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Hn Downvote notes

136 points by vezycash 11y ago

I propose a "reason for down vote" feature to be added to hn. It should be optional. The reason won't be part of the discussion thread. A small button close to the comment can link to the for the down vote. Why add this? People who get down voted (esp noobs to the community) have no idea why they were. As a result can't figure out how to change our avoid such in the future. Also trigger happy down voters might get to think carefully about WHY before they do. Punishment without reason in real life is known as wickedness, cruelty, bullying... This would be better for not just community but for the internet as a whole.

danmaz74 11y ago
It could be nice to have a popup menu where you can choose from the main reasons why a comment can be downvoted according to the rules, pointing to the relative FAQ entry. "Ad hominem" "Off topic" "Spammy" - this would help the newcomers and would probably be used more than having to type a reason.
danieltillett 11y ago
Rather than something complex like this can we get the down and up vote arrows separated? Something simple like putting the arrows on opposite sides of the user's name would be fine. This will stop fat fingered people like me from accidentally down voting a post when I am reading on a mobile device.
- lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
  This is only a problem because you can't modify your vote. On Reddit, you can change your vote any time before the thread is archived.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    It is a problem even if you could modify your vote as a lot of the time I am not sure if I have up voted or down voted a post. I love HN and its low fi design, but this is the one thing that I think takes away from the community spirt here. Intent should always be clear.
    - jonsen 11y ago
      You could tell from which arrow got disabled by your vote.
      - Gracana 11y ago
        But both arrows disappear when you vote. [edit] Or are you suggesting a way in which the site could be modified to reflect your vote? In that case yeah, I think that would work.
      - spacemanmatt 11y ago
        Both arrows disappear when I vote (Chrome)
    - crusso 11y ago
      Many online forums resolve the problem you mention by showing your vote. Disqus, for example, simply shows the up arrow button in a blue highlight if you've already upvoted the comment.
    - th0br0 11y ago
      If you're using Chrome I can only strongly recommend the HN Enhancement Suite which takes care of this issue: https://github.com/etcet/HNES https://github.com/etcet/HNES
- wheaties 11y ago
  Ues, this, a million times. I have done it again and again without the ability to undownvote. I can't even zoom in far enough to be sure that I have hit the correct button.
- aerique 11y ago
  I'm actually pretty sure I managed to upvote you on mobile, like I intended! Sorry for the strong language but I think it is nothing short of retarded that after so many years and so many complaints this issue has not been fixed yet.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    The only reason I know for sure that I up voted you is because you are replying to my post! What do we need to do to fix this - it can't be talent or will given the community.
    - aerique 11y ago
      That's why I'm so surprised this hasn't been fixed yet. I'll go take a looksy tonight to see whether the HN source code is available online.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        There is a github thing. The vote buttons are, as far as I know, a firm and definite won't fix. The vote buttons are about the only thing I hate about HN on mobile.
        danieltillett 11y ago
        Do we have any idea why the vote buttons are a won't fix? Surely it can't be that anyone thinks the current design is good?
- mark_l_watson 11y ago
  This might help with this problem: I reverse pinch gesture the text around the vote arrows for a larger font, vote, then pinch gesture the text back to normal size. This just takes an extra few seconds and is a good workaround.
givan 11y ago
You want to censor yourself based on down vote reasons? Even if sometimes it seems strange to receive a down vote there are many people with different opinions and even if they told you the reason it won't help you much, other than entering a time consuming debate I don't see what else you can do. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/ Down votes increased because hn got bigger, and it only means someone disagrees with you, why do you see it as a punishment?
- currysausage 11y ago
  > Down votes increased because hn got bigger, and it only means someone disagrees with you, why do you see it as a punishment? And I thought disagreement was the worst reason for downvoting. I thought that you should downvote comments for low quality, when they add nothing but flame potential to the discussion. Downvotes let a comment fade to grey until it is invisible. Is it so hard to see why someone would see this as punishment? Why would I want to make counter-arguments vanish? A discussion where all visible comments promote the same opinion would be a boring, useless discussion. Actually, I tend to upvote opinions that I reject if they are outlined in a valuable manner. It is in my best interest to know the best points for all sides. And OP, as I understand it, wants to make this more visible to downvoters: that disagreement isn't actually in the canonical list of downvote reasons.
  - Sandman 11y ago
    As a long-time HN user I completely agree with you, but it's worth mentioning that pg specifically stated that it's perfectly fine to use downvotes for disagreement (if I find the comment where he said that I'll edit my post and put a link to it). So, while I don't think that downvotes should be used for disagreement, if the person that created this site says that it's ok, then I guess it's ok. EDIT: Ah, here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- tomjen3 11y ago
  When downvoted comments are no longer greyed out and pushed out of the discussion maybe we agree that they are not a punishment. The problem is that at present they are a bully pulpit. I have had comments that went negative days after they had been upvoted - surely if the comments were so bad they would have been downvoted right away?
amirmc 11y ago
Why not leave the reason as a comment instead? I don't really see a need for a new feature.
- kephra 11y ago
  If someone upvotes your negative comment, the complete thread goes up a bit. Thats the opposite, that your want with a downvote.
  - eCa 11y ago
    That could be solved by "if user has downvoted the comment they reply to, don't count upvotes for their reply when calculating thread value".
  - amirmc 11y ago
    What you're describing isn't clear. I assume you meant to say "If someone comments on your negative comment ..." otherwise it appears you're describing how upvotes are generally expected to work. I expect HNs algos could spot such a comment thread quite easily (thereby avoiding what you've described). That doesn't require a new user feature.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- DanBC 11y ago
  the options are: i) Just downvote a comment that you think should not be on HN but which is not bad enough to flag ii) Get involved in a tedious sub-thread bit of bickering with the comment's author about why you think they're wrong iii) Write a post explaining why you think they're wrong, and have them reply with clarification, and you both end up agreeing and happy. iii rarely happens. ii happens too often, and i is preferable to ii.
rwmj 11y ago
Slashdot was/is good in this regard. You don't upvote and downvote, you give a reason, like "Interesting", "Troll", "Offtopic", "Funny".
- lazyjones 11y ago
  Slashdot had (it's pretty dead now, I guess) meta-moderation, which worked very well. I.e. you could vote on whether a particular rating and reason were appropriate in your opinion or not (with my 4-figure user-ID I often got 15 meta-moderation points to "spend" this way).
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    You are showing your age when reminiscing about having a 4 digit slashdot ID :)
    - msutherl 11y ago
      "Flashing" your age ;)
- stephen_mcd 11y ago
  Funny is a +1 on Slashdot, while on HN it'd be a -1.
  - jqm 11y ago
    Agreed. And that more than anything else about HN bothers me. I like intelligent humor. (Stupid humor however deserves to be down voted).
jonsen 11y ago
Years back down-votes were rare on HN. It was relatively easy to infer why a comment was down-voted. Now you mostly can't tell, just wonder why.
- anu_gupta 11y ago
  Looking at the greyed out comments on this post, I think it's fairly obvious why they've been downvoted.
- DanBC 11y ago
  No they weren't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057275 Brushfire says, 1946 days ago: > I agree - Thanks for acknowledging it. > I've seen a lot more down voting of well-reasoned comments and arguments just because of disagreement, and I've seen a lot more snide, unhelpful, almost belligerent comments across the board. > I cant speak for others, but its good to know you are working on it, as I dont want to find another place.
  - jonsen 11y ago
    I remember that. I've been here longer. It has been a long down-slope.
oskarth 11y ago
I was just thinking about this the other day. I think it'd be useful if you could specify DH{0,1,2} as reasons for downvoting (http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html), as these are essentially useless comments that add nothing to the discussion.
lazyjones 11y ago
YMMV, but my impression is that downvotes are usually obvious and expected, either bad style/inflammatory or unpopular opinions in the given context (i.e. any criticism of e.g. Perl in a Perl-related discussion where many fans of the language are present). Requiring a comment is probably less effort than all the captchas I have to solve because of Tor (many more than the number of downvotes I pass around...), but it'll lead to unnecessary meta-discussions ("he downvoted me because of foo but he's wrong because ...").
- dang 11y ago
  > all the captchas I have to solve because of Tor Do you see those when posting from your current account? If so, I'm not sure we have this right. There are hurdles on new accounts to impede spammers and trolls, but we don't mean to make things harder for established users. If you wouldn't mind, sending details of what you're experiencing to hn@ycombinator.com would be helpful. We'll look into it and maybe adjust how this works.
  - lazyjones 11y ago
    > Do you see those when posting from your current account? Yes, I do reload HN quite often (always logged in with this account) and believe I have seen 5+ captchas or so today already. Thanks for the offer to report details, I'll try to keep track of what exactly happens tomorrow.
    - dang 11y ago
      Cool. A screenshot would be great, if that's convenient. Sorry we've been inconveniencing you!
stefantalpalaru 11y ago
Notes won't change anything. There's a culture of comment suppression here that goes all the way up. If you've been downvoted it means that you failed to match somebody's expectation of what you should be writing. Now you're toxic and you need to be punished for the common good. Be glad you weren't also hellbanned. Yet.
pavlov 11y ago
I completely agree, but I feel it should be mandatory. (I've proposed this same "explain why" mechanism for downvotes a few times in the past.) Currently downvoting has unbalanced incentives. You need a fairly high level of karma to use the feature, which suggests that it's considered a privilege. Yet, once you have it, there's no responsibility attached to the privilege. This can make downvoting kind of sophomoric: "I was unreasonably downvoted when I was a newbie, now it's payback time!"
- amirmc 11y ago
  You're assuming that HN isn't keeping track of how often you downvote (or any patterns). Without knowing the set up, it's difficult to infer much. Of course, revealing that info might lead to gaming the system.
compbio 11y ago
If you consistently have no idea why you got downvoted, then HN might not be the place for you. Learn quickly to adapt, start lurking more, or find another community without high standards for replies. If you don't read the community guidelines [1] and then complain about negative karma you are to be avoided. If I did not get downvoted for my very first flame-y, half-assed or dumb replies, then I would have continued making them. Wickedness and cruelty is forcing low standards upon a community and sucking away all the fun. With downvoting comes a little responsibility: to not only reward good posts, but lower the visibility of posts that do not contribute to the quality or enjoy-ability of HN. That is why you need 500 upvotes to get downvote functionality. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- solve 11y ago
  Translation: become a subservient hive mind conformist wimp.
  - mahouse 11y ago
    This is pretty accurate, actually—votes in an Internet community just encourage the hive mind. I just say what I want and never mind my "karma" or "vote count" or whatever it is called in the community.
    - zo1 11y ago
      I know, why don't we just have elections every 4 years for community moderators to represent us. And they can vote/downvote on our behalf! Sounds brilliant. A bit of a sarcastic tone, yes. But the hive-mind comment strikes at the heart of the issues of "democracy" and group dynamics. I'd even argue that group-moderated internet discussions are more "democratic" than actual democracy, with the only difference being the real-world physical repercussions of said voting.
      - solve 11y ago
        An excellent benevolent dictator can be so much better than any system where there's a big pressure to converging to the crowd average, or even the lowest common denominator of the crowd. Most of us joined HN for exactly this reason. It was run in dictator fashion by a guy whose writings and actions showed that he was clearly above what ever be achieved by a general crowd average, at least in a particular area of expertise. Unfortunately, his other work prevented him from spending much time here, and it's now been years since he left all active involvement in the community entirely. The departure of the benevolent dictator is almost always catastrophic, as far as I sense. Imagine if Linus had left Linux after just a couple years, or if Guido had left Python after just a couple years. You can start to see evidence of the problems that a disappearing excellent dictator causes in the decision paralysis facing the Bitcoin community now. What's good, is that the HN successor should appear within the next few years.
Red_Tarsius 11y ago
I don't have issues with the vote system. I always understand why users up/downvote me and they usually describe at great length their point of view. On the other hand, Reddit has an awful downvote culture. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526798 I stand by my point, but I can see why a few users thought of my comment as inappropriate.
pvnick 11y ago
This is a good idea, but I would go one step further - giving a reason should be required for downvoting, but not for upvoting. Praise is always more effective communication than criticism. Especially as more members join this community steps must be made to prevent the toxic downvote-to-express-kneejerk-disagreement culture that pervades Reddit.
tete 11y ago
That would be really nice. It could prevent accidental downvotes, when implemented in a certain way.
M8 11y ago
hackernews.stackexchange.com
- gus_massa 11y ago
  Be carefull, onliners are usually dowvoted here. (I usually donwvote dummy oneliners, but I didn't downvote this.) (Luckily your comment is black again.) I guess I agree with you, but I' difficult to know without a longer explanation. I'll write my longer explanation: If HN does this, it will look like http://hackernews.stackexchange.com http://hackernews.stackexchange.com .When I visit stackoverflow, I notice that there are many comments just to explain upvotes and downvotes. I think that it adds too much noise and moderation to the discussion. I prefer the HN style, were the meta discussion is as small as possible, so it's easier to follow the main discussion.
DanBC 11y ago
Almost anyone with a logged in account can upvote comments. There is a karma threshold to downvoting. Thus, an unfairly downvoted post is not a failure of the downvote system but a failure of everyone else to provide corrective upvotes.
- gus_massa 11y ago
  I agree. Some of my personal rules are: * Don't downvote gray comments, unless they are offensive or very offensive. * Upvote very gray comments, even if I disagree or it is wrong or ... , unless it's very offensive.
- stephenr 11y ago
  This is a band-aid solution to a widely acknowledged problem. But the entire concept of startup culture actively embraces the hive-mentality/cool-kids-know-best mindset so I doubt the actual problem will ever be fixed. But sure, keep posting the same stockholm-esque defensive comments.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007027 > Strictly speaking a vote does affect someone's karma. But it doesn't cause their karma to be net decreased as a result of posting a comment unless you downvote the comment below 1, which most people don't do lightly. I think of the up and downvoting as a collaboration to determine how much additional karma someone should get for posting a new comment. > This is a band-aid solution to a widely acknowledged problem. It's an easy solution, and the only solution currently available. The fact it doesn't work just proves me right: the problem isn't just with people downvoting comments for disagreement; the problem involves other people not upvoting unfairly downvoted comments.
    - stephenr 11y ago
      > The fact it doesn't work just proves me right I didn't say your "solution" won't work, I said it's a bandaid. Maybe it wasn't clear what I meant by "bandaid solution". Let me explain a literal example: I once cut my knuckle very badly with a cheap mandolin slicer. I didn't realise at the time, but there was basically a chunk of my finger - about the size of a very large pea - missing, and because my knuckle was bent at the time it was deep. Because the blade was so ridiculously sharp, it wasn't really very painful, and due to the blood I couldn't see how deep it actually was, so I put a band-aid on it and didn't think about it. Three days later a doctor had to use silver nitrate to cauterise the wound, as it immediately started bleeding profusely whenever the pressure from the bandaid was removed. That is what I mean by "bandaid solution" - you're not solving the problem, merely covering up the issue and trying to ignore it. Upvoting any and all non-offensive comments simply to counter any possible errant down votes defeats the purpose of having votes at all - I then have to choose between keeping the conversation open and honest, and "supporting" comments I actively agree with. As a side-note, I strongly suggest against using a cheap mandolin OR having a wound cauterised with silver nitrate. I've had entire toenails removed, and part of the nailbed scraped away (it's as horrible as it sounds) as a child, and that hurt less than the cauterisation.
justincormack 11y ago
It doesn't matter. A downvote is not a personal affront, and you should certainly not ask for an explanation every time. Most are just noise and tend to even out after a while.
benihana 11y ago
>Punishment without reason in real life is known as wickedness, cruelty, bullying... I had some issue with this point. Getting a downvote might sting a little bit, but to equate it to getting bullied is taking it too far. I got bullied plenty growing up (as I'm sure many other people here have) and to equate a meaningless downvote - someone disagreeing with you - with something as traumatizing as being bullied is insulting. Someone disagreeing with your opinion is nowhere near the same as being bullied, or being oppressed. I've experienced cruelty directed at me. It's nothing like a semi anonymous person on the internet pressing a button.
- xtrumanx 11y ago
  I don't think he was equating the two. Just comparing them. Many of us have experienced cruelty. That doesn't mean anything less severe than what we've experienced is not cruel (although I wouldn't describe getting downvoted without reason to be cruel I understand where OP is coming from).
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    If he wasn't equating the two, he wouldn't have put them in the same post lie that. No, technically he didn't say it out loud, but that was the intention of the proximity.
onemask 11y ago
The trick to avoiding downvotes is avoid to commenting on touchy unpopular topics. What is touchy, well you will know that once you get a few downvotes. Such topics brooke no argument. Well it has the intended effect of people self-censoring and ensuring homogeneous thinking within HN. Many downvotes are just when people disagree with a view instead of the post not advancing the discussion. Anytime I see a downvoted post, I upvote it unless it is really beyond the pale. I suggest those who don't like the irrational downvoting to do the same. One solution to discourage downvoting for disagreeing is that that downvoting to take effect only after say 3 downvotes have accrued. That means atleast 3 people thought a post didn't advance the discussion. PS : this is a throwaway, learnt from past experiences
- stesch 11y ago
  A few days ago I posted about some feature X a company was building for product Y of another company. One of the first comments was from someone who was excited that this feature was available or at least will be usable in foreseeable time. He got downvoted a gray fast. And one reply said in a very short form that there is no X for Y. I said to him that the title of the post was "X for Y" and got downvoted to -3 points. And why all this? Because 1 other person tricked people into thinking that the project was abandoned. Nobody checked if he was right. I myself apologized to the other readers. When I checked the project's mailing list I was surprised. The project was alive with the founder of the company helping users to download and install X. It's still in early development and a bit complicated. You need the right version of everything at this moment. And you need to have an account to access some parts of Y needed to compile. I asked the one who said the project is abandoned why he believes this despite an active mailing list. He made something up that wasn't topic in April or May on the mailing list. And said this was a sign of an abandoned project. Until then the whole post vanished from the front page and nobody cared anymore. Why should anybody care for the reasons you get downvoted when you can't change anything about if for most of the time?
- stephenr 11y ago
  Comments that are factually correct and non-offensive are often down voted. Comment negatively about Google? Down vote. Comment negatively about the risks of building your business on the shifting sands of startup SaaS? Down vote. Ive never seen anyone manage to explain how it is logical to use the same action without any distinction, for any of the following, especially given the result for multiple down-votes is to effectively hide the comment from view: - "i disagree with this opinion" - "this is offtopic/unrelated" - "this is factually wrong" The "if more people upvoted, it wouldn't be a problem" excuse is not new, and as I've said elsewhere, it's a ridiculous bandaid solution to a widely acknowledged problem. If you need a pop culture reference, it's the Walter White solution: "our health care system is completely fucked, but this guy can make and sell illegal drugs to pay for treatment"
ForFreedom 11y ago
Isn't "not" upvoting same as "downvoting"? I mean on HN the frequency of people who click on a link, if not at all worth would be less than 50-60. Not sure how the HN algorithm works but am pretty sure it does well.
sgentle 11y ago
I think the more pertinent question is: why do we downvote? If the answer is to signal to others that the comment is not worth reading (by greying it out, dropping it down in the rankings and eventually preventing people from reading it at all) then the reason is sort of immaterial. On the other hand, if the goal is to adjust behaviour I feel like a downvote (including a downvote-with-reason) is needlessly punitive. Consider the dubious value of a bad-performance-review-with-pay-cut as a behaviour adjustment tool. While there might have been a time when you could politely correct someone's behaviour in the comments, as HN grows it starts to feel less like a quiet word and more like calling someone out on stage. For that reason I'm very reluctant to do it. It would be good if there was some way to privately reply to a comment. (Essentially your proposal minus the necessity of downvoting). I'm not sure if there's any way to do that without it being a vector for abuse or disrupting public commentary, but if there is I would definitely use it. Maybe you could let the recipient of a private comment make it public? And it's not possible to reply to a private comment otherwise? That would be a way of enforcing a certain don't-say-anything-you-wouldn't-want-repeated niceness in private comments, and also prevent them from turning into a mechanism for shadow discussion that takes away from the main comment thread. Anyway, I definitely agree there is something missing in the HN toolkit for this kind of problem and I hope we can find a way to improve it.
- dottrap 11y ago
  To me, the problem is that down-voting combines down-votes for those that are off-topic or contribute nothing, and down-votes from people who disagree with what was said. In my opinion, the latter happens far too often which is why this is even a topic.
- hollerith 11y ago
  >It would be good if there was some way to privately reply to a comment. (Essentially your proposal minus the necessity of downvoting). I'm not sure if there's any way to do that without it being a vector for abuse or disrupting public commentary I have my email address in my HN profile. I take it you wouldn't do that because you believe it makes you too vulnerable to abuse? Will you please help me understand what you mean by "disrupting public commentary"? Maybe give an example.
sidcool 11y ago
I agree. Many a times the link is duplicate and people downvote, but the OP gets no indication. In fact, when for a link I request people to add reason for flagging a post, my comment is downvoted.
stesch 11y ago
No, you don't really want to know why you are getting downvoted. Every time I got an explanation on Reddit it was annoying and more aggravating than just some stupid downvotes.
smitherfield 11y ago
Usually the reason why posts are being downvoted are pretty clear. But, those aren't always good reasons, because we're dealing with a group of people who have a very strong tendency to be know-it-alls (myself certainly not excepted). The vast bulk of my downvotes so far came from a thread where I pointed out a few obvious flaws (massive civil and potentially criminal liability) with the prevailing conspiracy theory about how the leaked Game of Thrones episodes were leaked by HBO themselves, as part of their secret plan to get people not to use HBO Go. I'm not especially bitter about it, but I do find myself self-censoring more often to avoid arguing with groupthink.
moron4hire 11y ago
If you are a net positive contributor to HN, then the one or two negative votes a week from negative people should not outweigh the positive votes from everyone else. Don't be fixated on the raw value.
whybroke 11y ago
While the idea of "downvote requires a posted reason" is no doubt the best idea, if it proves too radical a change from a technical or behavioral reason, at least radically raise the karma need to downvote. Say so that only the top K number of accounts by age or karma can do so where K is _not_ a percentage. Because honestly the number of down-voting-for-poorly-thought-out-postings is now mightily outweighed by down-voting-becuse-I-dont-agree. So much so that to be honest I now take downvotes as a badge of honor ironically.
- DanBC 11y ago
  I currently have 27800 karma. What makes you think I'm not an idiot with the downvote button?
  - whybroke 11y ago
    Subjectively the problem seemed less bad in the past so I'm thinking that limiting to the donwvote permissions to longer term users will reduce the problem. Very obviously requiring comments for downvotes is better.
andy_ppp 11y ago
Hackernews is a great community in spite of the horrible mess that is the HN app. There is no reason that the HN codebase isn't open sourced and built by and for the community.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > There is no reason that the HN codebase isn't open sourced I think mods mentioned some pretty aggressive voting rings (from surprising, disappointing, places. The Atlantic did this. I stopped posting any links from them when I found out.) But there is a lot of vote ringing on HN. Would being open source affect vote ring detection?
delinka 11y ago
When I started participating on HN, the general consensus for downvoting was for posts that were off-topic, poorly written, trollish, vile, etc. Never downvote to disagree. Disagree by writing a thoughtful, reasoned response. Dissect the points that matter, ask for clarification, provide your own clarification.
- DanBC 11y ago
  People were having this conversation before you joined HN under this account. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691
quesera 11y ago
I disagree completely. Any "feature" that encourages people to spend more energy thinking about the reasons for being down voted is just promoting whinging and self-absorbed discontent. (Which, a: no one wants to see, and b: is bad for the people going through it!) I do feel that down votes should not be used for disagreement, but the practical matter of fact is that they are and will be, both because pg endorses the idea, and because people are people. If they have a negative response to reading something, and a down arrow is convenient, it will be used. Downvotes are not punishment. They just mean someone didn't like what you wrote, but couldn't be arsed to respond. Maybe what you wrote didn't deserve a response, maybe they were confused, maybe the topic is incredibly important to you but not to them. Who cares? We're adults, ja? As an alternative, I wouldn't be disappointed if the threshold for greying out was reduced to -3 or so. And full death at -10? And for new users who might not know why they're being downvoted, how about a link to the rules next to any comment of yours that is score-negative? HN already puts an orange star next to your comments, so the pages are dynamic at least to that extent. Personally, I use downvotes exclusively for hostility. I upvote any greyed comment that is respectful, coherent, and relevant.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > both because pg endorses the idea He did at one time mention that. But he also said this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 which seems to not like downvote for disagreement. > As an alternative, I wouldn't be disappointed if the threshold for greying out was reduced to -3 That feels like a good idea: Don't change the gray level until a post has had 3 downvotes.
- tokenadult 11y ago
  While I was reading the thread, this comment just posted mentioned that the site founder, pg, has endorsed the idea that the site's rules permit downvoting to express disagreement. By the site rules, implicitly, some comments should be downvoted on sight. http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads." Yes, downvote thoughtfully, and downvote to improve the overall quality of discussion here, but a downvote in an active discussion to silently indicate a comment is 1) uncivil and unconstructive, or 2) factually incorrect, or 3) both is okay. A comment that is solely on the issue of being downvoted is subject to being downvoted on sight, because those sorts of comments are never constructive to the discussion and disfavored by the site guidelines. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." The site founder, pg, (who no longer has an active day-by-day role in moderating the site) has commented that downvotes for disagreement are permitted here. (In order of time of posting.) "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "IIRC we first had this conversation about a month after launch. Downvotes have always been used to express disagreement." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 "I sometimes downvote things that seem mistaken. I think most users do." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006808 "If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically. . . . . "The problem with the middlebrow dismissal is that it's a magnet for upvotes. The 'U R a fag's get downvoted and end up at the bottom of the page where they cause little trouble. But this sort of comment rises to the top. Things have now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the 'comments' link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me at the top of the page." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 This is an ongoing issue, but the key idea is both to upvote and to downvote (and, for that matter, to submit stories and to post comments) in way that elevates the quality of discussion here. Grow a thick enough skin to learn from other users' behavior here, and develop curiosity about why other users might disagree with you, and all will be well.
deleted 11y ago
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mark_l_watson 11y ago
I think probably not a good idea. I don't particularly enjoy being down voted but it is interesting to try to figure out why a comment was down voted. In real life, our friends might not tell us if, for example, our little political rant is boring. We do get that feedback on HN. One thing that really irritates me however is when someone takes the time to respond to one of my comments and gets down voted. For me a big motivation for commenting is to see what responses I get. So, I like the current system, but perhaps down voting is overly used.
chris_wot 11y ago
I'd love to know why a few of my comments have been few voted lately, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517067 - which wasn't wrong! Or this one, on systemd: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951637
mavdi 11y ago
I like downvoted comments. I always pick up a couple of them when reading the comments to get a view of the people who think outside the norm. Sometimes they are genuinely stupid, but sometimes you get very interesting remarks on things which the "established norm" dislikes.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  Sometimes the established norm is pretty far from the HN norm, too. It's an interesting way to learn about the (more active) users here. Not a rigorous or a scientific way, of course.
- xkiwi 11y ago
  This is something very similar to the Seniority in government system. The one who been there longer has more power, even they do not have brilliant idea nor ability to perform.
giarc 11y ago
Is this really a problem that needs a solution?
zxcvcxz 11y ago
My idea: charge karma for a downvote: 1 down vote = lose one karma point UNLESS they reply to the person they downvoted.
brudgers 11y ago
I have never been baffled by a down vote. I've been surprised that something was downvoted. When I am surprised, I try to figure out why and what contributed to it that was in my control and what wasn't. Usually, I get downvoted for xkcd 360 style wrestling the pig in mud. Sometimes I'm just factually wrong. Sometimes I'm just being a mean or stupid or just expressing a binary opinion...though those are less and less common, I think. The long term solution has been trying to improve my writing, so that it better communicates my intent. The work of figuring out the reason for Downvotes is a feature not a bug...the exercise [literally and metaphorically] makes my writing stronger. As for new users, I think The current system is useful for HN as a business unit. HN is part of YC. It's helpful to its selection process. Karma is a bit of a proxy for product market fit. Upvotes and Downvotes and novotes signal the reaction to some offering, taking risk and analyzing rewards and adjusting to feedback are all valuable habits, and if a down vote is going to wreck a person's day, a VC not returning your calls regarding the previously mentioned offer sheet as the startup burns through its last bag of ramen may not be the right career move. The long play requires persistence and pivoting and perspective.
denzil_correa 11y ago
Personally, I don't down vote - I only up vote articles/comments that are worth reading.
sitkack 11y ago
https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/
Gracana 11y ago
I find the often-preachy-and-self-absorbed explanations of why someone was downvoted really obnoxious. People here aren't stupid, we usually have a pretty good idea of when we're saying something controversial and/or why someone might downvote it. And some of the explanations I've seen, just wow... Explaining to someone that saying "thanks" is meaningless and adds nothing to the discussion is just a slap in the face.
csomar 11y ago
I think we need a flag link for comments. - You down-vote a wrong citation, false truth, someone who is flaming... - You flag spammy links and such. On the other hand, maybe we should increase the threshold for - down-votes to 1,000 or 5,000 - flagging to 100 or 500
- dang 11y ago
  There is a flag link for comments. Click on a comment's timestamp to go to its item page, and (assuming you have a small amount of karma, I think 30) you'll see it.
  - csomar 11y ago
    Then I don't have it?
    - dang 11y ago
      You should. If you don't see it, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll help you out. One thing, though, is that you can't flag a direct reply to your own comment. Same rule as for downvotes.
threatofrain 11y ago
I don't think the problem is with down votes per se, but in the total balance of votes. It doesn't matter if you receive 100 negative votes if you received 1000 positive votes. It doesn't matter if you received 1000 positive votes if you received 10000 negative votes. The question is if there are special biases for voters, like if almost nobody logs in to up vote, but people will log in to down vote. That will make some people feel like the site is capriciously punishing.

Hn Downvote notes

136 points by vezycash 11y ago

danmaz74 11y ago

It could be nice to have a popup menu where you can choose from the main reasons why a comment can be downvoted according to the rules, pointing to the relative FAQ entry. "Ad hominem" "Off topic" "Spammy" - this would help the newcomers and would probably be used more than having to type a reason.

danieltillett 11y ago

Rather than something complex like this can we get the down and up vote arrows separated? Something simple like putting the arrows on opposite sides of the user's name would be fine. This will stop fat fingered people like me from accidentally down voting a post when I am reading on a mobile device.

lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
This is only a problem because you can't modify your vote. On Reddit, you can change your vote any time before the thread is archived.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  It is a problem even if you could modify your vote as a lot of the time I am not sure if I have up voted or down voted a post. I love HN and its low fi design, but this is the one thing that I think takes away from the community spirt here. Intent should always be clear.
  - jonsen 11y ago
    You could tell from which arrow got disabled by your vote.
    - Gracana 11y ago
      But both arrows disappear when you vote. [edit] Or are you suggesting a way in which the site could be modified to reflect your vote? In that case yeah, I think that would work.
    - spacemanmatt 11y ago
      Both arrows disappear when I vote (Chrome)
  - crusso 11y ago
    Many online forums resolve the problem you mention by showing your vote. Disqus, for example, simply shows the up arrow button in a blue highlight if you've already upvoted the comment.
  - th0br0 11y ago
    If you're using Chrome I can only strongly recommend the HN Enhancement Suite which takes care of this issue: https://github.com/etcet/HNES https://github.com/etcet/HNES
wheaties 11y ago
Ues, this, a million times. I have done it again and again without the ability to undownvote. I can't even zoom in far enough to be sure that I have hit the correct button.
aerique 11y ago
I'm actually pretty sure I managed to upvote you on mobile, like I intended! Sorry for the strong language but I think it is nothing short of retarded that after so many years and so many complaints this issue has not been fixed yet.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  The only reason I know for sure that I up voted you is because you are replying to my post! What do we need to do to fix this - it can't be talent or will given the community.
  - aerique 11y ago
    That's why I'm so surprised this hasn't been fixed yet. I'll go take a looksy tonight to see whether the HN source code is available online.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      There is a github thing. The vote buttons are, as far as I know, a firm and definite won't fix. The vote buttons are about the only thing I hate about HN on mobile.
      - danieltillett 11y ago
        Do we have any idea why the vote buttons are a won't fix? Surely it can't be that anyone thinks the current design is good?
mark_l_watson 11y ago
This might help with this problem: I reverse pinch gesture the text around the vote arrows for a larger font, vote, then pinch gesture the text back to normal size. This just takes an extra few seconds and is a good workaround.

givan 11y ago

You want to censor yourself based on down vote reasons? Even if sometimes it seems strange to receive a down vote there are many people with different opinions and even if they told you the reason it won't help you much, other than entering a time consuming debate I don't see what else you can do. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/ Down votes increased because hn got bigger, and it only means someone disagrees with you, why do you see it as a punishment?

currysausage 11y ago
> Down votes increased because hn got bigger, and it only means someone disagrees with you, why do you see it as a punishment? And I thought disagreement was the worst reason for downvoting. I thought that you should downvote comments for low quality, when they add nothing but flame potential to the discussion. Downvotes let a comment fade to grey until it is invisible. Is it so hard to see why someone would see this as punishment? Why would I want to make counter-arguments vanish? A discussion where all visible comments promote the same opinion would be a boring, useless discussion. Actually, I tend to upvote opinions that I reject if they are outlined in a valuable manner. It is in my best interest to know the best points for all sides. And OP, as I understand it, wants to make this more visible to downvoters: that disagreement isn't actually in the canonical list of downvote reasons.
- Sandman 11y ago
  As a long-time HN user I completely agree with you, but it's worth mentioning that pg specifically stated that it's perfectly fine to use downvotes for disagreement (if I find the comment where he said that I'll edit my post and put a link to it). So, while I don't think that downvotes should be used for disagreement, if the person that created this site says that it's ok, then I guess it's ok. EDIT: Ah, here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
tomjen3 11y ago
When downvoted comments are no longer greyed out and pushed out of the discussion maybe we agree that they are not a punishment. The problem is that at present they are a bully pulpit. I have had comments that went negative days after they had been upvoted - surely if the comments were so bad they would have been downvoted right away?

amirmc 11y ago

Why not leave the reason as a comment instead? I don't really see a need for a new feature.

kephra 11y ago
If someone upvotes your negative comment, the complete thread goes up a bit. Thats the opposite, that your want with a downvote.
- eCa 11y ago
  That could be solved by "if user has downvoted the comment they reply to, don't count upvotes for their reply when calculating thread value".
- amirmc 11y ago
  What you're describing isn't clear. I assume you meant to say "If someone comments on your negative comment ..." otherwise it appears you're describing how upvotes are generally expected to work. I expect HNs algos could spot such a comment thread quite easily (thereby avoiding what you've described). That doesn't require a new user feature.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 11y ago
the options are: i) Just downvote a comment that you think should not be on HN but which is not bad enough to flag ii) Get involved in a tedious sub-thread bit of bickering with the comment's author about why you think they're wrong iii) Write a post explaining why you think they're wrong, and have them reply with clarification, and you both end up agreeing and happy. iii rarely happens. ii happens too often, and i is preferable to ii.

rwmj 11y ago

Slashdot was/is good in this regard. You don't upvote and downvote, you give a reason, like "Interesting", "Troll", "Offtopic", "Funny".

lazyjones 11y ago
Slashdot had (it's pretty dead now, I guess) meta-moderation, which worked very well. I.e. you could vote on whether a particular rating and reason were appropriate in your opinion or not (with my 4-figure user-ID I often got 15 meta-moderation points to "spend" this way).
- danieltillett 11y ago
  You are showing your age when reminiscing about having a 4 digit slashdot ID :)
  - msutherl 11y ago
    "Flashing" your age ;)
stephen_mcd 11y ago
Funny is a +1 on Slashdot, while on HN it'd be a -1.
- jqm 11y ago
  Agreed. And that more than anything else about HN bothers me. I like intelligent humor. (Stupid humor however deserves to be down voted).

jonsen 11y ago

Years back down-votes were rare on HN. It was relatively easy to infer why a comment was down-voted. Now you mostly can't tell, just wonder why.

anu_gupta 11y ago
Looking at the greyed out comments on this post, I think it's fairly obvious why they've been downvoted.
DanBC 11y ago
No they weren't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057275 Brushfire says, 1946 days ago: > I agree - Thanks for acknowledging it. > I've seen a lot more down voting of well-reasoned comments and arguments just because of disagreement, and I've seen a lot more snide, unhelpful, almost belligerent comments across the board. > I cant speak for others, but its good to know you are working on it, as I dont want to find another place.
- jonsen 11y ago
  I remember that. I've been here longer. It has been a long down-slope.

oskarth 11y ago

I was just thinking about this the other day. I think it'd be useful if you could specify DH{0,1,2} as reasons for downvoting (http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html), as these are essentially useless comments that add nothing to the discussion.

lazyjones 11y ago

YMMV, but my impression is that downvotes are usually obvious and expected, either bad style/inflammatory or unpopular opinions in the given context (i.e. any criticism of e.g. Perl in a Perl-related discussion where many fans of the language are present). Requiring a comment is probably less effort than all the captchas I have to solve because of Tor (many more than the number of downvotes I pass around...), but it'll lead to unnecessary meta-discussions ("he downvoted me because of foo but he's wrong because ...").

dang 11y ago
> all the captchas I have to solve because of Tor Do you see those when posting from your current account? If so, I'm not sure we have this right. There are hurdles on new accounts to impede spammers and trolls, but we don't mean to make things harder for established users. If you wouldn't mind, sending details of what you're experiencing to hn@ycombinator.com would be helpful. We'll look into it and maybe adjust how this works.
- lazyjones 11y ago
  > Do you see those when posting from your current account? Yes, I do reload HN quite often (always logged in with this account) and believe I have seen 5+ captchas or so today already. Thanks for the offer to report details, I'll try to keep track of what exactly happens tomorrow.
  - dang 11y ago
    Cool. A screenshot would be great, if that's convenient. Sorry we've been inconveniencing you!

stefantalpalaru 11y ago

Notes won't change anything. There's a culture of comment suppression here that goes all the way up. If you've been downvoted it means that you failed to match somebody's expectation of what you should be writing. Now you're toxic and you need to be punished for the common good. Be glad you weren't also hellbanned. Yet.

pavlov 11y ago

I completely agree, but I feel it should be mandatory. (I've proposed this same "explain why" mechanism for downvotes a few times in the past.) Currently downvoting has unbalanced incentives. You need a fairly high level of karma to use the feature, which suggests that it's considered a privilege. Yet, once you have it, there's no responsibility attached to the privilege. This can make downvoting kind of sophomoric: "I was unreasonably downvoted when I was a newbie, now it's payback time!"

amirmc 11y ago
You're assuming that HN isn't keeping track of how often you downvote (or any patterns). Without knowing the set up, it's difficult to infer much. Of course, revealing that info might lead to gaming the system.

compbio 11y ago

If you consistently have no idea why you got downvoted, then HN might not be the place for you. Learn quickly to adapt, start lurking more, or find another community without high standards for replies. If you don't read the community guidelines [1] and then complain about negative karma you are to be avoided. If I did not get downvoted for my very first flame-y, half-assed or dumb replies, then I would have continued making them. Wickedness and cruelty is forcing low standards upon a community and sucking away all the fun. With downvoting comes a little responsibility: to not only reward good posts, but lower the visibility of posts that do not contribute to the quality or enjoy-ability of HN. That is why you need 500 upvotes to get downvote functionality. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

solve 11y ago
Translation: become a subservient hive mind conformist wimp.
- mahouse 11y ago
  This is pretty accurate, actually—votes in an Internet community just encourage the hive mind. I just say what I want and never mind my "karma" or "vote count" or whatever it is called in the community.
  - zo1 11y ago
    I know, why don't we just have elections every 4 years for community moderators to represent us. And they can vote/downvote on our behalf! Sounds brilliant. A bit of a sarcastic tone, yes. But the hive-mind comment strikes at the heart of the issues of "democracy" and group dynamics. I'd even argue that group-moderated internet discussions are more "democratic" than actual democracy, with the only difference being the real-world physical repercussions of said voting.
    - solve 11y ago
      An excellent benevolent dictator can be so much better than any system where there's a big pressure to converging to the crowd average, or even the lowest common denominator of the crowd. Most of us joined HN for exactly this reason. It was run in dictator fashion by a guy whose writings and actions showed that he was clearly above what ever be achieved by a general crowd average, at least in a particular area of expertise. Unfortunately, his other work prevented him from spending much time here, and it's now been years since he left all active involvement in the community entirely. The departure of the benevolent dictator is almost always catastrophic, as far as I sense. Imagine if Linus had left Linux after just a couple years, or if Guido had left Python after just a couple years. You can start to see evidence of the problems that a disappearing excellent dictator causes in the decision paralysis facing the Bitcoin community now. What's good, is that the HN successor should appear within the next few years.

Red_Tarsius 11y ago

I don't have issues with the vote system. I always understand why users up/downvote me and they usually describe at great length their point of view. On the other hand, Reddit has an awful downvote culture. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526798 I stand by my point, but I can see why a few users thought of my comment as inappropriate.

pvnick 11y ago

This is a good idea, but I would go one step further - giving a reason should be required for downvoting, but not for upvoting. Praise is always more effective communication than criticism. Especially as more members join this community steps must be made to prevent the toxic downvote-to-express-kneejerk-disagreement culture that pervades Reddit.

tete 11y ago

That would be really nice. It could prevent accidental downvotes, when implemented in a certain way.

M8 11y ago

hackernews.stackexchange.com

gus_massa 11y ago
Be carefull, onliners are usually dowvoted here. (I usually donwvote dummy oneliners, but I didn't downvote this.) (Luckily your comment is black again.) I guess I agree with you, but I' difficult to know without a longer explanation. I'll write my longer explanation: If HN does this, it will look like http://hackernews.stackexchange.com http://hackernews.stackexchange.com .When I visit stackoverflow, I notice that there are many comments just to explain upvotes and downvotes. I think that it adds too much noise and moderation to the discussion. I prefer the HN style, were the meta discussion is as small as possible, so it's easier to follow the main discussion.

DanBC 11y ago

Almost anyone with a logged in account can upvote comments. There is a karma threshold to downvoting. Thus, an unfairly downvoted post is not a failure of the downvote system but a failure of everyone else to provide corrective upvotes.

gus_massa 11y ago
I agree. Some of my personal rules are: * Don't downvote gray comments, unless they are offensive or very offensive. * Upvote very gray comments, even if I disagree or it is wrong or ... , unless it's very offensive.
stephenr 11y ago
This is a band-aid solution to a widely acknowledged problem. But the entire concept of startup culture actively embraces the hive-mentality/cool-kids-know-best mindset so I doubt the actual problem will ever be fixed. But sure, keep posting the same stockholm-esque defensive comments.
- DanBC 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007027 > Strictly speaking a vote does affect someone's karma. But it doesn't cause their karma to be net decreased as a result of posting a comment unless you downvote the comment below 1, which most people don't do lightly. I think of the up and downvoting as a collaboration to determine how much additional karma someone should get for posting a new comment. > This is a band-aid solution to a widely acknowledged problem. It's an easy solution, and the only solution currently available. The fact it doesn't work just proves me right: the problem isn't just with people downvoting comments for disagreement; the problem involves other people not upvoting unfairly downvoted comments.
  - stephenr 11y ago
    > The fact it doesn't work just proves me right I didn't say your "solution" won't work, I said it's a bandaid. Maybe it wasn't clear what I meant by "bandaid solution". Let me explain a literal example: I once cut my knuckle very badly with a cheap mandolin slicer. I didn't realise at the time, but there was basically a chunk of my finger - about the size of a very large pea - missing, and because my knuckle was bent at the time it was deep. Because the blade was so ridiculously sharp, it wasn't really very painful, and due to the blood I couldn't see how deep it actually was, so I put a band-aid on it and didn't think about it. Three days later a doctor had to use silver nitrate to cauterise the wound, as it immediately started bleeding profusely whenever the pressure from the bandaid was removed. That is what I mean by "bandaid solution" - you're not solving the problem, merely covering up the issue and trying to ignore it. Upvoting any and all non-offensive comments simply to counter any possible errant down votes defeats the purpose of having votes at all - I then have to choose between keeping the conversation open and honest, and "supporting" comments I actively agree with. As a side-note, I strongly suggest against using a cheap mandolin OR having a wound cauterised with silver nitrate. I've had entire toenails removed, and part of the nailbed scraped away (it's as horrible as it sounds) as a child, and that hurt less than the cauterisation.

justincormack 11y ago

It doesn't matter. A downvote is not a personal affront, and you should certainly not ask for an explanation every time. Most are just noise and tend to even out after a while.

benihana 11y ago

>Punishment without reason in real life is known as wickedness, cruelty, bullying... I had some issue with this point. Getting a downvote might sting a little bit, but to equate it to getting bullied is taking it too far. I got bullied plenty growing up (as I'm sure many other people here have) and to equate a meaningless downvote - someone disagreeing with you - with something as traumatizing as being bullied is insulting. Someone disagreeing with your opinion is nowhere near the same as being bullied, or being oppressed. I've experienced cruelty directed at me. It's nothing like a semi anonymous person on the internet pressing a button.

xtrumanx 11y ago
I don't think he was equating the two. Just comparing them. Many of us have experienced cruelty. That doesn't mean anything less severe than what we've experienced is not cruel (although I wouldn't describe getting downvoted without reason to be cruel I understand where OP is coming from).
- moron4hire 11y ago
  If he wasn't equating the two, he wouldn't have put them in the same post lie that. No, technically he didn't say it out loud, but that was the intention of the proximity.

onemask 11y ago

The trick to avoiding downvotes is avoid to commenting on touchy unpopular topics. What is touchy, well you will know that once you get a few downvotes. Such topics brooke no argument. Well it has the intended effect of people self-censoring and ensuring homogeneous thinking within HN. Many downvotes are just when people disagree with a view instead of the post not advancing the discussion. Anytime I see a downvoted post, I upvote it unless it is really beyond the pale. I suggest those who don't like the irrational downvoting to do the same. One solution to discourage downvoting for disagreeing is that that downvoting to take effect only after say 3 downvotes have accrued. That means atleast 3 people thought a post didn't advance the discussion. PS : this is a throwaway, learnt from past experiences

stesch 11y ago
A few days ago I posted about some feature X a company was building for product Y of another company. One of the first comments was from someone who was excited that this feature was available or at least will be usable in foreseeable time. He got downvoted a gray fast. And one reply said in a very short form that there is no X for Y. I said to him that the title of the post was "X for Y" and got downvoted to -3 points. And why all this? Because 1 other person tricked people into thinking that the project was abandoned. Nobody checked if he was right. I myself apologized to the other readers. When I checked the project's mailing list I was surprised. The project was alive with the founder of the company helping users to download and install X. It's still in early development and a bit complicated. You need the right version of everything at this moment. And you need to have an account to access some parts of Y needed to compile. I asked the one who said the project is abandoned why he believes this despite an active mailing list. He made something up that wasn't topic in April or May on the mailing list. And said this was a sign of an abandoned project. Until then the whole post vanished from the front page and nobody cared anymore. Why should anybody care for the reasons you get downvoted when you can't change anything about if for most of the time?
stephenr 11y ago
Comments that are factually correct and non-offensive are often down voted. Comment negatively about Google? Down vote. Comment negatively about the risks of building your business on the shifting sands of startup SaaS? Down vote. Ive never seen anyone manage to explain how it is logical to use the same action without any distinction, for any of the following, especially given the result for multiple down-votes is to effectively hide the comment from view: - "i disagree with this opinion" - "this is offtopic/unrelated" - "this is factually wrong" The "if more people upvoted, it wouldn't be a problem" excuse is not new, and as I've said elsewhere, it's a ridiculous bandaid solution to a widely acknowledged problem. If you need a pop culture reference, it's the Walter White solution: "our health care system is completely fucked, but this guy can make and sell illegal drugs to pay for treatment"

ForFreedom 11y ago

Isn't "not" upvoting same as "downvoting"? I mean on HN the frequency of people who click on a link, if not at all worth would be less than 50-60. Not sure how the HN algorithm works but am pretty sure it does well.

sgentle 11y ago

I think the more pertinent question is: why do we downvote? If the answer is to signal to others that the comment is not worth reading (by greying it out, dropping it down in the rankings and eventually preventing people from reading it at all) then the reason is sort of immaterial. On the other hand, if the goal is to adjust behaviour I feel like a downvote (including a downvote-with-reason) is needlessly punitive. Consider the dubious value of a bad-performance-review-with-pay-cut as a behaviour adjustment tool. While there might have been a time when you could politely correct someone's behaviour in the comments, as HN grows it starts to feel less like a quiet word and more like calling someone out on stage. For that reason I'm very reluctant to do it. It would be good if there was some way to privately reply to a comment. (Essentially your proposal minus the necessity of downvoting). I'm not sure if there's any way to do that without it being a vector for abuse or disrupting public commentary, but if there is I would definitely use it. Maybe you could let the recipient of a private comment make it public? And it's not possible to reply to a private comment otherwise? That would be a way of enforcing a certain don't-say-anything-you-wouldn't-want-repeated niceness in private comments, and also prevent them from turning into a mechanism for shadow discussion that takes away from the main comment thread. Anyway, I definitely agree there is something missing in the HN toolkit for this kind of problem and I hope we can find a way to improve it.

dottrap 11y ago
To me, the problem is that down-voting combines down-votes for those that are off-topic or contribute nothing, and down-votes from people who disagree with what was said. In my opinion, the latter happens far too often which is why this is even a topic.
hollerith 11y ago
>It would be good if there was some way to privately reply to a comment. (Essentially your proposal minus the necessity of downvoting). I'm not sure if there's any way to do that without it being a vector for abuse or disrupting public commentary I have my email address in my HN profile. I take it you wouldn't do that because you believe it makes you too vulnerable to abuse? Will you please help me understand what you mean by "disrupting public commentary"? Maybe give an example.

sidcool 11y ago

I agree. Many a times the link is duplicate and people downvote, but the OP gets no indication. In fact, when for a link I request people to add reason for flagging a post, my comment is downvoted.

stesch 11y ago

No, you don't really want to know why you are getting downvoted. Every time I got an explanation on Reddit it was annoying and more aggravating than just some stupid downvotes.

smitherfield 11y ago

Usually the reason why posts are being downvoted are pretty clear. But, those aren't always good reasons, because we're dealing with a group of people who have a very strong tendency to be know-it-alls (myself certainly not excepted). The vast bulk of my downvotes so far came from a thread where I pointed out a few obvious flaws (massive civil and potentially criminal liability) with the prevailing conspiracy theory about how the leaked Game of Thrones episodes were leaked by HBO themselves, as part of their secret plan to get people not to use HBO Go. I'm not especially bitter about it, but I do find myself self-censoring more often to avoid arguing with groupthink.

moron4hire 11y ago

If you are a net positive contributor to HN, then the one or two negative votes a week from negative people should not outweigh the positive votes from everyone else. Don't be fixated on the raw value.

whybroke 11y ago

While the idea of "downvote requires a posted reason" is no doubt the best idea, if it proves too radical a change from a technical or behavioral reason, at least radically raise the karma need to downvote. Say so that only the top K number of accounts by age or karma can do so where K is _not_ a percentage. Because honestly the number of down-voting-for-poorly-thought-out-postings is now mightily outweighed by down-voting-becuse-I-dont-agree. So much so that to be honest I now take downvotes as a badge of honor ironically.

DanBC 11y ago
I currently have 27800 karma. What makes you think I'm not an idiot with the downvote button?
- whybroke 11y ago
  Subjectively the problem seemed less bad in the past so I'm thinking that limiting to the donwvote permissions to longer term users will reduce the problem. Very obviously requiring comments for downvotes is better.

andy_ppp 11y ago

Hackernews is a great community in spite of the horrible mess that is the HN app. There is no reason that the HN codebase isn't open sourced and built by and for the community.

DanBC 11y ago
> There is no reason that the HN codebase isn't open sourced I think mods mentioned some pretty aggressive voting rings (from surprising, disappointing, places. The Atlantic did this. I stopped posting any links from them when I found out.) But there is a lot of vote ringing on HN. Would being open source affect vote ring detection?

delinka 11y ago

When I started participating on HN, the general consensus for downvoting was for posts that were off-topic, poorly written, trollish, vile, etc. Never downvote to disagree. Disagree by writing a thoughtful, reasoned response. Dissect the points that matter, ask for clarification, provide your own clarification.

DanBC 11y ago
People were having this conversation before you joined HN under this account. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691

quesera 11y ago

I disagree completely. Any "feature" that encourages people to spend more energy thinking about the reasons for being down voted is just promoting whinging and self-absorbed discontent. (Which, a: no one wants to see, and b: is bad for the people going through it!) I do feel that down votes should not be used for disagreement, but the practical matter of fact is that they are and will be, both because pg endorses the idea, and because people are people. If they have a negative response to reading something, and a down arrow is convenient, it will be used. Downvotes are not punishment. They just mean someone didn't like what you wrote, but couldn't be arsed to respond. Maybe what you wrote didn't deserve a response, maybe they were confused, maybe the topic is incredibly important to you but not to them. Who cares? We're adults, ja? As an alternative, I wouldn't be disappointed if the threshold for greying out was reduced to -3 or so. And full death at -10? And for new users who might not know why they're being downvoted, how about a link to the rules next to any comment of yours that is score-negative? HN already puts an orange star next to your comments, so the pages are dynamic at least to that extent. Personally, I use downvotes exclusively for hostility. I upvote any greyed comment that is respectful, coherent, and relevant.

DanBC 11y ago
> both because pg endorses the idea He did at one time mention that. But he also said this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 which seems to not like downvote for disagreement. > As an alternative, I wouldn't be disappointed if the threshold for greying out was reduced to -3 That feels like a good idea: Don't change the gray level until a post has had 3 downvotes.
tokenadult 11y ago
While I was reading the thread, this comment just posted mentioned that the site founder, pg, has endorsed the idea that the site's rules permit downvoting to express disagreement. By the site rules, implicitly, some comments should be downvoted on sight. http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads." Yes, downvote thoughtfully, and downvote to improve the overall quality of discussion here, but a downvote in an active discussion to silently indicate a comment is 1) uncivil and unconstructive, or 2) factually incorrect, or 3) both is okay. A comment that is solely on the issue of being downvoted is subject to being downvoted on sight, because those sorts of comments are never constructive to the discussion and disfavored by the site guidelines. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." The site founder, pg, (who no longer has an active day-by-day role in moderating the site) has commented that downvotes for disagreement are permitted here. (In order of time of posting.) "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "IIRC we first had this conversation about a month after launch. Downvotes have always been used to express disagreement." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 "I sometimes downvote things that seem mistaken. I think most users do." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006808 "If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically. . . . . "The problem with the middlebrow dismissal is that it's a magnet for upvotes. The 'U R a fag's get downvoted and end up at the bottom of the page where they cause little trouble. But this sort of comment rises to the top. Things have now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the 'comments' link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me at the top of the page." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 This is an ongoing issue, but the key idea is both to upvote and to downvote (and, for that matter, to submit stories and to post comments) in way that elevates the quality of discussion here. Grow a thick enough skin to learn from other users' behavior here, and develop curiosity about why other users might disagree with you, and all will be well.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I think probably not a good idea. I don't particularly enjoy being down voted but it is interesting to try to figure out why a comment was down voted. In real life, our friends might not tell us if, for example, our little political rant is boring. We do get that feedback on HN. One thing that really irritates me however is when someone takes the time to respond to one of my comments and gets down voted. For me a big motivation for commenting is to see what responses I get. So, I like the current system, but perhaps down voting is overly used.

chris_wot 11y ago

I'd love to know why a few of my comments have been few voted lately, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517067 - which wasn't wrong! Or this one, on systemd: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951637

mavdi 11y ago

I like downvoted comments. I always pick up a couple of them when reading the comments to get a view of the people who think outside the norm. Sometimes they are genuinely stupid, but sometimes you get very interesting remarks on things which the "established norm" dislikes.

spacemanmatt 11y ago
Sometimes the established norm is pretty far from the HN norm, too. It's an interesting way to learn about the (more active) users here. Not a rigorous or a scientific way, of course.
xkiwi 11y ago
This is something very similar to the Seniority in government system. The one who been there longer has more power, even they do not have brilliant idea nor ability to perform.

giarc 11y ago

Is this really a problem that needs a solution?

zxcvcxz 11y ago

My idea: charge karma for a downvote: 1 down vote = lose one karma point UNLESS they reply to the person they downvoted.

brudgers 11y ago

I have never been baffled by a down vote. I've been surprised that something was downvoted. When I am surprised, I try to figure out why and what contributed to it that was in my control and what wasn't. Usually, I get downvoted for xkcd 360 style wrestling the pig in mud. Sometimes I'm just factually wrong. Sometimes I'm just being a mean or stupid or just expressing a binary opinion...though those are less and less common, I think. The long term solution has been trying to improve my writing, so that it better communicates my intent. The work of figuring out the reason for Downvotes is a feature not a bug...the exercise [literally and metaphorically] makes my writing stronger. As for new users, I think The current system is useful for HN as a business unit. HN is part of YC. It's helpful to its selection process. Karma is a bit of a proxy for product market fit. Upvotes and Downvotes and novotes signal the reaction to some offering, taking risk and analyzing rewards and adjusting to feedback are all valuable habits, and if a down vote is going to wreck a person's day, a VC not returning your calls regarding the previously mentioned offer sheet as the startup burns through its last bag of ramen may not be the right career move. The long play requires persistence and pivoting and perspective.

denzil_correa 11y ago

Personally, I don't down vote - I only up vote articles/comments that are worth reading.

sitkack 11y ago

https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/

Gracana 11y ago

I find the often-preachy-and-self-absorbed explanations of why someone was downvoted really obnoxious. People here aren't stupid, we usually have a pretty good idea of when we're saying something controversial and/or why someone might downvote it. And some of the explanations I've seen, just wow... Explaining to someone that saying "thanks" is meaningless and adds nothing to the discussion is just a slap in the face.

csomar 11y ago

I think we need a flag link for comments. - You down-vote a wrong citation, false truth, someone who is flaming... - You flag spammy links and such. On the other hand, maybe we should increase the threshold for - down-votes to 1,000 or 5,000 - flagging to 100 or 500

dang 11y ago
There is a flag link for comments. Click on a comment's timestamp to go to its item page, and (assuming you have a small amount of karma, I think 30) you'll see it.
- csomar 11y ago
  Then I don't have it?
  - dang 11y ago
    You should. If you don't see it, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll help you out. One thing, though, is that you can't flag a direct reply to your own comment. Same rule as for downvotes.

threatofrain 11y ago

I don't think the problem is with down votes per se, but in the total balance of votes. It doesn't matter if you receive 100 negative votes if you received 1000 positive votes. It doesn't matter if you received 1000 positive votes if you received 10000 negative votes. The question is if there are special biases for voters, like if almost nobody logs in to up vote, but people will log in to down vote. That will make some people feel like the site is capriciously punishing.