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

81–90 of 101 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#81

Post by dang »

kylebenzle wrote: post #8
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.

That post that blew up about Apple keeping their 30% cut after a refund was 100% made up. It was, sorry to say, "fake news". But my comment got downvoted. You idiots here on HN would rather read "news" that agrees with your already held opinions, that is why the downvote button is here, so idiots don't have to think too much.

What comment are you referring to? You should include a link so readers can make up their own minds, i.e. so they can see whether there might have been some other reason to downvote the comment. Generally a good, substantive comment explaining what's false in an article will get upvoted heavily. Sometimes, though, such a comment breaks the site guidelines at the same time as it includes correct information. That's particularly bad, because it actually discredits the truth: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

(While I have you: would you please stop breaking the site guidelines generally? You've done it a lot and, as you know, we ban accounts that do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#82

Post by antisthenes »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #26

Personally, I never downvote based on whether I agree with someone. I only downvote for low-effort comments that do not contribute, things like "lol" or 5-10 word comments with no evidence/explanation. Even if someone needs citations, I'm not going to downvote them, I'll ask for further evidence/citations, which in itself often gets downvoted. I've been downvoted a number of times for posting well-written, thought-ou…

> I've often been downvoted below zero within a minute of posting, just for playing Devil's Advocate.

I just want to point out that playing Devil's Advocate is not as innocent as you make it seem. Most people, when they say they're doing it are posting poorly supported populist arguments, based on some unsubstantiated folk wisdom or straight up fake facts. Not saying you did that in that particular case.

Playing Devil's Advocate is only valid when you're dealing with normative scenarios, for example when advocating for one policy over another, both of which have drawbacks and advantages.

When someone says they're playing Devil's Advocate for issues where the science has been mostly settled, it's usually what I stated above in the first paragraph, and becomes very clear that the poster has some ulterior motive or is personally attached to their beliefs over evidence.

So the reason those get downvoted is that when you have a wrong populist argument at the top of the thread, more people see it and adopt it as their position, thus perpetuating the cycle. To break the cycle, people downvote it.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#83

Post by ZinniaZirconium »

dang wrote: post #77
ZinniaZirconium wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok. I can only speculate unless you want to document.

I'll guess again! My VPN just happened to be IP banned which I had no way of knowing before registering.

I'm sure new people appreciate being labeled as abusive trolls and spammers just for registering and I’m sure new people don't stay either.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#84

Post by kube-system »

hirundo wrote: post #70
kube-system wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downvote button is not a disagree button. If you disagree with something, add your own comment. That's the point of a discussion board. Downvotes are for comments which are not worthy of a response because they are not honest attempts at discussion.

> The downvote button is not a disagree button. That's wishful thinking. In practice that's just what it is. I'd be in favor of some magical gui change that would fix that, but it doesn't exist.

There are some GUI features that address this. For instance, there is no downvote button if you reply to someone, or if they reply to you. But ultimately, the use of the button is up to the community.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#85

Post by stareatgoats »

Not sure if I can say any general reason why I downvote sometimes. Perhaps mostly when people complain about being down-voted ...

I've come to the conclusion that one needs to have a healthy distance to ones points, and realize that it's just a gamification of discourse that is helpful up to a certain point, but that it quickly gets counterproductive when that's mostly all that people care about.

I sense that many people are extremely strategic about what they submit or comment on, where they comment etc, and therefore get sensitive about the downvotes as well. Unfortunately it is a seemingly unavoidable consequence of introducing scores in any context.

Better just accept that people downvote you for whatever reason, don't worry too much about your karma (what on earth for?). Care about the content instead.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#86

Post by basch »

happytoexplain wrote: post #40
WhompingWindows wrote: post #26

Personally, I never downvote based on whether I agree with someone. I only downvote for low-effort comments that do not contribute, things like "lol" or 5-10 word comments with no evidence/explanation. Even if someone needs citations, I'm not going to downvote them, I'll ask for further evidence/citations, which in itself often gets downvoted. I've been downvoted a number of times for posting well-written, thought-ou…

Note: The parent was significantly edited while I was writing. >for posting well-written, thought-out responses which other people disagreed with I could write a well-written, thought-out argument in favor of segregating blacks. I'm not suspicious of you - I'm just saying, maybe you're making too much assumption about how valuable your writing is, since you've only used "well written" and "thought out" as evidence. >…

None of that should really matter. Either it adds to the conversation or not. Conversation being the key word. Even if its a poorly thought out or written argument, if its mistakes generate good replies, its good for the goose.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#87

Post by bryanlarsen »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #26

Personally, I never downvote based on whether I agree with someone. I only downvote for low-effort comments that do not contribute, things like "lol" or 5-10 word comments with no evidence/explanation. Even if someone needs citations, I'm not going to downvote them, I'll ask for further evidence/citations, which in itself often gets downvoted. I've been downvoted a number of times for posting well-written, thought-ou…

> I've often been downvoted below zero within a minute of posting

Quick downvotes typically do more good than harm. In my experience both voting and receiving votes, a undeservedly grey comment gets more upvotes than a comment that hasn't been downvoted.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#88

Post by dang »

ZinniaZirconium wrote: post #83
dang wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ok. I can only speculate unless you want to document. I'll guess again! My VPN just happened to be IP banned which I had no way of knowing before registering. I'm sure new people appreciate being labeled as abusive trolls and spammers just for registering and I’m sure new people don't stay either.

A lot of "new people" who show up to complain about HN are not "new people" at all but ones who have been banned many times and are well aware of it. Typically they create a new account to come back in the front door before the back door has swung shut behind them. A favorite sport before doing that is to leave a message with the old account about how $snarkism HN is and how they're leaving and never coming back.

If you or anyone has suggestions for how to better write software to distinguish between genuinely new accounts and serial abusers, I'm sure we'd be very interested.

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#89

Post by kangnkodos »

basch wrote: post #86
happytoexplain wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: The parent was significantly edited while I was writing. >for posting well-written, thought-out responses which other people disagreed with I could write a well-written, thought-out argument in favor of segregating blacks. I'm not suspicious of you - I'm just saying, maybe you're making too much assumption about how valuable your writing is, since you've only used "well written" and "thought out" as evidence. >…

None of that should really matter. Either it adds to the conversation or not. Conversation being the key word. Even if its a poorly thought out or written argument, if its mistakes generate good replies, its good for the goose.

The problem is that beside the comment, I am only left with one feedback lever, up or down.

Just image if I were given two feedback levers instead:

- This comment adds to the discussion/This comment does not add significantly to the discussion

- Agree/Disagree

Re: Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

#90

Post by AnonC »

Why do I downvote? I downvote to do my part in making invisible the comments that I don’t want floating around here. Any voting system is meant for voters to help decide what’s important and what’s not. That’s the case with HN too.

It’s all fine and dandy to say that downvotes shouldn’t be used for disagreements (which, on the other hand, pg himself has said is fine to do), but no voting based system can prevent that. Voting by the masses by itself is a flawed system that depends on the attitude, mindset and knowledge of the voter.

There are many users on HN who downvote to express disagreement or dislike for certain comments. I too downvote some comments that I disagree with to prevent them from surfacing up because I do not value those comments. If upvoting is meant to help “useful content” (as perceived by the reader) surface to the top, then downvoting is meant for the opposite purpose. Whenever I see a downvoted comment whose content I believe I agree with or that others may have aggressively downvoted to express disagreement, I upvote them.

Nobody, in my recollection, has ever said that upvotes shouldn’t be used to express agreement. So using upvotes to express agreement while saying that downvotes shouldn’t be used for disagreement makes no sense. We don’t live in utopia. Not every comment is worthy enough to stay visible in a black font with text replies to express disagreement and go on with lengthy arguments. We are not objective beings who don’t care about that number on the top right that has no tangible value.

Looking only at the downvoted or flagged comments in this thread will show what the broader community wants or prefers.

Edit: After having said all this and admitting that I do downvote comments that I disagree with, I also believe that downvoting for this purpose is probably not a good idea for one’s mental health and emotional quotient. Most of the time, I browse HN comments without logging in (so no voting at all), and that’s a way to just observe and experience HN.

Post reply on HN