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I think some people are terribly thin skinned when it comes to downvoting.
The only time I get really annoyed for being downvoted is after presenting a provable factual statement, which riles up a fanboi of some sorts..
That said, I don't think I ever complained about a downvote. It's not worth it, detracts from the discussion flow and is almost always self-correcting by upvotes from others.
If it's factually wrong, or missing the point. Or if it's just attacking the parent. I try not to downvote opinions, even if they are blatantly stupid. On the other hand, disagreeing in a clever way will earn an upvote from me.
I try (but probably fail often) to downvote only on fact or form, not opinion.
Can I answer this differently? I virtually always upvote comments, which I see downvoted for expressing an opinion, which is obviously presented in good faith. That's even then the case when I violently disagree with the opinion in question. What's even worse than people downvoting a well reasoned opinion are downvotes for factual statements.
I almost cheer when a comment of mine gets a quick down vote. Nothing attracts upvotes faster than a grey comment that shouldn't be grey.
And yes, it's usually self-correcting anyway.
Downvotes on HN are basically random. I've had well-written comments downvoted into oblivion in threads that also included another comment stating the exact same opinion slightly differently. I've had zingy one-liners upvoted to 100 or so. I've had discussions where the back and forth statements alternated between negative and positive karma. I'm treating it as a study in human behavior around communications. So far…
I think the comment kind and timing matter together. If the comment was reasonable but contrary to popular views, it will usually attract early downvotes, but over time I’ve noticed the score will normalize as more measured people visit the story over the day.
The worst is users with the ability to flag content. I have dead comments turned on and see a lot of well-made thought provoking comments that that are flagged because they are contrary to the popular narrative. On the other hand there are a lot of bad comments that deserve to be flagged so it's a double-edged sword.
I've resurrected quite a few of these; note that with flagging rights comes also the "vouch" button to keep the discourse more balanced. Would be interested to learn the proportion of flagged:vouched comments.
The problem is you have to have dead comments turned on to vouch, but the ability to flag comments is default with enough karma.
I didn't even know there were so many decent flagged comments until I turned on dead.
I think it would be cool to have a mechanism where if someone's flagged comments get vouched for so many times they lose their ability to flag for a period of time.
Downvotes on HN are basically random. I've had well-written comments downvoted into oblivion in threads that also included another comment stating the exact same opinion slightly differently. I've had zingy one-liners upvoted to 100 or so. I've had discussions where the back and forth statements alternated between negative and positive karma. I'm treating it as a study in human behavior around communications. So far…
It still riles me, when well reasoned opinions are downvoted.
Edited to add: Your comment is a brilliant example and I really don't get why it's downvoted
if only those comments could just disappear from HN.
I think the downvote option is probably needed but it can be problematic - it carries different meanings with subtle differences:
- A way to signal disagreement with a comment.
- A means to flag a comment as clearly misleading or incorrect.
- A way of signalling a 'low value' comment (obviously subjective).
- A way for the downvoter to simply express his or her displeasure at what has been posted regardless how reasonable the comment is. (This probably happens more often than people care to admit it. It's subtly different than just disagreement.)
One might argue all the above examples are types of 'disagreement'.
An idea:
Clicking downvote adds the following line to the end of a comment: 3 readers disagree or 3 readers downvoted. Would this make readers pause before they hit the downvote button? (And is that a good or bad thing?)