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Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

41 points by rokhayakebe 17y ago

What is the point of downvoting someone? I apologize to anyone who may take offense to the following, but I find it very barbaric. Most people, I believe, downvote because they do not agree with someone's opinion. I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them. Maybe web communities are still primitive, or maybe there is a real flaw in current commenting/rating systems. If there were some consequences to downvoting, i.e. we knew who downvoted whom, what do you think would be the result?

tokenadult 17y ago
I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them. You don't think there is any difference between throwing a rock at someone and reducing their overall vote count by one vote in an electronic voting system? If someone downvotes me, I have a reason to look again at what I posted and whether or not it fit the discussion. If someone throws a rock at me, I have a reason to report a case of assault to the police.
- unalone 17y ago
  Both, however, are instances of expressing disapproval without in turn adding something valuable. It was a ridiculous simile, but I understood his feeling because it's one I have also. When I take time and effort to argue something and get voted down, the message I'm given in liu of an actual counterpoint is that my effort in a community has not been appreciated. It's not as drastic as my being hit by a rock, but it's still something that engenders an emotional response on my part. Of course, I then go on to contribute to the pool of negativity by downvoting people without responding to them, so it's not like I'm blaming everybody who's ever downvoted. But I do understand where he's coming from.
  - borism 17y ago
    You're taking it too personally. How do you know the reasons your post got downvoted? And why do you revenge against community after that? Community has it's moods too, if it annoys you too much at some particular time you're always free to leave. That's what I do, but I know there's some value in this community so I return. But revenge is simply immature.
- chrischen 17y ago
  Both can be threatening. So certain types of comments that may be not accepted, but may not necessarily be wrong, have the risk of being censored by the mob via this social means. And so this risk in censorship by social degradation can be powerful enough to sway certain viewpoints from gaining traction here. It may not happen all the time, but it certainly does happen. And since the "ranking algorithm" that is the voting can be achieved with just an up vote (at least in theory), I do believe the risks associated with a down vote outweigh any possible efficiency increase to the sorting algorithm.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    "Both can be threatening." I submit that if one is threatened by others disagreeing with or not appreciating one's contribution to a discussion, one needs to find a more harmonious discussion.
    - chrischen 17y ago
      When I say threatening I mean with the intent to discourage. so when you down vote someone you disagree with you essentially discourage them from voicing their opinion. Why? Because when I'm downvoted I'm being punished. I don't want to be punished, so I either leave the community and decrease the variation in opinions or refrain from voicing it again. Is that what we want to allow here, or anywhere? We ignore the kkk. We do not jail them. That is essentially what freedom of speech is about. Furhermore we can't all have a consensus on every topic. It's good to have differing opinions and it's unavoidable to have disagreements. Being voted down for having opposing viewpoints is inevitable if the system permits it. So to have a perfectly free speech community, we shouldn't provide the mechanism to condemn speech. We can however provide the mechanism to delete spam and blatantly trollish comments and perhaps even blatantly negative comments. But to give the majority the ability to hurt the minority will have negative long term consequences to the community. So no one should have to think to themselves, "are people going to like what I say or should I just keep it to myself?" when posting a comment. No one benefits from that and we could all one day miss out on a great learning opportunity.
      - 17y ago
kyro 17y ago
Voting is probably the easiest way to quickly express your (dis/ap)proval with little effort, especially when the comment is so obviously insightful or stupid. Your analogy is a bit extreme, and I wouldn't mind people knowing whom I up/downvoted.
warp 17y ago
Most people, I believe, downvote because they do not agree with someone's opinion. If they do, they're doing it wrong. Downvote someone for not contributing to the discussion.
- fnid 17y ago
  One of the problems is that people don't down vote for the same reasons. Some down because they disagree, others to resort topics, others because they don't like the person's comment, tone, bias, etc... Without a consistent use of the down vote, the effect is undesired by most.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    "the effect is undesired by most" Says who?
    - fnid 17y ago
      says whoever upvoted me.
      - Semiapies 17y ago
        One person upvoted you, at the time of my writing this. One person is not "most". Everyone commenting in this topic is not "most". Everyone who's ever started a thread against down-voting is not "most", as best as I can tell.
    - chrischen 17y ago
      I think he means the effect is undesired because we're trying to get rid of "stupid" comments but in practice such a system gives way to abuse.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  People keep saying that, and people keep linking to pg saying that's part of the intended use. Shall we avoid the pointlessness of this argument?
bendotc 17y ago
I always find opinions like these to be illuminating whenever people claim that people don't care about karma, as it's obviously just a silly number in some computer running this website. As it turns out, some people find losing just 1 point to be indistinguishable from throwing a rock at the person. For what it's worth, the downvote is for the comment, not the poster. It influences a sorting algorithm that shapes the way people read as well as serves as a signal for how the community feels about a given post. The value of this signal is debatable, but that's the point. When I personally down-vote your comment, it's because I think you're wrong or your post is of zero or negative value (spam, noise, etc), and it really has nothing to do with your worth as a person (or any desire to hurt you).
- chrischen 17y ago
  Even if you do not care about karma, a down vote is still symbol of negativity, just as is someone who doesn't care about earthly possessions being robbed. The sorting algorithm can probably work fine with just an upvote button. I don't think you really help sort comments when you down-vote if you personally think the person is wrong. You should reply and correct them if they are wrong. Comments that aren't wrong and contribute > 0 should be upvoted.
  - wtallis 17y ago
    If people only down-vote fairly (ie. to suppress a comment that contains a factual error that has been explained by another comment) then the net effect of allowing down-votes is to give users relatively more influence over the ranking of posts. The issue of whether to allow down-votes ultimately is a trade-off between stronger and faster filtering of comments, and fewer opportunities for abuse.
    - chrischen 17y ago
      I think the problem is that down votes have more potential for abuse than to increase the efficiency of sorting. A factual error, corrected is just as valuable as any other average comment in my opinion. Perhaps they should be pushed down, but then you have people who will down vote to suppress opposing ideas and unpopular ones. By only allowing up votes, it becomes much harder for people to manipulate any single comment, as it would require up voting everything else. So the filtering of better comments would end up being delegated to the majority consensus of up votes, and less possible manipulation by a minority of down votes.
mooism2 17y ago
Downvoting is there to bury spam, swearing, bad behaviour, objectively false information, etc. Some people downvote to bury opinions they disagree with, which isn't good, I agree.
- jrockway 17y ago
  People downmod swearing? That's fucking stupid.
  - jodrellblank 17y ago
    Here I agree with the sentiment (swearing is OK and not what the downvote button should be used for) but dislike the comment (a one line personal attack). Which is why there should be "agree/disagree" and "good/bad contribution" buttons.
    - mquander 17y ago
      What's the utility of an agree/disagree button? I don't think I would want to see that even if it was available to me. I downvoted the parent comment because it's a crappy one-liner. It adds nothing except to express that some people are cool with swearing, which is not a very novel sentiment, and it does so in a way intended as flamebait.
      - chrischen 17y ago
        That's your opinion. To me, I thought it was a good one liner. See our differing opinions? Down voting/flagging should be reserved for those comments people mutually agree on as bad. What's the difference between discouraging by threat of jail time and discouraging vs social disapproval? Both are threats against you for certain behaviors. While these threats may be justified for stuff people all agree on are bad like racism, I do not think it's a good idea for subjective opinions. It will lead to socially induced censorship and society as a whole will become single-minded, afraid of thinking against the crowd. I think HN should foster the environment for unique thinking and controversial comments. Sure there isn't official discouragement of certain opinions, but if we allow the mob to do it it's practically the same thing.
jrockway 17y ago
Ask the submitter: Why don't you get a blog? Edit: OK, I will answer the question. People downmod to get people to convince themselves to go away. Imagine I don't like your viewpoint, and you place value on imaginary points I can take from you. I take those points, you get upset, and you stop posting stuff I disagree with. That's all there is to it; reinforcing groupthink. Similarly upmods encourage people to keep submitting. Knowing that people like your work encourages you to make more.
- unalone 17y ago
  This is a very HN-focused point. No reason he can't just post it directly, in this case.
- rokhayakebe 17y ago
  So, pretty much you force people to make comments you will by taking away points. "reinforcing groupthink" Do you speak for one group when on HN or do you speak for yourself? If you speak for a group could you please detail which group that is and at which point you were assigned the right to take actions in its name?
- NathanKP 17y ago
  Anyone who has read "The Wisdom of Crowds" or has studied the Bay of Pigs disaster knows that groupthink is a terrible idea. I can only hope that your apparent approval of reinforcing groupthink was intended as wry sarcasm.
RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
If someone posts something that is negative, detracts from the discussion, or is generally of negative value, the way to provide feedback is to downmod. If there is value to be had from doing so, a followup comment is indicated. Many people downmod simply because they disagree, and I think that's wrong. But that's my opinion. Personally, if a comment is of positive value I'll upmod it, even if I don't agree with it.
robotrout 17y ago
"What if we knew who downvoted whom, what would be the result?" I love that idea, but extend it also to upvoting, and use it to create a killer social network and/or dating site. If you and I love the same ideas and hate the same ideas, than we should meet. We may not enrich each others worldview, but that's what HN is for. You and I, in such a scenario would probably get along really well and be great friends. A great way to find that out is a "similarity heuristic" in voting patterns on a site such as this one.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  Then we would care [a little?] more about the person commenting and less about the content of the comments. Perhaps content would still win but people would be influenced with decisions like "he downvoted me" or "she believes Y" (where Y is orthogonal to the issue) or dimiss salient point based on past arguments. Which is fine if that's what you're after.
  - robotrout 17y ago
    The data would be pretty confusing, without analysis. I'm also assuming people with enough of a life that they wouldn't try. Instead of (or in addition to) raw upvote/downvote data, you get a "compatibility score", where 100 means you're soul mates, and -100 means you're mortal enemies!
iamelgringo 17y ago
The possibility of downvotes creates an element of risk in posting a comment. Without that element of risk the only deterrent to trolling or violating community standards is deleting or banning by the moderators. Moderating a site like this is an awful lot of work. The down vote arrow allows the community to police itself. It's certainly not perfect, people have been down voted to oblivion. Pg has put in safeguards so people can only get down voted 5-10 points. I think that it's helped keep the community on track. People take their karma very seriously for some reason. Notice the amount of angry posts when someone gets downvoted. :)
- SlyShy 17y ago
  Respectfully, I doubt downvoting is a deterrent to any troll. Trolls are already determined to anger the community. Downvoting is more of a deterrent to people who care what the community thinks of them--they might refrain from posting their contrary opinions as a result. That said, I still think downvoting is a useful function, because the point is to filter discussion.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    I personally like that trolling comments tend to rapidly vanish into light-gray text.
    - SlyShy 17y ago
      Yes, that's what I'm saying about the filtering, is that it serves to hide trolling comments. That doesn't necessarily mean that it reduces the number of trolls, as suggested by the parent.
chrischen 17y ago
I completely agree. And I suggested that the down vote be removed and replaced with something like a flag. Flagging would be reserved for inappropriate comments. Upvoting can be used to sort and rank the "better" comments. Frankly if you disagree with a comment, reply, don't down vote.
anigbrowl 17y ago
I don't think that most people downmod for just disagreement, but rather for stupidity, noise, trolling. Sure, some people vote a comment down to express disagreement, but their votes are often cancelled out. And it's not so unusual to see two HN'ers having an argument and both gaining karma from it if their arguments are well-formed, respectful, and informative. On the other hand, comments such as 'more like CLOWNvote, amirite???' don't really improve the quality of the discussion, do they?
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
auston 17y ago
I vote (up|down) to manipulate the way a thread is displayed.
- emmett 17y ago
  More generally, downvotes exist to provide negative feedback into the system. It's a useful and well understood engineering principle that negative feedback is a useful tool for molding the output of a system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback
jlees 17y ago
It's just behavioural reinforcement. Upvote the positive but on the few occasions someone acts out of line with the spirit of the community, there's got to be a way to deal with them. Imagine a troll running rampant on HN with no downvoting; it'd be hard to get them to stop, since there is no consequence for their actions. As it is, behaviour that acts out of the norm - lame jokes, empty-but-offensive remarks and entirely pointless trivia - all tends to be rewarded negatively, reinforcing the community values nicely. If you get downvoted, it's usually simple enough to figure out why - and if it really is a disagreement of opinion then the downvoters are doing it wrong, or there's also something about the way you express your opinion that is repellant.
- aichcon 17y ago
  I agree that it enforces the spirit of the community. One of my first comments was a joke and it was down-modded hard (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684509 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684509). This quickly taught me the community's expectations in terms of quality of comments.
scott_s 17y ago
My downmodding protocol (I rarely downvote): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=361390 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=361390
brtzsnr 17y ago
I usually downvote intentional bad or wrong answers (of course, I don't think others opinion are wrong answers). It's more to inform the poster that he/she generated 'noise'.
prabodh 17y ago
Can HN experiment with this...show the users who have downvoted one particular comment or ..make the commenter name invisible until you up/down vote a comment in a particular thread...
camccann 17y ago
There's an interesting argument in favor of downvoting here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ For context, the author is someone who posts on HN and was (at the time) trying to launch a new community.
BigZaphod 17y ago
Your assumption that downvotes occur mostly as a result of disagreement may be flawed. (I don't know myself, obviously, but it's not how I personally tend to use the feature.) The rest of your question/opinion is based on your perceived truth of your initial assumption. I think we cannot proceed with any of that until we know the first answer.
frou 17y ago
On a similar topic, the primary use of "ignore lists" on forums appears to be the opportunity to smugly announce that someone has been added to yours.
basdog22 17y ago
The worst part is downvoting someone without expressing why you did it. For example : This is spam. Downvoted. Most of the time people seem to just don't care about how someone else feels when gets downvoted. In the case of an article this gets more frustrating because there was effort to do it, document it and other things too. Even if the article is not what you think of "cool" it doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve an explanation on why it was downvoted. Some might say: This is the internet, democracy etc... Democracy is also getting annoyed when someone thinks of you like a "nothing". Other times, someone might post something that he doesn't like, only to see if others feel the same too.
- ax0n 17y ago
  I've had comments and submissions of mine downvoted before, and I didn't take offense. The article or my comment was simply "unliked" rather than enjoyed (upvoted) or met with indifference (left alone). Reading anything more into it is kind of silly. You certainly can't please everyone all the time.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    I think it's actually natural for people to feel offended, because down voting is an active engagement. There are actually 3 choices. Ignore, up vote, and down vote. Down vote is taking the time and effort to click and purposely bury something. If it was unliked it would have probably simply been ignored. I seriously doubt most people read through each title and only either down vote or up vote. Most would probably be ignored, with the particularly hated ones being more likely down voted.
ax0n 17y ago
I've never seen an option to downvote. It could be because I don't have enough "points" in this game (130 as of the time I'm posting this) or it may be because I haven't been around long enough. Once, I did try to downvote something by kludging the "dir" variable. I was told I couldn't make that vote. What parameters must be met for a person to get downvoting ability? Enough with the goofy meta-talk, though. Since I don't have downvoting ability, I didn't even know it existed until I saw comments with zero or negative scores. Coming at it from my neophytic perspective, I am torn. At first blush, "not upvoting" and "downvoting" seem like they would serve similar functions: floating better content to the top. My only guess is that downvoting is a catalyst that makes it happen faster. The only things I've wanted to downvote if I could were trolling, spam, and tangents. To that end, I think "not relevant or contributing to the discussion" is probably the most popular reason.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
I like to scan the newcomments page to see if there is anything worth commenting on. Doing that, I noticed a long-time poster making the point that the community has changed and asking if anybody else has noticed it. So I said yes, it has changed, and quite a bit. The reward for my comment was several downvotes. As it turns out, his comment was part of some Rand thread. My comment was viewed as supportive of his position, so I was punished. Everybody who took one position was getting upvoted, and everybody who took another was getting downvoted. Now was that what really happened? Or was my comment simply empty and a pointless waste of bandwidth? I honestly don't know. All I have is up and down scores to go by. So for all of you who think the up-down arrows enforce community behavior, I have a simple question: how can the community push me to conform when I don't know if it's giving me a "we disagree" or a "poor quality" message? I know I can (and have) made the same comment in other discussions and actually got voted up, so I don't think the quality of my comment had much to do with it. It looks a lot like context and opinion matter the most to me. Probably also the time of the week and time of day. In short, the voting system is broken. A lot.
- nkurz 17y ago
  I didn't see your comment until now, but I'd guess it was downvoted for 'feeding the troll'. While the comment you responded was reasonable, the grandparent was a bad joke that was rightly being beaten down. I'm not sure how the page placement algorithm currently works, but I'd assume, and I think others assume, that downvotes on the children help to move something down the page. In other words, you were a victim of collateral damage.
- 10ren 17y ago
  BTW on just the beginning of your comment: This might explain why I sometimes get "correct" replies that totally miss the point: they've seen it in the newcomments page. It's really baked my noodle a few times, that a seemingly intelligent person could be so self-confidently blind. Now it seems likely that it simply was because they were blind.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  Maybe responding to single comments out-of-context is a questionable methodology.
shrughes 17y ago
I downvote the following kinds of comments: - comments that have a high excitement to information ratio, such as brief comments that include profanity or attitude, and of course garbage one-liner humor comments. But not good one-line comments (such as the best comeback of all time), and usually not the kind that are nested two or more levels deep in the tree. - most comments made in reply to an article that definitely should be flagged. - comments that deliberately ignore standard English in a bad direction. For example, those with sentences that end with the word "lol". On the other hand, saying that you "... vote (up|down) to manipulate ..." is ignoring standard English in a non-bad direction. - comments that show an inability to appreciate rational discussion or approach things with a sufficient level of detachment. This often results a chain of replies between persons A and B, with person B getting several downvotes (by people voting for similar reasons) on every post and person A getting upvotes. Sometimes both A and B both get downvoted. I think that when people complain about being downvoted, usually it's because they were downvoted for this reason and begin to feel persecuted. - certain types of self-indulgent comments. I suppose everybody writes comments because they want to share their opinion, but some are indulging the poster's desire to tell others about his worldview without being written in a way that could influence other people's worldviews. There were a lot of these, if you want examples, in the justin.tv suicide thread. - comments that blandly recite a reader's opinion or reaction about an article, that don't add information, especially when there's a long tail of them and they're all the same. These are the less exciting kind of self-indulgent comments. Basically, with that formula, I vote with the intent of making this site boring and unwelcoming with a high signal:noise ratio.
- araneae 17y ago
  And yet, my only comments that actually get upvoted are garbage one-liner humor comments. EDIT: I believe this is what we call irony: http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss323/araneae/hn.png http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss323/araneae/hn.png
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    I didn't bother with that topic, but your comment seemed like a valid, even if tongue-in-cheek, proposal to me. Apparently 9 other people also had that reaction.
quellhorst 17y ago
I like how when you flag on craigslist you have to say why. If multiple people flag, the post is removed.
10ren 17y ago
I've noticed that sometimes interesting answers get downvoted, and irrelevant/badly thought-out answers get upvoted. So I don't take downvotes so seriously now. However, there's a backlash: if I get a bunch of upvotes, I'll now think that it's probably just a bunch of those idiot voters. Which in a way is a good thing, because it means I have to fall back on my own judgment, instead of being guided by karma. (I do listen to intelligent rebuttals and counter view-points, as they have actual content, unlike a downvote). For a long time, I didn't down-vote anyone. Now I'll sometimes downvote, to put comments in the order of insightfulness; and very occasionally for irrelevance/childishness. For really obnoxious comments, I'll downvote to grey them, and also flag them. But my usual response is to reply "please elaborate" (for a content-free comment), which offers the human behind the comment an opportunity to grow into the community; or an impartial recital of the facts (for a mistaken, inappropriate or irrelevant comment).
marze 17y ago
This all brings to mind Churchill's quote (paraphrased): "Democracy is the worst form of government, with the exception of all other forms of government."
- billswift 17y ago
  You might find Hoppe's book, http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257033804&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-... , interesting. He claims democracy is the worst form of government, period. (The book is not easy reading and is pretty repetitive, but interesting.)
araneae 17y ago
I downvote people who downvoted me before I could downvote. Karma's a bitch.
jeremyw 17y ago
I'm impressed by the shifting voting trends when a new, dissenting (sub)opinion is attached to a comment. A string of upvotes now is halted/reversed. And the polarity change can happen several times. An articulated position unleashes the silent thinker or is this a characteristic of mob rule? (When it happens to me, it's mob rule. :) I'm also terribly sad when someone is downvoted in an opinion-thread (e.g. what is your favorite X). I wish one could mark a post as opinion or even upvote-only.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  Someone can be off-topic or troll in opinion threads. "What's your favorite X?" is not the place for "Stop using different types of Xs and start using Ys, noobs.", for example.
  - jeremyw 17y ago
    For such special-purpose threads, I think it's worth seeing those comments fall through upvotes (or flagging) rather than penalize straight opinions. A similar chilling effect to a downvoted opinion could be had by exposing the downvoters. :) I'm curious if pg has data on this.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    As much as someone could type that, someone could also downvote because they were thinking that.
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      Indeed. And yet, while trolls get downvoted to pale gray happens, entire threads getting their comments downvoted as far doesn't.
      - chrischen 17y ago
        Unpopular opinions can be down voted. And this does happen. While often it doesn't matter that an unpopular opinion is down voted because it may in fact be wrong, there will be certain cases where an unpopular but universally right comment will be down voted. It will be grayed out. But with a system that promotes and allows silencing unpopular comments, such a rare event will almost always result in a down vote will not just marginalize it, but actually suppress it.
amalcon 17y ago
Turn it around: why upvote someone? A downvote is equal and opposite to an upvote; what makes the former "bad" and not the latter?
crux 17y ago
I downvote because I have been personally offended by something that has been said. Most often I have been offended by the sin of bad taste. This is, granted, a pretty wide area, but when somebody writes something egregiously distasteful—whether it's a terrible sense of humor, or a misinformed righteousness, or craven pandering to the self-important 'social media' upper crust, or indeed the myopic, worthless blather of said upper crust—I am aesthetically offended by that sort of thing. It offends my sense of decency, my sense of wit and interestingness. I suffer in the same way as I do when I witness incredibly stupid people on television, or very bad music, or indeed when I find myself buttonholed into a painfully tedious conversation with someone who is similarly lacking in good taste, be it social, intellectual, aesthetic or otherwise. I suffer and therefore I downvote, in an attempt to exorcise my pain. Maybe that would be the easiest rule of thumb, then. If you say something which would, if I were chatting with you at a cocktail party, make me fearfully look for some excuse to go refill my drink, I will downvote you.
- shiranaihito 17y ago
  > I downvote because I have been personally offended by something that has been said. Most often I have been offended by the sin of bad taste. > I suffer in the same way as I do when I witness incredibly stupid people on television, or very bad music, or indeed when I find myself buttonholed into a painfully tedious conversation with someone who is similarly lacking in good taste, be it social, intellectual, aesthetic or otherwise. I suffer and therefore I downvote, in an attempt to exorcise my pain. Are you for real? I guess I should downvote you for deeply offending me by needing to get over yourself. But I won't, because I agree with the OP.
eli_s 17y ago
It's just quality control. For some reason people value karma. The possibility of a down vote makes you think twice about posting rubbish. From that perspective the system is working as intended :)
derefr 17y ago
Because the informationally-equivalent action of upvoting every comment other than yours is not only tedious, but leaves you without the ability to upvote any other comment on its own merit.
Keyframe 17y ago
Why not introduce a cost to both upvote and downvote of 1 karma point?
InclinedPlane 17y ago
Downvoting has two aspects: reducing the visibility of a post and discouraging the poster from making similar posts in the future. This can be used maliciously (though to limited effect) against viewpoints you merely disagree with. But it does have a legitimate use as well, when harmful or unhelpfully disruptive information is posted. A few examples to clarify these guidelines: Spam and inappropriate material (this isn't 4chan). Advice that is well known to be wrong and/or is very likely to be harmful if followed, such as advising someone to embed raw SQL query strings in web application parameters or to exclusively use javascript for client side input sanitation (both of which would open up anyone to huge security vulnerabilities). Unnecessary or unfunny jokes (live by the sword, die by the sword, jokes rarely improve discussion). Completely off-topic material.
Mathnerd314 17y ago
It might be interesting to keep every vote for each comment and use something like the Netflix prize algorithm to calculate whether you'd like the comment. Hiding comments would then be based on personal preferences, rather than the community at large. If nobody at all likes the comment, (i.e., it's spam or something), then it can get removed automatically. Of course, this takes a lot of work to implement, and it might require HN to have a longer privacy policy...
onoj 17y ago
I sort of agree with you, but I would only up vote to show that the topic / comment was interesting, even if I did not agree with it . Up/down voting because i agree or disagree is arrogant. If it makes people feel better, bully for them. The danger is that a group of people will upvote a perspective and alienate alternative points of view from a thread. This creates a narrow minded culture and prevents interesting discussions. Ideally there is no point posing to a thread you agree with if you have no content to add.
techiferous 17y ago
The interface should provide two ways to vote: one for relevance (value) and the other for agreement/disagreement.
Mz 17y ago
Of course, I dislike being downvoted. If I think it was because I was misunderstood or misinterpreted, I will post in response to the downvote. Clarification sometimes gets the original post upvoted, as well as the clarification. If it's a case of "Yeah, I was trying to avoid getting into that because I just knew it would go over badly and now I've been downvoted, confirming what I thought" or a case of me just not saying something well because I was having a bad day, I generally leave it alone. No point in pouring gasoline on the fire, so to speak (which is generally what's going to happen if I am already sticking my feet in my mouth because I don't feel well and now I am all defensive and trying to "clarify"....downward spiral ensues). On the one hand, I often do wish people would converse with me and tell me what they "heard" that they think it's a bad comment. In many cases, it turns out be a misunderstanding. The vast majority of meaning in face-to-face communication comes from facial expression, body language, voice tone and context. The actual words are a very small part of the meaning conveyed. But on the 'Net, the words are about all we have. If two people come from very different backgrounds, misunderstandings are practically guaranteed. On the other hand, an Iranian friend once told me that there is a saying in Iran: "Silence is the only good answer to stupid people." I would modify that slightly to "Silence is the only good answer to something stupid." We all do stupid stuff at times. It isn't proof we are generally stupid. It's just part of the human condition. An anonymous downvote, though it may be upsetting to the receiver, is probably a lot less destructive to the community than being able to put a name to the criticism and having to try to express the criticism in words. Running battles between two members who just don't ever agree on anything can be very destructive to a forum. I think the capacity to downvote helps avoid such outcomes. I am still getting a feel for how HN works. But so far I am finding that the system here seems to do a better job of minimizing some of the negative social crapola you find everywhere. Conflict of interest will never go away. Interpersonal friction between some members is inevitable. Spammers and all kinds of other undesirable stuff is also a fact of life. There has to be a means to address that. Warm-fuzzy 'let's only upvote people' solutions won't work. It has no teeth.
Raphael_Amiard 17y ago
>I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them. Can you really not see the difference ?

41 points by rokhayakebe 17y ago

tokenadult 17y ago

I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them. You don't think there is any difference between throwing a rock at someone and reducing their overall vote count by one vote in an electronic voting system? If someone downvotes me, I have a reason to look again at what I posted and whether or not it fit the discussion. If someone throws a rock at me, I have a reason to report a case of assault to the police.

unalone 17y ago
Both, however, are instances of expressing disapproval without in turn adding something valuable. It was a ridiculous simile, but I understood his feeling because it's one I have also. When I take time and effort to argue something and get voted down, the message I'm given in liu of an actual counterpoint is that my effort in a community has not been appreciated. It's not as drastic as my being hit by a rock, but it's still something that engenders an emotional response on my part. Of course, I then go on to contribute to the pool of negativity by downvoting people without responding to them, so it's not like I'm blaming everybody who's ever downvoted. But I do understand where he's coming from.
- borism 17y ago
  You're taking it too personally. How do you know the reasons your post got downvoted? And why do you revenge against community after that? Community has it's moods too, if it annoys you too much at some particular time you're always free to leave. That's what I do, but I know there's some value in this community so I return. But revenge is simply immature.
chrischen 17y ago
Both can be threatening. So certain types of comments that may be not accepted, but may not necessarily be wrong, have the risk of being censored by the mob via this social means. And so this risk in censorship by social degradation can be powerful enough to sway certain viewpoints from gaining traction here. It may not happen all the time, but it certainly does happen. And since the "ranking algorithm" that is the voting can be achieved with just an up vote (at least in theory), I do believe the risks associated with a down vote outweigh any possible efficiency increase to the sorting algorithm.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  "Both can be threatening." I submit that if one is threatened by others disagreeing with or not appreciating one's contribution to a discussion, one needs to find a more harmonious discussion.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    When I say threatening I mean with the intent to discourage. so when you down vote someone you disagree with you essentially discourage them from voicing their opinion. Why? Because when I'm downvoted I'm being punished. I don't want to be punished, so I either leave the community and decrease the variation in opinions or refrain from voicing it again. Is that what we want to allow here, or anywhere? We ignore the kkk. We do not jail them. That is essentially what freedom of speech is about. Furhermore we can't all have a consensus on every topic. It's good to have differing opinions and it's unavoidable to have disagreements. Being voted down for having opposing viewpoints is inevitable if the system permits it. So to have a perfectly free speech community, we shouldn't provide the mechanism to condemn speech. We can however provide the mechanism to delete spam and blatantly trollish comments and perhaps even blatantly negative comments. But to give the majority the ability to hurt the minority will have negative long term consequences to the community. So no one should have to think to themselves, "are people going to like what I say or should I just keep it to myself?" when posting a comment. No one benefits from that and we could all one day miss out on a great learning opportunity.
    - 17y ago

kyro 17y ago

Voting is probably the easiest way to quickly express your (dis/ap)proval with little effort, especially when the comment is so obviously insightful or stupid. Your analogy is a bit extreme, and I wouldn't mind people knowing whom I up/downvoted.

warp 17y ago

Most people, I believe, downvote because they do not agree with someone's opinion. If they do, they're doing it wrong. Downvote someone for not contributing to the discussion.

fnid 17y ago
One of the problems is that people don't down vote for the same reasons. Some down because they disagree, others to resort topics, others because they don't like the person's comment, tone, bias, etc... Without a consistent use of the down vote, the effect is undesired by most.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  "the effect is undesired by most" Says who?
  - fnid 17y ago
    says whoever upvoted me.
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      One person upvoted you, at the time of my writing this. One person is not "most". Everyone commenting in this topic is not "most". Everyone who's ever started a thread against down-voting is not "most", as best as I can tell.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    I think he means the effect is undesired because we're trying to get rid of "stupid" comments but in practice such a system gives way to abuse.
Semiapies 17y ago
People keep saying that, and people keep linking to pg saying that's part of the intended use. Shall we avoid the pointlessness of this argument?

bendotc 17y ago

I always find opinions like these to be illuminating whenever people claim that people don't care about karma, as it's obviously just a silly number in some computer running this website. As it turns out, some people find losing just 1 point to be indistinguishable from throwing a rock at the person. For what it's worth, the downvote is for the comment, not the poster. It influences a sorting algorithm that shapes the way people read as well as serves as a signal for how the community feels about a given post. The value of this signal is debatable, but that's the point. When I personally down-vote your comment, it's because I think you're wrong or your post is of zero or negative value (spam, noise, etc), and it really has nothing to do with your worth as a person (or any desire to hurt you).

chrischen 17y ago
Even if you do not care about karma, a down vote is still symbol of negativity, just as is someone who doesn't care about earthly possessions being robbed. The sorting algorithm can probably work fine with just an upvote button. I don't think you really help sort comments when you down-vote if you personally think the person is wrong. You should reply and correct them if they are wrong. Comments that aren't wrong and contribute > 0 should be upvoted.
- wtallis 17y ago
  If people only down-vote fairly (ie. to suppress a comment that contains a factual error that has been explained by another comment) then the net effect of allowing down-votes is to give users relatively more influence over the ranking of posts. The issue of whether to allow down-votes ultimately is a trade-off between stronger and faster filtering of comments, and fewer opportunities for abuse.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    I think the problem is that down votes have more potential for abuse than to increase the efficiency of sorting. A factual error, corrected is just as valuable as any other average comment in my opinion. Perhaps they should be pushed down, but then you have people who will down vote to suppress opposing ideas and unpopular ones. By only allowing up votes, it becomes much harder for people to manipulate any single comment, as it would require up voting everything else. So the filtering of better comments would end up being delegated to the majority consensus of up votes, and less possible manipulation by a minority of down votes.

mooism2 17y ago

Downvoting is there to bury spam, swearing, bad behaviour, objectively false information, etc. Some people downvote to bury opinions they disagree with, which isn't good, I agree.

jrockway 17y ago
People downmod swearing? That's fucking stupid.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  Here I agree with the sentiment (swearing is OK and not what the downvote button should be used for) but dislike the comment (a one line personal attack). Which is why there should be "agree/disagree" and "good/bad contribution" buttons.
  - mquander 17y ago
    What's the utility of an agree/disagree button? I don't think I would want to see that even if it was available to me. I downvoted the parent comment because it's a crappy one-liner. It adds nothing except to express that some people are cool with swearing, which is not a very novel sentiment, and it does so in a way intended as flamebait.
    - chrischen 17y ago
      That's your opinion. To me, I thought it was a good one liner. See our differing opinions? Down voting/flagging should be reserved for those comments people mutually agree on as bad. What's the difference between discouraging by threat of jail time and discouraging vs social disapproval? Both are threats against you for certain behaviors. While these threats may be justified for stuff people all agree on are bad like racism, I do not think it's a good idea for subjective opinions. It will lead to socially induced censorship and society as a whole will become single-minded, afraid of thinking against the crowd. I think HN should foster the environment for unique thinking and controversial comments. Sure there isn't official discouragement of certain opinions, but if we allow the mob to do it it's practically the same thing.

jrockway 17y ago

Ask the submitter: Why don't you get a blog? Edit: OK, I will answer the question. People downmod to get people to convince themselves to go away. Imagine I don't like your viewpoint, and you place value on imaginary points I can take from you. I take those points, you get upset, and you stop posting stuff I disagree with. That's all there is to it; reinforcing groupthink. Similarly upmods encourage people to keep submitting. Knowing that people like your work encourages you to make more.

unalone 17y ago
This is a very HN-focused point. No reason he can't just post it directly, in this case.
rokhayakebe 17y ago
So, pretty much you force people to make comments you will by taking away points. "reinforcing groupthink" Do you speak for one group when on HN or do you speak for yourself? If you speak for a group could you please detail which group that is and at which point you were assigned the right to take actions in its name?
NathanKP 17y ago
Anyone who has read "The Wisdom of Crowds" or has studied the Bay of Pigs disaster knows that groupthink is a terrible idea. I can only hope that your apparent approval of reinforcing groupthink was intended as wry sarcasm.

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago

If someone posts something that is negative, detracts from the discussion, or is generally of negative value, the way to provide feedback is to downmod. If there is value to be had from doing so, a followup comment is indicated. Many people downmod simply because they disagree, and I think that's wrong. But that's my opinion. Personally, if a comment is of positive value I'll upmod it, even if I don't agree with it.

robotrout 17y ago

"What if we knew who downvoted whom, what would be the result?" I love that idea, but extend it also to upvoting, and use it to create a killer social network and/or dating site. If you and I love the same ideas and hate the same ideas, than we should meet. We may not enrich each others worldview, but that's what HN is for. You and I, in such a scenario would probably get along really well and be great friends. A great way to find that out is a "similarity heuristic" in voting patterns on a site such as this one.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago
Then we would care [a little?] more about the person commenting and less about the content of the comments. Perhaps content would still win but people would be influenced with decisions like "he downvoted me" or "she believes Y" (where Y is orthogonal to the issue) or dimiss salient point based on past arguments. Which is fine if that's what you're after.
- robotrout 17y ago
  The data would be pretty confusing, without analysis. I'm also assuming people with enough of a life that they wouldn't try. Instead of (or in addition to) raw upvote/downvote data, you get a "compatibility score", where 100 means you're soul mates, and -100 means you're mortal enemies!

iamelgringo 17y ago

The possibility of downvotes creates an element of risk in posting a comment. Without that element of risk the only deterrent to trolling or violating community standards is deleting or banning by the moderators. Moderating a site like this is an awful lot of work. The down vote arrow allows the community to police itself. It's certainly not perfect, people have been down voted to oblivion. Pg has put in safeguards so people can only get down voted 5-10 points. I think that it's helped keep the community on track. People take their karma very seriously for some reason. Notice the amount of angry posts when someone gets downvoted. :)

SlyShy 17y ago
Respectfully, I doubt downvoting is a deterrent to any troll. Trolls are already determined to anger the community. Downvoting is more of a deterrent to people who care what the community thinks of them--they might refrain from posting their contrary opinions as a result. That said, I still think downvoting is a useful function, because the point is to filter discussion.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  I personally like that trolling comments tend to rapidly vanish into light-gray text.
  - SlyShy 17y ago
    Yes, that's what I'm saying about the filtering, is that it serves to hide trolling comments. That doesn't necessarily mean that it reduces the number of trolls, as suggested by the parent.

chrischen 17y ago

I completely agree. And I suggested that the down vote be removed and replaced with something like a flag. Flagging would be reserved for inappropriate comments. Upvoting can be used to sort and rank the "better" comments. Frankly if you disagree with a comment, reply, don't down vote.

anigbrowl 17y ago

I don't think that most people downmod for just disagreement, but rather for stupidity, noise, trolling. Sure, some people vote a comment down to express disagreement, but their votes are often cancelled out. And it's not so unusual to see two HN'ers having an argument and both gaining karma from it if their arguments are well-formed, respectful, and informative. On the other hand, comments such as 'more like CLOWNvote, amirite???' don't really improve the quality of the discussion, do they?

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

auston 17y ago

I vote (up|down) to manipulate the way a thread is displayed.

emmett 17y ago
More generally, downvotes exist to provide negative feedback into the system. It's a useful and well understood engineering principle that negative feedback is a useful tool for molding the output of a system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback

jlees 17y ago

It's just behavioural reinforcement. Upvote the positive but on the few occasions someone acts out of line with the spirit of the community, there's got to be a way to deal with them. Imagine a troll running rampant on HN with no downvoting; it'd be hard to get them to stop, since there is no consequence for their actions. As it is, behaviour that acts out of the norm - lame jokes, empty-but-offensive remarks and entirely pointless trivia - all tends to be rewarded negatively, reinforcing the community values nicely. If you get downvoted, it's usually simple enough to figure out why - and if it really is a disagreement of opinion then the downvoters are doing it wrong, or there's also something about the way you express your opinion that is repellant.

aichcon 17y ago
I agree that it enforces the spirit of the community. One of my first comments was a joke and it was down-modded hard (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684509 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684509). This quickly taught me the community's expectations in terms of quality of comments.

scott_s 17y ago

My downmodding protocol (I rarely downvote): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=361390 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=361390

brtzsnr 17y ago

I usually downvote intentional bad or wrong answers (of course, I don't think others opinion are wrong answers). It's more to inform the poster that he/she generated 'noise'.

prabodh 17y ago

Can HN experiment with this...show the users who have downvoted one particular comment or ..make the commenter name invisible until you up/down vote a comment in a particular thread...

camccann 17y ago

There's an interesting argument in favor of downvoting here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ For context, the author is someone who posts on HN and was (at the time) trying to launch a new community.

BigZaphod 17y ago

Your assumption that downvotes occur mostly as a result of disagreement may be flawed. (I don't know myself, obviously, but it's not how I personally tend to use the feature.) The rest of your question/opinion is based on your perceived truth of your initial assumption. I think we cannot proceed with any of that until we know the first answer.

frou 17y ago

On a similar topic, the primary use of "ignore lists" on forums appears to be the opportunity to smugly announce that someone has been added to yours.

basdog22 17y ago

The worst part is downvoting someone without expressing why you did it. For example : This is spam. Downvoted. Most of the time people seem to just don't care about how someone else feels when gets downvoted. In the case of an article this gets more frustrating because there was effort to do it, document it and other things too. Even if the article is not what you think of "cool" it doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve an explanation on why it was downvoted. Some might say: This is the internet, democracy etc... Democracy is also getting annoyed when someone thinks of you like a "nothing". Other times, someone might post something that he doesn't like, only to see if others feel the same too.

ax0n 17y ago
I've had comments and submissions of mine downvoted before, and I didn't take offense. The article or my comment was simply "unliked" rather than enjoyed (upvoted) or met with indifference (left alone). Reading anything more into it is kind of silly. You certainly can't please everyone all the time.
- chrischen 17y ago
  I think it's actually natural for people to feel offended, because down voting is an active engagement. There are actually 3 choices. Ignore, up vote, and down vote. Down vote is taking the time and effort to click and purposely bury something. If it was unliked it would have probably simply been ignored. I seriously doubt most people read through each title and only either down vote or up vote. Most would probably be ignored, with the particularly hated ones being more likely down voted.

ax0n 17y ago

I've never seen an option to downvote. It could be because I don't have enough "points" in this game (130 as of the time I'm posting this) or it may be because I haven't been around long enough. Once, I did try to downvote something by kludging the "dir" variable. I was told I couldn't make that vote. What parameters must be met for a person to get downvoting ability? Enough with the goofy meta-talk, though. Since I don't have downvoting ability, I didn't even know it existed until I saw comments with zero or negative scores. Coming at it from my neophytic perspective, I am torn. At first blush, "not upvoting" and "downvoting" seem like they would serve similar functions: floating better content to the top. My only guess is that downvoting is a catalyst that makes it happen faster. The only things I've wanted to downvote if I could were trolling, spam, and tangents. To that end, I think "not relevant or contributing to the discussion" is probably the most popular reason.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

I like to scan the newcomments page to see if there is anything worth commenting on. Doing that, I noticed a long-time poster making the point that the community has changed and asking if anybody else has noticed it. So I said yes, it has changed, and quite a bit. The reward for my comment was several downvotes. As it turns out, his comment was part of some Rand thread. My comment was viewed as supportive of his position, so I was punished. Everybody who took one position was getting upvoted, and everybody who took another was getting downvoted. Now was that what really happened? Or was my comment simply empty and a pointless waste of bandwidth? I honestly don't know. All I have is up and down scores to go by. So for all of you who think the up-down arrows enforce community behavior, I have a simple question: how can the community push me to conform when I don't know if it's giving me a "we disagree" or a "poor quality" message? I know I can (and have) made the same comment in other discussions and actually got voted up, so I don't think the quality of my comment had much to do with it. It looks a lot like context and opinion matter the most to me. Probably also the time of the week and time of day. In short, the voting system is broken. A lot.

nkurz 17y ago
I didn't see your comment until now, but I'd guess it was downvoted for 'feeding the troll'. While the comment you responded was reasonable, the grandparent was a bad joke that was rightly being beaten down. I'm not sure how the page placement algorithm currently works, but I'd assume, and I think others assume, that downvotes on the children help to move something down the page. In other words, you were a victim of collateral damage.
10ren 17y ago
BTW on just the beginning of your comment: This might explain why I sometimes get "correct" replies that totally miss the point: they've seen it in the newcomments page. It's really baked my noodle a few times, that a seemingly intelligent person could be so self-confidently blind. Now it seems likely that it simply was because they were blind.
Semiapies 17y ago
Maybe responding to single comments out-of-context is a questionable methodology.

shrughes 17y ago

I downvote the following kinds of comments: - comments that have a high excitement to information ratio, such as brief comments that include profanity or attitude, and of course garbage one-liner humor comments. But not good one-line comments (such as the best comeback of all time), and usually not the kind that are nested two or more levels deep in the tree. - most comments made in reply to an article that definitely should be flagged. - comments that deliberately ignore standard English in a bad direction. For example, those with sentences that end with the word "lol". On the other hand, saying that you "... vote (up|down) to manipulate ..." is ignoring standard English in a non-bad direction. - comments that show an inability to appreciate rational discussion or approach things with a sufficient level of detachment. This often results a chain of replies between persons A and B, with person B getting several downvotes (by people voting for similar reasons) on every post and person A getting upvotes. Sometimes both A and B both get downvoted. I think that when people complain about being downvoted, usually it's because they were downvoted for this reason and begin to feel persecuted. - certain types of self-indulgent comments. I suppose everybody writes comments because they want to share their opinion, but some are indulging the poster's desire to tell others about his worldview without being written in a way that could influence other people's worldviews. There were a lot of these, if you want examples, in the justin.tv suicide thread. - comments that blandly recite a reader's opinion or reaction about an article, that don't add information, especially when there's a long tail of them and they're all the same. These are the less exciting kind of self-indulgent comments. Basically, with that formula, I vote with the intent of making this site boring and unwelcoming with a high signal:noise ratio.

araneae 17y ago
And yet, my only comments that actually get upvoted are garbage one-liner humor comments. EDIT: I believe this is what we call irony: http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss323/araneae/hn.png http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss323/araneae/hn.png
- Semiapies 17y ago
  I didn't bother with that topic, but your comment seemed like a valid, even if tongue-in-cheek, proposal to me. Apparently 9 other people also had that reaction.

quellhorst 17y ago

I like how when you flag on craigslist you have to say why. If multiple people flag, the post is removed.

10ren 17y ago

I've noticed that sometimes interesting answers get downvoted, and irrelevant/badly thought-out answers get upvoted. So I don't take downvotes so seriously now. However, there's a backlash: if I get a bunch of upvotes, I'll now think that it's probably just a bunch of those idiot voters. Which in a way is a good thing, because it means I have to fall back on my own judgment, instead of being guided by karma. (I do listen to intelligent rebuttals and counter view-points, as they have actual content, unlike a downvote). For a long time, I didn't down-vote anyone. Now I'll sometimes downvote, to put comments in the order of insightfulness; and very occasionally for irrelevance/childishness. For really obnoxious comments, I'll downvote to grey them, and also flag them. But my usual response is to reply "please elaborate" (for a content-free comment), which offers the human behind the comment an opportunity to grow into the community; or an impartial recital of the facts (for a mistaken, inappropriate or irrelevant comment).

marze 17y ago

This all brings to mind Churchill's quote (paraphrased): "Democracy is the worst form of government, with the exception of all other forms of government."

billswift 17y ago
You might find Hoppe's book, http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257033804&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-... , interesting. He claims democracy is the worst form of government, period. (The book is not easy reading and is pretty repetitive, but interesting.)

araneae 17y ago

I downvote people who downvoted me before I could downvote. Karma's a bitch.

jeremyw 17y ago

I'm impressed by the shifting voting trends when a new, dissenting (sub)opinion is attached to a comment. A string of upvotes now is halted/reversed. And the polarity change can happen several times. An articulated position unleashes the silent thinker or is this a characteristic of mob rule? (When it happens to me, it's mob rule. :) I'm also terribly sad when someone is downvoted in an opinion-thread (e.g. what is your favorite X). I wish one could mark a post as opinion or even upvote-only.

Semiapies 17y ago
Someone can be off-topic or troll in opinion threads. "What's your favorite X?" is not the place for "Stop using different types of Xs and start using Ys, noobs.", for example.
- jeremyw 17y ago
  For such special-purpose threads, I think it's worth seeing those comments fall through upvotes (or flagging) rather than penalize straight opinions. A similar chilling effect to a downvoted opinion could be had by exposing the downvoters. :) I'm curious if pg has data on this.
- chrischen 17y ago
  As much as someone could type that, someone could also downvote because they were thinking that.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    Indeed. And yet, while trolls get downvoted to pale gray happens, entire threads getting their comments downvoted as far doesn't.
    - chrischen 17y ago
      Unpopular opinions can be down voted. And this does happen. While often it doesn't matter that an unpopular opinion is down voted because it may in fact be wrong, there will be certain cases where an unpopular but universally right comment will be down voted. It will be grayed out. But with a system that promotes and allows silencing unpopular comments, such a rare event will almost always result in a down vote will not just marginalize it, but actually suppress it.

amalcon 17y ago

Turn it around: why upvote someone? A downvote is equal and opposite to an upvote; what makes the former "bad" and not the latter?

crux 17y ago

I downvote because I have been personally offended by something that has been said. Most often I have been offended by the sin of bad taste. This is, granted, a pretty wide area, but when somebody writes something egregiously distasteful—whether it's a terrible sense of humor, or a misinformed righteousness, or craven pandering to the self-important 'social media' upper crust, or indeed the myopic, worthless blather of said upper crust—I am aesthetically offended by that sort of thing. It offends my sense of decency, my sense of wit and interestingness. I suffer in the same way as I do when I witness incredibly stupid people on television, or very bad music, or indeed when I find myself buttonholed into a painfully tedious conversation with someone who is similarly lacking in good taste, be it social, intellectual, aesthetic or otherwise. I suffer and therefore I downvote, in an attempt to exorcise my pain. Maybe that would be the easiest rule of thumb, then. If you say something which would, if I were chatting with you at a cocktail party, make me fearfully look for some excuse to go refill my drink, I will downvote you.

shiranaihito 17y ago
> I downvote because I have been personally offended by something that has been said. Most often I have been offended by the sin of bad taste. > I suffer in the same way as I do when I witness incredibly stupid people on television, or very bad music, or indeed when I find myself buttonholed into a painfully tedious conversation with someone who is similarly lacking in good taste, be it social, intellectual, aesthetic or otherwise. I suffer and therefore I downvote, in an attempt to exorcise my pain. Are you for real? I guess I should downvote you for deeply offending me by needing to get over yourself. But I won't, because I agree with the OP.

eli_s 17y ago

It's just quality control. For some reason people value karma. The possibility of a down vote makes you think twice about posting rubbish. From that perspective the system is working as intended :)

derefr 17y ago

Because the informationally-equivalent action of upvoting every comment other than yours is not only tedious, but leaves you without the ability to upvote any other comment on its own merit.

Keyframe 17y ago

Why not introduce a cost to both upvote and downvote of 1 karma point?

InclinedPlane 17y ago

Downvoting has two aspects: reducing the visibility of a post and discouraging the poster from making similar posts in the future. This can be used maliciously (though to limited effect) against viewpoints you merely disagree with. But it does have a legitimate use as well, when harmful or unhelpfully disruptive information is posted. A few examples to clarify these guidelines: Spam and inappropriate material (this isn't 4chan). Advice that is well known to be wrong and/or is very likely to be harmful if followed, such as advising someone to embed raw SQL query strings in web application parameters or to exclusively use javascript for client side input sanitation (both of which would open up anyone to huge security vulnerabilities). Unnecessary or unfunny jokes (live by the sword, die by the sword, jokes rarely improve discussion). Completely off-topic material.

Mathnerd314 17y ago

It might be interesting to keep every vote for each comment and use something like the Netflix prize algorithm to calculate whether you'd like the comment. Hiding comments would then be based on personal preferences, rather than the community at large. If nobody at all likes the comment, (i.e., it's spam or something), then it can get removed automatically. Of course, this takes a lot of work to implement, and it might require HN to have a longer privacy policy...

onoj 17y ago

I sort of agree with you, but I would only up vote to show that the topic / comment was interesting, even if I did not agree with it . Up/down voting because i agree or disagree is arrogant. If it makes people feel better, bully for them. The danger is that a group of people will upvote a perspective and alienate alternative points of view from a thread. This creates a narrow minded culture and prevents interesting discussions. Ideally there is no point posing to a thread you agree with if you have no content to add.

techiferous 17y ago

The interface should provide two ways to vote: one for relevance (value) and the other for agreement/disagreement.

Mz 17y ago

Of course, I dislike being downvoted. If I think it was because I was misunderstood or misinterpreted, I will post in response to the downvote. Clarification sometimes gets the original post upvoted, as well as the clarification. If it's a case of "Yeah, I was trying to avoid getting into that because I just knew it would go over badly and now I've been downvoted, confirming what I thought" or a case of me just not saying something well because I was having a bad day, I generally leave it alone. No point in pouring gasoline on the fire, so to speak (which is generally what's going to happen if I am already sticking my feet in my mouth because I don't feel well and now I am all defensive and trying to "clarify"....downward spiral ensues). On the one hand, I often do wish people would converse with me and tell me what they "heard" that they think it's a bad comment. In many cases, it turns out be a misunderstanding. The vast majority of meaning in face-to-face communication comes from facial expression, body language, voice tone and context. The actual words are a very small part of the meaning conveyed. But on the 'Net, the words are about all we have. If two people come from very different backgrounds, misunderstandings are practically guaranteed. On the other hand, an Iranian friend once told me that there is a saying in Iran: "Silence is the only good answer to stupid people." I would modify that slightly to "Silence is the only good answer to something stupid." We all do stupid stuff at times. It isn't proof we are generally stupid. It's just part of the human condition. An anonymous downvote, though it may be upsetting to the receiver, is probably a lot less destructive to the community than being able to put a name to the criticism and having to try to express the criticism in words. Running battles between two members who just don't ever agree on anything can be very destructive to a forum. I think the capacity to downvote helps avoid such outcomes. I am still getting a feel for how HN works. But so far I am finding that the system here seems to do a better job of minimizing some of the negative social crapola you find everywhere. Conflict of interest will never go away. Interpersonal friction between some members is inevitable. Spammers and all kinds of other undesirable stuff is also a fact of life. There has to be a means to address that. Warm-fuzzy 'let's only upvote people' solutions won't work. It has no teeth.

Raphael_Amiard 17y ago

>I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them. Can you really not see the difference ?