5 ms·

I'd rather just keep the original title.

by rat9988 3y ago

nickthegreek 3y ago
[flagged]
- tinus_hn 3y ago
  Because some people think the downvote arrow is the disagree button. However, discussing voting behavior is typically boring and unwanted on the site.
  - swores 3y ago
    "Some people" including both the founder (pg) and the main moderator (dang) of HN (and me too, though my opinion doesn't matter much outside the bounds of this comment). The thinking I've seen explained before - and personally agree with - is that it's better for people to be able to disagree with a downvote than to have shallow "I disagree" replies. edit: pg @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 Although every time it gets discussed there are people on both sides of whether it's good or bad for downvoting to disagree to be encouraged, eg recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251926
    - seanw444 3y ago
      I'd say: if you disagree, and the reason for disagreeing hasn't already been commented by someone else, then leave a downvote for OP, and upvote for replier. If you disagree, and someone else hasn't explained why, then reply. If you disagree, but are too lazy to explain why, that is very lame. If you disagree, but you can't well explain why, then perhaps you should do more thinking.
      - swores 3y ago
        I mostly agree with what you've written, but I don't think this is completely reasonable: > If you disagree, but are too lazy to explain why, that is very lame. I'll agree that generally it would be better for the community to explain the disagreement if nobody else has done it already, but we're allowed to be lazy if we want (and if it isn't in a way that actively worsens the site), or to just be too busy and needing to move on rather than dive into writing a potentially long comment. And in either of those cases, you could choose to therefore not downvote since you're not going to comment, but surely giving the downvote is still contributing slightly in a helpful way by sending the "a person disagrees" signal to HN's comment sorting algo, so I think it's fine to do that as a lazy option even though not as good as taking the non-lazy route!
    - tinus_hn 3y ago
      Well that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved into another worthless echo chamber with people fistbumping around the popular opinion. Because that’s how you earn internet points. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
      - swores 3y ago
        Maybe try and stop caring about internet points - other than acting as a prompt to ask yourself "do these downvotes mean I should think more about what I said and consider whether it was a good thing to say", downvotes don't do anything bad to you and a high karma score doesn't do anything good. I wish more people could view points/karma as simple a useful tool for the website, not a metric of personal achievement. Especially as it's such a shit metric for personal achievement - I've earned 124 points (so far) just for submitting this article, which took me 30 seconds and no skill at all. While I've written comments that I felt were useful, intelligent, and not quick to write that only got a single upvote because it was just helpful to one person. Who cares? I'd also add that it doesn't make much sense to say "that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved" about a policy that has been the same since the site launched 15+ years ago. And also that the HN Guidelines even explicitly say "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." with each of the words in the second sentence linking to old comments making the same claims dating back as far as 2009." (though personally I do think it's getting worse... but I've no idea if that's real or just from the angle I'm looking at it from.) But of course you're free to leave if you don't like the site any more, or you could email the mods and lobby them to change the guidelines in some way, or you could try setting a good example to others by only posting substantial and interesting comments etc. Plenty of options :)
- registeredcorn 3y ago
  Unrelated question: Do you have to have a certain amount of "points" on an HN account to be able to see the downvoting button, or something? I've only ever seen the up-arrow and assumed that either my account received some kind of "black mark" or that it hasn't met some arbitrary threshold.
  - rtavares 3y ago
    According to Wikipedia[1], you need 501 karma points: > Hacker News does not allow users to downvote content until they have accumulated 501 "karma" points. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikequinlan 3y ago
    https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented >After users reach 501 Karma, they gain the ability to downvote another comment.

I'd rather just keep the original title.

nickthegreek 3y ago

[flagged]

tinus_hn 3y ago
Because some people think the downvote arrow is the disagree button. However, discussing voting behavior is typically boring and unwanted on the site.
- swores 3y ago
  "Some people" including both the founder (pg) and the main moderator (dang) of HN (and me too, though my opinion doesn't matter much outside the bounds of this comment). The thinking I've seen explained before - and personally agree with - is that it's better for people to be able to disagree with a downvote than to have shallow "I disagree" replies. edit: pg @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 Although every time it gets discussed there are people on both sides of whether it's good or bad for downvoting to disagree to be encouraged, eg recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251926
  - seanw444 3y ago
    I'd say: if you disagree, and the reason for disagreeing hasn't already been commented by someone else, then leave a downvote for OP, and upvote for replier. If you disagree, and someone else hasn't explained why, then reply. If you disagree, but are too lazy to explain why, that is very lame. If you disagree, but you can't well explain why, then perhaps you should do more thinking.
    - swores 3y ago
      I mostly agree with what you've written, but I don't think this is completely reasonable: > If you disagree, but are too lazy to explain why, that is very lame. I'll agree that generally it would be better for the community to explain the disagreement if nobody else has done it already, but we're allowed to be lazy if we want (and if it isn't in a way that actively worsens the site), or to just be too busy and needing to move on rather than dive into writing a potentially long comment. And in either of those cases, you could choose to therefore not downvote since you're not going to comment, but surely giving the downvote is still contributing slightly in a helpful way by sending the "a person disagrees" signal to HN's comment sorting algo, so I think it's fine to do that as a lazy option even though not as good as taking the non-lazy route!
  - tinus_hn 3y ago
    Well that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved into another worthless echo chamber with people fistbumping around the popular opinion. Because that’s how you earn internet points. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
    - swores 3y ago
      Maybe try and stop caring about internet points - other than acting as a prompt to ask yourself "do these downvotes mean I should think more about what I said and consider whether it was a good thing to say", downvotes don't do anything bad to you and a high karma score doesn't do anything good. I wish more people could view points/karma as simple a useful tool for the website, not a metric of personal achievement. Especially as it's such a shit metric for personal achievement - I've earned 124 points (so far) just for submitting this article, which took me 30 seconds and no skill at all. While I've written comments that I felt were useful, intelligent, and not quick to write that only got a single upvote because it was just helpful to one person. Who cares? I'd also add that it doesn't make much sense to say "that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved" about a policy that has been the same since the site launched 15+ years ago. And also that the HN Guidelines even explicitly say "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." with each of the words in the second sentence linking to old comments making the same claims dating back as far as 2009." (though personally I do think it's getting worse... but I've no idea if that's real or just from the angle I'm looking at it from.) But of course you're free to leave if you don't like the site any more, or you could email the mods and lobby them to change the guidelines in some way, or you could try setting a good example to others by only posting substantial and interesting comments etc. Plenty of options :)
registeredcorn 3y ago
Unrelated question: Do you have to have a certain amount of "points" on an HN account to be able to see the downvoting button, or something? I've only ever seen the up-arrow and assumed that either my account received some kind of "black mark" or that it hasn't met some arbitrary threshold.
- rtavares 3y ago
  According to Wikipedia[1], you need 501 karma points: > Hacker News does not allow users to downvote content until they have accumulated 501 "karma" points. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mikequinlan 3y ago
  https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented >After users reach 501 Karma, they gain the ability to downvote another comment.