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It's better than a downvote, if you ask me. A downvote is an anonymous put-down, and that's why people use it to punish anyone that disagrees with them, or if t
by zo1 12y ago
It's better than a downvote, if you ask me. A downvote is an anonymous put-down, and that's why people use it to punish anyone that disagrees with them, or if they don't like someone's opinion.
Perhaps if down-votes were displayed, and people could respond. Dunno, perhaps we're over-complicating it.
- dragonwriter 12y agoA downvote is a tool to provide community management of the signal-to-noise ratio on HN. Encouraging noise to trigger more noise would not be an effective means of serving that purpose.
- zo1 12y agoThat's not been my experience with downvotes here so far. I've regularly had meaningful comments, that would have been seen as "conversation" in a normal context, get downvoted here. Now I don't know what "noise" that got rid of, but it sure did serve a pretty powerful way of signaling others to jump on board with the downvotes and/or ignore my comment.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> I've regularly had meaningful comments The fact that you thought they were meaningful does not mean that others found them as meaningful contributions to the discussion. > but it sure did serve a pretty powerful way of signaling others to jump on board with the downvotes Downvotes (because the fact that they have been given is visible and, with a small number, the comment text's visibility is not reduced much) do encourage others to moderate -- either with downvotes or upvotes. If they are piling on with downvotes, that's perhaps a signal that lots of people here think your comment is inappropriate. I've had lots of posts of mine draw both hostile responses and a few downvotes -- but most of those get reverse by upvotes quickly. On the rare occasions where I've gotten more than a few downvotes that haven't been quickly countered by upvotes, I've usually been able to see a plausible explanation other than simple disagreement why people would see the post as not a substantive addition. And that's been true of most of other people's posts I've seen downvoted more than slightly, so I am not inclined to think that there is a broad, general problem with downvoting on HN.
- ThomPete 12y agoI think this is true when discussions tend to be quantifiable areas. But I have seen and experienced downvotes purely based on disagreement about political opinion which is why I wish downvotes mandated a comment as to why the downvote is happening. Other than that I agree with you.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> But I have seen and experienced downvotes purely based on disagreement about political opinion You've seen downvotes and you've assumed were based purely on disagreement about political opinion. > which is why I wish downvotes mandated a comment as to why the downvote is happening. If they mandated a comment, then every downvote would produce discussion of the merits of the downvote, which is exactly the opposite of the purpose of having downvotes. Ironically, this whole subthread has become a demonstration of why comments about downvotes are big distractions from whatever the substantive topic under discussion is.
- ThomPete 12y agoNo I know it was based on different political viewpoints. There is a reason why you aren't allowed to downvote in the beginning lets not pretend this issue goes away just because you get more karma.
- ThomPete 12y agoPeople spend a lot of time here and invest a lot of time, of course downvotes is always going to be a very important topic of discussion.