6 ms·

downvoting is just as much a problem with fools as well. A good downvote is when a post/comment is abusive or pointless. A bad downvote is when the voter disagr

downvoting is just as much a problem with fools as well. A good downvote is when a post/comment is abusive or pointless. A bad downvote is when the voter disagrees with the opinion expressed. Mention Microsoft on slashdot you'll get downvoted, period. Mention VisualBasic on any tech forum you'll get downvotes regardless of the point you're trying to make. Eventually you learn to stop trying to present alternative points of view and just go with the flow or leave because the "fools" are now in charge of the downvoting.

DanBC2 14y ago
With luck many silent but wise people will downvote the one or two noisy fools. There's a strong temptation to interact, even with someone you suspect is a fool. Resist that temptation, and carefully use a downvote. There's a great article called "Why We Banned Legos" which covers some of the weird problems that online communities get into. (A small group of children get control of the lego, and decide who can have what pieces, etc.) (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/restrict.asp?path=archive/21_02/lego212.shtml http://www.rethinkingschools.org/restrict.asp?path=archive/2...) Meatball wiki covers lots of these concepts. I've posted it before. Here it is again. (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/)
- billpatrianakos 14y ago
  You're probably right about the silent but wise but unfortunately on HN you cannot be silent and have downvote privileges. Edit: To be clear, it's not unfortunate that the silent probably won't be downvoting, it's the wise we're missing out on.
spindritf 14y ago
> A good downvote is when a post/comment is abusive or pointless. A bad downvote is when the voter disagrees with the opinion expressed. A downvote is also justified when a comment is misleading, contains a fallacious argument, or misrepresents contents of other comments or the article. Sometimes even when it's just incorrect. Unless the particular misconception is somewhat popular or difficult to spot. Basically, anything that could be removed without loss of value, should be downvoted.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  My only disagreement with this comes in when some kind of censorship is enacted once you pass a certain number of down votes. And no, the fact that you can disable that censorship doesn't ameliorate the issue - the majority will still be unable to see the comment. Reddit is particularly bad at this, as once you hit -2, your comment might as well have never been posted. Any idiot with a bot and a grudge can make anything you do invisible. FWIW I like the way HN has chosen to handle this. You can't even downvote until you go past a certain karma threshold (eliminates sock puppetry and calling for backup), and even if you are down voted into oblivion, your words are still visible (if a little harder to see). Now if they'd just lighten up on the hell bans. I've seen a number of valid comments here which were dead on arrival.
jseliger 14y ago
Great comment—and the problem your describing completely true. Still, I think the post is a useful reminder because I've noticed a general deterioration in the HN comments over the past six months or so (and I even wrote a post about that: http://jseliger.com/2012/01/15/commenting-community-deterioration-and-hacker-news/ http://jseliger.com/2012/01/15/commenting-community-deterior... ; see also this discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3469453 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3469453 ). For me, a comment like this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4034170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4034170 exemplifies some of the deterioration. The commenter asks for substantiation of a claim that refers back to the original article that was submitted. If he'd read the article, he'd know that. Now, it's easy to argue that this is a one-time example, and alone that's true. But I'm noticing these kinds of comments more and more—ones in which people comment without knowing anything, or without reading the original article, or even without closely reading the person who they're replying to. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution.
- AncientPC 14y ago
  No one has found a good solution to this problem. As an open community grows it will inevitably experience Eternal September and content quality will decrease. It happened with Usenet, Slashdot, Reddit, and Hacker News is following their footsteps. The upper echelon will migrate, others will follow. Perhaps closed communities with a curated member list is the answer[1][2]. Closed communities are not without its own drawbacks, but the trade off may be acceptable to some. Open communities allows for anyone's input, but you also get drama like arguing about Javascript semicolons or GitHub's commit messages. However, closed communities are susceptible to group think. How do you judge a minority opinion's validity? [1]: http://svbtle.com/ http://svbtle.com/ [2]: http://www.behance.net/ http://www.behance.net/
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    HN probably slower than the others for the same reason that PostgreSQL seems to be perpetually getting better.... I think the decay you note is specific to communities who are not coming in with any sort of common self-interest at stake. In essence they are what I might call "intellectual entertainment" communities. People read and argue on Slashdot primarily because it's fun. People argue on PostgreSQL email lists because they all want PostgreSQL to be as good as it can be. In the former, a troll can stir up a lot of argument, but in the latter, the most that can be hoped for is a collegial discussion on the merits of a specific approach. HN leans towards the former. I am betting most commenters are mostly interested in fun conversations. However, the fact is that it is also an integral part of a VC ecosystem and so presents an aspect of common economic interest as well.
tokenadult 14y ago
A good downvote is when a post/comment is abusive or pointless. A bad downvote is when the voter disagrees with the opinion expressed. At least 1568 days ago, the site founder pg was of a different opinion. He wrote, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. "It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that." My own analysis of the issue is that if I receive a downvote, I'm curious about why I received it. I understand that not everyone shares all of my opinions, but perhaps if one of my comments is downvoted, I can learn something about how to express my opinions so that they are allowed to stand, without people feeling they have to go out of their way to vote them down. Any time I have a comment with negative karma (which is a rare occurrence), I look back on what I said, and think about what I can learn from the other comments in the same thread and how I might express myself better the next time. I try to learn from the people who disagree with me as well as from the people who agree with me.
- sounds 14y ago
  Thank you for quoting the comment more fully. I've seen it paraphrased too succinctly as "pg says downvotes can mean disagree." Although pg hasn't implemented a change to this effect, I believe he would agree that -- "people feeling they have to go out of their way to vote them down" -- implies a downvote should be more work than an upvote. I think a downvote should require a response to the parent comment that: 1. contains at least 15 English words, excluding quoted phrases 2. quotes at least min(25% of entire comment, 5 consecutive words) of the parent comment 3. meets current downvote requirements (karma and downvote bombing protections spring to mind immediately) For the sake of argument, such a "required downvote comment" could contribute almost nothing -- but it would still reduce downvotes. An example of a really bad downvote comment on this comment might be: > a change to this effect This is HN, not reddit. Um, did you read the article? I down voted you. The 15 English word requirement sort of requires some sort of explanation. Does anyone think this would help?
makecheck 14y ago
I think upvotes and downvotes should be harder to do. An example of what would make a vote "harder" would be to require reason-words. When you click down-arrow a box might pop up where you must select (or better still, type out in full) at least two words justifying the vote such as "Abusive" or "Pointless". This would also help to prevent fat-fingered downvotes that I've accidentally done on my iPad because the arrows are too close together and irreversible.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  I don't think making it mandatory is necessarily a good idea. But I would love to be able to have people give me a short reason for an down vote so that I can hopefully see what I'm doing wrong. Anonymously of course. One issue I could see happening would be people abusing the feature to send hateful messages. Some solutions may be to allow users to delete messages or block the ability to give them text feedback along with a down or up vote. Another problem might be causing a sort of hugfest where users try to get upvotes by upvoting someone else, creating an upvote ring. (Eg: Including their name in the feedback and asking for upvotes.) One countermeasure would be to block the user from putting in their unabridged unedited name into the feedback box. (Of course, this could be circumvented in the way that almost all other online censor systems are circumvented. Obfuscation.) Thoughts?
  - makecheck 14y ago
    Yes, an open text channel could be abused and it is only unlikely to be abused if it's public; e.g. everything reads "makecheck said X" and not just "X". Maybe the right thing is for downvotes to always list voter IDs (but probably not long upvote lists). If I downvote something for "the right reasons" I don't really care if anyone knows it because I expect most people will agree with me. The opposite would be true for someone doing a lot of petty downvoting; he or she would probably be embarrassed and discouraged once everyone can see that the same person has downvoted a bunch of comments for no reason. One way to find a "reason" for a personal downvote, then, would be to look at everything else your downvoters have downvoted. One of two patterns would probably form: either these people are in the habit of downvoting lots of stuff for no reason, or they seem to be downvoting comments that have common themes.
JoachimSchipper 14y ago
I don't agree. First, the people complaining about downvotes often really did write a comment worth being downvoted (I didn't look at your history). Second, HN is still very valuable if the top comments are all good - it's much less necessary that all good comments are on the top. And despite what people say, the key source of groupthink on HN is not the voting system (rather, the homogeneity of the user base.)
taw 14y ago
My experience with multiple subreddits is that subreddits which disabled downvote button (by custom CSS style, it's still there if you really need it) tend to have much more friendly and polite discussion, very much like HN. Subreddits of comparable size and/or field which keep downvote button tend to be extremely argumentative and full of flames. Getting downvoted turns off your reason and you start seeing the thing not as a friendly argument but as a fight. And so does the other side. The result is ugly.

DanBC2 14y ago

With luck many silent but wise people will downvote the one or two noisy fools. There's a strong temptation to interact, even with someone you suspect is a fool. Resist that temptation, and carefully use a downvote. There's a great article called "Why We Banned Legos" which covers some of the weird problems that online communities get into. (A small group of children get control of the lego, and decide who can have what pieces, etc.) (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/restrict.asp?path=archive/21_02/lego212.shtml http://www.rethinkingschools.org/restrict.asp?path=archive/2...) Meatball wiki covers lots of these concepts. I've posted it before. Here it is again. (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/ http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/)

billpatrianakos 14y ago
You're probably right about the silent but wise but unfortunately on HN you cannot be silent and have downvote privileges. Edit: To be clear, it's not unfortunate that the silent probably won't be downvoting, it's the wise we're missing out on.

spindritf 14y ago

> A good downvote is when a post/comment is abusive or pointless. A bad downvote is when the voter disagrees with the opinion expressed. A downvote is also justified when a comment is misleading, contains a fallacious argument, or misrepresents contents of other comments or the article. Sometimes even when it's just incorrect. Unless the particular misconception is somewhat popular or difficult to spot. Basically, anything that could be removed without loss of value, should be downvoted.

Karunamon 14y ago
My only disagreement with this comes in when some kind of censorship is enacted once you pass a certain number of down votes. And no, the fact that you can disable that censorship doesn't ameliorate the issue - the majority will still be unable to see the comment. Reddit is particularly bad at this, as once you hit -2, your comment might as well have never been posted. Any idiot with a bot and a grudge can make anything you do invisible. FWIW I like the way HN has chosen to handle this. You can't even downvote until you go past a certain karma threshold (eliminates sock puppetry and calling for backup), and even if you are down voted into oblivion, your words are still visible (if a little harder to see). Now if they'd just lighten up on the hell bans. I've seen a number of valid comments here which were dead on arrival.

jseliger 14y ago

Great comment—and the problem your describing completely true. Still, I think the post is a useful reminder because I've noticed a general deterioration in the HN comments over the past six months or so (and I even wrote a post about that: http://jseliger.com/2012/01/15/commenting-community-deterioration-and-hacker-news/ http://jseliger.com/2012/01/15/commenting-community-deterior... ; see also this discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3469453 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3469453 ). For me, a comment like this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4034170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4034170 exemplifies some of the deterioration. The commenter asks for substantiation of a claim that refers back to the original article that was submitted. If he'd read the article, he'd know that. Now, it's easy to argue that this is a one-time example, and alone that's true. But I'm noticing these kinds of comments more and more—ones in which people comment without knowing anything, or without reading the original article, or even without closely reading the person who they're replying to. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution.

AncientPC 14y ago
No one has found a good solution to this problem. As an open community grows it will inevitably experience Eternal September and content quality will decrease. It happened with Usenet, Slashdot, Reddit, and Hacker News is following their footsteps. The upper echelon will migrate, others will follow. Perhaps closed communities with a curated member list is the answer[1][2]. Closed communities are not without its own drawbacks, but the trade off may be acceptable to some. Open communities allows for anyone's input, but you also get drama like arguing about Javascript semicolons or GitHub's commit messages. However, closed communities are susceptible to group think. How do you judge a minority opinion's validity? [1]: http://svbtle.com/ http://svbtle.com/ [2]: http://www.behance.net/ http://www.behance.net/
- einhverfr 14y ago
  HN probably slower than the others for the same reason that PostgreSQL seems to be perpetually getting better.... I think the decay you note is specific to communities who are not coming in with any sort of common self-interest at stake. In essence they are what I might call "intellectual entertainment" communities. People read and argue on Slashdot primarily because it's fun. People argue on PostgreSQL email lists because they all want PostgreSQL to be as good as it can be. In the former, a troll can stir up a lot of argument, but in the latter, the most that can be hoped for is a collegial discussion on the merits of a specific approach. HN leans towards the former. I am betting most commenters are mostly interested in fun conversations. However, the fact is that it is also an integral part of a VC ecosystem and so presents an aspect of common economic interest as well.

tokenadult 14y ago

A good downvote is when a post/comment is abusive or pointless. A bad downvote is when the voter disagrees with the opinion expressed. At least 1568 days ago, the site founder pg was of a different opinion. He wrote, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. "It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that." My own analysis of the issue is that if I receive a downvote, I'm curious about why I received it. I understand that not everyone shares all of my opinions, but perhaps if one of my comments is downvoted, I can learn something about how to express my opinions so that they are allowed to stand, without people feeling they have to go out of their way to vote them down. Any time I have a comment with negative karma (which is a rare occurrence), I look back on what I said, and think about what I can learn from the other comments in the same thread and how I might express myself better the next time. I try to learn from the people who disagree with me as well as from the people who agree with me.

sounds 14y ago
Thank you for quoting the comment more fully. I've seen it paraphrased too succinctly as "pg says downvotes can mean disagree." Although pg hasn't implemented a change to this effect, I believe he would agree that -- "people feeling they have to go out of their way to vote them down" -- implies a downvote should be more work than an upvote. I think a downvote should require a response to the parent comment that: 1. contains at least 15 English words, excluding quoted phrases 2. quotes at least min(25% of entire comment, 5 consecutive words) of the parent comment 3. meets current downvote requirements (karma and downvote bombing protections spring to mind immediately) For the sake of argument, such a "required downvote comment" could contribute almost nothing -- but it would still reduce downvotes. An example of a really bad downvote comment on this comment might be: > a change to this effect This is HN, not reddit. Um, did you read the article? I down voted you. The 15 English word requirement sort of requires some sort of explanation. Does anyone think this would help?

makecheck 14y ago

I think upvotes and downvotes should be harder to do. An example of what would make a vote "harder" would be to require reason-words. When you click down-arrow a box might pop up where you must select (or better still, type out in full) at least two words justifying the vote such as "Abusive" or "Pointless". This would also help to prevent fat-fingered downvotes that I've accidentally done on my iPad because the arrows are too close together and irreversible.

unimpressive 14y ago
I don't think making it mandatory is necessarily a good idea. But I would love to be able to have people give me a short reason for an down vote so that I can hopefully see what I'm doing wrong. Anonymously of course. One issue I could see happening would be people abusing the feature to send hateful messages. Some solutions may be to allow users to delete messages or block the ability to give them text feedback along with a down or up vote. Another problem might be causing a sort of hugfest where users try to get upvotes by upvoting someone else, creating an upvote ring. (Eg: Including their name in the feedback and asking for upvotes.) One countermeasure would be to block the user from putting in their unabridged unedited name into the feedback box. (Of course, this could be circumvented in the way that almost all other online censor systems are circumvented. Obfuscation.) Thoughts?
- makecheck 14y ago
  Yes, an open text channel could be abused and it is only unlikely to be abused if it's public; e.g. everything reads "makecheck said X" and not just "X". Maybe the right thing is for downvotes to always list voter IDs (but probably not long upvote lists). If I downvote something for "the right reasons" I don't really care if anyone knows it because I expect most people will agree with me. The opposite would be true for someone doing a lot of petty downvoting; he or she would probably be embarrassed and discouraged once everyone can see that the same person has downvoted a bunch of comments for no reason. One way to find a "reason" for a personal downvote, then, would be to look at everything else your downvoters have downvoted. One of two patterns would probably form: either these people are in the habit of downvoting lots of stuff for no reason, or they seem to be downvoting comments that have common themes.

JoachimSchipper 14y ago

I don't agree. First, the people complaining about downvotes often really did write a comment worth being downvoted (I didn't look at your history). Second, HN is still very valuable if the top comments are all good - it's much less necessary that all good comments are on the top. And despite what people say, the key source of groupthink on HN is not the voting system (rather, the homogeneity of the user base.)

taw 14y ago

My experience with multiple subreddits is that subreddits which disabled downvote button (by custom CSS style, it's still there if you really need it) tend to have much more friendly and polite discussion, very much like HN. Subreddits of comparable size and/or field which keep downvote button tend to be extremely argumentative and full of flames. Getting downvoted turns off your reason and you start seeing the thing not as a friendly argument but as a fight. And so does the other side. The result is ugly.