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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

#211

Post by nescioquid »

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…

> a two-party system creates the divide because it encourages such a powerful "us vs them" feeling

I agree, but that's just the punch-and-judy show. The real disaffection stems from seeing how the incentives of politicians are reliably not aligned with their nominal constituents.

We have legal precedent establishing money as speech, and a steep hill to climb for any third party to win the prerogatives which the two major US parties enjoy, like automatically getting your candidate on the ballot in all 50 states in federal elections.

I decided some time ago to never cast a vote for either of these two parties again. Even speaking with people who decry the bankrupt nature of these parties, they still view casting a vote for a third party as throwing their vote away.

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

#213

Post by neogodless »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #195
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 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 o…

I agree with @dahart.

The political threads were a special beast, where any comment that revealed your political leanings would get a deluge of downvotes from the opposition. The Tesla and Apple threads sometimes get a bit of this too. But the vast majority of my experience is that the downvotes I've received were well-deserved. Maybe I was just misinformed and propagating misinformation. Maybe I was trying and failing to be funny - and thus didn't contribute to the conversation or cultivate curiosity.

Low effort / incorrect comments don't bother me a great deal. Usually someone else comes along and downvotes those. If it's a thoughtful comment that I disagree with, I'll attempt to engage, if I think there's some value in putting the effort in.

With experience, you do get a feel for when comments just are not worth bothering with. If they are low effort / failing to contribute, downvote and move on with your life.

A community is very much the sum of the contributors, with spirit that stems from the guidelines and moderation. Without individuals putting something in, something more than what detractors try to take away, it couldn't exist and thrive.

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

#214

Post by croes »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #195
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 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 o…

One problem on HN is, that downvotes aren't limited to the comment but include the commenter.

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

#215

Post by Pxtl »

hashkb wrote: post #208
Pxtl wrote: post #176

I've noticed a difference between downvoting and non-downvoting discussions systems. In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion. Note that this isn't "the truth" or "the consensus of the community" but of the people engaged on the subject. For example, if you see an otherwise-liberal community discussing gun-rights, the gun owners within that community…

But with downvotes, we ensure that only popular opinions get visibility, defeating the entire purpose of sharing ideas within a community.

When the unpopular opinions are things like "COVID is just the flu" and "climate change is fake", both of which have a substantial contingent that will support them, those ideas getting downvoted into oblivion is not a bad outcome.

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

#216

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

My mental model of downvote systems is that systems without them allow more diverse thoughts.

Imagine a topic where everyone feels compelled to vote, skewed about 51% to 49%. Without downvotes, your top comments are going to be a mix of both sides. Opinions are about 50-50 and comments will look like that. It will feel frustrating, like in the article, because you see about half of these posts from those evil Others, and have no way to disagree aside from commenting.

With downvotes, the 51% side’s score becomes 51-49=+2, and the 49% side’s score becomes 49-51=-2; below a never-read comment at zero! All the top comments are from the (slim) majority, making it feel like a strong consensus, when it isn’t. It will feel better to that 51%. Who knows what the 49% will do. Leave?

Of course it’s never exactly as straightforward as that, but that’s the tendency. I like systems without downvotes because what you’re likely to see more proportionally reflects the diversity of opinions of the others on the site.

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

#217

Post by hashkb »

Pxtl wrote: post #215
hashkb wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with downvotes, we ensure that only popular opinions get visibility, defeating the entire purpose of sharing ideas within a community.

When the unpopular opinions are things like "COVID is just the flu" and "climate change is fake", both of which have a substantial contingent that will support them, those ideas getting downvoted into oblivion is not a bad outcome.

Sure. But it's a double edged sword. "You should wear your mask" is getting downvoted (edit: I'm using the term loosely here, I hope it tracks) across the country and responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. We need to engage with ideas we don't like, and be open to persuasion. Downvotes preclude that.

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

#218

Post by nindalf »

wutbrodo wrote: post #196
nindalf wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 safeguard…

Imagine thinking your comments are so influential that a mere mention from you will cause a massive influx of crass HN-ers into your beloved subreddits.

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

#220

Post by tomjen3 »

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…

>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?

If you write a comment that is against what the majority of the site beliefs you will be downvoted. If you agree with the majority you probably won't have experienced this.

I know that if I make a comment that is positive of bitcoin it will get to -3 or -4 in a very short time and then in a few days it will get to +2 or +3.

I don't know that it is a specific group of people who do that, but it is consistent enough that I can pretty much count on it happening every time, and clearly since it earned more upvotes than downvotes the community did consider the comment somewhat valuable.

Granted you get hammered much harder on r/politics or r/news, but the problem is the same.

The solution is also pretty obvious: randomly review downvoted comments and if they are downvoted for disagreement and not merrit, ban the people who downvoted it from future voting. For new users shadow the votes for a while to be sure they understand the community[0].

[0]: No democracy permits people to move there and vote right away. For native born citizens they have to wait 18 years to get the vote.

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