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Ask HN: Downvoting

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Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#41

Post by thomasz »

ColinWright wrote: post #31
jinushaun wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time and time again, Slashdot's voting system shows that it's superior to these simple up/down voting systems. Not all up votes are equal, nor are all down votes simply because you disagree with the content.

I, and I'm sure many others here also, am unfamiliar with SlashDot's system. Could you point to a summary? Perhaps simply edit your comment to include one. Thanks.

"Randomly selected moderators assign points of either −1 or +1 to each comment, based on whether the comment is perceived as either normal, offtopic, insightful, redundant, interesting, or troll (among others)."(Wikipedia)

Interesting approach...

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#42

Post by maresca »

ColinWright wrote: post #40
maresca wrote: post #39

Downvoting is used often for dissenting views nowadays. Personally, I don't care that much if my comments are downvoted. This is just another forum on the internet. I'd rather voice my opinion and get downvoted than not voice my opinion at all. That being said, I'd like to see the downvoting be removed. Go ahead and downvote my comment.

From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In Comments ... Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.

Irony is dead.

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#43

Post by NoItAll »

In the grand scheme of things, why on Earth do you care if an account was down-voted?

Personally, I see this as a bad sign that people in general are very immature and do not have an adult grasp on reality. People who care about getting 'down-voted' frighten me.

Comment trolled perhaps? It's hard to say. ColinWright: are you really this bored with life?

I like to contribute, but really.. I don't care what people thing of my comments, they are just comments on a random website.

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#44

Post by rcfox »

fogus wrote: post #29

Am I missing something? Isn't one way to fix downvoting to make them subtractive for both parties?

I wonder if you're referring to the Stack Overflow decision to do this. They've made several strange modifications to their reputation system since the beginning, and I'm not sure any of them have really added value: paying for downvotes, daily reputation caps, etc.

All of these tweaks to the reputation system are to encourage a certain kind of behaviour, but I'm not sure it's the right kind of behaviour. Does it make sense to stop someone from providing answers when they are clearly good at it?

I find that, for myself, when I cast a downvote on Stack Overflow, I see an opportunity for 9 more free downvotes. (I'm a little OCD about having a score that's divisible by 10.)

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#45

Post by rcfox »

NoItAll wrote: post #43

In the grand scheme of things, why on Earth do you care if an account was down-voted? Personally, I see this as a bad sign that people in general are very immature and do not have an adult grasp on reality. People who care about getting 'down-voted' frighten me. Comment trolled perhaps? It's hard to say. ColinWright: are you really this bored with life? I like to contribute, but really.. I don't care what people thin…

This comment would be more persuasive if it weren't coming from a newly-created account.

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#46

Post by NoItAll »

rcfox wrote: post #45
NoItAll wrote: post #43

In the grand scheme of things, why on Earth do you care if an account was down-voted? Personally, I see this as a bad sign that people in general are very immature and do not have an adult grasp on reality. People who care about getting 'down-voted' frighten me. Comment trolled perhaps? It's hard to say. ColinWright: are you really this bored with life? I like to contribute, but really.. I don't care what people thin…

This comment would be more persuasive if it weren't coming from a newly-created account.

Why on Earth would you say that? Not sure which reality 'newly-created accounts' have any weight, but not among adults.

Please get over yourselves. Such hubris!

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#47

Post by wnight »

ColinWright wrote: post #16
mrvc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does help in sorting, but i'd suggest it sorts by popularity, not by quality as we tend to assume. I don't know about you guys, but I'm here to read interesting perspectives on interesting topics. I don't really care to reaffirm a popular opinion, irrespective of quality or substance.

In that case, why do you care about the voting? You will always get the group-think out-voting the carefully reasoned but unpopular. All you need to do is read - perhaps simply skim - all the comments. Find users whose opinion seems to be worth reading, and then seek out their comments. Removing down-votes won't help the problem you've identified.

The problem is that down-votes have account consequences. They aren't the mirror opposite of an up-vote. Ten upvotes and a post is just popular, ten downvotes and you might get banned.

If moderation was a flag that some people cared about but that left everything intact then people could ignore it if they wanted.

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#48

Post by JoachimSchipper »

wnight wrote: post #47
ColinWright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, why do you care about the voting? You will always get the group-think out-voting the carefully reasoned but unpopular. All you need to do is read - perhaps simply skim - all the comments. Find users whose opinion seems to be worth reading, and then seek out their comments. Removing down-votes won't help the problem you've identified.

The problem is that down-votes have account consequences. They aren't the mirror opposite of an up-vote. Ten upvotes and a post is just popular, ten downvotes and you might get banned. If moderation was a flag that some people cared about but that left everything intact then people could ignore it if they wanted.

Do you think you get banned for the downvotes, or for the comment? I don't think anybody (here) is proposing removing the "flag" button...

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#49

Post by gonehome »

steventruong wrote: post #34
ColinWright wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one way to think about it, based purely on what you've said. I didn't see your comment, so I don't know for sure: Did you say anything unobvious? You quoted from the site that they declared it not to be a production release, and you said "OK - not for me." (I paraphrase) We can easily deduce that, as it's not a production release, then not everyone will want it. Fine. What did your comment really add? It was a…

I can see what you mean and I do understand that vantage point of view. However, I think downvoting something just because it doesn't necessarily add obvious value (which is relative) to the conversation is a mistake. Maybe it's just me but I would think it would make people more hesitant to speak freely just because others may perceive no value from it and getting downvoted as a result. It's very different than down…

It may be a fine line with some fringe comments being downvoted when perhaps they shouldn't be, but without this it spirals out of control pretty quickly and the entire site becomes useless. Look at the transition that happened to Digg and subsequently Reddit.

These were sites that originally had thoughtful or interesting users that would often be more informative then the content link itself (it's currently like this on HN).

It seems for a while the bad comments get downvoted and removed, but once enough of the community is diluted with a critical mass of 'useless' users, bad comments start being upvoted and the site eventually only consists of the same bad one line jokes, completely devoid of content. At this point most of the old users move somewhere else.

Re: Ask HN: Downvoting

#50

Post by hammock »

I ask because following that incident I will no longer be presenting dissenting views here, irrespective of perceived value.

Having a positive points value is more important to you than interesting debate? Boy do you have your priorities backwards. Don't let a downvote stop you from posting your ideas, that's ridiculous.

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