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Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

theapeiron.co.uk

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

#191

Post by foobarbecue »

not_jd_salinger wrote: post #185
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…

edit: this comment initially made claims that it looked like HN was removing climate change related content from the front page. I still believe this to be the case, but don't really have strong enough evidence to back it up. I'll wait until I have something more convincing before posting about this again. Who knows, maybe I am just paranoid.

Things generally don't stay on the front page for long. Your claim sounds pretty paranoid.

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

#192

Post by Veen »

minikites wrote: post #121
JohnWhigham wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Name a subject or domain that involves people which isn't "political".

My love of my partner and my nephews and nieces. My enjoyment of art. My appreciation of the natural world. You can do a political analysis of those things, but they are not intrinsically political. Of course, some on the left believe that there is nothing that isn't political. But I don't think they're correct.

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

#193

Post by avel »

mindcrime wrote: post #155
Karellen wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If downvotes don't matter Votes don't matter. Upvotes, downvotes, they're just fake internet points, they don't mean anything. Don't sweat it. Some of my most upvoted posts/comments in various fora over the web have been quick low-effort in-joke references, or throwaway gags, whereas my carefully nuanced and referenced technical explanations have got a handful of upvotes. They're totally arbitrary, and the crowd is…

Some of my most upvoted posts/comments in various fora over the web have been quick low-effort in-joke references, or throwaway gags, whereas my carefully nuanced and referenced technical explanations have got a handful of upvotes. They're totally arbitrary, and the crowd is fickle. This is one of the more frustrating parts of the whole thing. I try not to care much about votes, but when a "throwaway comment" gets 50…

But _why_ does it feel kind of grating? Why does it frustate you? Again -- votes don't matter. I absolutely love the parent post for making it so plain.

Moreover, why do you only care about the downvotes? Why don't upvotes bother you? Something to think about :)

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

#194

Post by spywaregorilla »

rijoja wrote: post #168
spywaregorilla wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Tangential but whenever I read something like this, and people do post them a lot, I tend to assume they're actually normal, sensitive people who have learned that not showing any sign of harm means…

The scientific process leaves no room for emotions what so ever. Errors in the scientific process could have devastating results. If you can not separate your emotional well beings from the truth go and do something where your feelings are of no consequence.

If you can't separate "separating emotional well being from the truth" and "acknowledging you have emotions" you should go and take a vacation.

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

#195

Post by squeaky-clean »

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…

I agree with the GP commenter. It's not about everyone being against you. All it takes is just a couple people, or even one.

I don't particularly care about downvotes myself. But the lazy and incorrect drive-by responses, the ones where you can tell the responder did not even read your full comment... Those just really get to me. Enough to upset my whole day and making it so I have to put effort into not ruminating on it.

Should I care less? Definitely. But that's not so easy for me. So more than half the time on HN I'll write a full comment, read it back, and then decide not to post it because it's not worth whatever incorrect response it will get. I don't comment on Reddit at all anymore because it's not worth it.

I've been waffling on whether or not it's even worth posting this comment, haha.

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

#196

Post by wutbrodo »

nindalf wrote: post #156
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…

Look, for what it's worth I agree. In my experience, HN is welcoming of my viewpoints. My karma is over 9000, so I'm not worried if a few comments get downvoted. But that still doesn't invalidate what GP was saying. They perceive a difficulty in contributing to the conversation because they're afraid of being downvoted. You're telling them not to worry and that they'll be fine ... but it's still a legitimate concern…

> TFA does some handwaving about how it'll save democracy, but it's a crock of shit. All it does is make fewer people participate. crazy_horse tried to tell you that. The solution to saving democracy isn't reducing participation.

I don't see that this follows. Limiting participation is not just compatible with democratic systems, it's crucial. Democracy-the-system (the thing being "saved") has long built in safeguards against untempered application of democracy-the-concept. Constitutions, "upper houses", multi-branch government, representative democracy itself: the idea that the untempered whims of the masses are not a stable basis for govt is practically foundational to democratic systems.

Downvotes are even more egalitarian than the proxies that eg govt uses to temper pure democracy. This can make them a double-edged sword: they deter bad actors from causing disproportionate damage to a community (eg a troll starting a flamewar has a sizable blast radius), but they do so by the standards of the community. If the community's norms are "bad" by your definition, then deterring deviation from them is a bad thing. But there's no axiomatic basis for defining what "good" norms are, and the community's views (via downvotes) is a principled mechanism (again, the principle behind democracy).

IMO, the lack of any accountability feedback loop in downvotes alone means that it's a tough sole basis for a healthy community. The best fora I've been on have been on Reddit[1], combining the presence of downvotes with the "constitutional" approach of clearly-defined conversational norms (primarily civility and intellectual charity) and rigorous enforcement.

[1] I have a rule of not naming this family of subreddits on HN or other fora, because maintaining the community quality is a delicate balance and the average HNer would both find it attractive and utterly ruin it in large enough numbers.

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

#197

Post by godshatter »

I greatly dislike downvoting. Fundamentally, in my opinion, it's an act of censorship. Especially on sites that ultimately hide that information after a certain threshold, as HN does. It's no different in my mind than turning your nose up at someone or trying to talk over someone in a real-life conversation (assuming those still happen). I would much rather upvote the good comments, so that they rise to the top. I probably spend half my upvotes on this forum and others to undo what I consider to be unfair downvotes. If there is a comment I don't like and it bothers me, then it's better for me to reply to it rather than just signal my disapproval at it.

The only time I would downvote personally is for something like spam, and I rarely even do that.

I just think it's better all around to be positive instead of negative.

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

#198

Post by wutbrodo »

not_jd_salinger wrote: post #185
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…

edit: this comment initially made claims that it looked like HN was removing climate change related content from the front page. I still believe this to be the case, but don't really have strong enough evidence to back it up. I'll wait until I have something more convincing before posting about this again. Who knows, maybe I am just paranoid.

Do you have any examples of downvote-bombing simple claims that climate change is real? I'd be beyond surprised to find out this phenomenon is real, even just based on the demographic prior of HN.

No worries if not, I get that it's not a trivial ask to dig up an example.

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

#199

Post by Workaccount2 »

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 don't think downvotes are the problem.

I think the problem largely comes from the echo-chamberization of platforms. The people who would normally upvote your honest good faith against the grain take are no longer on the platform, because the reigning ideology pushed them out. That doesn't mean you are necessarily ideologically aligned with these people, reality is much more nuanced then black and white.

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

#200

Post by howaboutnope »

underseacables wrote: post #146
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 this is more about your ego. Not to be glib, but if you have written out a thoughtful statement, who cares if it gets downvoted? You can’t control how other people are going to react, and getting upset that you lack that control, takes away from your arguments and makes it about you. How do you respond when colleagues or students disagree? Perhaps working in academia so long has given you a false sense…

A downvote is not "disagreeing". It doesn't require the downvoter to be able to justify their action, they can just do it, and it is closer to violence than to communication.
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