4 ms·

Why -1? I'm quoting exactly from the article mentioned above in the thread. Am I wrong in anything? Am I disrespectful? Please care to explain.

• scott_s 12y ago
  Please resist the urge to question receiving a downvote. If it's unwarranted (and I think it was, in this case), someone will likely give you a corrective upvote.
  • derekp7 12y ago
    The other common case is someone clicking the downvote button in error. Is there any way to undo a downvote, or is that a planned future feature?
    • e12e 12y ago
      No, there isn't. There probably should be (but it's debatable, perhaps like edits, they should be timed, with a hint in the UI that not only voting is done (arrows removed), but which vote was cast (eg: dim the arrow not pressed, highlight the one pressed.). What really should be done, is change the hopelessly small arrows (which are annoying on desktop, unusable on mobile) to a pair of unicode up-down arrows/triangles side-by-side that are more or less full line-height/1em. Eg: ▲▼. It would mean a minimal change in layout (small increase in left margin) -- but greatly increase usability. I'd probably stopped using hn (well interacting with the ui) a long time ago, if I wasn't using vimperator, and could just hit "f"[ollow links] and type a number for the arrow I wanted to hit, rather than hunting the tiny glyphs. /Off-topic-rant
  • innguest 12y ago
    Why doesn't HN have a policy whereby the downvoter must explain the reason for it, much like a Wikipedia edit is strongly encouraged to have a written reason? How can we teach people not to do something worthy of downvote if there is no visible feedback mechanism to help see why something downvoted was rightfully so? If the current policy (of downvoting without a reason) is to avoid discussing the reason for the downvote, so that the conversation not be derailed further, then maybe we should focus on disincentivizing this specific behavior.
    • reitanqild 12y ago
      Not unexpectedly parent was downvoted too as will I most likely be. It seems to have become a trend lately. To any newcomers with downvote privilege: There used to be that you had to say something wrong or unpopular to be downvoted, not just something that could have been avoided etc. That way HN came across as a friendly (although biased) community. I'd appreciate if we extended this to newcomers and tired ones today: If you have gained your downvote-privilege, use it carefully, don't assume stackoverflow-moderator-responsibility. (Notice that this is my second account, I have lurked and participated here a few years and have another account that I sometimes log into when someone really needs my downvote or I want to be personally identified with my answers ; )
• ch4s3 12y ago
  looks like someone downvoted a quote they don't like. It irks me when that happens here.
  • reitanqild 12y ago
    As I've pointed out before either there is a change in policy or we got some unusually active downvoters recently. I don't know and I don't have time to research it but I guess someone with admin access could do some kind of query on users with unusual amount of downvotes?
    • waterlesscloud 12y ago
      I habitually downvote discussions about downvoting as they pretty much always distract from the topic at hand and really aren't all that interesting in themselves. The best approach to being downvoted is not to woundedly post asking why you were downvoted, but to wait. If your post has genuine value, it will almost always be voted back up. This has happened to me more times than I can count. If your post is not upvoted over time, perhaps you're wrong about its value. Certainly the community disagrees with you. That questioning should be directed inwardly. Perhaps sometimes the answer will be that you don't care if the community disagrees with you, you still feel your point was justified. That also happens to me. I understand the emotional impulse to question what a poster feels to be an injustice, but all they're really doing is indulging their emotional impulse at the expense of actual on-topic and interesting discussion. Please don't do that.
      • reitanqild 12y ago
        I see and I used to agree although I usually didn't care to do that myself. Lately I find a lot of the downvoting that has been going on has been so stupid that the stupid "why the downvotes?" question has seemed relevant.
      • hosh 12y ago
        Sometimes, the way to improve your skill at communicating is getting feedback from the community. Further, you can't assume that someone asking for such feedback is asking in a defensive way. Although that often happens, the written text is a poor way of judging that. Spoken tonality is more accurate. If you're interpreting a request for feedback as one coming out of being "wounded", that is more likely to be a projection of your own habits of communication and psyche than what is actually happening.
• swartkrans 12y ago
  I didn't downvote you, I can't since you replied to me, but you are selectively quoting the article, which may have been the reason. The article also said the Elk population was reduced by the wolves, and that this impacted plant regrowth but not as much as widely believed, and yes some areas haven't been improved at all. It also said bear populations increased. It's a nuanced piece.
  • aetherson 12y ago
    I think that the summary of that story, though, is, "Actually, wolves hardly did anything." Yes, not literally nothing, but that for the most part, plant regrowth didn't happen at all. Where it did happen, it's far from clear that the wolves -> elk predation causality chain was a major factor.
  • waterlesscloud 12y ago
    I've read a few papers on this in the past, after having originally seen the video. The ongoing research is indeed nuanced and complex, and as with a lot of ongoing scientific research, there's disagreements among scientists. Different papers use different methods to estimate predation risk in various locations, for instance. Some base it on actual predation incidents, some on landscape factors (which may model risk perception as opposed to actual risk). There's also discussion about the way active predators such as wolves impact an area, which is different from lie-in-wait predators. And there's an idea that a constant background threat comes to be ignored, as opposed to a sort of pulsing threat, where there are surges of predation. Also worth noting that various studies take place in different areas of the park, and in different seasons. Not to mention there's three main varieties of trees under discussion (aspens, cottonwoods, willows), which have all seen different recovery rates in different areas. It's not a simple question, and from what I've seen in my sort of casual reading on the topic, it's not at all settled.