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Given the propensity for users to downvote comments they disagree with and upvote populist but empty rhetoric like anything that bashes Gruber, I'm not sure tha

Given the propensity for users to downvote comments they disagree with and upvote populist but empty rhetoric like anything that bashes Gruber, I'm not sure that the karma formula should be HN's first concern. Before we optimize how we weight karma, we should first ensure that points are awarded for valuable behavior. Right now, I think it's measuring conformity. Is that true? And if true, is that deireable?

dhugiaskmak 15y ago
I don't know how you could possibly tell. Upvote/downvote isn't a very fine-grained tool to express one's opinion with.
pbreit 15y ago
Aside: if you want automatic downvotes, suggest that Groupon might be viable. Since downvoting erases, it should definitely not be used for simple disagreement. It should be used on poor arguments, bad faith, pointless posts, etc. It's harder to suggest that upvoting should not be used for agreement. Regardless, in both cases, I prefer that voting be used to evaluate quality.
- po 15y ago
  You're absolutely right. Upvote and downvote should be separate dimensions not two extremes of one dimension. The opposite of up/down vote is apathy. By summing up and down votes, you are destroying data. There is no difference between a controversial point and an idea nobody cares about.
  - sjs 15y ago
    Excellent point. I use a browser extension to show up and down votes on Reddit and I really miss that info here on HN. Not that we get to see comment scores anymore but I still miss it even on my own comments.
  - llambda 15y ago
    It would be interesting to have no downvote option at all and instead rely on flagging the comments that are effectively spam. The problem then becomes relying on the moderators to remove or degrade such posts. But clearly the upvote/downvote mechanism is broken as you've described...
    - po 15y ago
      If you remove downvote, people will start to use 'flag' to censor people and you won't be able to trust it anymore. I think leaving the buttons but just separating the calculations is enough: mostly upvotes: keep it mostly downvotes: drop it, its junk; the community has spoken many mixed up/down votes: controversial topic, maybe delay the appearance of reply links? few votes: boring, maybe sort it lower
      - llambda 15y ago
        The problem is that downvotes are used as a way of disagreeing with a comment. But what would be more productive and worthwhile is when there's differing perspectives there's a dialogue. Downvotes should be used to filter spam and other cruft but not differences of opinion.
- iand 15y ago
  Maybe the right karma metric is whether the poster has added anything new to the conversation. Downvote for repetition and zero new information.
- rimantas 15y ago
  I still stand by my point, that symmetrical actions should have symmetrical meaning. If upvote is used for agreement, downvote should be used for disagreement. Would you enjoy if your right arrow were to move cursor to the right, and the left arrow to move it up? If you don't want downvotes as the sign of disagreement then remove that arrow altogether and leave just "flag". On the other hand, I don't really get how is the system where showing only agreement is allowed is any better.
  - pbreit 15y ago
    The current problem is that while both arrows have a similar effect on positioning, down voting also causes the post to sort of disappear, which is ok for lousy posts but tragic for good, but unpopular posts.
joelhaus 15y ago
> we should first ensure that points are awarded for valuable behavior Do url submissions deserve points: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fpointsforthis&t=Should%20this%20Garner%20Points%3F http://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.y...? I think that this may drive certain undesirable behavior (e.g. duplicate story submissions, down-vote capability for new-ish accounts). On the other hand, points derived from the comments you make are probably a better indicator of the quality of your contribution to HN.
jmilloy 15y ago
High quality, contentious comments should be front and center in the discussion. People also seem to like expressing their opinion by clicking, which acts counter to this goal. I find myself wishing there were two values: agree/disagree and valuable/useless. Not because I think we particularly care about the agree/disagree ratio (we can form our own opinions, and comments are always more interesting valuable in this regard anyways), but because then it would absorb opinion votes, removing them from the valuable/useless score that helps determine where a comment is located and how it is colored.

dhugiaskmak 15y ago

I don't know how you could possibly tell. Upvote/downvote isn't a very fine-grained tool to express one's opinion with.

pbreit 15y ago

Aside: if you want automatic downvotes, suggest that Groupon might be viable. Since downvoting erases, it should definitely not be used for simple disagreement. It should be used on poor arguments, bad faith, pointless posts, etc. It's harder to suggest that upvoting should not be used for agreement. Regardless, in both cases, I prefer that voting be used to evaluate quality.

po 15y ago
You're absolutely right. Upvote and downvote should be separate dimensions not two extremes of one dimension. The opposite of up/down vote is apathy. By summing up and down votes, you are destroying data. There is no difference between a controversial point and an idea nobody cares about.
- sjs 15y ago
  Excellent point. I use a browser extension to show up and down votes on Reddit and I really miss that info here on HN. Not that we get to see comment scores anymore but I still miss it even on my own comments.
- llambda 15y ago
  It would be interesting to have no downvote option at all and instead rely on flagging the comments that are effectively spam. The problem then becomes relying on the moderators to remove or degrade such posts. But clearly the upvote/downvote mechanism is broken as you've described...
  - po 15y ago
    If you remove downvote, people will start to use 'flag' to censor people and you won't be able to trust it anymore. I think leaving the buttons but just separating the calculations is enough: mostly upvotes: keep it mostly downvotes: drop it, its junk; the community has spoken many mixed up/down votes: controversial topic, maybe delay the appearance of reply links? few votes: boring, maybe sort it lower
    - llambda 15y ago
      The problem is that downvotes are used as a way of disagreeing with a comment. But what would be more productive and worthwhile is when there's differing perspectives there's a dialogue. Downvotes should be used to filter spam and other cruft but not differences of opinion.
iand 15y ago
Maybe the right karma metric is whether the poster has added anything new to the conversation. Downvote for repetition and zero new information.
rimantas 15y ago
I still stand by my point, that symmetrical actions should have symmetrical meaning. If upvote is used for agreement, downvote should be used for disagreement. Would you enjoy if your right arrow were to move cursor to the right, and the left arrow to move it up? If you don't want downvotes as the sign of disagreement then remove that arrow altogether and leave just "flag". On the other hand, I don't really get how is the system where showing only agreement is allowed is any better.
- pbreit 15y ago
  The current problem is that while both arrows have a similar effect on positioning, down voting also causes the post to sort of disappear, which is ok for lousy posts but tragic for good, but unpopular posts.

joelhaus 15y ago

> we should first ensure that points are awarded for valuable behavior Do url submissions deserve points: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fpointsforthis&t=Should%20this%20Garner%20Points%3F http://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.y...? I think that this may drive certain undesirable behavior (e.g. duplicate story submissions, down-vote capability for new-ish accounts). On the other hand, points derived from the comments you make are probably a better indicator of the quality of your contribution to HN.

jmilloy 15y ago

High quality, contentious comments should be front and center in the discussion. People also seem to like expressing their opinion by clicking, which acts counter to this goal. I find myself wishing there were two values: agree/disagree and valuable/useless. Not because I think we particularly care about the agree/disagree ratio (we can form our own opinions, and comments are always more interesting valuable in this regard anyways), but because then it would absorb opinion votes, removing them from the valuable/useless score that helps determine where a comment is located and how it is colored.