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Consider removing the downvotes? Keep only the upvotes? Downvoting IMO feels bad for the poster. They stop feeling like participating. They might have very goo

Consider removing the downvotes? Keep only the upvotes? Downvoting IMO feels bad for the poster. They stop feeling like participating. They might have very good and insightful posts which might not be popular. The downvotes end up driving them away and all you're left with is an echo chamber of groupthink

notduncansmith 12y ago
As someone who's received a nontrivial amount of downvotes in this community and others, I can confidently say that I appreciate them as a mechanism. Almost every downvote that I've received was for a legitimate reason - a few were just out of disagreement, but that's the exception rather than the rule. In a way, it does create an echo chamber: when the community consistently downvotes things that don't conform to X (in HN's case, X usually being "well-reasoned commentary relevant to the thread"), people tend to shy away from those things. One could consider the utter lack of response gifs on HN "groupthink", in the sense that everyone knows the community is unfriendly to them so they don't post them (even when they're funny).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- underrated 12y ago
  A well-organized hate group can use downvotes to silence reasonable discourse and trumpet their ideology, so it looks like the popular opinion when it's nothing of the sort. You see this happen on Reddit. A hate group called SRS does it. They've even been leaking onto Hacker News recently, with some of the same lines they regularly use.
  - notduncansmith 12y ago
    Wow, that's really disheartening to hear. I've personally never seen that around here (thankfully), but now that I'm over my minor obsession with Dogecoin I don't spend much time on Reddit.
fivedogit 12y ago
For my money, downvoting is entirely necessary. You know how a comment like "R u srs? Luv this vid!" is normal on Youtube? I want users to downvote the living hell out of that comment. I want the WORDS community to hold each other to a much higher standard. Downvotes seem like the only way to actually maintain order.
- underrated 12y ago
  There's nothing disorderly or actively harmful about that comment. It just adds little value compared to the search space of all possible comments. So it seems semantically more sound to simply withhold upvotes from it, rather than punishing it with downvotes.
  - fivedogit 12y ago
    Let's say a comment on one site gets 100 upvotes and no downvotes. On another site, another comment gets 10 upvotes and no downvotes. Was the first more popular, or just more trafficked? You need the ratio of up-to-down to determine a comment's true usefulness.
    - underrated 12y ago
      You can't compare upvote numbers (or even upvote/downvote ratios) meaningfully between sites, because their communities aren't the same. Your proposed scenario tells us nothing beyond pure numbers -- 100 people voted on one, 10 on the other. You can't say anything comparative. You certainly can't speak to strength of intent.

notduncansmith 12y ago

As someone who's received a nontrivial amount of downvotes in this community and others, I can confidently say that I appreciate them as a mechanism. Almost every downvote that I've received was for a legitimate reason - a few were just out of disagreement, but that's the exception rather than the rule. In a way, it does create an echo chamber: when the community consistently downvotes things that don't conform to X (in HN's case, X usually being "well-reasoned commentary relevant to the thread"), people tend to shy away from those things. One could consider the utter lack of response gifs on HN "groupthink", in the sense that everyone knows the community is unfriendly to them so they don't post them (even when they're funny).

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
underrated 12y ago
A well-organized hate group can use downvotes to silence reasonable discourse and trumpet their ideology, so it looks like the popular opinion when it's nothing of the sort. You see this happen on Reddit. A hate group called SRS does it. They've even been leaking onto Hacker News recently, with some of the same lines they regularly use.
- notduncansmith 12y ago
  Wow, that's really disheartening to hear. I've personally never seen that around here (thankfully), but now that I'm over my minor obsession with Dogecoin I don't spend much time on Reddit.

fivedogit 12y ago

For my money, downvoting is entirely necessary. You know how a comment like "R u srs? Luv this vid!" is normal on Youtube? I want users to downvote the living hell out of that comment. I want the WORDS community to hold each other to a much higher standard. Downvotes seem like the only way to actually maintain order.

underrated 12y ago
There's nothing disorderly or actively harmful about that comment. It just adds little value compared to the search space of all possible comments. So it seems semantically more sound to simply withhold upvotes from it, rather than punishing it with downvotes.
- fivedogit 12y ago
  Let's say a comment on one site gets 100 upvotes and no downvotes. On another site, another comment gets 10 upvotes and no downvotes. Was the first more popular, or just more trafficked? You need the ratio of up-to-down to determine a comment's true usefulness.
  - underrated 12y ago
    You can't compare upvote numbers (or even upvote/downvote ratios) meaningfully between sites, because their communities aren't the same. Your proposed scenario tells us nothing beyond pure numbers -- 100 people voted on one, 10 on the other. You can't say anything comparative. You certainly can't speak to strength of intent.