4 ms·

Disagreement is a perfectly valid reason for downvoting someone. No. It isn't. How would you feel if people shut you out of a discussion because they disagree

by marrs 11y ago

Disagreement is a perfectly valid reason for downvoting someone. No. It isn't. How would you feel if people shut you out of a discussion because they disagreed with you? If someone says something you disagree with, debate them. If they say something factually incorrect, correct them. They may even thank you for it. And guess what, they may end up changing your mind, or correcting a mistake on your part. Actively seeking to censor somebody for having a different perspective on something is frankly abhorant. I find it ironic that this kind of behaviour is being encouraged in this thread of all. Snowden's actions will prove to be a giant waste of effort if your kind get their way.

bad_user 11y ago
I'm shutting people out of discussing with me like all the time. I close the phone on unwanted calls, I mark unsolicited emails as spam, I tell salesmen showing up on my door to fuck off and whenever deeply flawed opinions are spoken by my friends or family (on matters important to me, like racism, privacy, free speech), I get up and leave. It's how I keep sane. And as somebody that was born in Eastern Europe in a (now) ex-communist country, I must say that censorship (as used in your comment) is not incompatible with free speech. In fact it is required for people to have ways to filter out noise - you're still free to speak your mind regardless, therefore using that term doesn't win you any favors from my point of view ;-) Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise. It doesn't add anything interesting to the conversation. If it would have been an interesting point of view, then I would have agreed that downvoting is bad, but noise is precisely what downvoting is for.
- deciplex 11y ago
  Totally agree as long as you're making a good faith effort to distinguish noise (which I agree blumkvist's posts basically are, especially after the first one), from unfamiliar patterns of thought.
- marrs 11y ago
  I'm shutting people out of discussing with me like all the time. And if you're down-voting comments on Hacker News you're also shutting them out for me as well as everyone else on this site. Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise. No it's not. It's not going to win "insight of the month" but it's not a bait-and-switch, or a spambot, or a troll. It's a reply to a question. Do we all need to start practicing our poetry writing skills or something? The downvoted comment was this: I can't say I see him as a villain, but definitely not a hero. I hold back my judgement, because we are just too far away to know what's going on. He did expose some pretty bad practices to the general public, but asylum in Russia afterwards? Are you kidding me? That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain. Especially in the context of the Crimea debacle.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    I happen to believe that Snowden's asylum to Russia makes sense given the circumstances, I would have preferred Europe to give him asylum but unfortunately we are bending over whenever the US wants us too. Plus I don't see any connection with Crimea. Now back to the point, the opinion that Snowmen is guilty of treason is held by a majority. And to me that doesn't make sense, because I personally want to live under the rule of law and in such a nation nobody should be above that law, not a secret service, not the president, nobody. That the US government is capable of illegally spying on their own citizens, using the taxes of those citizens to do it, well I want to know about it. That Germany is spying on their own citizens in cooperation with the US, I want to know that as well. I also happen to believe that my right to privacy should be above your right for security and if that ain't gonna happen, then at the very least I want to know where my taxes are going. And last but not least, we happen to live in a society in which the mass-media is constantly failing us and our rights are being constantly eroded. Therefore I consider Snowden to be a hero, because regardless of his motivations, his actions were the right thing to do. And I could go on with lots of reasons for why I believe the above, but I'm tired of doing that for everybody that regurgitates a mainstream opinion without at least making an effort to explain why. Hence I believe that the comment in question is noise.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
I tend to read the downvoted comments first. I figure if someone doesn't want me to read something then that something is probably important/interesting.
- marrs 11y ago
  And it usually is
striking 11y ago
This is a common complaint from people who get downvoted, while it's been held in the community by dang and pg that people should downvote whatever they feel should be downvoted. There's no specific prescription to what can or can't be. Disagreement is often a bad reason for downvoting someone, but in this case it's disagreement with someone who is lacking facts. Also note that the guidelines note that you shouldn't comment about being downvoted. PS. Nice, ad hominem. You want to be taken seriously? I can't tell.
- deciplex 11y ago
  Well, while we're throwing around logical fallacies, you just made an appeal to authority. I don't care what dang or pg say - downvoting someone because you disagree with them is stupid. That said, I did downvote blumkvist, firstly because he stated his opinion without really providing any reason for having it other than "oh we don't really know what's going on" (this is annoying, but everyone does it sometimes and it isn't such a big deal). But secondly and much more importantly, even after being asked to follow up on his assertion and have a discussion, he chose to continue on his anti-HN rant. (And seriously, why is going to Russia "super fishy" when you've got US Congressmen suggesting on national fucking television that the CIA ought to assassinate you? And why do those Congressmen get a pass for saying it? They disgraced their office in doing so. Still like an answer for this, blumkvist.)
  - smtddr 11y ago
    >>I don't care what dang or pg say - downvoting someone because you disagree with them is stupid. Well... I don't care what you say, downvoting based on opinion is perfectly valid and I will continue to do so as I see fit. Especially when the opinion is based on assumptions that I believe has been proven false many times in the past and rehashing the debate on HN turns into a multi-page endless arguing.... kind like this is turning into. So your opinion on downvoting is different from mine, where does that leave us?
    - deciplex 11y ago
      It leaves us with a bunch of otherwise well thought-out comments which, in spite of their quality, are hard to read for no reason other than the first person to bother to vote was having a bad day or is an idiot, etc.
vinceguidry 11y ago
I get downvoted all the time, I do not feel as if the downvoters have shut me out of a discussion. I continue to post in the same threads, and usually I get more upvotes than downvotes. Over time the downvoted comments typically get upvoted to 0 or 1 or so. Downvotes are nothing more than another kind of participation in the discussion and should be treated as such.
- marrs 11y ago
  Down-voting fades out the text of the comment, making it harder to read. I've had to modify the CSS of comments before now just to read what they say, only to find out that I found the post thought provoking or even insightful. I have to do that enough that I'm thinking I might just write a bookmarklet to automate the process. Downvotes are nothing more than another kind of participation in the discussion and should be treated as such. Participation is a constructive activity. This is more like graffitiing over someone's comment to make it invisible. As far as I'm concerned, that's shutting him out.
  - irishcoffee 11y ago
    > I've had to modify the CSS of comments before now I may be misunderstanding you, or missing something obvious, but I just highlight faded comments with my mouse (or finger if on mobile), works well.
    - krapp 11y ago
      The intent of fading downvoted comments out seems to be to make them more annoying to read than most users would be willing to put up with, and far easier to simply skim over and ignore, regardless of their quality (even when they're not faded enough to be illegible - the fading provides the visual cue to the casual reader that "this isn't worth your time.") It's similar to the reason text posts are faded by default - to make those posts more annoying to read the longer they are, in order to discourage using them as personal blog posts. If you don't particularly want your hand held like that and are capable of reading more than a paragraph at a time without suffering mental exhaustion or ennui, you may well find these practices to be condescending and passive-aggressive. I have a userscript that I use to unfade everything[0] and have showdead on and I find that neither has negatively affected my experience much. Although of course everyone's mileage may vary. [0]https://gist.github.com/kennethrapp/5b5e413220afb93c9c93 https://gist.github.com/kennethrapp/5b5e413220afb93c9c93

by marrs 11y ago

bad_user 11y ago

I'm shutting people out of discussing with me like all the time. I close the phone on unwanted calls, I mark unsolicited emails as spam, I tell salesmen showing up on my door to fuck off and whenever deeply flawed opinions are spoken by my friends or family (on matters important to me, like racism, privacy, free speech), I get up and leave. It's how I keep sane. And as somebody that was born in Eastern Europe in a (now) ex-communist country, I must say that censorship (as used in your comment) is not incompatible with free speech. In fact it is required for people to have ways to filter out noise - you're still free to speak your mind regardless, therefore using that term doesn't win you any favors from my point of view ;-) Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise. It doesn't add anything interesting to the conversation. If it would have been an interesting point of view, then I would have agreed that downvoting is bad, but noise is precisely what downvoting is for.

deciplex 11y ago
Totally agree as long as you're making a good faith effort to distinguish noise (which I agree blumkvist's posts basically are, especially after the first one), from unfamiliar patterns of thought.
marrs 11y ago
I'm shutting people out of discussing with me like all the time. And if you're down-voting comments on Hacker News you're also shutting them out for me as well as everyone else on this site. Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise. No it's not. It's not going to win "insight of the month" but it's not a bait-and-switch, or a spambot, or a troll. It's a reply to a question. Do we all need to start practicing our poetry writing skills or something? The downvoted comment was this: I can't say I see him as a villain, but definitely not a hero. I hold back my judgement, because we are just too far away to know what's going on. He did expose some pretty bad practices to the general public, but asylum in Russia afterwards? Are you kidding me? That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain. Especially in the context of the Crimea debacle.
- bad_user 11y ago
  I happen to believe that Snowden's asylum to Russia makes sense given the circumstances, I would have preferred Europe to give him asylum but unfortunately we are bending over whenever the US wants us too. Plus I don't see any connection with Crimea. Now back to the point, the opinion that Snowmen is guilty of treason is held by a majority. And to me that doesn't make sense, because I personally want to live under the rule of law and in such a nation nobody should be above that law, not a secret service, not the president, nobody. That the US government is capable of illegally spying on their own citizens, using the taxes of those citizens to do it, well I want to know about it. That Germany is spying on their own citizens in cooperation with the US, I want to know that as well. I also happen to believe that my right to privacy should be above your right for security and if that ain't gonna happen, then at the very least I want to know where my taxes are going. And last but not least, we happen to live in a society in which the mass-media is constantly failing us and our rights are being constantly eroded. Therefore I consider Snowden to be a hero, because regardless of his motivations, his actions were the right thing to do. And I could go on with lots of reasons for why I believe the above, but I'm tired of doing that for everybody that regurgitates a mainstream opinion without at least making an effort to explain why. Hence I believe that the comment in question is noise.

JupiterMoon 11y ago

I tend to read the downvoted comments first. I figure if someone doesn't want me to read something then that something is probably important/interesting.

marrs 11y ago
And it usually is

striking 11y ago

This is a common complaint from people who get downvoted, while it's been held in the community by dang and pg that people should downvote whatever they feel should be downvoted. There's no specific prescription to what can or can't be. Disagreement is often a bad reason for downvoting someone, but in this case it's disagreement with someone who is lacking facts. Also note that the guidelines note that you shouldn't comment about being downvoted. PS. Nice, ad hominem. You want to be taken seriously? I can't tell.

deciplex 11y ago
Well, while we're throwing around logical fallacies, you just made an appeal to authority. I don't care what dang or pg say - downvoting someone because you disagree with them is stupid. That said, I did downvote blumkvist, firstly because he stated his opinion without really providing any reason for having it other than "oh we don't really know what's going on" (this is annoying, but everyone does it sometimes and it isn't such a big deal). But secondly and much more importantly, even after being asked to follow up on his assertion and have a discussion, he chose to continue on his anti-HN rant. (And seriously, why is going to Russia "super fishy" when you've got US Congressmen suggesting on national fucking television that the CIA ought to assassinate you? And why do those Congressmen get a pass for saying it? They disgraced their office in doing so. Still like an answer for this, blumkvist.)
- smtddr 11y ago
  >>I don't care what dang or pg say - downvoting someone because you disagree with them is stupid. Well... I don't care what you say, downvoting based on opinion is perfectly valid and I will continue to do so as I see fit. Especially when the opinion is based on assumptions that I believe has been proven false many times in the past and rehashing the debate on HN turns into a multi-page endless arguing.... kind like this is turning into. So your opinion on downvoting is different from mine, where does that leave us?
  - deciplex 11y ago
    It leaves us with a bunch of otherwise well thought-out comments which, in spite of their quality, are hard to read for no reason other than the first person to bother to vote was having a bad day or is an idiot, etc.

vinceguidry 11y ago

I get downvoted all the time, I do not feel as if the downvoters have shut me out of a discussion. I continue to post in the same threads, and usually I get more upvotes than downvotes. Over time the downvoted comments typically get upvoted to 0 or 1 or so. Downvotes are nothing more than another kind of participation in the discussion and should be treated as such.

marrs 11y ago
Down-voting fades out the text of the comment, making it harder to read. I've had to modify the CSS of comments before now just to read what they say, only to find out that I found the post thought provoking or even insightful. I have to do that enough that I'm thinking I might just write a bookmarklet to automate the process. Downvotes are nothing more than another kind of participation in the discussion and should be treated as such. Participation is a constructive activity. This is more like graffitiing over someone's comment to make it invisible. As far as I'm concerned, that's shutting him out.
- irishcoffee 11y ago
  > I've had to modify the CSS of comments before now I may be misunderstanding you, or missing something obvious, but I just highlight faded comments with my mouse (or finger if on mobile), works well.
  - krapp 11y ago
    The intent of fading downvoted comments out seems to be to make them more annoying to read than most users would be willing to put up with, and far easier to simply skim over and ignore, regardless of their quality (even when they're not faded enough to be illegible - the fading provides the visual cue to the casual reader that "this isn't worth your time.") It's similar to the reason text posts are faded by default - to make those posts more annoying to read the longer they are, in order to discourage using them as personal blog posts. If you don't particularly want your hand held like that and are capable of reading more than a paragraph at a time without suffering mental exhaustion or ennui, you may well find these practices to be condescending and passive-aggressive. I have a userscript that I use to unfade everything[0] and have showdead on and I find that neither has negatively affected my experience much. Although of course everyone's mileage may vary. [0]https://gist.github.com/kennethrapp/5b5e413220afb93c9c93 https://gist.github.com/kennethrapp/5b5e413220afb93c9c93