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If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. But is fading the comme

If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment? My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't agree with it; and let flagging remove inappropriate comments.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mblevin 12y ago
Moving comments down completely can break the threading - e.g. you could have a highly upvoted parent comment with a single child comment that was heavily downvoted. You can't move the child any further down the tree. You CAN indicative that the comment has been downvoted - the fading accomplishes that objective.
- readerrrr 12y ago
  That sounds like an incorrect fix. Since the comments are separated by trees, they should be positioned and compared to comments relative to that tree, not relative to the master tree. Being at the bottom of a sub-tree marks the comment automatically as the most downvoted in that tree. Applying fading to all the comments just because a downvoted comment has a parent that happens to be at the top, seems wrong.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    Downvoting and threaded view is hard to combine. What you describe is the trivial way. It has the downside that if a comment has few subcomments, downvoting them don't accomplish very much.
    - r00fus 12y ago
      Slashdot solved it by "re-parenting" - i.e., a great reply to a redundant/trollish comment will appear to start it's own thread. Another approach is simply to hide the offensive comment and weight the entire thread in relation to other threads when determining display order.
  - axlprose 12y ago
    Agreed. If they're this adamant about keeping the fading functionality tied to downvoting, they should just do away with downvoting all together, because fading just seems to worsen the discussion. I've lost count of how many times I've seen perfectly good insightful comments around here that get ignored because some people decided to downvote them for some arbitrary reason. In fact, it's so bad, that I'd say I've barely seen any good instances of fading for the past year; they just seems to encourage group-think almost every time. I'm ok with the idea of downvoting meaning disagreement, since that's how voting systems always end up being used anyway (not to mention pg approves of that interpretation as well), but penalizing comments to become practically non-existent based on a few downvotes (last time I noticed, a score of -1 started the fading) is just not conducive to interesting discussion.
    - readerrrr 12y ago
      I believe the fading starts at 0 ( a comment starts with 1 point ).
      - axlprose 12y ago
        ah thanks. Even worse!
    - krapp 12y ago
      Comments that most deserve to be downvoted (trolling, incivility, lies, etc) are inevitably going to garner a lot of downvotes anyway. It's only the ones which oscillate between one or two downvotes and upvotes in what may be controversial threads which most fall prey to what I consider to be the more petty examples of downvoting. The first couple of downvotes are the least meaningful, I think. So perhaps a margin of, say, five or six downvotes should be necessary before any visual effect takes place. Not only would this no longer bias readers against a comment before having read it, but it would guarantee that the faded comments more accurately reflect the standards of the community as a whole.
hackuser 12y ago
> downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment I hope downvoting has nothing to do with agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated). I want to see many more comments that are valuable and challenge the community (and challenge my thinking too). The groupthink is already well known and if not, will certainly be posted by someone. In practice, I do see downvoting used on comments that are valuable but challenging. It's disappointing. EDIT: remove embarrassing typo
- baddox 12y ago
  > I hope downvoting has nothing to do with a agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated). That's a weak distinction when there is a factual disagreement, since most people probably believe that factually incorrect statements are not valuable to the conversation.
  - brianpan 12y ago
    You stated: most people probably believe that factually incorrect statements are not valuable to the conversation. I don't think this is true at all. I disagree that 1) this is a thing most people believe and 2) that incorrect statements are not valuable. I would hope our disagreement would cause people to refine their thinking about what they post as well as what they downvote and flag. [*] Most, referring to most HN readers
- lotharbot 12y ago
  pg has said many times that it's OK to downvote out of disagreement (particularly since it's OK to upvote due to agreement.) I generally don't unless the disagreement has another value-subtracting component (lack of substance, poor reasoning/phrasing, factual errors, unnecessary incivility.) For disagreeable but worthwhile comments, I prefer responding instead. But I recognize the value in having differences of opinion over the use of downvotes -- comments of marginal quality (which some people disagree with, and others don't find valuable enough to upvote even if they agree) will end up dropping down the page.
onli 12y ago
I think you don't understand the rules correctly. Or rather, I know a different version. Maybe that is because that question does seem to not really be answered in the rules, at least I found nothing. I was under the impression that downvoting is for comments that you do more than just disagree with. If you disagree, but it is a valid interesting argument, I try to vote a comment up, in any case not to vote it down. Flagging is for inappropriate comment, stuff that is harder than just a bad comment, like racial insults or spam. I'm sure that will be explained to us :)
jonnathanson 12y ago
"If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments." In theory, no, downvoting is not supposed to be used to disagree. It's supposed to be used to move "stupid" comments (inarticulate, illogical, poorly argued, etc.) down towards the bottom of the screen. Flagging, on the other hand, is meant to call out wildly inappropriate, offensive, or completely off-topic comments. A few hypotheticals: 1) I see a comment that is well articulated and generally inoffensive, but I disagree completely with its premise or its arguments --> I do nothing. 2) I see a comment that is irrational, illogical, poorly constructed, whiny, or off topic --> I downvote. 3) I see a comment that is extremely offensive, completely unrelated to the topic at hand, spammy/astroturfy, or clearly intended to instigate a flame war --> I flag. That said, many people seem to use downvotes to disagree with a comment, and I'm concerned that lowering the downvote threshold will lead to even more of that behavior. Maybe the problem is that downvoting and flagging share too close of a hypothetical use case. Downvoting is clearly easier to do, and it's doable in the main thread view. So that could be why people routinely use it to disagree with comments. I have flagged maybe a grand total of one comment in all my time on HN, and I generally regard flagging as an option of last resort. (It could also be that I arrive at various threads after the worst stuff has been flagged and removed, providing me an artificially sunny view of the threads).
- tptacek 12y ago
  That's a reasonable take on what downvoting is for, but the HN take is that it's better to downvote a disagreement than to write a noisy bad comment to express the same disagreement.
  - jonnathanson 12y ago
    Interesting. At first I thought, wait a minute, isn't "don't downvote to disagree" in the HN Guidelines? Then I checked, and no, it isn't. The guidelines talk about downvoting ("downmodding") very briefly, and only to say that one shouldn't complain when it happens to him or her. There are no guidelines on how or why to downvote. Maybe this is a problem, in and of itself? Seems different people have different takes on the use case for downvoting.
SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
As far as I can tell, there are no guidelines or FAQs about what downvoting should be "used for" on HN. On Reddit, the Reddiquette [1] standard is that you should only downvote if a comment doesn't contribute to the conversation. I think is is an excellent standard. It's been suggested in the past that a similar standard should be present on HN. [2] Considering that flagging is a privilege that can be lost if someone decides that you're abusing it, ideally it should be reserved for the egregious cases that are unquestionably bad. Downvoting on HN should be for comments that truly don't contribute to the conversation, though the comments in question may not rise to the level of flagging. As an example: Say you have a comment expressing an opinion with no support, no references, and factual errors. Is it "inappropriate"? Arguable. Does it contribute to the conversation? Not in any positive way. I would suggest downvoting that comment would be the right answer, even if you agree with the sentiment, because it doesn't positively contribute to the conversation. But flagging wouldn't be appropriate considering the comment is on topic and not spam (which are given as criteria in the HN Guidelines). If you encourage downvoting because you disagree with an opinion, then minority opinions get buried. And sometimes it's useful to see that an opinion isn't unanimous, and that there's another side to an argument, even if you disagree. [1] http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=721314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=721314
Udo 12y ago
I think disagreeing with a comment is not enough to merit a downvote. I'd rather see downvoting as a signal to the author about the quality of their post - while flagging is a signal to the system itself in cases where the post is unacceptable and should be removed from the site. When I disagree with a comment, I'd rather write a dissenting one or a reply stating my counter points. Another method of dealing with disagreements is to simply upvote other comments you agree with.
nilkn 12y ago
Using a downvote to express disagreement with somebody here is going to come off as highly inflammatory towards them because downvotes actually cause their comment to fade out, as you mentioned. In fact, there have been instances where I've upvoted comments that I didn't agree with because they were so well articulated. I believe that pg himself disagrees with me on this, but I honestly don't think the site is designed correctly with his view of voting in mind. The punishment for downvoting shouldn't be so harsh (both moving the comment down and fading it out) if it's just to express disagreement. That just encourages extreme group-think. By far the best way to express disagreement IMHO is to neither vote nor flag, but to post a response.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  > By far the best way to express disagreement IMHO is to neither vote nor flag, but to post a response. I sometimes wish downvoting comments that have no response was impossible period, but I have no idea how to deal with the edge cases. Still, it's frustrating to see responses (actual ones, not just a bunch of insults etc.) made in obviously good faith greyed out without anyone pointing out what is wrong with them. When I do know, I try to reply, but usually I don't feel quite qualified. But the person who downvoted should know, right? If they can't put it in words, can it really be that good a reason? Among people who mostly type very fast, mostly idly browsing this site instead of being in a hurry, the time it takes is not an excuse, either. To me it says someone has enough time to care about something someone said being somehow wrong, but not enough time to tell them what it is; that somehow the fact that they said something wrong makes them unworthy of being told what was wrong about it. Oh, and that nobody else who doesn't "get it" doesn't deserve to learn, either.
ggchappell 12y ago
> If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment .... Certainly not. Up & downvotes determine what is shown on the site, and what is prominently featured. Is your goal for this site for it to be full of things you agree with? I hope not. That's not my goal. Now, there are varying opinions on the issue of downvoting for disagreement. Regardless, it is certainly never officially stated that this is the purpose of downvotes.
ars 12y ago
> If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. No, that is NOT correct. Downvoting is a for useless comment. Flagging is for spam and abusive comments. If you disagree with the comment, but the comment was well made and on topic you should UPVOTE it, not downvote it. This is one of the main differences for HN vs Reddit, and it's one of the main reasons this site is so much better.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mblevin 12y ago

Moving comments down completely can break the threading - e.g. you could have a highly upvoted parent comment with a single child comment that was heavily downvoted. You can't move the child any further down the tree. You CAN indicative that the comment has been downvoted - the fading accomplishes that objective.

readerrrr 12y ago
That sounds like an incorrect fix. Since the comments are separated by trees, they should be positioned and compared to comments relative to that tree, not relative to the master tree. Being at the bottom of a sub-tree marks the comment automatically as the most downvoted in that tree. Applying fading to all the comments just because a downvoted comment has a parent that happens to be at the top, seems wrong.
- xorcist 12y ago
  Downvoting and threaded view is hard to combine. What you describe is the trivial way. It has the downside that if a comment has few subcomments, downvoting them don't accomplish very much.
  - r00fus 12y ago
    Slashdot solved it by "re-parenting" - i.e., a great reply to a redundant/trollish comment will appear to start it's own thread. Another approach is simply to hide the offensive comment and weight the entire thread in relation to other threads when determining display order.
- axlprose 12y ago
  Agreed. If they're this adamant about keeping the fading functionality tied to downvoting, they should just do away with downvoting all together, because fading just seems to worsen the discussion. I've lost count of how many times I've seen perfectly good insightful comments around here that get ignored because some people decided to downvote them for some arbitrary reason. In fact, it's so bad, that I'd say I've barely seen any good instances of fading for the past year; they just seems to encourage group-think almost every time. I'm ok with the idea of downvoting meaning disagreement, since that's how voting systems always end up being used anyway (not to mention pg approves of that interpretation as well), but penalizing comments to become practically non-existent based on a few downvotes (last time I noticed, a score of -1 started the fading) is just not conducive to interesting discussion.
  - readerrrr 12y ago
    I believe the fading starts at 0 ( a comment starts with 1 point ).
    - axlprose 12y ago
      ah thanks. Even worse!
  - krapp 12y ago
    Comments that most deserve to be downvoted (trolling, incivility, lies, etc) are inevitably going to garner a lot of downvotes anyway. It's only the ones which oscillate between one or two downvotes and upvotes in what may be controversial threads which most fall prey to what I consider to be the more petty examples of downvoting. The first couple of downvotes are the least meaningful, I think. So perhaps a margin of, say, five or six downvotes should be necessary before any visual effect takes place. Not only would this no longer bias readers against a comment before having read it, but it would guarantee that the faded comments more accurately reflect the standards of the community as a whole.

hackuser 12y ago

> downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment I hope downvoting has nothing to do with agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated). I want to see many more comments that are valuable and challenge the community (and challenge my thinking too). The groupthink is already well known and if not, will certainly be posted by someone. In practice, I do see downvoting used on comments that are valuable but challenging. It's disappointing. EDIT: remove embarrassing typo

baddox 12y ago
> I hope downvoting has nothing to do with a agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated). That's a weak distinction when there is a factual disagreement, since most people probably believe that factually incorrect statements are not valuable to the conversation.
- brianpan 12y ago
  You stated: most people probably believe that factually incorrect statements are not valuable to the conversation. I don't think this is true at all. I disagree that 1) this is a thing most people believe and 2) that incorrect statements are not valuable. I would hope our disagreement would cause people to refine their thinking about what they post as well as what they downvote and flag. [*] Most, referring to most HN readers
lotharbot 12y ago
pg has said many times that it's OK to downvote out of disagreement (particularly since it's OK to upvote due to agreement.) I generally don't unless the disagreement has another value-subtracting component (lack of substance, poor reasoning/phrasing, factual errors, unnecessary incivility.) For disagreeable but worthwhile comments, I prefer responding instead. But I recognize the value in having differences of opinion over the use of downvotes -- comments of marginal quality (which some people disagree with, and others don't find valuable enough to upvote even if they agree) will end up dropping down the page.

onli 12y ago

I think you don't understand the rules correctly. Or rather, I know a different version. Maybe that is because that question does seem to not really be answered in the rules, at least I found nothing. I was under the impression that downvoting is for comments that you do more than just disagree with. If you disagree, but it is a valid interesting argument, I try to vote a comment up, in any case not to vote it down. Flagging is for inappropriate comment, stuff that is harder than just a bad comment, like racial insults or spam. I'm sure that will be explained to us :)

jonnathanson 12y ago

"If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments." In theory, no, downvoting is not supposed to be used to disagree. It's supposed to be used to move "stupid" comments (inarticulate, illogical, poorly argued, etc.) down towards the bottom of the screen. Flagging, on the other hand, is meant to call out wildly inappropriate, offensive, or completely off-topic comments. A few hypotheticals: 1) I see a comment that is well articulated and generally inoffensive, but I disagree completely with its premise or its arguments --> I do nothing. 2) I see a comment that is irrational, illogical, poorly constructed, whiny, or off topic --> I downvote. 3) I see a comment that is extremely offensive, completely unrelated to the topic at hand, spammy/astroturfy, or clearly intended to instigate a flame war --> I flag. That said, many people seem to use downvotes to disagree with a comment, and I'm concerned that lowering the downvote threshold will lead to even more of that behavior. Maybe the problem is that downvoting and flagging share too close of a hypothetical use case. Downvoting is clearly easier to do, and it's doable in the main thread view. So that could be why people routinely use it to disagree with comments. I have flagged maybe a grand total of one comment in all my time on HN, and I generally regard flagging as an option of last resort. (It could also be that I arrive at various threads after the worst stuff has been flagged and removed, providing me an artificially sunny view of the threads).

tptacek 12y ago
That's a reasonable take on what downvoting is for, but the HN take is that it's better to downvote a disagreement than to write a noisy bad comment to express the same disagreement.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  Interesting. At first I thought, wait a minute, isn't "don't downvote to disagree" in the HN Guidelines? Then I checked, and no, it isn't. The guidelines talk about downvoting ("downmodding") very briefly, and only to say that one shouldn't complain when it happens to him or her. There are no guidelines on how or why to downvote. Maybe this is a problem, in and of itself? Seems different people have different takes on the use case for downvoting.

SomeCallMeTim 12y ago

As far as I can tell, there are no guidelines or FAQs about what downvoting should be "used for" on HN. On Reddit, the Reddiquette [1] standard is that you should only downvote if a comment doesn't contribute to the conversation. I think is is an excellent standard. It's been suggested in the past that a similar standard should be present on HN. [2] Considering that flagging is a privilege that can be lost if someone decides that you're abusing it, ideally it should be reserved for the egregious cases that are unquestionably bad. Downvoting on HN should be for comments that truly don't contribute to the conversation, though the comments in question may not rise to the level of flagging. As an example: Say you have a comment expressing an opinion with no support, no references, and factual errors. Is it "inappropriate"? Arguable. Does it contribute to the conversation? Not in any positive way. I would suggest downvoting that comment would be the right answer, even if you agree with the sentiment, because it doesn't positively contribute to the conversation. But flagging wouldn't be appropriate considering the comment is on topic and not spam (which are given as criteria in the HN Guidelines). If you encourage downvoting because you disagree with an opinion, then minority opinions get buried. And sometimes it's useful to see that an opinion isn't unanimous, and that there's another side to an argument, even if you disagree. [1] http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=721314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=721314

Udo 12y ago

I think disagreeing with a comment is not enough to merit a downvote. I'd rather see downvoting as a signal to the author about the quality of their post - while flagging is a signal to the system itself in cases where the post is unacceptable and should be removed from the site. When I disagree with a comment, I'd rather write a dissenting one or a reply stating my counter points. Another method of dealing with disagreements is to simply upvote other comments you agree with.

nilkn 12y ago

Using a downvote to express disagreement with somebody here is going to come off as highly inflammatory towards them because downvotes actually cause their comment to fade out, as you mentioned. In fact, there have been instances where I've upvoted comments that I didn't agree with because they were so well articulated. I believe that pg himself disagrees with me on this, but I honestly don't think the site is designed correctly with his view of voting in mind. The punishment for downvoting shouldn't be so harsh (both moving the comment down and fading it out) if it's just to express disagreement. That just encourages extreme group-think. By far the best way to express disagreement IMHO is to neither vote nor flag, but to post a response.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
> By far the best way to express disagreement IMHO is to neither vote nor flag, but to post a response. I sometimes wish downvoting comments that have no response was impossible period, but I have no idea how to deal with the edge cases. Still, it's frustrating to see responses (actual ones, not just a bunch of insults etc.) made in obviously good faith greyed out without anyone pointing out what is wrong with them. When I do know, I try to reply, but usually I don't feel quite qualified. But the person who downvoted should know, right? If they can't put it in words, can it really be that good a reason? Among people who mostly type very fast, mostly idly browsing this site instead of being in a hurry, the time it takes is not an excuse, either. To me it says someone has enough time to care about something someone said being somehow wrong, but not enough time to tell them what it is; that somehow the fact that they said something wrong makes them unworthy of being told what was wrong about it. Oh, and that nobody else who doesn't "get it" doesn't deserve to learn, either.

ggchappell 12y ago

> If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment .... Certainly not. Up & downvotes determine what is shown on the site, and what is prominently featured. Is your goal for this site for it to be full of things you agree with? I hope not. That's not my goal. Now, there are varying opinions on the issue of downvoting for disagreement. Regardless, it is certainly never officially stated that this is the purpose of downvotes.

ars 12y ago

> If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. No, that is NOT correct. Downvoting is a for useless comment. Flagging is for spam and abusive comments. If you disagree with the comment, but the comment was well made and on topic you should UPVOTE it, not downvote it. This is one of the main differences for HN vs Reddit, and it's one of the main reasons this site is so much better.