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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 com

• 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.
      • viraptor 17y ago
        While upvoting better comments is a really good thing, I don't think it's enough. Let's say that instead of trying to give a counter example for your idea, I simply write something like: "No - that's lame and you should be downvoted, because you're wrong right now." If that was the last response - everything's fine - the thread gets lost. But if someone tries to explain that I'm not correct, we get a standard war that doesn't really prove anything. If people wanted to upvote "better" comments, then anything after my post could be considered "better" and I can keep the thread afloat by just contradicting everyone (if I don't simply abuse them). I'm still at ~1 vote with every post, but with others being upvoted, we would just grab attention and pull more people into the "conversation"... and that's what I think happens in forums that simply move the updated threads up. The only way to break that cycle would be to start upvoting most of the other threads... But then what to do if some of them are actually worth upvoting and some aren't? Now the question is: did I, or did I not try to start a noisy attention grabbing thread just now by saying you're wrong but not in a trollish way (and was it really not a troll post or did I just try to assure you it wasn't by my definition (how meta! ;) ))
        • chrischen 17y ago
          I think you're talking about a different problem. And this problem specifically deals with responses to threaded comments that are on top. I think in this case simply flag it if it seems trollish. Or only allow down votes on responses. Because allowing down votes on all comments introduces a whole new set of problems like majority induced silencing.
          • chrischen 17y ago
            Another solution would be to offer the ability to sort comments strictly by karma.
  • viraptor 17y ago
    So what action do you propose for a situation where some person writes an incorrect post and is then corrected, but the whole thread doesn't deserve to be upvoted? If you just upvote the correction, you mark it as significant in some way. But if it's only correcting a flamebait, why would you? It seems to be better to leave the correction there (so that people who read it get more information), but force the whole thread to go down by downvoting the first incorrect post. I think it's a good protection against flamewars which may contain a lot of "correct" posts, but you may want to push them down anyways. The problem of course is: what is correct / true and how sure are you about it.
    • chrischen 17y ago
      > The problem of course is: what is correct / true and how sure are you about it. Exactly. So rather than try to determine "correctness" because sometimes it is subjective, just try to determine what's clearly "better." Up voting better comments will have the side effect of pushing down comments that are not as deserving.
      • deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
      • Semiapies 17y ago
        If you can't judge a comment for a degree of "correctness", you can't judge one comment as "better" than another.
        • chrischen 17y ago
          Yes you're right. We each have our own definition of "better," as we do have for "correct." But it's less detrimental/errpr to just have you judge "better" than to have you judge both "better" and "worse" which is what happens when we allow judgements of "correct."
          • Semiapies 17y ago
            Why? Really, please explain.
• abefortas 17y ago
  Wouldn't it make more sense to downvote either to eliminate spam/noise or to signal disagreement? I'm all for stoning spammers, but I think it's more constructive to write a response if you disagree with someone.
  • Semiapies 17y ago
    Sometimes a response is not worth writing. If people make reasonable (and even to your knowledge correct) arguments for X, then someone replies to say nothing more than "X is wrong/bad/inefficient" with no counter-argument or evidence, why answer that? If someone makes a bigoted remark (anti-gay, anti-American, whatever), why answer that? If someone's trying to drag a discussion off-topic, why answer that? The answer is "I don't have to write an answer." You have a channel for expressing a reaction, and just as it's unnecessary to write "That's so right!" replies instead of up-voting, it's unnecessary to give gratuitous replies instead of down-voting.
• quellhorst 17y ago
  Your bank account is just a silly number in a computer! The money only has value because other people think it has value.
  • borism 17y ago
    I'd give you 10 points for that answer. Only if I could :)
  • bendotc 17y ago
    My point was not to take the position that karma is an unimportant number in a computer somewhere, but that people often claim as much in defense of various scoring systems on sites like this and Reddit and so on that create perverse incentives for the users. I work on online videogames. You don't need to tell me the value of a number in a computer somewhere that means a whole heck of a lot to someone, and shapes how they act. :-)
    • chrischen 17y ago
      He's right the number is insignificant. The number just represents the sentiment of the person who gave you it, or the sentiment of the person who who down voted you. It gets even worse if you're someone who worked hard for karma, only have it taken away by someone for your opinion.
• dfragnito 17y ago
  There must be a better way to asses the "value" of content. I agree that the down vote is arguably a good gauge for how the community at large "feels" about the content but not a good indicator for "value". There are two metrics here that I do not believe can be extracted from a voting system. I rarely comment, one of the few time I did I got down voted. I returned 3 days later and tried to defend my position, but it was too late and the community had move on. Oddly enough my comment did start a thread of discussion. As I mentioned in my followup comment assessing the value of user contributed content is an area that we are trying to solve in a web application solution soon to be deployed. Below is an excerpt from my comment. "Using my initial comment as an example had I not posted that comment "value adding" content would never have been created. If my contributed content resulted in "value adding" content, is it not then "value adding" content? Is a good proxy of "value adding" content, content which produces or causes other content creation?" So if a comment gets down voted but starts a wave of discussion surely it has value.
  • borism 17y ago
    Of course comment score doesn't display value objectively or comprehensibly or indefinitely. Every topic has it's decay period, you may have made a good point, but if the community doesn't feel that way during lifetime of the topic, then that was a lost cause. If it really matters try again, as you just did. If it doesn't - leave it alone. There are many other things that HN doesn't do and leaves for people to figure out. Perfect? No. Good enough? I think so.
    • dfragnito 17y ago
      I agree the marginal improvement may not be worth the effort.The web application I alluded to would offer this "content valuing" service to a community. It's actually on our wish list and not the main value-add of the offering
  • bendotc 17y ago
    Not seeing the original comment to which you're referring, I can't offer any opinion on it in particular. However, I generally disagree with the statement "if a comment gets down voted but starts a wave of discussion surely it has value." Trolling is, at its heart, the creation of discussion by posts of negative value, usually by eliciting a strong emotional response from readers. Most troll-posts don't have value to those trolled (though there may be exceptions).
• rokhayakebe 17y ago
  It influences a sorting algorithm that shapes the way people read... What gives you the right to decide how a thread should or shouldn't be displayed for others? Aren't you valuing your opinion too much? When I personally down-vote, it's because I think you're wrong You can simply make your point in a reply, or maybe make use of silence. or negative value (spam, noise, etc) There is a FLAG link for all comments. it really has nothing to do with your worth as a person Comments reflect the way the poster thinks. You will not find anything more personal to us than the way we think. or any desire to hurt you But you do.