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)

#91

Post by bena » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

noxToken wrote: post #34

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…

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.

I have a comment on reddit that was both downvoted to nearly -100 and was given gold. I was given the award because the actual information I gave was correct. Which someone mentioned in a reply. It was downvoted because no one liked the answer.

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

#92

Post by jodrellblank » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

NobodyNada wrote: post #47

Macha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry for the confusion, I was referencing how it would be unusual to hear SE staff today talking about why downvoting is an important quality-control feature and how it can be made more useful and more helpful for new users, rather than just condemning downvotes as hostile. In fact, the blog post you linked was at the forefront of my mind as an example of SE staff not "getting it." Stack Overflow's moderation system…

> "In fairness: within the last year or two they finally seem to have hired some staff members who finally get it and are taking steps towards actually fixing the site's moderation problems."

That is such a time frame to choose; right in the middle of it, 1 year 6 months ago, the Monica incident happened[1]. Do you mean before that or after that?

In summary, StackOverflow said they were discussing a code of conduct that would mandate volunteer moderators use someone's preferred pronouns. Monica, a widely respected moderator, asked if she could continue using gender-neutral language under the proposed code of conduct. They kicked her out alledging (incorrectly) that this was a statement of intent to break the rules they hadn't brought in yet. Then 50+ other moderators stood down in protest[2]. Then the company doubled down on their decision and their following silences. This unravelled into a lot of people voicing their discontent with the way the StackExchange company interacts with the volunteer mods and the community, and builds on the back of the ~2019 one-sided changes to try and make the community more welcoming to new users by being harder on the people who are already the community, and how badly that went down, and company employee leaks saying the company is not engaging with the community, and an apparent increase in pushing for money to return to investors rather than any other mission.

Right about the same time, they retrospectively relicensed all questions, answers and comments ever submitted, possibly illegally, and then refused for a long time to comment on it.[3]

[1] https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-... and a related post covering other things the company has done fairly badly ~1 year ago - https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/342950/

[2] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-...

[3] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...

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

#93

Post by causality0 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #44

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…

It's easier to write a bad comment than a good one, so I don't think that downvoting bad comments should be more difficult than it is now. HN software already has little nudges that make it easier to gain karma than to lose it: - You can earn points but never lose them by submitting URLs for discussion. - You can't lose more than 4 points per post, no matter how many times it is downvoted. There is no upper limit to…

Not everything on HN is user-facing. For example, one comment can only sink to -4 points, but further downvotes on that comment still contribute to the user being muted. I've experienced that myself.

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

#94

Post by dmos62 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #72

dang wrote: post #23

Getting 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=…

Those are mostly out of date. Maybe stop self-celebrating past victories, it's not very becoming. ;) Flagging is where HN gets it wrong, IMO. So many slightly controversial and important topics are being removed with this mechanism. We're left with all the vanilla stuff.

> Flagging

Flagging is a problem sometimes. I feel like it's common for a comment to get flagged when someone strongly opposes it. It's really upsetting to see that. Especially since it feels like the flaggers are a small minority, but they're shutting down discussions for everyone.

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

#95

Post by systemvoltage » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #74

I don't know if these are popular opinions or not: 1: I really wish I could downvote Hacker News articles. 2: I really wish there was some friction to downvoting. Perhaps something like choosing among: disagree, factually wrong, mean, incoherent Regarding the downvoting of articles: For awhile I used to see a regular pattern of weird articles on the front page. The discussion would then predictably involve a mod defe…

Reduce the bandwagon effect. People see a slightly gray (0 points) comment and pile up on it without thinking. It affects their view and introduces a subconcious bias.

Just don't grey out comments for 2 hours or so to allow people to vote. It's fine to greyout comments after that.

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

#96

Post by not_knuth » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

Scottopherson wrote: post #75

I don't have the ability to downvote. Is it possible to undo an upvote? I sometimes upvote a comment by accident when viewing HN on mobile.

There should be a clickable "unvote" above the comment if you wish to do so.

Regarding anything else about how Hacker News works, I found this quite useful:

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...

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

#97

Post by DoreenMichele » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #91

noxToken wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a comment on reddit that was both downvoted to nearly -100 and was given gold. I was given the award because the actual information I gave was correct. Which someone mentioned in a reply. It was downvoted because no one liked the answer.

Well, you have my respect. Standing on a thing you know to be correct that gets that much open dislike is not an easy thing to do. Most people likely would have deleted the correct but hated answer long before it accumulated that many downvotes.

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

#98

Post by simias » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #44

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…

It's easier to write a bad comment than a good one, so I don't think that downvoting bad comments should be more difficult than it is now. HN software already has little nudges that make it easier to gain karma than to lose it: - You can earn points but never lose them by submitting URLs for discussion. - You can't lose more than 4 points per post, no matter how many times it is downvoted. There is no upper limit to…

I think downvoting is an anti-pattern because it's a negative interaction, and I think negative interactions shouldn't be encouraged if we value high quality discourse.

If downvoting bad comments (for any definition of bad) was harder or even outright impossible you'd still have an alternative: upvote an other, better comment to have it shadow what you consider a less valuable contribution. And that's a positive interaction.

Whenever I find a comment that I think is on-topic and somewhat constructive, but I still fundamentally disagree with the take, I generally go hunting for a comment that embraces my point of view (or write one myself) and upvote that.

I very rarely downvote comments on this site, and generally only do it for comments that I consider to be completely off topic, flamebait or stupid "meme" references. That being said I do comment quite a bit and I admit that I'm always a bit frustrated when I take the time to write what I consider to be a constructive (if sometimes controversial) comment and I get downvoted reddit-style. It feels disrespectful, almost. I probably care too much about that stuff, I acknowledge that.

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

#99

Post by Blikkentrekker » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #74

I don't know if these are popular opinions or not: 1: I really wish I could downvote Hacker News articles. 2: I really wish there was some friction to downvoting. Perhaps something like choosing among: disagree, factually wrong, mean, incoherent Regarding the downvoting of articles: For awhile I used to see a regular pattern of weird articles on the front page. The discussion would then predictably involve a mod defe…

I rather really wish there was no way at all to vote on comments. — what purpose does it serve?

I very often see the top comment on the page to be a thoughtless one-line that is self-evident, but also not wrong nor easily disagreed with, and thus incurring the most upvotes from simply being quick to read.

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

#100

Post by minimaxir » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #83

dang wrote: post #23

Getting 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=…

HN definitely moves in the proper direction on this one. The ONLY purpose of down votes is to suppress conversation. If, contrarily, a user wished to provide a form of disagreement they would do so with a reply. Why? Because votes are a means of action to express an appeal to agreement/disagreement. I remember pointing this out once on Reddit, before I deleted my account there, and it temporarily changed peoples' beh…

> The ONLY purpose of down votes is to suppress conversation.

This assumes all conversation is equal quality. That particular point has never been true in social media, and has actually become worse post-2016, with increased partisanship and bad faith arguing.

It's impossible to run a high-quality discussion forum without some sort of check on bad behavior. That said, it's up for debate whether downvotes are the best answer to this problem.