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

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

#251

Post by type0 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #180
dmos62 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> controversy that has little value or importance to this site What do you mean by "this site"? The participants in this forum are the site. I've had discussions flagged that I thought to be valuable. Why would you want to get rid of controversy anyway? Do you want to discuss only popular old hat things? Stability under diversity is a sign of health in an ecosystem.

> Stability under diversity is a sign of health in an ecosystem. And yet part of that diversity is that ecosystem has different niches :). You can discuss politics, sports and controversy anywhere else on the Internet. HN has a different focus, and many of us (myself included) would like to keep it that way - because that's literally the basis for the whole value of this place.

> HN has a different focus,

This needs to be expressed more often, too bad often people do write that but not in a friendly way and some threads go on with countless bickering.

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

#252

Post by downandout »

ascar wrote: post #241
downandout wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's an honest assessment of the current state of HN.

I remember you because of the about me. I was reading a somewhat controversial comment from you and then visited your account page probably to check for sibling comments in the same post. Your about me definitely changed how I feel about your comments and probably the source of your recent experience.

My about me is based upon my experience here over the last few years. I updated it at some point in the last 6 months, long after all this started. So it is a symptom of my experience here, not a cause.

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

#253

Post by klyrs »

CDRdude wrote: post #102
benlivengood wrote: post #40

I'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. Fo…

I think slashdot’s voting system was well equipped to avoid that problem, but they faded anyway. Maybe it was the redesign? I think many of their innovations in 1999 would go a long way to resolve political downvoting today—-new accounts were unable to vote on comments, you were unable to vote and comment in the same posts, metamoderation to ensure fairness, and up or downvotes having to fit categories like ‘insightf…

I dunno about everybody else, but there were about 15 years where every single story had several trolls commenting purely for the purpose of dropping a racial slur. Meta-moderate for long enough, and you could occasionally earn 5 karma, which could easily get blown on downvoting stupid shit from a single story. It was a cesspool, and I think a lot of people left because of that.

They started a really good thing with the user moderation, I think meta-moderation and the vote-category dropdown are very smart, but they locked it down too hard and moderation was largely ineffective.

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

#254

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

ascar wrote: post #223
ipband wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just downvoting that makes HN strong, it's IP banning. Right now I'm commenting via a new user I created via my work VPN, because nothing on my home network is allowed to create new users on HN now or effectively comment, since I always did so using temporary accounts. I'm getting so much more done, so- thanks, HN!

Are static ips a common thing in the US? Here in Germany getting a fresh ip is as easy as restarting the router unless you explicitly pay for a static ip.

Depends on the ISP.

For some people, simply rebooting their router gets a new IP. Others have to explicitly tell it to release the IP and then renew it. Others have to change their router's MAC address.

I know that personally, if I release it and renew it, I'll get assigned the same IP. Though my IP is technically dynamic, it hasn't changed in the 5 years I've been in this house. I haven't tried changing my MAC address, but with a previous ISP, I had changed my router's MAC and it wouldn't even get an IP at all until I changed it back. Makes me wonder what would happen if I had changed it to the MAC of a router being used by another customer...

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

#255

Post by benlivengood »

downandout wrote: post #214
0xEFF wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Down voted you because of your about me.

I believe it's an honest assessment of the current state of HN.

I think you're using an overly broad brush. For example, you still feel it's worthwhile to comment sometimes which implies that there are bastions of useful content, which you don't list. I'm sure we disagree on things, which limits the extent of groupthink.

Beyond that, there's the relative difference between HN and places like 4chan. Nuance is helpful.

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

#256

Post by FooHentai »

ascar wrote: post #229
TheManInThePub wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I couldn't agree with this more. I've seen intelligent and insightful HN posts down voted simply because they went against the status-quo. If this is allowed to go on, people will be afraid of making controversial (but intelligent) posts, and this place will become another reddit.

> I've seen intelligent and insightful HN posts down voted simply because they went against the status-quo The best thing to do here is for the community to step in and actively up-vote unfairly downvoted comments.

I try and do that but often the comment is full dead and can’t be upvoted.

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

#257

Post by ergot_vacation »

Belief in Downvoting seems to be an artifact of idealistic naivete (that I used to have as well), in the same way as enthusiastic, unquestioning belief in the writings of Ayn Rand, Karl Marx etc (not calling anyone out, everyone was a teenager once). Downvotes SEEM good on paper. In the real world, they're garbage because they're never used as intended.

Nearly every implementation of downvotes assumes they will be used as a way for ordinary users to moderate bad content, and that this power will not be abused. The reality is that we've known mob rule was a terrible idea since at least the Enlightenment era, and probably much earlier. But apparently we need to keep re-discovering it.

There is a certain kind of person that mostly likes to attack and destroy, in any given situation. Not for any good reason, but simply because they like conflict. Give them a downvote, and they'll latch on to it and destroy communities. Give them only an upvote and they'll lose interest and go cause problems somewhere else.

Moderation is for moderators. Users cannot, and should not, be trusted with it.

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

#258

Post by PragmaticPulp »

TheManInThePub wrote: post #135
CDRdude wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think slashdot’s voting system was well equipped to avoid that problem, but they faded anyway. Maybe it was the redesign? I think many of their innovations in 1999 would go a long way to resolve political downvoting today—-new accounts were unable to vote on comments, you were unable to vote and comment in the same posts, metamoderation to ensure fairness, and up or downvotes having to fit categories like ‘insightf…

Frankly, I couldn't agree with this more. I've seen intelligent and insightful HN posts down voted simply because they went against the status-quo. If this is allowed to go on, people will be afraid of making controversial (but intelligent) posts, and this place will become another reddit.

I've noticed that when I comment against the status quo, my comments quickly dip to -2 or lower from rapid fire downvotes, then slowly tick upward into positive territory over time as the more patient readers come through.

It would be interesting to see if time-weighting the votes somehow could improve the signal. Maybe give less weight to someone who rapid-fire downvotes comments faster than they could possibly read them?

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

#259

Post by DoreenMichele »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #247
DoreenMichele wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people have simply changed their handle and that likely wouldn't be obvious from the public data set either. My old handle has 25k. It has been inactive since I moved to this one.

Curious, why did you create a new account?

My old handle unfortunately and innocently looks like (or can be interpreted as) "I'm just here to start shit!" It did not occur to me it might be misinterpreted a certain way until six weeks after I started it and I didn't think it important at that point. As I gained more karma, I did a blog post at some point explaining the completely innocent origin story for it (typo and all). After I hit the leaderboard, I decided, basically, "Oh, brother. This is so not worth the hassle involved. Yeesh." And changed to my actual first and middle names.

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

#260

Post by benlivengood »

downandout wrote: post #210
burnished wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some of your views that you think have become unpopular over time?

I don't actually know. I am who I am, and have been responding to things in the same way since I arrived on the site. I took a lot of flack for criticizing GDPR, which I agree with in principle but believe was very poorly implemented. Also people seem to have confused me for a Trump supporter, even though I am middle-of-the-road politically - which is why I suspect that I get many automatic downvotes regardless of th…

> I try to call things as I see them, and any criticism of left-leaning principles/programs/policies on here - even the most misguided ones - tends to meet with instant, harsh rebuke.

Something to consider; is it a harsh rebuke or just other people calling it as they see it?

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