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Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

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Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#171

Post by acjohnson55 »

bendykstra wrote: post #96
DanBC wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very many HN threads would be improved if people would just downvote for disagreement and shut the fuck up. Those downvotes would soon be corrected by other people reading the thread, and we wouldn't have to read bad tempered bickering.

That idea works in theory, but in practice it makes comments a popularity contest. Eventually, people with minority opinions figure out that their ideas are unpopular and leave or stop commenting. The end result is monoculture. A great illustration of this phenomenon is Reddit's politics subreddit. In theory, it is a place to discuss American politics. In practice, its discussion is almost entirely centered around a…

I don't think HN is monocultural, at least to a pathological extent. There's quite a bit of debate here. The overwhelming majority of grayed out comments are baseless, off-topic, or unnecessarily inflammatory, from my perspective. I think that's because there's a norm to agree with an upvote, disagree with a non-vote, and reserve downvotes for unproductive commentary. People seem to upvote unfairly gray comments regardless of their personal agreement.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#172

Post by alphapapa »

mclifton wrote: post #154
Karunamon wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the case for disagreement, where a counter-argument must exist, but has not been voiced yet. Someone shouldn't have to expect to come up with an alternative just to voice the idea that something sucks. This idea leaves you vulnerable to the "something must be done, this is something, therefore we do it" problem by unfairly biasing positive votes rather than negative ones. Yes, I read your rationale. I don…

Prior to reading these arguments I would have agreed. But I suppose I have to admit that I would prefer that someone said "This feature isn't necessary - feature Y is a perfectly good substitute" or even "this feature is inappropriate according to the goals of this project" and upvote those comments, rather than downvoting the original feature/pull request without giving a reason. I'm not nearly as adamantly opposed…

The problem here is the presupposition that a positive argument has been made. People often make claims without any supporting argument. If only counterclaims were required to have supporting argument, it would be unbalanced in favor of bald assertions.

Sometimes people make silly claims or requests or demands. In such cases, one shouldn't be required to write a reasoned counterargument. A simple "nope" should suffice.

"This is why we can't have nice things." People assume the status quo is bad or wrong and that change is necessarily progress. It begins to take more effort to keep the good things that have been achieved than it does to break them and replace them with regressions. It requires more time and effort to defend them against the onslaught of unreasoned demands because of irrational bias against the status quo.

This is true not only in software but in politics and society. But for a simple example in the software world, just look at the Metro UI: it's awful for a million reasons, a regression even from Windows 95's UI--but to some people, it's change, therefore it must be progress, therefore it must be done.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#173

Post by joeyespo »

braythwayt wrote: post #65
joepie91_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to elaborate on this a bit more: Implementing a downvote button is inviting baseless disagreement . It makes it socially acceptable to say that you disagree, without ever providing an argument or being expected to do so - this is precisely what you don't want, on what is supposed to be a constructive platform. This will (indirectly and directly) lead to populism, where unpopular opinions get dismissed out…

And yet, you’re making this point on a platform that has down-votes. And where I have made very unpopular statements around social issues that have been down-voted for being unpopular, so I appreciate how points that I know to be reasonable can be downvoted for being unpopular. Nevertheless, some people find them useful. I don’t think it’s 100% clear-cut that you should never ever implement downvotes. I’d say that do…

FWIW unlike HN, downvoting has no negative consequences to the comment on GitHub. It's useful on HN to effectively remove the off-topic and deeply non-constructive comments. But on GitHub, it serves no such function. We're going to end up with the many abuses of -1's and none of the benefits.

As for "I don’t think it’s 100% clear-cut that you should never ever implement downvotes," perhaps. There's still probably better ways to flag inappropriate comments though. Like a flag button. Downvotes are far too general and ambiguous in comparison.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#174

Post by alecdbrooks »

lccarrasco wrote: post #155
goldenkey wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+0 and -0 are equal..

I believe the implied meaning is: +0 -> support from the sidelines (like for a change that doesn't directly affect you)/something that's not urgent but would be nice -0 -> disagree from the sidelines/disagree with the solution but can't think of a better one

I would enjoy it if they used +ε and -ε for that, although +0 and -0 is probably clearer.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#175

Post by jahewson »

joeyespo wrote: post #145
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1s could mean -Someone agrees with you -Someone likes you -Someone is happy or having a good day -Someone is repaying a favor or maintaining a friendship.

The difference is when you +1, you're publically expressing agreement with what they wrote. If someone you like writes something you don't agree with, you wouldn't +1 them. If you're having a good day, you still wouldn't blindly dish out +1's because if you +1 a controversial comment, it could hurt your reputation. Negation is different because it's entirely ambiguous. You can dish them out freely and retroactively r…

My experience of open source projects is that people dish out +1's freely and are reluctant to -1 as it signifies conflict. +1 is arguably the more ambiguous for that reason as it can mean "I didn't read the issue but I like you and what you're saying at a glance looks non-insane" or "meh" or "I love it". You're really underestimating the ammount of politics that can factor into these things, people will +1 something that they 90% disagree with because of who's saying it, don't kid yourself otherwise.

Nobody really cares if you +1 something crazy, maybe you were just feeling agreeable that day, or you misunderstood the comment. But if you -1 sensible things you're going to get a bad reputation pretty quickly.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#176

Post by [deleted] »

gkoberger wrote: post #88
mrharrison wrote: post #51

-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a specific user, instead of constructive criticism. If someone downvotes you, you tend to downvote them. At the least, it should be a privilege to down vote, like SO and HN do. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down

Agreed 100% for Facebook or even Hacker News, however on GitHub it would be really useful for voting. If you ask "Should we add this feature?", it's hard to understand what favorites mean if you don't have an anchor. Does 10 thumbs-up mean unanimous support, or is it just a small minority? It'd be nice to say "Oh, 10 upvotes... but there's 90 downvotes, so we won't do it." FB and Hacker News are a marketplace of rela…

[deleted]

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#177

Post by geofft »

goldenkey wrote: post #151
rtpg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internally when voting (informally) on things we do +1, +0, -0, and -1. Super helpful to be able to ask for everyone's opinion while they can also express the strength of their opinion. Feel like that would be very useful

+0 and -0 are equal..

Those terms for code-review voting are (almost certainly) from Apache, which treats them differently. From http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html :

+0: 'I don't feel strongly about it, but I'm okay with this.'

-0: 'I won't get in the way, but I'd rather we didn't do this.'

(These votes are strings, not numbers, though they closely resemble numbers. See also the existence of a "++1" vote.)

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#178

Post by joeyespo »

jahewson wrote: post #175
joeyespo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is when you +1, you're publically expressing agreement with what they wrote. If someone you like writes something you don't agree with, you wouldn't +1 them. If you're having a good day, you still wouldn't blindly dish out +1's because if you +1 a controversial comment, it could hurt your reputation. Negation is different because it's entirely ambiguous. You can dish them out freely and retroactively r…

My experience of open source projects is that people dish out +1's freely and are reluctant to -1 as it signifies conflict. +1 is arguably the more ambiguous for that reason as it can mean "I didn't read the issue but I like you and what you're saying at a glance looks non-insane" or "meh" or "I love it". You're really underestimating the ammount of politics that can factor into these things, people will +1 something…

> are reluctant to -1 as it signifies conflict

That's because people don't tend to write "-1", but rather disagree with a comment explaining why. GitHub is full of disagreement. We'd be in a much worse place if that was all expressed through downvotes instead of comments (unless of course, an issue is explicitly opting in to a vote).

> people will +1 something that they 90% disagree with because of who's saying it, don't kid yourself otherwise.

Ok yeah, you're right about the politics. Bad example. But in open source, I've seen much more comment-based pushback regardless of author.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#179

Post by echelon »

philliphaydon wrote: post #134
mrharrison wrote: post #51

-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a specific user, instead of constructive criticism. If someone downvotes you, you tend to downvote them. At the least, it should be a privilege to down vote, like SO and HN do. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down

I shall respectfully disagree. Not wanting down votes is just a way of saying "I'm offended please don't offend me I can't handle down it's it makes me sad" It's 2016, can we stop worrying about if someone disagrees with you and just accept the fact they wanted to down vote on an issue rather than say nothing or leave a comment.

It's usually the case that it's cheap to disagree. It would be more beneficial to the review process to have those with dissenting opinions lay out a logical case presenting their concerns rather than enable them to do quicker, drive-by review.

Haven't you had feedback along the lines of, "but did you take into consideration what impact the heat death of the universe will have on your design?" ?

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