I downvote sarcastic, jokey, snarky, or flippant comments. There are no shortage of sites where peanut gallery comments are the norm, and I think we should continue to discourage them here as much as possible.
Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
71–80 of 101 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#72This is an example of a comment that should be downvoted.
I vacillated, but then upvoted you because I love a good paradox.
Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#73The one thing I don't like is when comments become "dead", which I understand happens after too many downvotes. The reason I dislike this, is that besides obviously racist or otherwise inappropriate comments, there are regularly normal seeming comments that are dead. Now, there may be reasons for this I am just not privy to, but I feel it hinders discussion when some opinions that don't seem problematic are just sile…
Comments do not become [dead] after too many downvotes - only flags. The worst that happens to downvoted comments is that they get faded. If you want to read one, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page, whereupon the text should be normal.
Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#74The one thing I don't like is when comments become "dead", which I understand happens after too many downvotes. The reason I dislike this, is that besides obviously racist or otherwise inappropriate comments, there are regularly normal seeming comments that are dead. Now, there may be reasons for this I am just not privy to, but I feel it hinders discussion when some opinions that don't seem problematic are just sile…
When you see a dead comment that you feel shouldn't be, vouch for it. With a couple of vouches it'll become live again and can be responded to. Usually when I see a perfectly good, but dead, comment I check out the user's history. I usually see one of two situations here: 1. It's clear that they have a pattern of making nasty, off-topic, often vulgar comments. I'll still vouch for their good comments, but at least I…
In case 2 you should email hn@ycombinator.com. We watch for those ourselves and unban such users. Inevitably we don't see them all, though, and emails from fellow users are super helpful in that case.
Moderation is guesswork, and even if we guess 99% accurately about which accounts to ban in the early stage—a necessary thing to do, because otherwise the site would be overrun with spammers and trolls—that still leaves quite a few false positives who later turn out to be neither spammers nor trolls.
Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#75A lot of times I decide not to contribute because I am afraid of being downvoted into the abysss, usually all it takes, is one reply to interpret my own comment wrongly or assuming things I don't specificy. Then the HN readers will read my comment and the disagreeing reply. At this point, I get downvoted (or upvoted) based on the interpretation of my comment by the reply. So if I don't spend 20minutes making sure my…
So, out of curiosity: Why do you care if you get downvoted? Are there negative repercussions when using the site? But you know, making sure your post is factual correct, nicely worded and thought out seems to be a good consequence. Reading that I actually wish I was afraid of downvotes so I put more effort into some of mine.
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Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#76The great thing about the downvote feature is that is perfectly individually subjective, and thereby its affect on comments is an emergent property reflecting the subjective sentiment of the community. Perhaps more importantly, by only enabling downvotes after some period of time, new users are acclimated to the culture here (say, versus reddit), and thereby dampen culture swings. To the OP's question, since the aggr…
>its affect on comments is an emergent property reflecting the subjective sentiment of the community.
Thank you for making this point - you stated it perfectly. Regardless of what you think downvotes "should be used for", the fact is that they are used to "downvote", whatever that means, and that alone is valuable.
Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#77The one thing I don't like is when comments become "dead", which I understand happens after too many downvotes. The reason I dislike this, is that besides obviously racist or otherwise inappropriate comments, there are regularly normal seeming comments that are dead. Now, there may be reasons for this I am just not privy to, but I feel it hinders discussion when some opinions that don't seem problematic are just sile…
Registering an account through a VPN is an automatic shadowban without warning. How is a new user supposed to know this? Hacker News is a lot less hospitable in reality than it seems to an outsider. If you just register a lurker account and enable showdead and look around it's a veritable zombietown in here.
> Registering an account through a VPN is an automatic shadowban
That's not true.
New accounts are subject to extra software restrictions because of past abuses by trolls and spammers, though. I don't see any way around this.
Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#78I am pretty frustrated with downvotes, it seems a lot of users downvote for very different reasons that I do and so here are some reasons I downvote: - blatant misinformation, - posts that I feel are way off HN standards (for example just throwing expletives, writing "fr1st", generally wasting vertical space with no content), - focusing on HN voting mechanics and generally complaining about downvotes (no, I don't wan…
> generally complaining about downvotes (no, I don't want to hear why you think your post is being downvoted, if you can't take downvotes as what it is -- voice of multitude of people that may be right or wrong, stop posting) I sort of agree, but I also dislike comments being downvoted without any replies; it becomes a blind "people dislike and/or disagree with your comment, but good luck figuring out why".
I agree that people should engage more, to avoid the case where a comment is downvoted but it's not clear why from either the comment itself or its replies, but I think that case is somewhat rare. More importantly, complaining or positing reasons oneself that inevitably portray the downvoters as irrational doesn't help achieve that goal.
Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you see a dead comment that you feel shouldn't be, vouch for it. With a couple of vouches it'll become live again and can be responded to. Usually when I see a perfectly good, but dead, comment I check out the user's history. I usually see one of two situations here: 1. It's clear that they have a pattern of making nasty, off-topic, often vulgar comments. I'll still vouch for their good comments, but at least I…
In case 2 you should email hn@ycombinator.com. We watch for those ourselves and unban such users. Inevitably we don't see them all, though, and emails from fellow users are super helpful in that case. Moderation is guesswork, and even if we guess 99% accurately about which accounts to ban in the early stage—a necessary thing to do, because otherwise the site would be overrun with spammers and trolls—that still leaves…
I'll try to remember that in the future. I don't see #2 very often, which is a positive of this site. Usually it seems to be newer accounts or infrequent posters which makes sense.
Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?
#80I downvote comments that I think are bad. Comments that are useless, unhelpful, non-constructive, etc. For example, a few from the ruby post that was on the front page recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23990533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23991570
I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted here - you have given concrete examples of comments that are bad. Whether one agrees with you or not, this is exactly the kind of answer that OP was looking for.
I think it's clear the downvoters probably didn't agree that those examples are bad enough to be downvoted. (I have no opinion).