2 ms·
Downvoting is for however the user wants to use it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 > pg 2455 days ago
by Fuzzwah 12y ago
Downvoting is for however the user wants to use it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
> pg 2455 days ago | link | parent | flag
> I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.
> It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.
- nilkn 12y agoThis is a pretty big tangent, but I fairly strongly disagree with pg on this. The fact that upvotes and downvotes are not treated symmetrically seems to imply that they really aren't suitable for merely conveying agreement or disagreement. Somebody's comment shouldn't literally be greyed out, sometimes to the point of being illegible, because a few people disagreed with it. This combination -- using downvotes freely to express disagreement, and hiding or fading out downvoted comments -- is a recipe for groupthink. It's very nearly a form of censoring comments that are maybe contentious but in no way inflammatory or off-topic or poorly written.
- ryandvm 12y agoMeh. Maybe if you think Paul Graham is a god.