I assume that Jeff has changed his mind on this because Discourse does not have down-votes (with the caveat that Discourse has a different audience from HN). I wonder what made the difference?
The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
31–40 of 475 posts
Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#32The 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 ranking…
>"...upvote and report to mods."
This to me seems like the best approach.
Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#33Interesting, 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…
I think if people want the next level of quality on technical discussion, there needs to be a gatekeeping mechanism which is concerned with technical competency. I would also expect such a place to have a magnitude or two fewer people.
You would need to provide professional indemnity insurance cover. Most policies likely don’t cover advising the whole internet.
Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#34The 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…
Downvoting can also have a snowball effect. If someone disagrees with you, especially in a contested topic where it's opinion or unclear who is correct, downvotes signal other people to also downvote. You can see the effect on Reddit.
Comments that hit -1 can still recover. Comments rarely recover after -3 or so. The only counter is for the commenter to edit and call out readers for frivolous downvoting.
Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#35Interesting, 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…
>making downvotes costly seems like a good system
Habr.com makes both up and downvotes costly, and they have an evolved system checks and balances. The best I´ve seen. They can even fight off Kremlin bots successfully, this is major feat in their region/language of choice.
Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#36Interesting, 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…
I think if people want the next level of quality on technical discussion, there needs to be a gatekeeping mechanism which is concerned with technical competency. I would also expect such a place to have a magnitude or two fewer people.
I've tried that in my own community but it's a real struggle because in my experience newbies drive the conversation much more than pros so in my case gatekeeping was creating a silent community of highly skilled lurkers.
With no gatekeeping, there's lots of activity and pros feel like participating once in a while with deep discussions sparked from seemingly simple questions, but on the other hand a lot of pros feel alienated and leave if the average level of competency is too low.
I've been toying with the idea of pro:newbie ratios but haven't implemented anything yet.
Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#37I 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…
Yeah, I really wish that HN required you to comment in order to downvote. Or even just required that a comment had replies before it could be downvoted; I don't care so much that every single person justifies their downvote as that the person getting downvoted gets an explanation.
Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#38Getting it wrong for 12 years now: The Value of Downvoting, Or, How Hacker News Gets It Wrong (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25633668 - Jan 2021 (1 comment) 10 Years In, Was He Right? “Value of Downvoting; How HN Gets It Wrong” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23409231 - June 2020 (1 comment) The Value of Downvoting, or, How Hacker News Gets It Wrong (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…
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Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#39Interesting, 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.
... and machine learning and medical research and ...
Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)
#40I've been through several forum deaths. The cause is usually large growth from people with very different mindsets that downvote for essentially political reasons instead of encouraging good discourse. This makes the best people leave in short order.
In a sense there's no way to structure a forum to avoid this. Being outnumbered by people who don't value open communication is unpleasant with or without downvoting. Forums that are highly specific to a small audience can last a long time. Popularity is the death-knell.