 5y ago
    but everyone can still the the count - that is the main point here
    • nyxaiur 5y ago
      And the point of the comment above yours is that public voting systems are easily manipulated and you should always take them with a grain of salt. most people can't or don't know how to do that.
    • daveoc64 5y ago
      Everyone can see the count on Stack Overflow, but there are several mechanisms in place to protect that count from all sorts of abuse (bots, tactical voting, second accounts etc.). The same is simply not true of YouTube or any other kind of social media upvote/downvote system - anyone can sign up for an account, and their votes immediately count and have equal weighting. The same is not true of Stack Exchange or HN, where you have to put a lot of effort in with a community to be able to downvote something.
      • Tijdreiziger 5y ago
        > The same is simply not true of YouTube or any other kind of social media upvote/downvote system - anyone can sign up for an account, and their votes immediately count and have equal weighting. I don't think this is true for YouTube - you need a Google account, and you can't create a Google account without verifying your phone number. (Unless you can create numerous accounts with one phone number? But that seems like an easy loophole to close.)
        • 5y ago
• runevault 5y ago
  I mostly agree with you, with the caveat of brigading being a very real thing that lowers the information value. But then why show upvotes either because positive brigading is just as damaging to the information as downvote brigades.
  • dcow 5y ago
    Exactly. Seems like you could just throttle votes or abstract the metric to smooth out spikes and account for brigading in either direction...
    • prions 5y ago
      So you'd rather they manipulate the data and potentially mislead users? Sounds like a slippery slope to me \s
      • dcow 5y ago
        No I'd rather have a know established system/metric in place that amortizes brigading so as to diffuse the effects of mob attacks on internet content.
        • csee 5y ago
          I don't even buy YouTube's claim that "brigading" or "dislike attacks" is a real thing or a problem. If they have a minimum number of minutes that a video needs to be watched before a vote is counted, then that vote is legitimate, full stop. YouTube are simply unhappy about which videos users dislike, whether it's the White House's videos, important brands, or YT's own videos.
          • dcow 5y ago
            I like that solution even more.
          • davorak 5y ago
            > If they have a minimum number of minutes that a video needs to be watched before a vote is counted I think that unintentionally removes down votes on obviously bad videos that people do not waste much time watching.
• genewitch 5y ago
  Kinda of ironic that you can't downvote/dislike on this site here without enough upvotes yourself...
  • crowbahr 5y ago
    That's not the solution proposed by youtube though: They're _never_ allowing you to "prove yourself" the way that hacker news does.
    • LarrySellers 5y ago
      There are no dislike/downvote buttons on submissions on HN (only comments), no matter how much you "prove yourself"
      • WithinReason 5y ago
        "flag" is used as dislike
  • cute_boi 5y ago
    actually this is good because it helps to mitigate bot somehow.
  • dcow 5y ago
    How is that ironic? It's a well established spam prevention measure not a complete removal of a useful metric. It exists prominently on e.g. stack exchange sites and has been a common feature in general on reputation based forum software. What's perhaps ironic is that you can't see vote counts on HN comments _at all_ unless you're the author. So HN has already implemented this feature they just did it sensibly and included upvotes (on comments, at least) too. Most ironically, the front page shows only up-vote counts, something people are citing as a ruined experience in the case of YT removing the dislike count yet is par for the course for submissions on this very site.
  • mattowen_uk 5y ago
    To have full rights in a civilised society, you need to prove that you can be a good citizen first. What's wrong with that?
• adoxyz 5y ago
  100% agree. If they're going to do away with the dislike counter, then do away with the like counter as well.
  • mattowen_uk 5y ago
    My opinion on this, is that they should hide BOTH the counts, and only the creator can see it. Keep the actual buttons, as they signal to YouTube what you do and do not want to see in future, but the actual counts only have use to the creator... and even then a simple ratio or percentage alongside the video in the Creator Studio is enough; there's no need for actuall numbers. What's not been mentioned is that YouTube add a small % of fake clicks to the like/dislike buttons, and also hide the real counts for a while, if there's a rush on clicks (to dissuade click-bandwagoning).
• esnard 5y ago
  Yeah, that bugs me a lot, especially since the comments section of a video can be heavily censored by the author.
  • adminscoffee 5y ago
    yeah good is ruining everything they touch
• allenu 5y ago
  I also found it informative. If I see a clip explaining something that has a large number of dislikes, I immediately back out and look for another one. Most of the time, those dislikes are warranted. I honestly don't know if it's a generational thing or overall cultural shift, but it feels like negativity (at least in the workplace is where I've seen this) is either less tolerated or less shared. There's a bias towards being positive about everything, even for things that aren't... great. It feels like self censorship, and this isn't even for things that are political, just subjective.
• ohyeshedid 5y ago
  Likes and dislikes don't ultimately matter to Google, engagement does. Viewing is enough: likes, dislikes, comments; those are just multipliers. Hiding dislikes is something Brands want.
  • ridaj 5y ago
    Public dislike counts were opportunities for brands to own up to their ambition for authentic engagement. This is maybe the main thing lost here - without putting this at stake, and with full moderation powers on their video comments, brands basically only have a veneer of authenticity at this point. There's not as much at stake for them anymore, very limited downside / reason to care.
  • Igelau 5y ago
    > engagement That's the word. It isn't really "likes" in the sense that we normally think of it. It's ticks on the relationship of "engagement" to "dollars". IIRC, Facebook was pretty upfront about this being why they didn't implement a "dislike" button; the information wasn't valuable to them.
    • epolanski 5y ago
      Facebook said it lowered engagement iirc, same reason why they removed likes count on Instagram, it reduced engagement, people posted less if they feared being judged by the number of likes.
    • ohyeshedid 5y ago
      And now you've got me wondering if anyone has ever tried to compare likes to profitability of product launches.
• kobalsky 5y ago
  for all practical purposes it was cosmetic. I constantly got heavily downvoted slideshow + text-to-speech autogenerated garbage videos that were ranked above good videos on search results
• ghosty141 5y ago
  I think this shows what standpoint Google has in this: The dislike button is not supposed to be used by the user, but rather the creator. You as a user should watch the video no matter what and then rate the creator, not skip it if you see a large amount of dislikes.
  • DoItToMe81 5y ago
    No, thanks. I use Youtube for technical videos and videos pertaining to certain tasks and the dislike ratio is nearly always an indicator of whether or not the video is misleading, incorrect or uninformative.
• kingcharles 5y ago
  In New World Order everything is doubleplusgood.
• jonas21 5y ago
  Imagine a News site for Hackers that only had the option to upvote stories. How horrible would that be?!
  • pizza234 5y ago
    There's a significant difference - misleading/malicious content. A fake trailer can for example be spotted by the number of negative votes. If the negative votes concept is gone, using a low number of positive votes as indicator is less effective.
    • epolanski 5y ago
      And comments can be censored.
  • smsm42 5y ago
    Not too horrible but a bit annoying. Fortunately, HN is not that site.
  • xg15 5y ago
    To be fair, you can downvote comments here, which is often used effectively. Comments with a high dislike count are even specifically highlighted.
  • curtis3389 5y ago
    Hacker News has a downvote button, but you need enough karma to unlock it.
    • vadfa 5y ago
      Stories can never be downvoted. Only comments can be downvoted.
    • Shared404 5y ago
      They were mentioning stories, which afaik has no way to downvote - though I may just have not unlocked that yet!
  • 5y ago
• quotemstr 5y ago
  > If feels like they are trying to create a world where everything can only be good, better, even more better, which just doesn't represent reality. It's part of a trend towards fake, cloying, passive-aggressive forced positivity across the whole industry. It's a California thing. Time was, if you didn't like a bit of code, you could say so. Nowadays, you have to wrap criticism in right zillion levels of disingenuous praise before you can even start getting to the point -- and the you get fake "thank you for the excellent feedback!!!!1!!" typed with gritted teeth and fantasies of backstabbing later on. I've always found the in-your-face New York style more genuine, more honest, more efficient, and ultimately, kinder and more respectful.
• spurgu 5y ago
  Yup. If I'm watching a positive review of a [insert-object] I'm planning on buying and it has 10k likes visible while hiding 2k dislikes I'm probably going to get horribly misled. While if it's a video of a political debate I would expect there to be a ton of dislikes by default, so I suppose it wouldn't matter much in that scenario. And in howto/explanation-videos, if dislikes aren't shown, there's no signal for people telling them whether or not it's a good explanation. I suppose you could devise a dislike count yourself by calculating the likes/views ratio. But why... people are deliberately putting their content up publicly for display and as such are opening themselves up for scrutiny/criticism/dislikes. It can't be all praise and hugs and kisses. That's how we treat children.
  • bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    I guess we can make our own standard, someone should comment something like "This video is garbage." or simply "Dislike" and the amount of thumbs up on that comment can be taken as video dislikes. I sometimes look for obscure how-to's, and I get garbage videos not even answering the question. If YouTube can get rid of all that garbage, then not having a dislike button is fine.
    • NavinF 5y ago
      The uploaders of garbage videos will delete all comments along those lines. The inability to delete dislikes is what made them so useful.
      • bellyfullofbac 5y ago
        The alternative would be a 3rd party browser extension, that store the dislikes on a 3rd party server... In the 90's there was an add-on that allowed anyone to comment on any webpage: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~orit/utok.html http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~orit/utok.html Although imagine having such a tool nowadays and opening cnn.com, it'd be like walking into a MAGA rally.
    • spurgu 5y ago
      > someone should comment something like "This video is garbage." or simply "Dislike" and the amount of thumbs up on that comment can be taken as video dislikes. The problem with Youtube as I see it is that these comments never rise to the top. It's always compliments and ass-kissing and high-fives that make it there. Twitter tends to gravitate towards the opposite. It's all fascinating though.
• pjmlp 5y ago
  I really don't get this modern culture of positiveness, people cannot take a negative remark of any kind, kids should not play with anything that can hurt themselves, we are forbidden to say anything that can be interpreted in a negative way,...
  • userbinator 5y ago
    I find it ironic that your comment is downvoted ;-) I agree, this "toxic positivity" can't be good for society in the long term. The continued drive towards stupidity and unquestioning, docile populations is going to slowly turn into a massive dystopia.
    • pjmlp 5y ago
      As if I would care, I have seen plenty of stuff in this world, and yes we must care for the others and respect them. There is a red line between caring for the others, and what is nothing more than plain censorship via "toxic positivity".
• president 5y ago
  > If feels like they are trying to create a world where everything can only be good, better, even more better, which just doesn't represent reality. If they actually believed in the rationale behind this change, they would get rid performance reviews for engineers at Youtube too.