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Some very insightful and thought-provoking comments are under the above downvoted parent comment. I wonder what the Hacker News algorithm does with threads that

Some very insightful and thought-provoking comments are under the above downvoted parent comment. I wonder what the Hacker News algorithm does with threads that have a downvoted parent but with highly upvoted replies? Does it push the thread down or keep it high? In either case, I've often thought that this was small flaw with threaded discussions (though I don't know a solution): There should be a way to maintain visibility or priority for great comments that are buried in downvoted threads.

andrewflnr 4y ago
My read on downvotes is that they exist for managing signal/noise, basically for avoiding comments that are better off not read or engaged with. If a reader has to get through a noisy comment to get to a good comment that only exists because of the noise, is it worth it for the platform to try to lead them to it? And that's a pretty rare case anyway. So yeah, pretty hard to even specify a solution.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  In this particular case I'd guess the downvotes are because the comment is close to Elon's rhetoric.
- Archelaos 4y ago
  The general problem with up-votes, down-votes and no-votes is that the discourse mechanism behind them is so complex that the quality of the comment is only vaguely related to the number of votes. Sometimes I get lots of up-votes for a casual remark on a general topic, but none at all for a detailed reply on a specific question. When someone makes a false factual claim and is corrected by someone else, the last comment is often up-voted, but rarely is the original claim down-voted because people think the matter is settled. Appart from obvious nonsense, the typical cases for down-votes are not descriptive (what is true or false), but normative comments (what should or should not be the case). Normative comments, such as what user `blueprint` has written, have the tendency that people up-vote or down-vote according to their own, often quite ad-hoc opinion, using the system like a poll. I think that this is not good. Instead, one should either just ignore it or try to initiate a debate. For the vast majority of opinions that contradict one's own, there are plenty of representatives out there who are at least as clever as oneself. Being curious about why they have such a view does not have to mean that one relativises everything. There is almost always something to learn. I also think that we should strive to apply the principle of charity[1] in our responses, mending small flaws or bad rhetoric in a person's statements and instead challenge the essence of her or his thoughts. Although user `blueprint` does not elaborate on his topic, the topic itself is quite interesting. He just worded it a bit clumsily. Its essence may be reformulated as: "Given that an extremly devastating, but also extremly unlikely cosmic event could wipe out humanity in an instant, should we not prioritize to spread out across the galaxy, so that a single event could not affect all of us?" Has this statement the same chance to be down-voted? If this is not the case, doesn't it mean that a down-voter should have applied the principle of charity instead? [1] Wikipedia's definition: "In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
the_third_wave 4y ago
There would be such a solution if users were able to adjust the weight of downvotes or if the vote mechanism was changed to include a mandatory category or reason, i.e. '-1 spam' or '-1 disagree' or '-1 flamebait'. This, in combination with a way to adjust the weight of those categories - i.e. I would give 'disagree' votes a weight of 0 since I don't care whether someone else agrees as I like to make up my own mind about things - would make it possible for those who like to downvote from the hip to continue doing so without ruining the discourse for others. Such a system would quickly be gamed by the downvoters who would start marking things they disagree with as 'spam' so another layer would need to be added in which certain types of downvotes - spam, flamebait and other such categories - are checked and undone if needed. Downvoters who abuse their voting privilege too often would loose it for a day, then a week, then a month, etc. In other words, something like the Slashdot moderation/meta-moderation system of old.

andrewflnr 4y ago

My read on downvotes is that they exist for managing signal/noise, basically for avoiding comments that are better off not read or engaged with. If a reader has to get through a noisy comment to get to a good comment that only exists because of the noise, is it worth it for the platform to try to lead them to it? And that's a pretty rare case anyway. So yeah, pretty hard to even specify a solution.

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
In this particular case I'd guess the downvotes are because the comment is close to Elon's rhetoric.
Archelaos 4y ago
The general problem with up-votes, down-votes and no-votes is that the discourse mechanism behind them is so complex that the quality of the comment is only vaguely related to the number of votes. Sometimes I get lots of up-votes for a casual remark on a general topic, but none at all for a detailed reply on a specific question. When someone makes a false factual claim and is corrected by someone else, the last comment is often up-voted, but rarely is the original claim down-voted because people think the matter is settled. Appart from obvious nonsense, the typical cases for down-votes are not descriptive (what is true or false), but normative comments (what should or should not be the case). Normative comments, such as what user `blueprint` has written, have the tendency that people up-vote or down-vote according to their own, often quite ad-hoc opinion, using the system like a poll. I think that this is not good. Instead, one should either just ignore it or try to initiate a debate. For the vast majority of opinions that contradict one's own, there are plenty of representatives out there who are at least as clever as oneself. Being curious about why they have such a view does not have to mean that one relativises everything. There is almost always something to learn. I also think that we should strive to apply the principle of charity[1] in our responses, mending small flaws or bad rhetoric in a person's statements and instead challenge the essence of her or his thoughts. Although user `blueprint` does not elaborate on his topic, the topic itself is quite interesting. He just worded it a bit clumsily. Its essence may be reformulated as: "Given that an extremly devastating, but also extremly unlikely cosmic event could wipe out humanity in an instant, should we not prioritize to spread out across the galaxy, so that a single event could not affect all of us?" Has this statement the same chance to be down-voted? If this is not the case, doesn't it mean that a down-voter should have applied the principle of charity instead? [1] Wikipedia's definition: "In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

the_third_wave 4y ago

There would be such a solution if users were able to adjust the weight of downvotes or if the vote mechanism was changed to include a mandatory category or reason, i.e. '-1 spam' or '-1 disagree' or '-1 flamebait'. This, in combination with a way to adjust the weight of those categories - i.e. I would give 'disagree' votes a weight of 0 since I don't care whether someone else agrees as I like to make up my own mind about things - would make it possible for those who like to downvote from the hip to continue doing so without ruining the discourse for others. Such a system would quickly be gamed by the downvoters who would start marking things they disagree with as 'spam' so another layer would need to be added in which certain types of downvotes - spam, flamebait and other such categories - are checked and undone if needed. Downvoters who abuse their voting privilege too often would loose it for a day, then a week, then a month, etc. In other words, something like the Slashdot moderation/meta-moderation system of old.