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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." In theory, no, downvo

"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.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    The "HN take on downvoting" comes directly from Paul Graham. People disagree with it, but it is what it is. I don't downvote disagreement, but that's because I'm a compulsive (and, from what I can tell, fast) commenter. The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get downvoted.
    - jonnathanson 12y ago
      Gotcha. I'll take your word for it, because I regard you as about as much a lay authority on HN posting as HN has. And if pg has weighed in on this topic, well, he's quite the authority, too. :) That being said, I still feel weird about downvoting to disagree. The way I see it, disagreement-downvoting creates noise in its own way. Less noise than unproductive or bad replies, certainly, but more noise than doing nothing. "The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get down voted." True, and this is also an official guideline. (A good one, too, IMO).
- ars 12y ago
  > is that it's better to downvote a disagreement than to write a noisy bad comment to express the same disagreement No, quite the opposite. (See I wrote a comment explaining that I disagree, I didn't just click the arrow. Much more valuable to you and the reader.) And that's why you are wrong, by saying why you disagree you might (rarely) change the posters mind, or more likely change a 3rd readers mind about the topic. Clicking downvote is pretty useless.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I don't know who you're arguing with, but I was making a positive statement, not a normative one.
    - SilasX 12y ago
      I think it was helpful for ars to cite the problems with such a policy in a reply, even if you weren't advocating that policy.
    - ars 12y ago
      It wasn't obvious that you do not hold by the HN norm you described. I don't think it's the norm anyway, I think it's a minority that do that.
- etcet 12y ago
  Wouldn't it be better to upvote the disagreements you agree with?
  - tptacek 12y ago
    This isn't my argument, but you're missing its point. Think of disagreement downvotes as a pressure release valve for the downvoter. The idea is to prevent you from expressing your disagreement in an unproductive comment.
peterwwillis 12y ago
There is no particular purpose for HN downvotes other than to express dislike. It's not needed to move 'stupid' comments down, because only 'non-stupid' comments rise up. The comments which are never voted on have no intrinsic value, so they might as well be stupid anyway. I wasn't even aware of flagging on comments until someone mentioned it, and to be honest it's so inconvenient i'd probably never do it. Downvote is an easy enough way for me to say "I don't like this" and it helps reinforce the group dynamic, which is what they want (this whole post is about manipulating group dynamics). The only way to fix downvoting is to put an express purpose behind it, like a button that says "I disagree" next to a button that says "I dislike" next to a button that says "Inappropriate comment". But for some reason forum admins always prefer generic feedback which give rise to unexpected behavior. Heh, it probably keeps people upset, which reinforces user engagement.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  Again, interesting. Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but I don't approach voting from an agree/disagree axis. I approach it from a productive/unproductive axis. I upvote comments I find helpful, articulate, or informative. I downvote comments I find unhelpful, inarticulate, or uninformative. I leave alone comments that I find "meh," or that someone has already said better, or that neither add to, nor subtract from, the conversation. Basically: something either adds to the conversation (upvote), subtracts from the conversation (downvote), completely derails the conversation (flag), or is neutral. Case in point: I didn't necessarily agree with your comment, but I found it articulate and interesting. It presented a perspective I hadn't considered. It made me think. I upvoted it. Now, one could argue that agree/disagree and productive/unproductive are basically the same thing in practice. They both represent a desire to move the conversation in one direction or the other. (To your point about the group dynamics). But I don't know if I totally buy into that. I have no idea if this is true, but I'd hypothesize that voting patterns would be different under one explicit guideline or the other. I'd also think that downvoting-to-disagree runs the risk of fostering an echo chamber, which discourages dissenting or different viewpoints, particularly on hot-button topics.
- SilasX 12y ago
  >There is no particular purpose for HN downvotes other than to express dislike. It's not needed to move 'stupid' comments down, because only 'non-stupid' comments rise up. The problem is that smart-but-unpopular comments may fail to rise up. We want to prevent groupthink by ensuring that the top comments don't exclude ones that are well written and productive while expressing a contrary viewpoint. A simple "vote down for disagree" breaks that.

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.
- tptacek 12y ago
  The "HN take on downvoting" comes directly from Paul Graham. People disagree with it, but it is what it is. I don't downvote disagreement, but that's because I'm a compulsive (and, from what I can tell, fast) commenter. The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get downvoted.
  - jonnathanson 12y ago
    Gotcha. I'll take your word for it, because I regard you as about as much a lay authority on HN posting as HN has. And if pg has weighed in on this topic, well, he's quite the authority, too. :) That being said, I still feel weird about downvoting to disagree. The way I see it, disagreement-downvoting creates noise in its own way. Less noise than unproductive or bad replies, certainly, but more noise than doing nothing. "The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get down voted." True, and this is also an official guideline. (A good one, too, IMO).
ars 12y ago
> is that it's better to downvote a disagreement than to write a noisy bad comment to express the same disagreement No, quite the opposite. (See I wrote a comment explaining that I disagree, I didn't just click the arrow. Much more valuable to you and the reader.) And that's why you are wrong, by saying why you disagree you might (rarely) change the posters mind, or more likely change a 3rd readers mind about the topic. Clicking downvote is pretty useless.
- tptacek 12y ago
  I don't know who you're arguing with, but I was making a positive statement, not a normative one.
  - SilasX 12y ago
    I think it was helpful for ars to cite the problems with such a policy in a reply, even if you weren't advocating that policy.
  - ars 12y ago
    It wasn't obvious that you do not hold by the HN norm you described. I don't think it's the norm anyway, I think it's a minority that do that.
etcet 12y ago
Wouldn't it be better to upvote the disagreements you agree with?
- tptacek 12y ago
  This isn't my argument, but you're missing its point. Think of disagreement downvotes as a pressure release valve for the downvoter. The idea is to prevent you from expressing your disagreement in an unproductive comment.

peterwwillis 12y ago

There is no particular purpose for HN downvotes other than to express dislike. It's not needed to move 'stupid' comments down, because only 'non-stupid' comments rise up. The comments which are never voted on have no intrinsic value, so they might as well be stupid anyway. I wasn't even aware of flagging on comments until someone mentioned it, and to be honest it's so inconvenient i'd probably never do it. Downvote is an easy enough way for me to say "I don't like this" and it helps reinforce the group dynamic, which is what they want (this whole post is about manipulating group dynamics). The only way to fix downvoting is to put an express purpose behind it, like a button that says "I disagree" next to a button that says "I dislike" next to a button that says "Inappropriate comment". But for some reason forum admins always prefer generic feedback which give rise to unexpected behavior. Heh, it probably keeps people upset, which reinforces user engagement.

jonnathanson 12y ago
Again, interesting. Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but I don't approach voting from an agree/disagree axis. I approach it from a productive/unproductive axis. I upvote comments I find helpful, articulate, or informative. I downvote comments I find unhelpful, inarticulate, or uninformative. I leave alone comments that I find "meh," or that someone has already said better, or that neither add to, nor subtract from, the conversation. Basically: something either adds to the conversation (upvote), subtracts from the conversation (downvote), completely derails the conversation (flag), or is neutral. Case in point: I didn't necessarily agree with your comment, but I found it articulate and interesting. It presented a perspective I hadn't considered. It made me think. I upvoted it. Now, one could argue that agree/disagree and productive/unproductive are basically the same thing in practice. They both represent a desire to move the conversation in one direction or the other. (To your point about the group dynamics). But I don't know if I totally buy into that. I have no idea if this is true, but I'd hypothesize that voting patterns would be different under one explicit guideline or the other. I'd also think that downvoting-to-disagree runs the risk of fostering an echo chamber, which discourages dissenting or different viewpoints, particularly on hot-button topics.
SilasX 12y ago
>There is no particular purpose for HN downvotes other than to express dislike. It's not needed to move 'stupid' comments down, because only 'non-stupid' comments rise up. The problem is that smart-but-unpopular comments may fail to rise up. We want to prevent groupthink by ensuring that the top comments don't exclude ones that are well written and productive while expressing a contrary viewpoint. A simple "vote down for disagree" breaks that.