GitHub Deceased User Policy

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement." Paul Graham, February 16, 2008.

this is something that bothered me for years. I know this is how people behave, that the workflow allows and enables it, and the culture we've built around our tools enforces that. When I watch my own feelings before downvoting it isn't my rational self but my petty lizard-brain which does this. It feels good for 1 second before I feel small and petty. Often it bothers me that I did it and I return to the button 3 minutes later undoing the downvote for a neutral no-vote.

Who is served by the downvote? Is it the downvoter who feels upset another person disagreeing and now able to vent? Or the downvotee who can use the experience to learn what language to avoid? Or is it only the platform provider that benefits? If it's only the platform it seems like a very blunt and rudimentary tool IMHO. Perhaps a downvote is still less inflammatory for discourse than an angry reply and so a compromise? Regardless it's still lizard-brained and impulsive every time I use it and the more I think about it the more I'm puzzled that this is form of behavior modification is all we have after so many years on the Web. The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that sharing these thoughts are actually well thought-through "opinions" when in reality it's just "thinking out loud" or "reactions to other people thinking out loud". It's not like writing a letter, diary or journal. The Tech moves fast but our social collective behavior takes millenia to adjust and cope.

Anyway I wish there was a switch that allowed me to hide the downvote button, and if I wanted to enable it, then it could only be done by a forced delay of X hours into the future when activated. I'd like to eliminate downvoting as a behavior in myself in 2021 - not for others sake but for my own inner peace. And also because none of it matters really.

  @-moz-document domain("news.ycombinator.com") {
  [title=downvote] {
      display: none
  }
  }

Original: You could hide the button with TamperMonkey pretty easily (send an email if you genuinely want to, looked at it, and couldn’t figure it out, and I’ll try to help)

Then, the “only after reflection” I’d implement by forcing myself to use another browser or toggling the element title or the extension. I don’t downvote very often (probably 20:1 up to down vote ratio), but I do know that some of mine are still lizard brain.

I’m served by the downvote in knowing that what I said was downvoted. Usually, I don’t need a substantive conversation from everyone who dislikes my comment. The signal that someone dislikes is useful enough.

It’s like in a conversation, sometimes I’ll see a frown or drawn up eyes. I don’t want, or need, every time I say something stupid to have the other conversants stop me and say “well prepend, in that usage...”

I think there’s a mismatch of conversation goals. The school of thought that downvotes shouldn’t be used seems to value engagement over value and content. My goal is to learn and teach the most through comments. To convince and be convinced. As efficiently as possible.

Looking back at comments that are -n the downvotes are usually enough to understand what I did wrong and how to improve. Not always, but usually. And I would have hated it instead of that score I had n+2 comments engaging with me for how they didn’t like it. Or worse, no comment and no downvote. I think the latter is more likely as while I will downvote things I don’t like, I’ll rarely comment unless I have something substantive to say.

I think one of the main defects in Facebook, Twitter, etc is that there is no downvote, only upvote. So there’s no social norm to signify displeasure so we get into this weird cycle where people only know what works and it’s harder to know what doesn’t work.

I think social medial would be better off if we could distinguish the 1million upvoted content vs the 1million up, 1 million down, net zero content. But social media doesn’t really care about providing great content, they only want content good enough to keep me screaming and clicking.