3 ms·
As someone who has received a string of downvoted commented recently (admittedly they were warranted given the nature of some of them) I really don't see the pr
by froo 17y ago
As someone who has received a string of downvoted commented recently (admittedly they were warranted given the nature of some of them) I really don't see the problem.
Someone disagrees with you and does the initial downvoting, then groupthink kicks in and your score hits the floor.
It's a simple fact of life in social media sites (it occurs on many sites with differing communities), this is why PG put in the -8 limit, to combat the detrimental effect of this kind of groupthink.
Honestly, deal with it, it's just online Karma, a simple numerical value... what effect does it really have after you've unlocked various features on HN.
- wynand 17y agoI worry that when so many comments have negative votes, readers will be more inclined to downvote future comments. While I agree with you that it's really human nature, I still think it needs to be discouraged, if only to keep HN the kind of place where debate is encouraged.
- froo 17y ago"While I agree with you that it's really human nature, I still think it needs to be discouraged, if only to keep HN the kind of place where debate is encouraged." I agree with you, absolutely. I think we're mostly adults here and hearty debate should be encouraged. I think that if you really want to counteract the douchebag effect (the groupthink downvote pileon on thoughtful comments) then make who has downvoted you public to everyone but the downvotee - transparency would be one way to help combat it. Think about it for a second, if you have a legitimate gripe with someone's comment, then whether you downvote them or not shouldn't matter. Those comments are easy to single out. However, if you're piling on just because of groupthink, then why not let other's know. I'm sure someone could come up with an algorithm for working out who's being a dick with the downvoting consistently. I think there should be a clear distinction between legitimately disagreeing/downvoting someone's comment and being a dick, so why not try and expose the latter. We've seen in many, many cases that anonymity on the web has given rise to the kinds of behaviours that many of us dislike. Why not bring it back a little towards people being responsible for their actions.
- nopassrecover 17y agoI kind of see myself as the balancer. I tend to actually read a downvoted comment to see if it was worthy (and vote it up) or see a highly upvoted comment and possibly vote it down if it's just getting upvoted because it puts forward a popular view (e.g. Microsoft is evil) rather than something of value.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- bestes 17y agoIf downvotes are used for disagreement, then I have to read them in order to know if they are relevant. If downvotes are saved only for irrelevant, one-liners, me-too's, etc., then I can safely ignore them.
- shiranaihito 17y agoGroupthink is a silly thing. Besides, if your comment gets downvoted, it becomes gray and much harder to read. It's unfortunate if thoughtful comments get "hidden" by downvotes.
- billswift 17y agoI usually check out grayed out comments on the posts I read; I have yet to see one that was "thoughtful". Maybe on posts I don't bother to read, because the topic doesn't particularly interest me, there are lots of thoughtful comments downvoted, but I haven't seen it happening.
- shiranaihito 17y agoI often check them too, just to see if they were actually offensive, or just victims of groupthink etc. Well, if by thoughtful comments you mean obviously intelligent, well thought-out and reasonable comments, then yes, you don't see (m)any of those downvoted. But sometimes people downvote comments where the author has clearly put some thought into them, and tried to contribute to the conversation. Those shouldn't be grayed out just for failing to be as spectacular as some of the others. Everyone does what they can. I do realize I'm trying to defend my own comments here too..
- mhb 17y agoWhy do you think that the 8th downvote isn't as carefully considered as the first? Maybe the comment really is that worthy of being downvoted.