The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009) • Hacker News Board

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#11

Post by motohagiography » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

> The advantage of this system is that nobody gets downvoted, but at a steep cost: we’ve lost half the potential information.

A Mr. Claude Shannon would like a word. I joke, but when you have controls on voting rings and co-ordination, downvotes are necessarily noisier. An upvote is effectively neutral engagement with the content, where a downvote actively reduces engagement. From the perspective of wanting to mine the constructive engagement out of the collective minds of the audience, downvotes are about as meaningful and information dense as a fire alarm.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#12

Post by seba_dos1 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

NobodyNada wrote: post #3

(2009), by Jeff Atwood. I would have been very surprised to hear today's Stack Overflow staff talking about the value of downvoting. Atwood's experience with downvoting on Hacker News is definitely a bit dated as well: > (update: Apparently it is possible to downvote comments, which I never realized. It is buried in the faq) > (I apologize for my misunderstanding, but there’s no visible UI for downvoting, and I can’t…

> there’s no visible UI for downvoting

For you. I see two arrows - one for upvoting and one for downvoting - next to every comment in this thread.

[edit] Haha, somehow missed that this was a quote from the article, sorry :D

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#13

Post by ericmay » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

I really like downvoting where you lose one of your past upvotes in order to downvote. It's a nice little filter that people who care about how many upvotes they have won't use, and puts an end to some amount of frivolous downvoting.

In a meta way, you kind of have to use a little bit of your own point capital to downvote something, so if you're highly upvoted by the community then calling BS on something is easier for you and the risk taking for doing so makes more sense, versus someone who just signed up.

I also wonder, for a site like hacker news what's the point of even showing the user the # of upvotes they've obtained?

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#14

Post by robbyking » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

elhudy wrote: post #8

The glaring issue in this article (which I couldn't bring myself to finish) is that he equates downvoting to "evil or incorrect post(s)". Which would be true in an ideal world, but the reality becomes downvotes are equivalent to "I disagree with you". If plentiful downvoting is allowed, discourse becomes a popularity contest. Fortunately most of the experienced users here seem to understand this and reserve their dow…

I moderate a reddit community with ~200k subscribers, and I really wish I could disable downvoting. Automod takes care of most posts that violate our community rules, and I usually catch the ones that slip past within an hour or so.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, quality posts are almost always downvoted immediately. (I assume it's by self-promoters hoping that it will cause their content to rise in the rankings.)

Hiding posts scores has helped with bandwagoning, but I wish the two options were "upvote" and "report to mods."

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#15

Post by germinalphrase » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #10

Interesting, making downvotes costly seems like a good system. Though downvotes seem to work pretty well as-is for HN, I rarely see dead comments that were killed by downvotes rather than anti-spam features. If we take HN as reddit 2.0, what would be HN 2.0 I wonder? If I were the one to make it I'd create a system to promote the comments of people with professional expertise on the subject being discussed. HN has mo…

“one its major flaws is that people speak authoritatively about things they don't know about”

See: any thread about aeronautics, education, or (historical) warfare.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#16

Post by ameister14 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

I think one obvious problem with downvoting where downvotes automatically hide content is that it creates echo chambers. The downvote button is definitely a 'disagree' button here and I think it's not really conducive to great discussions.

Then again, this isn't really a forum - it's transitory comments about the news of the day. Perhaps the argument is that there shouldn't be substantive discussion here in the first place. You're clearly meant to respond to the article more than the individual comment - the tree style commenting system and automatically hidden nature of comments down the chain both speak to that.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#17

Post by Hnrobert42 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #2

The title should say that this was 2009. And I think that HN has held up pretty well over the years.

I noticed the pub date when the author says that maybe HN gets away without downvotes because HN is young, founded in 2007. I am glad the author turned out to be wrong.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#18

Post by zests » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

seba_dos1 wrote: post #12

NobodyNada wrote: post #3

(2009), by Jeff Atwood. I would have been very surprised to hear today's Stack Overflow staff talking about the value of downvoting. Atwood's experience with downvoting on Hacker News is definitely a bit dated as well: > (update: Apparently it is possible to downvote comments, which I never realized. It is buried in the faq) > (I apologize for my misunderstanding, but there’s no visible UI for downvoting, and I can’t…

> there’s no visible UI for downvoting For you. I see two arrows - one for upvoting and one for downvoting - next to every comment in this thread. [edit] Haha, somehow missed that this was a quote from the article, sorry :D

Except this one :)

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#19

Post by jerrac » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

I initially loved the idea of voting posts up and down. Thanks to seeing how it actually works on SO and here, well, I am not much of a fan anymore.

At the very least, if I ever implemented it myself, I'd require that people explain why they are voting up, or voting down, before they could vote. And I'd not limit users from being able to vote until they magically get to the right amount of "karma".

Without requiring an explanation, votes are more akin to boos and cheers than anything useful. Not a very good way to encourage a diverse culture.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#20

Post by Macha » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

NobodyNada wrote: post #3

(2009), by Jeff Atwood. I would have been very surprised to hear today's Stack Overflow staff talking about the value of downvoting. Atwood's experience with downvoting on Hacker News is definitely a bit dated as well: > (update: Apparently it is possible to downvote comments, which I never realized. It is buried in the faq) > (I apologize for my misunderstanding, but there’s no visible UI for downvoting, and I can’t…

You might be surprised: https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-ve...

There's been a couple of blog posts from the SE staff trying to move the needle on how close/downvote happy the community is.