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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?

#71

Post by lgrialn »

sideway wrote: post #39

If I could, I would downvote anything that does not increase the signal-to-noise ratio. In the last 1-2 years, there has been an upward trend in reddit-like comments like "Yes!", "That sucks", and smart-ass/low-quality oneliners that are supposed to be funny. if only those comments could just disappear from HN.

I know sometimes on Reddit I would reply to people with something very short when all they’d been getting were lots of downvotes, or even some upvotes, but I felt they needed some support through actual human communication instead of just the blank emptiness of votes, and yet I didn’t have anything detailed to say.

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

#72

Post by Mezzie »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #66

Never downvote. If a comment was just racial slurs or something, others will downvote. Otherwise, never downvote an idea regardless of 'provocativeness' or otherwise. In fact the provocative approach can often be what breaks cognitive dissonance. hunter s thompson or matt taibbi for example do this well. Gonzo journalism is easier to consume than yellow journalism coming from mass media. >For example, I'll sometimes…

> Not sure what to call it, but its not a community anymore.

I've been thinking of this and spaces start to feel like an old-school gathering of snake oil salesmen: The primary interest starts to be either attracting upvotes/avoiding downvotes or 'presenting' oneself rather than finding people who share your interests.

> It's interesting to try to find all the issues you aren't allowed to discuss on HN. You can then also see who is doing it and why. The curious thing is why they are so secretive.

You want SUPER interesting, compare which topics you can discuss where. I love social computing and have been talking to people online since UseNet. What's interesting to me about the recent era is that the big players go out of their way to prevent new platforms from taking hold outside of their influence. Back in the day, if a mod was being out of pocket, you could just LEAVE and start your own listserve/IRC stuff/etc, and if admin in general went overboard, people would leave. (Remember Digg -> Reddit, or LJ -> Tumblr, or the protocol wars in the 90s and why we all ended up on the Web)?

Now if any platform gets big enough that allows for dissent, the current big guys just buy it out and censor it.

Unfortunately, this also means that the places that DO let you discuss these things also tend to be contrarian cesspools with no ideology other than 'you can't tell me what to do' which is terrible for discussion for OTHER reasons (4Chan, I'm looking at you).

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

nzmsv wrote: post #62
SilasX wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are right, it's not really random, but it can certainly feel that way. I can throw the pedantry right back at you though: I didn't quote a percentage of randomness so I made a true statement. Some degree of randomness is present (if nothing else, it would be the percentage of readers having a bad day at that moment). So there :P

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by nzmsv »

SilasX wrote: post #65
nzmsv wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, it's not really random, but it can certainly feel that way. I can throw the pedantry right back at you though: I didn't quote a percentage of randomness so I made a true statement. Some degree of randomness is present (if nothing else, it would be the percentage of readers having a bad day at that moment). So there :P

> I didn't quote a percentage of randomness Ah, you're right, I blurred it with the comment that said they agree 100%. >so I made a true statement. No, you didn't, and it's not pedantry to say "don't dismiss a rating system because you can find the occasional outlier". That would be a big mistake, and merits being called out. Even speaking loosely, none of that justifies calling it "basically random". The test of a d…

It's interesting that we had a back and forth discussion here. If we were talking in person, this kind of error correction would be natural (me: "it's random", you: "this is not what random is", me: "oh yeah, I'm using it in the colloquial sense, how silly of me, my main point...") but comments don't have that immediate feedback. At the same time they are not essays: one cannot spend as much time editing and forecast every small negative reaction.

Thank you for an interesting discussion!

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

#75

Post by SilasX »

nzmsv wrote: post #74
SilasX wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn't quote a percentage of randomness Ah, you're right, I blurred it with the comment that said they agree 100%. >so I made a true statement. No, you didn't, and it's not pedantry to say "don't dismiss a rating system because you can find the occasional outlier". That would be a big mistake, and merits being called out. Even speaking loosely, none of that justifies calling it "basically random". The test of a d…

It's interesting that we had a back and forth discussion here. If we were talking in person, this kind of error correction would be natural (me: "it's random", you: "this is not what random is", me: "oh yeah, I'm using it in the colloquial sense, how silly of me, my main point...") but comments don't have that immediate feedback. At the same time they are not essays: one cannot spend as much time editing and forecast…

That's not what happened. You're wrong in the most charitable, colloquial sense too, and that should have been clear from my previous reply. You didn't just "goof" or speak casually, you mischaracterized what the voting patterns look like, or, at the very least, you need to back up your view with more than "hey! Look at these weird cases!"

"Basically random" looks nothing like what we see on HN.

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

#78

Post by xboxnolifes »

I downvote two things:

- Comments that seem to be trolls or low effort jokes.

- Such outlandish comments that I can't even bring myself to reply to, as I can see no timeline where value can be added in the conversation chain.

Otherwise, I make an effort to reply if I disagree.

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

#79

Post by bradlys »

If I find it disagreeable enough. If someone makes a bad joke. I flag content when it’s trolling or goes into ism categories.

I flag stories when the headline doesn’t match the content or the content piece itself is garbage.

I’m liberal with downvotes. I’ll go through some threads and only downvote - nothing being worthy of an upvote.

I get I’m different than some here who think the downvote is holy and should only be used on the most sinful but I prefer a liberal amount of course correction over even slight sins. No sense in trying to turn a boat that is already flipped.

I also use it to manipulate threads where I want a certain comment to be at the top. I’ll downvote one that I’m not particularly fond of and then upvote those I find more relevant - purely with the goal to get a certain narrative going.

I think many people here do the same, tbh. This might make me sound like a prolific downvoter but I don’t feel like I am. Many threads get no votes at all from me and I read quite a few…

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

#80

Post by emerged »

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.

How much karma is needed before flag and vouch are available?
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