Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

theapeiron.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 553 posts

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#111

Post by Tenoke »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #93
dahart wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have a lot more fear and assumption than experience here. In reality, crazy unfair downvote bombing is not even close to the norm here in my ~decade of experience. What makes you certain that someone with multiple accounts has downvoted you? Are you sure you weren’t just wrong and didn’t know it? I’ve been wrong in good faith and gotten fairly downvoted for it far, far more often than I’ve been unf…

I think the downvote brigading is getting more frequent. Just look at the recent threads where a submission was flagged and you will see a ton of them. Unfortunately, HN isn't showing the data behind quantities but due to the oscillations we see, there are definitely significant amounts of downvoting occuring.

Submission flagging is the main place it happens and I personally wish HN will not treat flagging as downvotes, or would just call it downvotes, or would have some sort of penalty for obvious cases of mis-flagging.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#113

Post by epistasis »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #92
crazy_horse wrote: post #21

I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…

Given that many of his public posts are devoted to ranting against conformity of thought, it's amusing that pg designed a forum that rewards exactly that behavior.

I don't think I agree at all.

Some of my favorite comments I've made here are the ones that get downvoted. They point me to places where one of several interesting scenarios has occurred, such as, but not limited to:

1) I'm right, other people have not yet realized it and the way I'm expressing it doesn't make it clear that there's a good argument there. This is a fantastic opportunity.

2) I'm wrong about something, and haven't yet realized how. This is extremely valuable information because my own cognitive biases mean that it's difficult for me to discover through introspection.

3) lots of other possibilities too!

When I stumble upon making a comment that gets unexpected downvotes, I have come across some of the most valuable information HN can give me.

If I make a comment that I know will get lots of downvotes, I'm just wasting everybody's time. If I share something interesting that I think will get lots of upvotes, I may give some good information to others, but otherwise I'm mostly validating myself, which isn't a great use of my time.

But most of the time I'm not commenting with any thoughts to votes, it's just about discussion. The votes just serves as a standin for body language that we'd get if we were talking face to face.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#114

Post by intrasight »

What's the context of this "bring back". I only engage in public discussions on Reddit and HN and both have downvotes. And I'm not going to read the article just to try to figure out what platform he's referring to. Is there a platform that had downvotes and then subsequently the feature was removed?

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#115

Post by BEEdwards »

brightball wrote: post #108
dahart wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have a lot more fear and assumption than experience here. In reality, crazy unfair downvote bombing is not even close to the norm here in my ~decade of experience. What makes you certain that someone with multiple accounts has downvoted you? Are you sure you weren’t just wrong and didn’t know it? I’ve been wrong in good faith and gotten fairly downvoted for it far, far more often than I’ve been unf…

Agreed. It’s very out of the norm on HN. On Reddit though, it’s the standard.

In the default subs sure, but if you're subscribed to those shitholes you get what you get.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#116

Post by mindcrime »

Vis-à-vis HN and the discussion of down-voting here specifically:

There are definitely times when the down-voting is pathetically petty and inane. One of the most glaring examples I've noticed is this: any time somebody makes a post asking for book recommendations in any form (eg, "What's a book that influenced you?" or "What books do you recommend for $REASON?", or however they choose to phrase it), no matter what the rest of the content of your response is, IF you include anything by Ayn Rand you will get down-voted.

That's it... just mentioning an Ayn Rand book like The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged will provoke some people to downvote you. You could scarcely get more petty and ridiculous if you tried.

It's not like I'm even talking about overtly political threads, or a comment that specifically endorses Rand or her philosophy / ideology / etc. That I could (almost) understand the occasional downvote at least, just because her stuff is moderately controversial in some circles.

But to think that merely having the audacity to include a certain author's books on a list is reason to downvote a comment? And it wouldn't matter if it were Rand or anybody, the fundamental point is the same. It's one thing to dislike an author, but "C'mon, man..." as they say.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#117

Post by em-bee »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #47

One problem with downvotes, at least the way they are implemented in reddit and HN, is that they cancel out upvotes. You are not able to see how many upvotes a post got, only how many upvotes minus downvotes.

very much this. i would really like to see the actual number of up and downvotes on a post.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#118

Post by peoplefromibiza »

CharlesW wrote: post #41
crazy_horse wrote: post #21

I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…

> If downvotes don't matter… They clearly do, to you. I understand that upvotes-only systems are more compatible with your ego, but if I were to downvote this it would be because you don't have a persuasive argument for why an upvotes-only feedback system (which can also be easily gamed) is any better than one which supports both.

> I understand that upvotes-only systems are more compatible with your ego,

This is criticism, IMO it's stupid criticism that should deserve a downvote, but you still wasted time to write it and it's ok, according to OP view of things, you responded to his words with some ad hominem attack, it's pointless and dumb in my opinion, but you put in the effort to respond and presented your arguments.

Compare it to the blind downvoting, you get downvoted, with no reasoning, not knowing who did it and if you get 4 of them your comment gets hidden.

Just 4.

I much prefer your ad hominems to hypotetical perfectly valid downvotes.

At least now people can form an opinion on what you wrote.

With downvotes people just assume that the comment was worthless or worse.

What if you had to reply to the comment before being able to downvote it?

It would at least be a bit less anonymous.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#119

Post by antattack »

dahart wrote: post #89
crazy_horse wrote: post #21

I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…

It sounds like you have a lot more fear and assumption than experience here. In reality, crazy unfair downvote bombing is not even close to the norm here in my ~decade of experience. What makes you certain that someone with multiple accounts has downvoted you? Are you sure you weren’t just wrong and didn’t know it? I’ve been wrong in good faith and gotten fairly downvoted for it far, far more often than I’ve been unf…

Ideological issues get people to use downvote. Technical discourse is more civilized, upvotes are more likely than downvotes.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#120

Post by fidesomnes »

crazy_horse wrote: post #21

I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…

> but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to respond to something in good faith and then someone comes along with their four accounts and downvotes every comment I got because I'm not sufficiently ideological, it's fucking stupid

welcome to HN, enjoy your stay!

Post reply on HN