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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, drop

by 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.
- sgentle 11y ago
  Ah. I meant more that if I was a troll and I had the ability to comment privately, I could say nasty things to you in my private comment and nobody else would be able to see them (except admins, I suppose, who would quickly become overloaded). It's a good point that I could email feedback privately. I think that would be a difficult thing to establish in the general case because it's not expected behaviour, which makes it seem more significant (oh my god, this guy disliked my comment so much that he decided to email me about it?). It would also be more effort, and some people (especially newbies, I would think), don't include contact details in their profile. By disrupting public commentary I mean that the established norm on HN is that, mostly, if you have something to say you say it to the group. If it was possible to comment privately perhaps it would detract from that group discussion because people are shy or would rather their comment not be subject to scrutiny. The end result could be a tragic migration of the interesting conversations in HN comments from public to private. That's the "shadow discussion" problem I mentioned later. That's the particular reason I suggested making private comments impossible to reply to, so they don't become an alternate competing venue for discussion. I think the recipient being able to make the comment public would also help act as a balance against shy commenters making perfectly good public comments private.
  - hollerith 11y ago
    Thanks for your reply. I was unable to figure out a way to send you a private message. There's a link in your profile to a personal web site, but I could not find any contact info on it. There's a link to your account on Keybase, but 5 minutes of exploration of the Keybase service did not reveal a way to use Keybase to send you a message. So, I'm curious as to whether it is your intention that a random HN reader such as myself cannot figure out how to send you a private message or whether I'm missing something obvious, or something.
    - sgentle 11y ago
      Maybe not obvious - I must have just forgotten to add it! You can email me at sam@samgentle.com
- deleted 11y ago

by sgentle 11y ago

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.

sgentle 11y ago
Ah. I meant more that if I was a troll and I had the ability to comment privately, I could say nasty things to you in my private comment and nobody else would be able to see them (except admins, I suppose, who would quickly become overloaded). It's a good point that I could email feedback privately. I think that would be a difficult thing to establish in the general case because it's not expected behaviour, which makes it seem more significant (oh my god, this guy disliked my comment so much that he decided to email me about it?). It would also be more effort, and some people (especially newbies, I would think), don't include contact details in their profile. By disrupting public commentary I mean that the established norm on HN is that, mostly, if you have something to say you say it to the group. If it was possible to comment privately perhaps it would detract from that group discussion because people are shy or would rather their comment not be subject to scrutiny. The end result could be a tragic migration of the interesting conversations in HN comments from public to private. That's the "shadow discussion" problem I mentioned later. That's the particular reason I suggested making private comments impossible to reply to, so they don't become an alternate competing venue for discussion. I think the recipient being able to make the comment public would also help act as a balance against shy commenters making perfectly good public comments private.
- hollerith 11y ago
  Thanks for your reply. I was unable to figure out a way to send you a private message. There's a link in your profile to a personal web site, but I could not find any contact info on it. There's a link to your account on Keybase, but 5 minutes of exploration of the Keybase service did not reveal a way to use Keybase to send you a message. So, I'm curious as to whether it is your intention that a random HN reader such as myself cannot figure out how to send you a private message or whether I'm missing something obvious, or something.
  - sgentle 11y ago
    Maybe not obvious - I must have just forgotten to add it! You can email me at sam@samgentle.com
deleted 11y ago