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

131–140 of 553 posts

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

#131

Post by BitwiseFool »

notriddle wrote: post #66

Has this person even used Reddit? Or StackOverflow? Or even GitHub? I’ve used social platforms with downvote buttons; saying that they make you feel bad and should be removed is like saying that cigarettes should be removed because they smell bad. But to be specific, instead of just using metaphors: * A downvote carries less information than an upvote does. If a feature request gets a lot of upvotes, the voters are s…

>"Downvotes get used for bullying."

Absolutely. This is especially noticeable on the state/city/town subreddits where political partisans consistently dogpile on posts that go against their message.

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by nathanaldensr »

"Society" needs neither downvoting nor upvoting; it's a false dichotomy. What we need is to eliminate social media entirely. People need to get out in the real world and talk to others; that way, each person has to expend real energy to state their opinions one way or the other.

It's easy to hate someone remotely over the internet and even easier to click a vote button, no matter what way the thumb is pointing. What's much harder is participating in physical society.

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

#135

Post by mindcrime »

yoran wrote: post #56

I think Americans don't give enough attention to the bi-party system as an important cause for the current political divide, and increasingly, civil divide. My hypothesis is that a two-party system creates the divide because it encourages such a powerful "us vs them" feeling. I've never seen such disdain or hatred towards people on the other side of the political spectrum as in the US. I'm from continental Europe and…

But I think the root cause is the two-party political system.

I get what you're saying, but I don't completely agree. Firstly because, to the extent that we can say we have a "two party system" that itself is an effect with a deeper cause. And if you buy the theory behind Duverger's Law[1], the fundamental cause is the mechanism we use for elections, with "first past the post" voting in single-member districts.

My second quibble concerns more of the definition of "two party system". Clearly we do not have a "two party system" in the most literal sense, as there are plenty of other political parties in the US, and several of them routinely have candidates elected to office (the Libertarian and Green parties come to mind) albeit mostly at lower levels.

So yes, we have a system where two parties are dominant, but they are not exclusive and I think that difference matters. Why? Because I believe talking about us having a "two party system" creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop further enforcing the Duverger's Law effect and becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

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

#137

Post by at_a_remove »

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.

Curiously, just mentioning the existence of Windows LTSC / Windows LTSB used to get me four to five downvotes as an expected behavior, despite it being relevant to many "I thought Enterprise had more control than thins!" conversations.

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

#138

Post by BitwiseFool »

BEEdwards wrote: post #115
brightball wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The default subs are really toxic, for sure, but it seems like the 'shithole threshold' is a sufficiently large subscriber count. Especially when the subreddit gets the attention of the admins and powermods get pulled in.

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

#139

Post by ttGpN5Nde3pK »

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…

I can see this.

One half-cocked idea I can think of is downvotes require a comment explaining why. Conversationally, "I agree" or "that's correct" requires no follow on conversation. However, "I disagree" or "that's wrong" requires some sort of counter-argument or reason why you disagree. IMO, it does some good in making people explain their position, at least copy/paste another position, or shitpost and then they can deal with their own downvotes.

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

#140

Post by jowsie »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #62
_v7gu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Avoid political threads. Coupled with the new catchphrase "everything is political", this is quite impossible to do.

everything is political Can't stand this phrase that literally came out of nowhere. People will try and justify it with walls of text about the oppressed, blah blah, when it's just an excuse for them to chide you about why you're wrong and why this issue intersects with their politics.

This isn't a new phrase that came out of nowhere, I've seen it in use for a few years now. I believe it became more mainstream with this Ted Talk; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=171flckdKic
Post reply on HN