Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 101 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#41

Post by nscalf »

I downvote primarily bad faith arguments. If I disagree, think you’re wrong, etc I tend to respond (or upvote quality responses).

For instance, I downvoted a comment yesterday that said something along the lines of “you can get a cs degree and spend your life optimizing a companies ad revenue, or you can go into physics and work on problems like this” referring to an alternative gravity model passing some early tests for feasibility.

Obviously not all cs degree holders work on ad revenue, some work on important, impactful things. And I personally know physics majors who work on designing plumbing systems for a small company renovating houses in my area. It’s a bad argument, and it detracts from the quality of the conversation.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#42

Post by sowbug »

Apreche wrote: post #14

I downvote anything I don't like and I upvote what I do like. Most of the time I'm upvoting someone who already made basically the same comment I was going to make. No point in saying the same thing again in another comment, just upvote. If someone says the opposite of what I was going to say, I downvote. I never understood people acting like downvoting is some huge crime or being downvoted is some great slight. It's…

I disagree strongly with your position, but I will upvote your comment after I submit mine because you stated it in a way that I felt deserved a reply. I vote toward the goal of surfacing good HN discussion.

If you vote according to your own views on a topic, then you're saying that you want everyone to see only views that agree with yours, and you want contrasting views to be hidden from everyone. This must be true because voting affects the presentation of comments on the site; it is not at all just an inert database column.

I would like to see well-expressed opinions regardless of how echoey or reprehensible they might be. I visit HN in the hopes of having my mind changed, and those kinds of comments are the very comments that might change my mind.

That's why I especially try to vote for any comment I reply to (because it was literally thought-provoking); comments that restated another jumbled comment well (they improve site readability); and comments that explain extreme viewpoints in rational if not reasonable terms (they promote further logical or at least empathetic discussion). None of these have anything to do with my personal opinion on the subject.

You're going to downvote my comment because I think voting serves to curate the site to make it a better place to visit, and you think voting is a popularity contest for your own world view. I want your viewpoint to be seen and discussed. You want mine to be hidden.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#43

Post by jgwil2 »

oftenwrong wrote: post #6

I 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.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#44

Post by the-dude »

wcerfgba wrote: post #4

I view downvotes as an incomplete feature. If you disagree with some content -- because it is misinformation, or useless, or maybe you just disagree with the argument -- you should be able to explain what's wrong with it. I would much rather have a system where a downvote required a reason, so instead of a downvote it would be more like a comment which can also -1 / 0 / +1 the karma of the parent.

Doesn't /. have this?

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#46

Post by jimmyswimmy »

After being a member here for years I recently got the ability to down vote after making a well timed post. I've only used this power a little bit, and I think only on way off topic comments or jokes. I hope over the years I've up voted a lot more, and mostly on things I found insightful, even when I disagree, because that's the community I want to be a part of. Voting to agree or disagree is not really the best way to foster effective exchange of ideas. I hope that is what HN is still for. I've learned a lot here over the years thanks to the insightful and differing viewpoints one can find here.

I think I've also used this power to down vote completely incorrect information a few times.

But I usually read when not signed in and then I can't vote at all. And honestly, I think it was a pg comment that talking about voting and karma is boring. Either the post is valuable or it's not.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#47

Post by ZinniaZirconium »

Grumbledour wrote: post #19

The 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.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#48

Post by ilamont »

I don't see many people admitting that they downvote opinions they disagree with, but I will. It's a simple way for me to assert "I disagree," even if the act will have no visible impact (unless many others do the same). It also lets me track which comments I've downvoted (via the "undown" tag) vs. those that I have upvoted.

Sometimes it's difficult to decide whether I should upvote or downvote a comment. Opinions are often nuanced, and there are many cases where I may disagree with some points but agree with others, or recognize that even though I disagree with the commenter, that person has put forward a strong or well-articulated argument.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#49

Post by lmilcin »

I 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 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)

- extremist claims with no proofs -- the truth is almost always somewhere between extremes. Claiming the truth is an extreme of universe of possibilities should be taken with huge caution and usually just means the person is blind and deaf. In my personal experience, people who really do know the topic will usually start their answers with "that depends" or "it is complicated", and there is very good reason for it. The world is complicated and here on HN we try to understand it a little bit better with all its gory details and not create groupthink closing asymptotically to extreme views.

Post reply on HN