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So do you think disagreement alone is grounds for downvoting? Maybe I'm weird, but I'll often upvote comments I disagree with, if I think they're interesting.

by beat 12y ago

So do you think disagreement alone is grounds for downvoting? Maybe I'm weird, but I'll often upvote comments I disagree with, if I think they're interesting. Downvotes as cultural reinforcement is a real problem. And it's a bad idea, imho. I've seen it in the technical community since the idea of comment voting was introduced back in the glory days of Slashdot, 17 years or so ago. It distresses me to see HN doing the same thing.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> So do you think disagreement alone is grounds for downvoting? Maybe I'm weird, but I'll often upvote comments I disagree with, if I think they're interesting. Disagreement is fairly explicitly -- i.e., per pg -- an acceptable reason for downvoting, though I don't prefer to use it that way and will often upvote posts I disagree with that I feel add value to the discussion. But that's irrelevant to my point in GP -- my point is that people to tend to present self-serving assumptions about the motivation behind downvotes of particular posts as if they were established facts. > Downvotes as cultural reinforcement is a real problem. Downvotes as cultural reinforcement is a central element of community moderation -- "cultural reinforcement" is how the particular character of a community is maintained, and "community moderation" is expressly the decision to give that reinforcement to the community. And that's just as true for downvotes-for-lack-of-substance as for downvotes-for-disagreement. Having seen both unmoderated and primarily centrally moderated communities, I think community moderation is a fairly good approach (not without its tradeoffs), and HN's form of community moderation is, IMO, one of the better ones.
- beat 12y ago
  Yeah. As much as I knock cultural reinforcement of wrongheaded assumptions (it's no different in principle than fundie churches), community policing is better than the alternatives.

by beat 12y ago

dragonwriter 12y ago

> So do you think disagreement alone is grounds for downvoting? Maybe I'm weird, but I'll often upvote comments I disagree with, if I think they're interesting. Disagreement is fairly explicitly -- i.e., per pg -- an acceptable reason for downvoting, though I don't prefer to use it that way and will often upvote posts I disagree with that I feel add value to the discussion. But that's irrelevant to my point in GP -- my point is that people to tend to present self-serving assumptions about the motivation behind downvotes of particular posts as if they were established facts. > Downvotes as cultural reinforcement is a real problem. Downvotes as cultural reinforcement is a central element of community moderation -- "cultural reinforcement" is how the particular character of a community is maintained, and "community moderation" is expressly the decision to give that reinforcement to the community. And that's just as true for downvotes-for-lack-of-substance as for downvotes-for-disagreement. Having seen both unmoderated and primarily centrally moderated communities, I think community moderation is a fairly good approach (not without its tradeoffs), and HN's form of community moderation is, IMO, one of the better ones.

beat 12y ago
Yeah. As much as I knock cultural reinforcement of wrongheaded assumptions (it's no different in principle than fundie churches), community policing is better than the alternatives.