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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 com

by 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.
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    Maybe, but HN suffers quite as a bit as a forum. It's not really productive to go back and edit a comment to improve its quality. The half-life of even a popular thread on the front page is only a few hours, with a very long tail, so you might spend ten minutes editing a comment you made an hour ago all so that only three people will ever read it. For better or worse, downvote-to-sort-by-quality is a lot more efficient, and a lot less noisy. Read this as less of a disagreement with you and more of a criticism of HN as a place for high-quality discussions.

by bargl 11y ago

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.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  Maybe, but HN suffers quite as a bit as a forum. It's not really productive to go back and edit a comment to improve its quality. The half-life of even a popular thread on the front page is only a few hours, with a very long tail, so you might spend ten minutes editing a comment you made an hour ago all so that only three people will ever read it. For better or worse, downvote-to-sort-by-quality is a lot more efficient, and a lot less noisy. Read this as less of a disagreement with you and more of a criticism of HN as a place for high-quality discussions.