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Ask HN: Disable downvoting?

6 points by hartator 12y ago

I feel downvoting is out of hand. People are afraid to make comments that might had value but doesn't match the HN culture. Content should be about quality not conformity.

fokinsean 12y ago
Or allow anyone to downvote. I personally feel my opinions are oppressed by the downvote overlords. Down with them I say!
billconan 12y ago
I strongly agree. People often downvote opposite opinions, not bad quality.
superobserver 12y ago
Yep. I don't comment much any more. And don't forget only certain people get to downvote as it is.
benologist 12y ago
At this point in time the top ten submissions have 355 comments, 7 of which are grayed out, 1 of which is really grayed out. What makes you think it's out of hand?
MCRed 12y ago
I feel the same way. I find that my comments result in three outcomes- nothing significant, significant uproots or significant down votes. The ones with significant down votes are not any different in quality than the ones with significant uproots... however they are the ones that are less correlated with what I'd call the "HN ideological positions". I really don't like that heavily downvoted comments are invisible, it's literally silencing the opposition in a way. Upvotes only lets people surface the stuff they think is really good. The upvote action is inspired by strong agreement or liking of a comment, or respect. Down vote is almost always a negative emotion.
dang 12y ago
We certainly agree that HN comments should be of good quality. What's usually lacking in these discussions about downvotes are specific examples. I'm biased, but it seems to me that's because it's usually pretty easy to see how downvoted comments got there. But you have to wait a while to see the effect. Unfair downvotes happen, but the community usually corrects them after a while. So reacting too quickly to unfair downvotes—other than by giving them a corrective upvote—is always a mistake, as is making the thread worse by complaining about it. HN's voting system is flawed, but I've yet to hear of any alternative to downvoting that wouldn't, in my view, make the quality problem worse.
- krapp 12y ago
  Two things that might mitigate the effect of unfair downvoting (and reactions to them), such as they are - removing the fade effect from comments until they've reached a threshold of downvotes, and removing visible karma. Downvoting already seems to do its job affecting the sort order of the threads - people who want to avoid low karma threads can just not scroll down to see them.
  - dang 12y ago
    By visible karma do you mean the point score that one sees beside one's own comments? Taking that away would be a pretty drastic change. The thing about sort order is that it only applies to root comments, and plenty of downvoteable comments get attached to higher-ranking ones. So it doesn't feel to me like sort order is sufficient.
    - krapp 12y ago
      >By visible karma do you mean the point score that one sees beside one's own comments Yes, not showing it at all, or maybe not showing it immediately. Initially, downvotes don't really provide concrete feedback other than "someone disagreed with this for reasons," since there are no real guidelines for downvoting. But if a comment gets downvoted more than a few times and not corrected by the community, the commenter has likely crossed some line the community in general agrees on. >The thing about sort order is that it only applies to root comments (...) Fair enough, but why not sort the entire tree then?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
SamReidHughes 12y ago
> People are afraid to make comments that might had value but doesn't match the HN culture. I know this affects me and suppresses my willingness to post. The result is that I keep most of my shitty comments to myself. I behave much worse on other discussion forums. For example, if I have a countervailing opinion, on other forums often I'll just post it, and the way I'll post it will be designed to make the people that would disagree with them (prototypically, havers of idiotic European political opinions) unhappy by making them witness opinions that they disagree with. I do that with less frequency here -- here, I'll try to make it palatable and relatable in a way that's not totally saturated with spergacious obnoxiousness. I guess most of the reason is just the general expectation of professionalism that's maintained here, not specific fear of negative karma, but that atmosphere is not maintained by upvotes. (In fact, my most-upvoted comments, not that I have many, are almost always pop vacuouity that I think should have been downvoted.) I think a lot of other people here would post a lot worse, too, without downvotes and without the visible "fade" effect. Edit: For example, here's a comment of mine that was rightfully downvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867833 My opinion is right, of course, but it could have been much better presented. And here's a comment where I got downvoted for disagreeing with the thread-local hivemind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867309 So what if I got downvoted! Sometimes that's what you get when you engage with idiots. It's not the end of the world.
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
I personally don't think downvoting is out of hand. Then again, I have a script that edits the "fade" effect to still be readable (it changes it to green instead, like new usernames). It frustrates me that I have to use said script, however.

6 points by hartator 12y ago

I feel downvoting is out of hand. People are afraid to make comments that might had value but doesn't match the HN culture. Content should be about quality not conformity.

fokinsean 12y ago

Or allow anyone to downvote. I personally feel my opinions are oppressed by the downvote overlords. Down with them I say!

billconan 12y ago

I strongly agree. People often downvote opposite opinions, not bad quality.

superobserver 12y ago

Yep. I don't comment much any more. And don't forget only certain people get to downvote as it is.

benologist 12y ago

At this point in time the top ten submissions have 355 comments, 7 of which are grayed out, 1 of which is really grayed out. What makes you think it's out of hand?

MCRed 12y ago

I feel the same way. I find that my comments result in three outcomes- nothing significant, significant uproots or significant down votes. The ones with significant down votes are not any different in quality than the ones with significant uproots... however they are the ones that are less correlated with what I'd call the "HN ideological positions". I really don't like that heavily downvoted comments are invisible, it's literally silencing the opposition in a way. Upvotes only lets people surface the stuff they think is really good. The upvote action is inspired by strong agreement or liking of a comment, or respect. Down vote is almost always a negative emotion.

dang 12y ago

We certainly agree that HN comments should be of good quality. What's usually lacking in these discussions about downvotes are specific examples. I'm biased, but it seems to me that's because it's usually pretty easy to see how downvoted comments got there. But you have to wait a while to see the effect. Unfair downvotes happen, but the community usually corrects them after a while. So reacting too quickly to unfair downvotes—other than by giving them a corrective upvote—is always a mistake, as is making the thread worse by complaining about it. HN's voting system is flawed, but I've yet to hear of any alternative to downvoting that wouldn't, in my view, make the quality problem worse.

krapp 12y ago
Two things that might mitigate the effect of unfair downvoting (and reactions to them), such as they are - removing the fade effect from comments until they've reached a threshold of downvotes, and removing visible karma. Downvoting already seems to do its job affecting the sort order of the threads - people who want to avoid low karma threads can just not scroll down to see them.
- dang 12y ago
  By visible karma do you mean the point score that one sees beside one's own comments? Taking that away would be a pretty drastic change. The thing about sort order is that it only applies to root comments, and plenty of downvoteable comments get attached to higher-ranking ones. So it doesn't feel to me like sort order is sufficient.
  - krapp 12y ago
    >By visible karma do you mean the point score that one sees beside one's own comments Yes, not showing it at all, or maybe not showing it immediately. Initially, downvotes don't really provide concrete feedback other than "someone disagreed with this for reasons," since there are no real guidelines for downvoting. But if a comment gets downvoted more than a few times and not corrected by the community, the commenter has likely crossed some line the community in general agrees on. >The thing about sort order is that it only applies to root comments (...) Fair enough, but why not sort the entire tree then?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

SamReidHughes 12y ago

> People are afraid to make comments that might had value but doesn't match the HN culture. I know this affects me and suppresses my willingness to post. The result is that I keep most of my shitty comments to myself. I behave much worse on other discussion forums. For example, if I have a countervailing opinion, on other forums often I'll just post it, and the way I'll post it will be designed to make the people that would disagree with them (prototypically, havers of idiotic European political opinions) unhappy by making them witness opinions that they disagree with. I do that with less frequency here -- here, I'll try to make it palatable and relatable in a way that's not totally saturated with spergacious obnoxiousness. I guess most of the reason is just the general expectation of professionalism that's maintained here, not specific fear of negative karma, but that atmosphere is not maintained by upvotes. (In fact, my most-upvoted comments, not that I have many, are almost always pop vacuouity that I think should have been downvoted.) I think a lot of other people here would post a lot worse, too, without downvotes and without the visible "fade" effect. Edit: For example, here's a comment of mine that was rightfully downvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867833 My opinion is right, of course, but it could have been much better presented. And here's a comment where I got downvoted for disagreeing with the thread-local hivemind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867309 So what if I got downvoted! Sometimes that's what you get when you engage with idiots. It's not the end of the world.

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago

I personally don't think downvoting is out of hand. Then again, I have a script that edits the "fade" effect to still be readable (it changes it to green instead, like new usernames). It frustrates me that I have to use said script, however.