6 ms·

Observations on what's getting downvoted, with some dissected specimens

58 points by co_pl_te 14y ago

tsycho 14y ago
So if I comment that the behavior on Ars is surprisingly similar to HN, I should receive up votes from people who had the same thought, and down votes from those who think that's obvious and doesn't add to any new insight?
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  I think the behavior is the same on every site that has upvoting and downvoting functionality.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Nooooo. The community matters a lot. The way a conversation will shake out on HN or stackexchange or reddit (all of which have up and down voting) will be hugely different. Indeed, on reddit the particular sub-reddit that a thread is in will make a huge difference in voting patterns and comment behavior.
- jmilloy 14y ago
  With a rating scale of only 1, 0, and -1, I think most people reserve -1 for comments that, usually in addition to not adding new insight, are disruptive/off-topic/rude/etc.
raganwald 14y ago
What I find interesting about this post above and beyond its content, is the signal it sends from moderators to the community. We have guidelines, but a post like this from time to time might help reinforce them.
jandrewrogers 14y ago
I don't even use downvote buttons. They are the worst idea ever and anyone who uses them is an utterly insecure moron who downvotes to make themselves feel superior. This is one in a long line of downvoting articles on HN that are not even worth the time to click the link. (EDIT: Apparently some commenters on my post did not read the article. Meta-trolling FTW.) (I intend to harness the inevitable downvote singularity as a new form of clean energy.)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- cheald 14y ago
  I think you may be ignoring the community moderation effect of downvotes. Try turning "show dead" on and see if your opinion changes. There is a surprising amount of spam, abuse, and downright awful content that is moderated through the downvotes. It's easy to decry the function as useless when its prime effect is invisible to you. In a community like HN, I think it has a secondary value, as well, in that it provides well-intentioned posters with feedback that they are making a weak point, or doing it in a way that is not contributory to the community. There is (or was) a standard of discourse on HN that down votes help to reinforce by communicating to people that they need to improve their communication. Lack of positive signals is not the same thing as negative signals. It certainly is abused by insecure morons, but I think it's a bit narrow to decry it as useless because it can be misused.
  - atirip 14y ago
    "In a community like HN, I think it has a secondary value, as well, in that it provides well-intentioned posters with feedback that they are making a weak point, or doing it in a way that is not contributory to the community." Dream on. Whenever I try to troll a bit (or let's say be flamboyant) I get upvotes. Sometimes massively. Whenever I present "unpopular but sincere opinion" I get downvoted, usually massively.
    - enraged_camel 14y ago
snowwrestler 14y ago
The best moderation I've experienced is here on HN, and on Slashdot. I think this is for two reasons: 1. The cultures of the communities are largely technical, which is a culture that tends to care more about accuracy and truth, rather than just how closely a comment hews to personal opinions. It's okay to disagree if you present reasonably worthwhile support in the post. 2. The structure of the communities only allows highly valued members to down vote. On Slashdot all moderation (up or down) is controlled by the karma system, and metamoderation "watches the watchers". Here on HN, you must have quite a bit of karma (I think ~500 these days) before you can down vote. Compare to Reddit, which in most subreddits probably the worst quality moderation I've ever seen in a community. Unpopular truths are downvoted to oblivion, and lies rise to the top if they validate popularly held beliefs. The only exception that comes to mind is /r/askscience, which sets a very high bar to comment at all--all answers must be presented by proven experts or contain references to scientific publications.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  >>The cultures of the communities are largely technical, which is a culture that tends to care more about accuracy and truth, rather than just how closely a comment hews to personal opinions. I think you're greatly exaggerating the tendency of technical people to value accuracy and truth over personal opinions. In my experience, people who are technical also tend to have very strong opinions about everything, especially if the subject is technical in nature. >>The structure of the communities only allows highly valued members to down vote... Here on HN, you must have quite a bit of karma (I think ~500 these days) before you can down vote. 500 karma is really easy to accumulate. All one has to do is conform with popular opinion, and for an active poster it would take a month or so. I was under 500 karma recently, and I kept thinking to myself how much easier it would have been if I had posted in threads about controversial topics and just agreed with everyone. If I had sided with Samsung for example, and spouted the popular (but wrong) opinion that the decision hurts innovation.
  - guylhem 14y ago
    I'm below 500 (430) and couldn't care less about agreeing with people if what they are saying is not matched by what I consider the objective truth. What would be the value of karma gained that way? (I mean value for myself - is there any value in being a phony??) When (or if) I can downvote is not very interesting either - so far I get a lot of great content from HN - like valuable book recommendations. Karma won't make it any better. What I'd like is HN to remain a good source of information for as long as possible, since I am still finding lot of great info. Karma could help that, but would require an activate participation on my behalf (like clicking for downvoting - consider I rarely highvote, odds are it won't be very useful to me) Just yesterday I saw a post of mine get voted below - 4 for just questioning the interest of an approach - I first tried to explain how, in my sense, the proposed approach was wrong, gave an example, then basically gave up - not because of the karma but because there are better things to do with one's time. Everytime there is a score, we humans want to try and max it out. It's a natural tendency, but not always for the better- sometimes thinking whether it might be worth it helps :-) Karma on HN seems especially worthless. You quickly see who's posting sense and who's not - for ex I didn't need to see the user actual score to consider yummyfajitas posts very interesting and worth spending time to read
Stratoscope 14y ago
I'm closing in on that magical 500 karma number where I hear that I'll start to see downvote buttons. I'm almost hoping there is a way I can opt out of this and not have those buttons appear. Why? The ridiculous system here that gives you one shot at hitting the right button with no chance to correct your mistake. I've seen too many comments saying, "Sorry, I was trying to upvote your comment and fat-fingered the downvote button by mistake." I often read HN on my phone or a tablet and it will be all too easy for me to do that. Reddit, for all its flaws, gets this right. If you tap the wrong button or change your mind, perhaps after realizing that you misunderstood something, you can fix it.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I have experienced the same problem myself. An even simpler (partial) fix would be to just move the buttons further away from each other. They are so close at the moment that hitting the right one on a touch device is basically pure luck. You could also use JS to add an "are you sure?" popup upon hitting downvote. OTOH HN actually has a fair number of usability issues, though it doesn't seem like there is much interest in fixing them (I'm sure PG has plenty of other things to do). I think this might be partly because this board is written in some form of LISP so less people will be comfortable tweaking the source. Would it be heresy to suggest a re-implementation in something like rails, or gasp even PHP?
- spindritf 14y ago
  > with no chance to correct your mistake Your mistake will result in someone losing a point on a website. Sure, it would be better if you could fix that but it's not a big deal. You can make truly catastrophic mistakes everyday driving a car or even pushing an update. On HN other users can easily rectify minor slip-ups like that. A much worse mistake is upvoting crap. That is really damaging to the site.

58 points by co_pl_te 14y ago

So if I comment that the behavior on Ars is surprisingly similar to HN, I should receive up votes from people who had the same thought, and down votes from those who think that's obvious and doesn't add to any new insight?

enraged_camel 14y ago
I think the behavior is the same on every site that has upvoting and downvoting functionality.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Nooooo. The community matters a lot. The way a conversation will shake out on HN or stackexchange or reddit (all of which have up and down voting) will be hugely different. Indeed, on reddit the particular sub-reddit that a thread is in will make a huge difference in voting patterns and comment behavior.
jmilloy 14y ago
With a rating scale of only 1, 0, and -1, I think most people reserve -1 for comments that, usually in addition to not adding new insight, are disruptive/off-topic/rude/etc.

raganwald 14y ago

What I find interesting about this post above and beyond its content, is the signal it sends from moderators to the community. We have guidelines, but a post like this from time to time might help reinforce them.

jandrewrogers 14y ago

I don't even use downvote buttons. They are the worst idea ever and anyone who uses them is an utterly insecure moron who downvotes to make themselves feel superior. This is one in a long line of downvoting articles on HN that are not even worth the time to click the link. (EDIT: Apparently some commenters on my post did not read the article. Meta-trolling FTW.) (I intend to harness the inevitable downvote singularity as a new form of clean energy.)

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cheald 14y ago
I think you may be ignoring the community moderation effect of downvotes. Try turning "show dead" on and see if your opinion changes. There is a surprising amount of spam, abuse, and downright awful content that is moderated through the downvotes. It's easy to decry the function as useless when its prime effect is invisible to you. In a community like HN, I think it has a secondary value, as well, in that it provides well-intentioned posters with feedback that they are making a weak point, or doing it in a way that is not contributory to the community. There is (or was) a standard of discourse on HN that down votes help to reinforce by communicating to people that they need to improve their communication. Lack of positive signals is not the same thing as negative signals. It certainly is abused by insecure morons, but I think it's a bit narrow to decry it as useless because it can be misused.
- atirip 14y ago
  "In a community like HN, I think it has a secondary value, as well, in that it provides well-intentioned posters with feedback that they are making a weak point, or doing it in a way that is not contributory to the community." Dream on. Whenever I try to troll a bit (or let's say be flamboyant) I get upvotes. Sometimes massively. Whenever I present "unpopular but sincere opinion" I get downvoted, usually massively.
  - enraged_camel 14y ago

snowwrestler 14y ago

The best moderation I've experienced is here on HN, and on Slashdot. I think this is for two reasons: 1. The cultures of the communities are largely technical, which is a culture that tends to care more about accuracy and truth, rather than just how closely a comment hews to personal opinions. It's okay to disagree if you present reasonably worthwhile support in the post. 2. The structure of the communities only allows highly valued members to down vote. On Slashdot all moderation (up or down) is controlled by the karma system, and metamoderation "watches the watchers". Here on HN, you must have quite a bit of karma (I think ~500 these days) before you can down vote. Compare to Reddit, which in most subreddits probably the worst quality moderation I've ever seen in a community. Unpopular truths are downvoted to oblivion, and lies rise to the top if they validate popularly held beliefs. The only exception that comes to mind is /r/askscience, which sets a very high bar to comment at all--all answers must be presented by proven experts or contain references to scientific publications.

enraged_camel 14y ago
>>The cultures of the communities are largely technical, which is a culture that tends to care more about accuracy and truth, rather than just how closely a comment hews to personal opinions. I think you're greatly exaggerating the tendency of technical people to value accuracy and truth over personal opinions. In my experience, people who are technical also tend to have very strong opinions about everything, especially if the subject is technical in nature. >>The structure of the communities only allows highly valued members to down vote... Here on HN, you must have quite a bit of karma (I think ~500 these days) before you can down vote. 500 karma is really easy to accumulate. All one has to do is conform with popular opinion, and for an active poster it would take a month or so. I was under 500 karma recently, and I kept thinking to myself how much easier it would have been if I had posted in threads about controversial topics and just agreed with everyone. If I had sided with Samsung for example, and spouted the popular (but wrong) opinion that the decision hurts innovation.
- guylhem 14y ago
  I'm below 500 (430) and couldn't care less about agreeing with people if what they are saying is not matched by what I consider the objective truth. What would be the value of karma gained that way? (I mean value for myself - is there any value in being a phony??) When (or if) I can downvote is not very interesting either - so far I get a lot of great content from HN - like valuable book recommendations. Karma won't make it any better. What I'd like is HN to remain a good source of information for as long as possible, since I am still finding lot of great info. Karma could help that, but would require an activate participation on my behalf (like clicking for downvoting - consider I rarely highvote, odds are it won't be very useful to me) Just yesterday I saw a post of mine get voted below - 4 for just questioning the interest of an approach - I first tried to explain how, in my sense, the proposed approach was wrong, gave an example, then basically gave up - not because of the karma but because there are better things to do with one's time. Everytime there is a score, we humans want to try and max it out. It's a natural tendency, but not always for the better- sometimes thinking whether it might be worth it helps :-) Karma on HN seems especially worthless. You quickly see who's posting sense and who's not - for ex I didn't need to see the user actual score to consider yummyfajitas posts very interesting and worth spending time to read

Stratoscope 14y ago

I'm closing in on that magical 500 karma number where I hear that I'll start to see downvote buttons. I'm almost hoping there is a way I can opt out of this and not have those buttons appear. Why? The ridiculous system here that gives you one shot at hitting the right button with no chance to correct your mistake. I've seen too many comments saying, "Sorry, I was trying to upvote your comment and fat-fingered the downvote button by mistake." I often read HN on my phone or a tablet and it will be all too easy for me to do that. Reddit, for all its flaws, gets this right. If you tap the wrong button or change your mind, perhaps after realizing that you misunderstood something, you can fix it.

jiggy2011 14y ago
I have experienced the same problem myself. An even simpler (partial) fix would be to just move the buttons further away from each other. They are so close at the moment that hitting the right one on a touch device is basically pure luck. You could also use JS to add an "are you sure?" popup upon hitting downvote. OTOH HN actually has a fair number of usability issues, though it doesn't seem like there is much interest in fixing them (I'm sure PG has plenty of other things to do). I think this might be partly because this board is written in some form of LISP so less people will be comfortable tweaking the source. Would it be heresy to suggest a re-implementation in something like rails, or gasp even PHP?
spindritf 14y ago
> with no chance to correct your mistake Your mistake will result in someone losing a point on a website. Sure, it would be better if you could fix that but it's not a big deal. You can make truly catastrophic mistakes everyday driving a car or even pushing an update. On HN other users can easily rectify minor slip-ups like that. A much worse mistake is upvoting crap. That is really damaging to the site.