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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)

#271

Post by jacobr1 »

prichino wrote: post #239
cryptoz wrote: post #216

I used to read Coding Horror but stopped paying attention to Jeff Atwood after his anti-coding rant. He repeatedly insisted that "learning to code" is a really dumb thing to do unless you intend to make a career out of it. A really shocking opinion that I was surprised to hear from him, and made me lose all respect for his coding-related opinions.

At least he has opinions. The "everyoness must code" folk sometimes do sound like markov-generated text. Funny that you hold his coding opinions in less respect for what is most decidedly a not coding-related opinion. Substitute coding for "advanced mathematics", "investment banking", "nursing". Would you lose respect for a professional nurse's nursing opinions if he said learning to nurse is a really dumb thing to d…

An alternative analogy would be "learning first-aid is a dumb thing to do unless you become a medical professional."

I wouldn't lose respect, but it is a narrow view, and one worthy of debate.

"Programming" is such a powerful tool for everyone to interact with technology and we could do a better job exposing programatic abstractions. Think of how many people use spreadsheets with complex expressions. Is that that not also programming?

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

#272

Post by krapp »

disgrunt wrote: post #264
krapp wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same thing. Hellban is just a less polite term for it.

I've experienced a similar thing on HN. I'm calling it the "insta throttle". I've been met with a "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." message after posting just once.

I have that too. After four or five posts I have to wait an hour.

They'd probably remove it if I asked them, but I find it helps me choose my comments more wisely, or at least make certain the ones I know will be downvoted will be worth it. And being forced to take a break now and then isn't so bad.

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

#273

Post by phpnode »

disgrunt wrote: post #250
cryptoz wrote: post #216

I used to read Coding Horror but stopped paying attention to Jeff Atwood after his anti-coding rant. He repeatedly insisted that "learning to code" is a really dumb thing to do unless you intend to make a career out of it. A really shocking opinion that I was surprised to hear from him, and made me lose all respect for his coding-related opinions.

I have no opinion of Atwood and am unfamiliar with his work. But a single opinion/rant made you lose all respect for a person? I see this sentiment a lot on HN. The fatal opinion minefield.

I saw something earlier today that said (inelegantly paraphrasing)

"developers read articles as if they themselves were a compiler, immediately stopping as soon as they reach a sentence they disagree with and then throwing a syntax error"

I think the same thing applies here

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

#274

Post by DangitBobby »

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 have briefly perused your comments and most of them seem to be interesting contributions. Some of them were definitely downvoted for no real reason AFAICT other than offering up unpopular opinions, and still others appeared to be downvoted for being what I think is a combative tone. You do, in general I think, come across as a bit combative. You have interesting, relevant, and/or factual things to say, maybe consider how what you are saying comes across.

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

#275

Post by type0 »

downandout wrote: post #265
DangitBobby wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit passive aggressive, don't you think, to do drive-by insults of random strangers?

When I first put that up, I actually ended it by saying "Be part of the solution" or something along those lines. Then, as the downvotes kept coming, I came to realize that most of the people checking my profile had just downvoted one of my comments, and were there looking for additional comments to downvote. I have watched the downvotes come in batches, across threads. That's why it has a pretty negative tone.

If you stop making comments with negative tone maybe you will stop getting downvotes.

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

#276

Post by a1369209993 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #258
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 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…

> It would be interesting to see if time-weighting the votes somehow could improve the signal.

Perversely, downvotes aren't available on comments older than 24 hours, but upvotes are, so comments that attract a mixture of up- and down-votes get a strong upward bias on votes they attract after a day (since the upvotes happen and the downvotes don't).

Not sure how relevant that effect is to more short-term issues, though.

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

#277

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

bhupy wrote: post #225
tremon wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagging is for spam, at least that what I use it for. I reserve my downvotes for conversational indecency: bad faith arguments, personal attacks, not acknowledging/engaging the parent post's points.

I'm not sure why spam should be treated any differently than conversational indecency (personal attacks, bad faith arguing); in theory it could all fall under the bucket of "this doesn't belong here", right?

Personally, I flag for blatant rule violations such as comments that are filled with personal attacks or spam.

I will downvote comments that are simply low quality, like comments that merely say "^ This!". I don't usually downvote bad faith arguing because it's hard to prove when someone is arguing in bad faith versus just simply having bad arguments.

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

#278

Post by fortran77 »

type0 wrote: post #261
robocat wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would give no information about the reason someone left: there are a lot of reasons to stop interacting with hn that have nothing to do with the “best people leave in short order” theory.

I know some people just switched to a different account and you would think they left.

Exactly! I change my HN username every now and then.

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

#279

Post by type0 »

a1369209993 wrote: post #276
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It would be interesting to see if time-weighting the votes somehow could improve the signal. Perversely, downvotes aren't available on comments older than 24 hours, but upvotes are, so comments that attract a mixture of up- and down-votes get a strong upward bias on votes they attract after a day (since the upvotes happen and the downvotes don't). Not sure how relevant that effect is to more short-term issues, thou…

It does make the downvotes irrelevant in a way, it only signals strong disagreement which I think it's good to know. But it's not good to interpret the downvotes as correction method for yourself because it only leads to more echochamber.
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