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Imagine a News site for Hackers that only had the option to upvote stories. How horrible would that be?!
by jonas21 5y ago
Imagine a News site for Hackers that only had the option to upvote stories. How horrible would that be?!
- pizza234 5y agoThere'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 agoAnd comments can be censored.
- smsm42 5y agoNot too horrible but a bit annoying. Fortunately, HN is not that site.
- xg15 5y agoTo be fair, you can downvote comments here, which is often used effectively. Comments with a high dislike count are even specifically highlighted.
- curtis3389 5y agoHacker News has a downvote button, but you need enough karma to unlock it.
- badRNG 5y agoHN has a downvote button, but only for those who've engaged on HN for a bit prior to downvoting. It helps prevent abuse.
- scrooched_moose 5y agoJust for comments though, right? Stories can only be flagged, which as I understand can lead to bans/losing the privilege if it's abused.
- spurgu 5y agoYes. I think you need 500 karma and it's only for comments.
- Buttons840 5y agoI've been on HN for nearly 10 years and can't downvote stories. Not a complaint, just an observation.
- aeternum 5y agoThe flag button serves as a downvote for stories. Seems like a good system since people are less likely to hit flag just because they disagree.
- blendergeek 5y agoYou need a "score" of at least 500 to get to use downvotes.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rnd0 5y ago> Not a complaint, just an observation. Same. It feels like a passive-aggressive elitism, and not simply an anti-abuse feature. Given the site we're on, I don't have a problem as much with the elitism (I'm not the target demographic, after all -I'm older and not working in tech) as much as with the "passive-aggressive" part of the rhetoric behind withholding downvote capability.
- bogota 5y agoHN does have a downvote button you just don’t have enough reputation to use it yet.
- jeffbee 5y agoIt would be MetaFilter, a site with a noticeably higher level of discourse than HN.
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoIt'd be a lot better, actually. Downvotes are social poison.
- sytelus 5y agoIt is horrible, you just don’t know it it. There is always people like dang dedicating his life to fight all the spam. Look at “new” page and see how many dead links are being submitted each hour. When you put dislike button, you are adding a degree of freedom in expressing an intent for the user. It is upto you, how you use this information. Most systems fail in this task and then they just remove the degree of freedom as their solution.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoNobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.
- dang 5y agoI assume this is sarcastic but flags on stories are a significant option.
- jonas21 5y agoYeah, and it seems like you'll still be able to flag videos on YouTube too. The change makes YouTube more like HN, which I personally feel is a good thing.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoi don't know. The more i look at hn the more i appreciate the thought that went into it. Stories are far more black and white- either they violate the guidelines or not. The only thing a downvote would do is to make the story float all over the front page as there is an inevitable vote war. I would even say that most users don't like any given news story, which would lead to the situation that everything would get downvoted into oblivion. Comments OTOH lend themselves far more to moderation by downvotes. Remember we still get the "nuclear option" of flagging a submission.