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I have noticed a few of my comments being down voted because people disagree with them lately. I feel that they qualified as substantial and weren't blatantly

by bargl 11y ago

I have noticed a few of my comments being down voted because people disagree with them lately. I feel that they qualified as substantial and weren't blatantly incorrect, but weren't what other people were looking for. Downvoting a comment should be reserved for comments that we don't want other people to read. Things that are rude, blatantly false, or in general against the guidelines. I don't think we should downvote things we disagree with, because to some users a downvote says, your comment isn't wanted here please take it somewhere else. This isn't about points but instead the message you want to send to the author of the comment. If you do want to downvote someone because you disagree, could that instead be turned into a comment that might enlighten them and anyone else reading the thread? Edit: I don't want to say that these downvotes were unfair, but more about users not following my subjective definition of the real purpose of a downvote which is to discourage conversation on that thread.

MertsA 11y ago
And that kind of problem underlies a growing issue with HN. >As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening. There has always been a push for maintaining quality but more and more users are ignoring everything on this page. In your case that would mean that there's not only a growing amount of people who are downvoting who they disagree with but also that those users are getting a significant amount of karma. The theory is that by the time someone has enough karma to downvote posts they are already trustworthy to vote for content that adds to the discussion, this is starting to break down and it's only going to get worse.
DanBC 11y ago
It would be useful if you provided some examples of comments that you felt were unfairly downvoted. Don't forget that your comments didn't just attract downvotes - they also failed to attract upvotes.
- bargl 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9891402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9891402 This is the link I was referring to. There are a number of other comments I've made in there that have also been down voted. I think it was downvoted based on disagreement instead of for the content. If I could have edited this comment I would have been a little more clear with you'd see in some of my subsequent comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9893764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9893764 This and a linked comment both received downvotes about the same time as I published this thread. The comments stopped and the conversation was over with a punctuated You are wrong! It's a bad way to be rewarded for trying to participate in a conversation. But it happens. I don't want to blame anyone, I just think we need to think more when we vote as a community. Edit: later comments even substantial ones can fail to attract upvotes just based on when you submit. And many of the people who read that far down tend to be the ones who downvote a day later (but this is only my opinion with no data to back it up).
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    The argument over the purpose of downvotes usually devolves into "it's OK to downvote to express disagreement" vs. "downvotes should only be used for bad (dumb, abusive, or inciteful) content". But I think there's a third option, and it's the way that HN actually behaves: Voting is used to bubble good content up and bad content down. That is to say, your comments don't fall under the umbrellas of "dumb", "abusive", or "inciteful", but they might be a distraction from the main thread, or they might not be carefully enough considered -- it's not just that voters disagree, but also that they don't think the comments belong near the top of the threads. It doesn't look like the score went below maybe -2 ... that's really not that severe, and usually indicates a gentle "this isn't a good quality comment" signal.
    - bargl 11y ago
      Wouldn't it be more useful for someone to come along and say, "Hey this comment seems to be fairly low quality, do you mind editing it to clarify your opinion so it's easier to understand?" I've actually had this happen to me on HN before and I was able to take a breath, take some time and improve the content of my comment, which helped improve HN as a whole on a very small level. If we use gentle downvoting to indicate bad quality comments it's much harder to separate that from disagreement / negative comments. It might be time for HN to adopt a technical solution to keep the quality it has always had present. (I.E. private messages, or comments that aren't about content but directly to OP, or flags to indicate that a comment could use editing/rephrasing/deletion sent to the OP (along with a count of these flags)) This would everyone know what is wrong with their comment rather then having to speculate on what they did wrong, so they can learn and improve in the future.

by bargl 11y ago

MertsA 11y ago

And that kind of problem underlies a growing issue with HN. >As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening. There has always been a push for maintaining quality but more and more users are ignoring everything on this page. In your case that would mean that there's not only a growing amount of people who are downvoting who they disagree with but also that those users are getting a significant amount of karma. The theory is that by the time someone has enough karma to downvote posts they are already trustworthy to vote for content that adds to the discussion, this is starting to break down and it's only going to get worse.

DanBC 11y ago

It would be useful if you provided some examples of comments that you felt were unfairly downvoted. Don't forget that your comments didn't just attract downvotes - they also failed to attract upvotes.

bargl 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9891402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9891402 This is the link I was referring to. There are a number of other comments I've made in there that have also been down voted. I think it was downvoted based on disagreement instead of for the content. If I could have edited this comment I would have been a little more clear with you'd see in some of my subsequent comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9893764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9893764 This and a linked comment both received downvotes about the same time as I published this thread. The comments stopped and the conversation was over with a punctuated You are wrong! It's a bad way to be rewarded for trying to participate in a conversation. But it happens. I don't want to blame anyone, I just think we need to think more when we vote as a community. Edit: later comments even substantial ones can fail to attract upvotes just based on when you submit. And many of the people who read that far down tend to be the ones who downvote a day later (but this is only my opinion with no data to back it up).
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  The argument over the purpose of downvotes usually devolves into "it's OK to downvote to express disagreement" vs. "downvotes should only be used for bad (dumb, abusive, or inciteful) content". But I think there's a third option, and it's the way that HN actually behaves: Voting is used to bubble good content up and bad content down. That is to say, your comments don't fall under the umbrellas of "dumb", "abusive", or "inciteful", but they might be a distraction from the main thread, or they might not be carefully enough considered -- it's not just that voters disagree, but also that they don't think the comments belong near the top of the threads. It doesn't look like the score went below maybe -2 ... that's really not that severe, and usually indicates a gentle "this isn't a good quality comment" signal.
  - bargl 11y ago
    Wouldn't it be more useful for someone to come along and say, "Hey this comment seems to be fairly low quality, do you mind editing it to clarify your opinion so it's easier to understand?" I've actually had this happen to me on HN before and I was able to take a breath, take some time and improve the content of my comment, which helped improve HN as a whole on a very small level. If we use gentle downvoting to indicate bad quality comments it's much harder to separate that from disagreement / negative comments. It might be time for HN to adopt a technical solution to keep the quality it has always had present. (I.E. private messages, or comments that aren't about content but directly to OP, or flags to indicate that a comment could use editing/rephrasing/deletion sent to the OP (along with a count of these flags)) This would everyone know what is wrong with their comment rather then having to speculate on what they did wrong, so they can learn and improve in the future.