8 ms·

Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calli

by ffn 11y ago

Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names. Every internet message board has its own culture with its own take on what's "right" and what's "wrong", and on HN (and reddit) the institutionally accepted way of being mean is misusing the downvoting / flagkilling system to attempt to bleep out someone else's opinion because you disagree with it and labeled it as "toxic" from your perspective. I mean, it's one thing to downvote someone because of spam or noise (e.g. one line posts of "lolwtf" or "this is dumb"), but every time I scroll through the comments and see discussion chains of folks arguing some valid points (about say referrals and paywalls or the ever controversial issue of sexism) under a flagkilled or completely invisible down-voted-to-hell post, I think to myself "this shouldn't be how our community operates."

mkramlich 11y ago
well said I basically stopped commenting (well, except now -- doh) here on HN because of how frequently I saw toxic responses and punishment down-voting. There are a noisy subset of users here who either (a) can't understand or respect generalizations, especially based on older/real-life experience, or (b) demand "proof" for any claim, or (c) will punish any kind of not-narrowly-PC statement. And then the blatantly rude. Folks who say something in a comment they'd never dare to say to your face. Therefore I've given up on caring and now much prefer Reddit's community. Less pinheads there, greater topic variety, greater sense of fun, can collapse threads, can delete comments much later (if you discover one that attracts a hate mob). I still enjoy reading HN, mostly the off-site articles linked to. But not so much the comment threads here. Not anymore.
- latchkey 11y ago
  What if you could see who downvoted you? I'd be less annoyed by a downvote from pg, because I probably deserved it, than a downvote from someone completely random, who I might not care about. In some ways, I also wish downvoting cost you a point like it does on stackoverflow.
  - fr0styMatt2 11y ago
    I don't think the upvote/downvote system here provides enough feedback to the person being voted. There just isn't the information there. For the longest time I was confused at seeing down-voted comments because I mentally assumed that downvotes mean "this is a troll comment / this is some kind of abusive comment". Not so. Also (and I've said this before so apologies for repeating myself!), if downvotes do mean 'disagreement', could we get rid of the graying out of down-voted comments, or maybe just make it an account preference? I'm interested in reading viewpoints that I might not agree with and graying out the comment makes it really hard to do so. It also seems to fit better with the model of "downvote = this comment shouldn't be in the conversation".
    - jorgearturo 11y ago
      I agree with you.IMHO, graying out text is a way to convey censorship. Allowing each individual to configure his HN experience sounds positive to me. I like reading controversial opinions just like you. For me, it's both a way to challenge my worldview and a way to understand a particular community better.
      - kaybe 11y ago
        This has been discussed before (well, the general configuration for users). The main argument against it was that not having a common experience in the core elements makes it very hard for the community to stay coherent (which is given as desirable) and have good discussions. Eg when I don't know how you perceive the comments in the vicinity of the discussion, it is harder for me to understand your comment's intentions and finer points. Of course this doesn't apply to peripherical features such as the colour of the header bar.
    - lotharbot 11y ago
      From what I understand, upvotes signify "this adds to the conversation" and downvotes signify "this subtracts from the conversation" -- it's a stronger sentiment than disagreement, but weaker than trolling or abuse (which is what flags are for.) If a comment is disagreeable but worthwhile, my preference is to give a substantive response. If a comment is value-subtracting, even if I agree with the sentiment, I'll downvote it (and may take the time to explain the downvote if I think my explanation will be helpful.) The main attributes I consider to make a comment value-subtracting are: - substantial factual errors (not just a nitpick, but core to the point) - gratuitous negativity or unnecessary incivility - waste of space ("me too", memes or jokes except if they're edw519 caliber, excessive references to irrelevant topics such as mentioning someone else's religion several times in a thread that has nothing to do with that) - extremely poor reasoning or communication, to the degree that trying to engage substantively becomes difficult
- jorgearturo 11y ago
  I'm against trigger-happy flagging/downvoters too. On the other hand, I actually like the fact that Reddit's and HN's communities are different in that way. I go to Reddit when I'm hungry for lots of information and want to have a good time, also to get in touch with a broader internet community. I come to HN when I want to know what's making an impact, and that means -among MANY other things- surviving criticism. So I would not complain because HN needs criticism. I'd rather suggest a technical solution through UX design, for the false alarm flagging mostly.
  - mkramlich 11y ago
    agreed: differences and variety are good
- ryandrake 11y ago
  A subset of your (a) that I see here a lot is when I write a 500 word essay arguing some point, and the first reply comes in and says something to the effect of: "On word 348, you said 'all'. Here's a counter-example that proves that you should have said 'some' instead! I found the word that is wrong in your statement! See? Your entire argument is invalid!" Nit-picking and pedantry is toxic in real life and on message boards, however it seems to be ever-present in communication with fellow software engineers. In software engineering, if you miss an = sign or misplace a { or use a single wrong keyword in a 100K line program, the program can fail spectacularly. Debugging a broken program often involves nit-picking syntax--it's an essential tool in a software engineer's arsenal. This is not universally true for written argument or rhetoric. Being clear is good. Using correct grammar is good. The details count. But attacking a clear, articulate argument by nit-picking grammar or word usage is pointless and does not substantially add to the conversation. Despite this, this behavior seems to exist as a cancer everywhere on the Internet where you encounter written argument or persuasion, including here.
  - mkramlich 11y ago
    Great nuance and insight! That feels like part of it. When I'm wearing the Software Engineer hat, yes, the entire world can fail if a single nit is imperfect. But when we wear the Human Conversing or Persuading hat I expect and indeed enjoy seeing and using a more fuzzy logic. I expect more buffer and assume-I'm-not-an-idiot-kid-please-get-off-my-lawn-been-there-done-that-have-the-tee-shirt-thanks. Compilers and CPUs are the world's most productive utter idiots. The best engineers adjust their thoughts to see them and emulate them, but sometimes this backfires when they forget to exit that mode.
    - jorgearturo 11y ago
      Unfortunately, I don't think "aha!-you're-not-exactly-right" kind of people are going away anytime soon, they've been around on the net since I first laid mouse on it (the 90s, I'm not that old) and they've conquered the technical forums for a reason. Some people simply have that sort of mindset, one just needs to wear the "deal with it" hat and get over it. In fact, those people are very useful and most of them have helped me from time to time, so I'm grateful for them. Side note: >> assume-I'm-not-an-idiot-kid-please-get-off-my-lawn-been-there-done-that-have-the-tee-shirt-thanks Thank you for that, I'll use it sometime, not sure why or when, but it's so funny I must! :D
bootload 11y ago
"Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names." I've stopped up/down voting all together for similar reasons.
- Ntrails 11y ago
  I'd always assumed the intent was to vote when you feel something contributes to the discussion, or is particularly relevant. For example, upvoting when a subject matter expert gives some context, or the person offers a comment that you found interesting. Conversely downvoting when there is a "me too"/contentless comment. Personally I most commonly find myself downvoting what I would describe as either rhetoric or offensive.
  - bootload 11y ago
    "I'd always assumed the intent was to vote when you feel something contributes to the discussion, or is particularly relevant." It is. I've decided to just leave the comments (reactions) as they are and signal upvote by commenting. If the post/comment is of no interest, no comment. Voting in some ways has distorted the real intent of the site: "talking about things hackers like". Imagine of the rating system did away with votes and instead measured the quality of the discourse on something interesting.
doorhammer 11y ago
It's not much, but when I see posts that are downvoted for no discernable reason (assuming good faith on the poster), I'll usually throw them an upvote to bring them a bit out of grey. It's not much, but if I'm having a crap day and something I say it getting downvoted, I feel a little better when it ticks up a notch, knowing at least one person isn't trying to just bomb my post. It's basically the tiniest little gift I like to give to people, heh. I also think that, if enough people put that upvote in, the community could shift how it reacts to things. Just my two cents
- rootlocus 11y ago
  > It's not much, but if I'm having a crap day and something I say it getting downvoted, I feel a little better when it ticks up a notch, knowing at least one person isn't trying to just bomb my post. It's basically the tiniest little gift I like to give to people, heh. I think you're too concerned about what strangers think and do around the internet. Most people will "bomb" your subjective side of the argument (the snarky, mean, remarks), and not the underlying idea. I've found out that conveying your arguments while avoiding personal, subjective, attacks is a much better way of getting your point across, since people are more receptive if they don't get the impression they need to be defensive.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - doorhammer 11y ago
    Yeah. Part of "good faith" for me is that the person isn't being discernibly or overtly aggressive, mean, or sarcastic. Basically, if you're being an asshole, I don't feel a need to save you from yourself. There aren't many (if any) formal guidelines for comment voting on HN, so this is me driving at what I want out of the community. I don't speak for everyone. For my part, I want civility, and to encourage people to contribute their opinions, popular or not. The polite responses to misinformed ideas are often some of the most educational, at least for me, and so I'd like an environment where anxiety about the chance of being wrong is low for everyone. I also don't want any of this to sound like an indictment of hacker news. I keep coming back here because I think the community is really top notch, and the signal to noise ratio is high. Commenting systems and forums have had these problems for ages, and they're hard problems. I just wanted to add my voice to the crowd.
jorgearturo 11y ago
You might be right. Even when in many cases you can immediately tell downvotes were necessary, deserved and the commenter should've seen it coming. I've also encountered many cases that confused me a bit and at the time didn't quite understand why those people/commenters were being downvoted. So I've spent a long time just reading HN without commenting, trying to first understand the culture, the news are just as important as the people curating them IMHO. After sometime I've begun to understand the different mindsets and dynamics; there are many discernible reasons to be downvoted by the community, there's for example, being perceived as a shill or a strawman, and etc. And correct me if I'm wrong but there's also the secret/magic algorithms making the mod's jobs easier, I don't think those algorithms are perfect and may make mistakes sometimes, that's understandable. But there are still enough cases that I suspect ended up being downvoted just because disagreement motive or maybe even for irrational emotion (very rarely do strong emotions come with reason) motive. And there's also the case of Trigger-happy-downvoting individuals, all these latter cases generate such damage that I have * sometimes * even found myself a bit suspicious of the worth of the HN community as a whole. But I stressed "sometimes" for a reason... ...One has to understand that communities change, that's a fact, and as YC has had success and obtained more and more media attention (and therefore HN as well), different kind of audiences have joined the flock (me included, since a few years ago). My guess is that HN's community is still adapting to the new audience, must be tough since there must be thousands of real people along with hundreds of fake accounts (some with nefarious purposes) and bots. In the end, you'll find it more useful to acquire a thick skin and a "deal with it" attitude towards gratuitous negativity (down-voters included), but not an impermeable shell because sometimes there's some useful criticism behind rude negativity, just don't take it personal and master the art of spinning the conversation towards a constructive direction. Side note: >> anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names. Amazingly well phrased, I had to point that one out :)
- ticviking 11y ago
  > In the end, you'll find it more useful to acquire a thick skin and a "deal with it" attitude towards gratuitous negativity (down-voters included), but not an impermeable shell because sometimes there's some useful criticism behind rude negativity, just don't take it personal and master the art of spinning the conversation towards a constructive direction. This is the most important lesson I was never formally taught about discourse. If you can mange to be Kind & Thick-skinned you will be capable of communicating with a far wider group of people than those who are missing one component of that pair.
cma 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- kaybe 11y ago
  Well so he says, but is it useful? When downvoting means two different things, it is hard to discern what is meant. I usually vote with 'helpful'/'I learnt something new' and 'not helpful'/'wasted my time in a mean manner'. I also don't see how one could only want comments one agrees with at the top - you learn less, and there might be less of a discussion. (Maybe I misunderstood pg's intention here?) One could argue for another voting just for agreement/disagreement that wouldn't impact the positioning and colour of the comments, because seeing HN's opinions is also interesting. It would however add another layer of complexity.
  - cma 11y ago
    I don't know that I agree with him, but consider: As long as people upvote "I learnt something I agree with," and not "I learnt something I disagree with," the effect is the same, the amplification is just tuned a bit. Having a different standard for upvotes and downvotes doesn't do much. If you get less upvotes, it is effectively as if you got more downvotes.
    - jorgearturo 11y ago
      I found it curious that something is never mentioned in that post. That is, not voting at all. So yeah, I generally agree with PG in that > it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement But he never said to do it in a trigger-happy manner. There can be many other reasons to vote, but when the reasoning is 'agreement/disagreement', voting IMHO should be done when you strongly agree or strongly disagree; this way you allow some "space" in between for freedom of expression. So my current take on this whole vote up/down to convey agreement/dissagreement discussion would be not voting at all unless you find it pertinent. Also IMHO, in other types of reasoning one should be a bit faster to downvote, for example 'rudeness', or worse, 'hate messages', for those ones I downvote immediately, or flag and sometimes even educate (if the person seems to be just confused, and I make one attempt only, if the person is not interested in changing their mind, I skip). Other types of reasoning deserve a different approach, for example; Interesting comments I upvote even if I don't agree. Well redacted but uninteresting comments I leave untouched (I don't vote up nor down). And there are many other considerations for different scenarios and different types of reasoning, I mostly prefer not to waste time, but I liked this post about kindness and find the topic of community very engaging and relevant to me. Maybe because I'm starting to build a community myself. I admit that I'm a bit faster to upvote, for anything that deserves positive feedback; attention, approval, agreement, endorsement, celebration, applause, kudos, kindness, etc. And I'm OK with that.
zipppy 11y ago
Could HN benefit from a dual-voting system? One for 'agree'/'disagree', and the other for 'constructive'/'non-constructive'?
- gedrap 11y ago
  It's a bit like when you have a survey and you have 5 or 6 options ranging from 'hate it' and 'love it'. The difference is often very small and just adds not really necessary options which makes making a choice harder. How about checking if a user downvoted more than e.g. average number of comments on some post, resulting in his downvotes carrying very little weight if it is true. Unless it's being done already.
- jorgearturo 11y ago
  Don't you think that would break the minimalist design? I don't think it would benefit, not to mention it would be a little too opinionated. I suspect HN's up/down system follows the pattern of simplicity by design and for good reason; the reason being the flexibility to welcome a cognitive diverse audience. Apparently HN's decline in audience quality over time was expected from the start¹; quality and popularity seem to be inversely correlated, but the voting privilege threshold is a good way to maintain culture values to some degree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but given the fact this community was conceived as "an experiment"¹ to explore and empower the hacker community, I suspect one of the points has always been that the "best" ideas float to the top. In this case, the "best" ideas are always relative to the values of the community as a whole; the sum of criteria of the engaged participants, a very diverse audience. That diverse audience can have multiple motives to vote up or down, according to each individual mindset; it can be agree/disagree, constructive/non-constructive, as you proposed, yes, but it also can be interesting/uninteresting, like/dislike, kind/unkind. Or many other criteria that are not necessarily antonyms; amazing/disgusting, enlightening/TLDR, etc. So this singular up/down "un-opinionated" system's simplicity allows a cognition diversity one-size-fits-all dynamic, any change in UX would have to be planned for a justifiable purpose and very carefully executed. ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

by ffn 11y ago

mkramlich 11y ago

well said I basically stopped commenting (well, except now -- doh) here on HN because of how frequently I saw toxic responses and punishment down-voting. There are a noisy subset of users here who either (a) can't understand or respect generalizations, especially based on older/real-life experience, or (b) demand "proof" for any claim, or (c) will punish any kind of not-narrowly-PC statement. And then the blatantly rude. Folks who say something in a comment they'd never dare to say to your face. Therefore I've given up on caring and now much prefer Reddit's community. Less pinheads there, greater topic variety, greater sense of fun, can collapse threads, can delete comments much later (if you discover one that attracts a hate mob). I still enjoy reading HN, mostly the off-site articles linked to. But not so much the comment threads here. Not anymore.

latchkey 11y ago
What if you could see who downvoted you? I'd be less annoyed by a downvote from pg, because I probably deserved it, than a downvote from someone completely random, who I might not care about. In some ways, I also wish downvoting cost you a point like it does on stackoverflow.
- fr0styMatt2 11y ago
  I don't think the upvote/downvote system here provides enough feedback to the person being voted. There just isn't the information there. For the longest time I was confused at seeing down-voted comments because I mentally assumed that downvotes mean "this is a troll comment / this is some kind of abusive comment". Not so. Also (and I've said this before so apologies for repeating myself!), if downvotes do mean 'disagreement', could we get rid of the graying out of down-voted comments, or maybe just make it an account preference? I'm interested in reading viewpoints that I might not agree with and graying out the comment makes it really hard to do so. It also seems to fit better with the model of "downvote = this comment shouldn't be in the conversation".
  - jorgearturo 11y ago
    I agree with you.IMHO, graying out text is a way to convey censorship. Allowing each individual to configure his HN experience sounds positive to me. I like reading controversial opinions just like you. For me, it's both a way to challenge my worldview and a way to understand a particular community better.
    - kaybe 11y ago
      This has been discussed before (well, the general configuration for users). The main argument against it was that not having a common experience in the core elements makes it very hard for the community to stay coherent (which is given as desirable) and have good discussions. Eg when I don't know how you perceive the comments in the vicinity of the discussion, it is harder for me to understand your comment's intentions and finer points. Of course this doesn't apply to peripherical features such as the colour of the header bar.
  - lotharbot 11y ago
    From what I understand, upvotes signify "this adds to the conversation" and downvotes signify "this subtracts from the conversation" -- it's a stronger sentiment than disagreement, but weaker than trolling or abuse (which is what flags are for.) If a comment is disagreeable but worthwhile, my preference is to give a substantive response. If a comment is value-subtracting, even if I agree with the sentiment, I'll downvote it (and may take the time to explain the downvote if I think my explanation will be helpful.) The main attributes I consider to make a comment value-subtracting are: - substantial factual errors (not just a nitpick, but core to the point) - gratuitous negativity or unnecessary incivility - waste of space ("me too", memes or jokes except if they're edw519 caliber, excessive references to irrelevant topics such as mentioning someone else's religion several times in a thread that has nothing to do with that) - extremely poor reasoning or communication, to the degree that trying to engage substantively becomes difficult
jorgearturo 11y ago
I'm against trigger-happy flagging/downvoters too. On the other hand, I actually like the fact that Reddit's and HN's communities are different in that way. I go to Reddit when I'm hungry for lots of information and want to have a good time, also to get in touch with a broader internet community. I come to HN when I want to know what's making an impact, and that means -among MANY other things- surviving criticism. So I would not complain because HN needs criticism. I'd rather suggest a technical solution through UX design, for the false alarm flagging mostly.
- mkramlich 11y ago
  agreed: differences and variety are good
ryandrake 11y ago
A subset of your (a) that I see here a lot is when I write a 500 word essay arguing some point, and the first reply comes in and says something to the effect of: "On word 348, you said 'all'. Here's a counter-example that proves that you should have said 'some' instead! I found the word that is wrong in your statement! See? Your entire argument is invalid!" Nit-picking and pedantry is toxic in real life and on message boards, however it seems to be ever-present in communication with fellow software engineers. In software engineering, if you miss an = sign or misplace a { or use a single wrong keyword in a 100K line program, the program can fail spectacularly. Debugging a broken program often involves nit-picking syntax--it's an essential tool in a software engineer's arsenal. This is not universally true for written argument or rhetoric. Being clear is good. Using correct grammar is good. The details count. But attacking a clear, articulate argument by nit-picking grammar or word usage is pointless and does not substantially add to the conversation. Despite this, this behavior seems to exist as a cancer everywhere on the Internet where you encounter written argument or persuasion, including here.
- mkramlich 11y ago
  Great nuance and insight! That feels like part of it. When I'm wearing the Software Engineer hat, yes, the entire world can fail if a single nit is imperfect. But when we wear the Human Conversing or Persuading hat I expect and indeed enjoy seeing and using a more fuzzy logic. I expect more buffer and assume-I'm-not-an-idiot-kid-please-get-off-my-lawn-been-there-done-that-have-the-tee-shirt-thanks. Compilers and CPUs are the world's most productive utter idiots. The best engineers adjust their thoughts to see them and emulate them, but sometimes this backfires when they forget to exit that mode.
  - jorgearturo 11y ago
    Unfortunately, I don't think "aha!-you're-not-exactly-right" kind of people are going away anytime soon, they've been around on the net since I first laid mouse on it (the 90s, I'm not that old) and they've conquered the technical forums for a reason. Some people simply have that sort of mindset, one just needs to wear the "deal with it" hat and get over it. In fact, those people are very useful and most of them have helped me from time to time, so I'm grateful for them. Side note: >> assume-I'm-not-an-idiot-kid-please-get-off-my-lawn-been-there-done-that-have-the-tee-shirt-thanks Thank you for that, I'll use it sometime, not sure why or when, but it's so funny I must! :D

bootload 11y ago

"Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names." I've stopped up/down voting all together for similar reasons.

Ntrails 11y ago
I'd always assumed the intent was to vote when you feel something contributes to the discussion, or is particularly relevant. For example, upvoting when a subject matter expert gives some context, or the person offers a comment that you found interesting. Conversely downvoting when there is a "me too"/contentless comment. Personally I most commonly find myself downvoting what I would describe as either rhetoric or offensive.
- bootload 11y ago
  "I'd always assumed the intent was to vote when you feel something contributes to the discussion, or is particularly relevant." It is. I've decided to just leave the comments (reactions) as they are and signal upvote by commenting. If the post/comment is of no interest, no comment. Voting in some ways has distorted the real intent of the site: "talking about things hackers like". Imagine of the rating system did away with votes and instead measured the quality of the discourse on something interesting.

doorhammer 11y ago

It's not much, but when I see posts that are downvoted for no discernable reason (assuming good faith on the poster), I'll usually throw them an upvote to bring them a bit out of grey. It's not much, but if I'm having a crap day and something I say it getting downvoted, I feel a little better when it ticks up a notch, knowing at least one person isn't trying to just bomb my post. It's basically the tiniest little gift I like to give to people, heh. I also think that, if enough people put that upvote in, the community could shift how it reacts to things. Just my two cents

rootlocus 11y ago
> It's not much, but if I'm having a crap day and something I say it getting downvoted, I feel a little better when it ticks up a notch, knowing at least one person isn't trying to just bomb my post. It's basically the tiniest little gift I like to give to people, heh. I think you're too concerned about what strangers think and do around the internet. Most people will "bomb" your subjective side of the argument (the snarky, mean, remarks), and not the underlying idea. I've found out that conveying your arguments while avoiding personal, subjective, attacks is a much better way of getting your point across, since people are more receptive if they don't get the impression they need to be defensive.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- doorhammer 11y ago
  Yeah. Part of "good faith" for me is that the person isn't being discernibly or overtly aggressive, mean, or sarcastic. Basically, if you're being an asshole, I don't feel a need to save you from yourself. There aren't many (if any) formal guidelines for comment voting on HN, so this is me driving at what I want out of the community. I don't speak for everyone. For my part, I want civility, and to encourage people to contribute their opinions, popular or not. The polite responses to misinformed ideas are often some of the most educational, at least for me, and so I'd like an environment where anxiety about the chance of being wrong is low for everyone. I also don't want any of this to sound like an indictment of hacker news. I keep coming back here because I think the community is really top notch, and the signal to noise ratio is high. Commenting systems and forums have had these problems for ages, and they're hard problems. I just wanted to add my voice to the crowd.

jorgearturo 11y ago

You might be right. Even when in many cases you can immediately tell downvotes were necessary, deserved and the commenter should've seen it coming. I've also encountered many cases that confused me a bit and at the time didn't quite understand why those people/commenters were being downvoted. So I've spent a long time just reading HN without commenting, trying to first understand the culture, the news are just as important as the people curating them IMHO. After sometime I've begun to understand the different mindsets and dynamics; there are many discernible reasons to be downvoted by the community, there's for example, being perceived as a shill or a strawman, and etc. And correct me if I'm wrong but there's also the secret/magic algorithms making the mod's jobs easier, I don't think those algorithms are perfect and may make mistakes sometimes, that's understandable. But there are still enough cases that I suspect ended up being downvoted just because disagreement motive or maybe even for irrational emotion (very rarely do strong emotions come with reason) motive. And there's also the case of Trigger-happy-downvoting individuals, all these latter cases generate such damage that I have * sometimes * even found myself a bit suspicious of the worth of the HN community as a whole. But I stressed "sometimes" for a reason... ...One has to understand that communities change, that's a fact, and as YC has had success and obtained more and more media attention (and therefore HN as well), different kind of audiences have joined the flock (me included, since a few years ago). My guess is that HN's community is still adapting to the new audience, must be tough since there must be thousands of real people along with hundreds of fake accounts (some with nefarious purposes) and bots. In the end, you'll find it more useful to acquire a thick skin and a "deal with it" attitude towards gratuitous negativity (down-voters included), but not an impermeable shell because sometimes there's some useful criticism behind rude negativity, just don't take it personal and master the art of spinning the conversation towards a constructive direction. Side note: >> anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names. Amazingly well phrased, I had to point that one out :)

ticviking 11y ago
> In the end, you'll find it more useful to acquire a thick skin and a "deal with it" attitude towards gratuitous negativity (down-voters included), but not an impermeable shell because sometimes there's some useful criticism behind rude negativity, just don't take it personal and master the art of spinning the conversation towards a constructive direction. This is the most important lesson I was never formally taught about discourse. If you can mange to be Kind & Thick-skinned you will be capable of communicating with a far wider group of people than those who are missing one component of that pair.

cma 11y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

kaybe 11y ago
Well so he says, but is it useful? When downvoting means two different things, it is hard to discern what is meant. I usually vote with 'helpful'/'I learnt something new' and 'not helpful'/'wasted my time in a mean manner'. I also don't see how one could only want comments one agrees with at the top - you learn less, and there might be less of a discussion. (Maybe I misunderstood pg's intention here?) One could argue for another voting just for agreement/disagreement that wouldn't impact the positioning and colour of the comments, because seeing HN's opinions is also interesting. It would however add another layer of complexity.
- cma 11y ago
  I don't know that I agree with him, but consider: As long as people upvote "I learnt something I agree with," and not "I learnt something I disagree with," the effect is the same, the amplification is just tuned a bit. Having a different standard for upvotes and downvotes doesn't do much. If you get less upvotes, it is effectively as if you got more downvotes.
  - jorgearturo 11y ago
    I found it curious that something is never mentioned in that post. That is, not voting at all. So yeah, I generally agree with PG in that > it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement But he never said to do it in a trigger-happy manner. There can be many other reasons to vote, but when the reasoning is 'agreement/disagreement', voting IMHO should be done when you strongly agree or strongly disagree; this way you allow some "space" in between for freedom of expression. So my current take on this whole vote up/down to convey agreement/dissagreement discussion would be not voting at all unless you find it pertinent. Also IMHO, in other types of reasoning one should be a bit faster to downvote, for example 'rudeness', or worse, 'hate messages', for those ones I downvote immediately, or flag and sometimes even educate (if the person seems to be just confused, and I make one attempt only, if the person is not interested in changing their mind, I skip). Other types of reasoning deserve a different approach, for example; Interesting comments I upvote even if I don't agree. Well redacted but uninteresting comments I leave untouched (I don't vote up nor down). And there are many other considerations for different scenarios and different types of reasoning, I mostly prefer not to waste time, but I liked this post about kindness and find the topic of community very engaging and relevant to me. Maybe because I'm starting to build a community myself. I admit that I'm a bit faster to upvote, for anything that deserves positive feedback; attention, approval, agreement, endorsement, celebration, applause, kudos, kindness, etc. And I'm OK with that.

zipppy 11y ago

Could HN benefit from a dual-voting system? One for 'agree'/'disagree', and the other for 'constructive'/'non-constructive'?

gedrap 11y ago
It's a bit like when you have a survey and you have 5 or 6 options ranging from 'hate it' and 'love it'. The difference is often very small and just adds not really necessary options which makes making a choice harder. How about checking if a user downvoted more than e.g. average number of comments on some post, resulting in his downvotes carrying very little weight if it is true. Unless it's being done already.
jorgearturo 11y ago
Don't you think that would break the minimalist design? I don't think it would benefit, not to mention it would be a little too opinionated. I suspect HN's up/down system follows the pattern of simplicity by design and for good reason; the reason being the flexibility to welcome a cognitive diverse audience. Apparently HN's decline in audience quality over time was expected from the start¹; quality and popularity seem to be inversely correlated, but the voting privilege threshold is a good way to maintain culture values to some degree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but given the fact this community was conceived as "an experiment"¹ to explore and empower the hacker community, I suspect one of the points has always been that the "best" ideas float to the top. In this case, the "best" ideas are always relative to the values of the community as a whole; the sum of criteria of the engaged participants, a very diverse audience. That diverse audience can have multiple motives to vote up or down, according to each individual mindset; it can be agree/disagree, constructive/non-constructive, as you proposed, yes, but it also can be interesting/uninteresting, like/dislike, kind/unkind. Or many other criteria that are not necessarily antonyms; amazing/disgusting, enlightening/TLDR, etc. So this singular up/down "un-opinionated" system's simplicity allows a cognition diversity one-size-fits-all dynamic, any change in UX would have to be planned for a justifiable purpose and very carefully executed. ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html