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Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

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Re: Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

#51

Post by SilasX »

Glad to answer! My standard on voting is, "Does this improve the discussion?" How do you improve the discussion?

- Summaries of key dynamics/context for the discussion.

- Substantively criticizing other's points.

- References to related materials about the topic in different context and how they're relevant.

How do you worsen the discussion? The opposite of that, plus:

- Misrepresenting arguments or misapplying a citation.

- Replying only to the weakest, easiest version of a point. [1]

- Low-effort in-jokes. ("Hey, maybe they could use a Beowulf cluster for this!" "The mitochondria? Like, the powerhouse of the cell?" Any reference to the IT crowd emergency number.)

Generally speaking, my voting will correlate with whether I agree with a comment. But, two big exceptions:

- If I disagree with the conclusion, but it makes a good case for it that I think merits a response, I'll upvote.

- If I agree with the points, it's done in a trollish way that hinders substantive discussion of the key argument, I downvote. There was one interesting case (I'll try to find it) where the commenter made a great point, and even made a great analogy to one kind of taxation ... but the point didn't need the analogy, and said analogy (predictably) triggered a bunch of commenters to defend their sacred taxation cow at all costs even if they would have otherwise agreed with the main point.

[1] including nitpicking, unless the comment indicates it's doing so, i.e. just fixing a technical inaccuracy unrelated to the core point

Re: Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

#52

Post by guerrilla »

- adds nothing

- just expresses personal preference

- bad assumptions

- bad argument

- factually incorrect

- too unclear

- inflammatory or dismissive

- probably other stuff

> I believe that downvoting someone just because you disagree with them is terrible for a discussion network

Sure but I think it is a bit naive and futile to expect otherwise. People are going to try to hide and punish the spreading of opinions that they don't want people to have. Consider especially that there are opinions that people consider against their interests for people to hold, thus there is an even stronger incentive for them to suppress them and doing so would be entirely rational.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

#53

Post by AdrianB1 »

I am downvoting comments that are (subjectively) misleading, false or with bad intentions. Never for different opinions, I am actually upvoting any different opinion sustained by solid arguments.

This is only for HN, I am not active on social networks, I had enough.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

#54

Post by mdp2021 »

When a post lowers the quality of the debate.

> I believe that downvoting someone just because you disagree with them is terrible for a discussion network like HN

Yes: that would be unintellectual. If this is for debate, debate it should be. (Otherwise it would be "polling", not debating.)

Some noted that "If one can upvote to express agreement, then one could downvote to express disagreement". This position fails to see the asymmetry in rational discourse: you may not need further arguments to support the weight of an expressed position, but you do, in general, need arguments to instead oppose it.

(Otherwise, it's Monty Python's Argument Sketch - "Yes it is", "No it isn't"...)

Re: Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

#55

Post by SilasX »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #38
nzmsv wrote: post #26

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…

You really nailed it. I agree 100%. 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

I downvoted it because "a few outliers" does not remotely imply "100% random". Votes are pretty well correlated with comment quality, and being able to cite extreme exceptions is not a refutation of that.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

#56

Post by pawelwentpawel »

HN and Reddit (obviously depends on a subreddit) are drastically different communities than LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

I might downvote on HN or Reddit if something is spammy or blatantly doesn't bring any value to the conversation. I do that very rarely though.

Frequency wise I much more often go straight to reporting content for removal without getting into discussion with people that have more free time than me. While it still unfortunately takes time, I believe that if damaging (racist, abusive, calling for violence) content is left unattended the general amount of it will only multiply with time.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

#57

Post by pc86 »

isoprophlex wrote: post #20
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #10

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.

I've noticed that probably six months ago, vouching a comment would immediately return it to a live state ~90% of the time. Presumably because as soon as it hits the dead state it no longer gets flagged, so one is all that's needed to put it back over the threshold. Recently, my vouches have revived comments 0% of the time. I'm not sure if the algorithm or UI changed, or if I was simply using the feature too much for someone's liking and they disabled it for me on the back end?

I've come across many, many helpful and thoughtful comments that I can't revive simply because this thing that should work has stopped even though I have about 30x the karma needed for it.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?

#59

Post by dfxm12 »

If a post centers on a logical fallacy, I'll downvote it. I see too much false dichotomy, like "if not x, then it must be y" where u, v, w, etc. are not even considered. What really aggravates me is when I point this out from a completely neutral standpoint and people treat me like I'm supporting one side or the other when I'm merely pointing out there are more than 2 sides!

I'll also downvote stuff that is off topic. I'm sure I downvote other things, but I'd say those two are the lion's share.

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