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Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

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

#221

Post by neogodless »

Karellen wrote: post #101
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 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…

> Upvotes, downvotes, they're just fake internet points, they don't mean anything.

I think this should be true to individuals, in regards to the ownership they feel over their online account and the content they create.

But I do not think this is (or should be) true in regards to an online community. Because I think sites like Hacker News and Ars Technica have relatively healthy comment ecosystems, where the content of the comments is valuable and contributes immensely to the store of knowledge these sites contain.

(Notably, Ars Technica has a more obvious, perceivable liberal political bias which I happen to agree with, so I'm sure the value of that community is divided, whereas I think Hacker News is more politically balanced.)

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

#222

Post by detaro »

tomjen3 wrote: post #220
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…

>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…

> 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].

Even if you could objectively review that, HN doesn't have a rule against downvoting for disagreement, pg decided it was acceptable very early on and it hasn't been changed. (although plenty people think it should)

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

#223

Post by Veen »

NeoTar wrote: post #204
Veen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For lots of people around the world the ability to love their partner is a very political thing - homosexuality being illegal in a majority of Africa, and punishable by death in parts of the world.

We could quibble about this, but I don't think that makes their love political. The repression is external to their love of each other, not part of it.

In fact, it would be a diminishment of their love to analyze it purely through a political framework—which is one reason many people don't like "everything is political". It diminishes many of the most important aspects of our lives.

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

#224

Post by Akronymus »

NortySpock wrote: post #160
semireg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m entering grey beard territory, been on HN for years, and I still don’t know what the [-] button does. Is it a downvote? Or does it just collapse the parent so I can read more without clutter? You’d hope downvote UI would be more explicit.

[–] collapses the comment and all children. When logged in, I have upvote buttons on all comments, and I believe downvote buttons are enabled at over a certain amount of karma.

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m... 501 apparently

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

#225

Post by gruez »

at_a_remove wrote: post #137
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Curiously, just mentioning the existence of Windows LTSC / Windows LTSB used to get me four to five downvotes as an expected behavior

Just to be clear, you expect to get downvotes when mentioning LTSB? This does not match my experience, and I also made several LTSB mentions.

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

#226

Post by acituan »

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've got no problem being wrong, 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

It doesn't even need to be 4 accounts. Just a single lazy downvote can be infuriating due to the asymmetry in effort and influence.

The root cause is downvotes having been made into a combination of multiple things; yes it is a shortcut for expressing disagreement, but it is also a metric used for decreasing the salience of a point (e.g. in HN). Imagine how much of history of science, religion, philosophy would be lost if disagreeability of a point alone was a good heuristic for its attention-worthiness.

Additionally, since downvotes are an expression of disagreement, they are just opinions that have privileged representations in the UI, but they can't be disagreed with like other opinions. It does not build dialectic, it kills it by not allowing responses.

Ultimately we are trying to dynamically build a model of at least attention and content value based on collective intelligence that can articulate on 2 dimensions.

My humble proposal would be double the size of dimensions; have up-down votes for dis-agreement, which require justification, which can be responded to, and back-fore votes for salience dynamics, i.e. foreground if "I think more people should read this" and background if "I think people shouldn't waste time on this idea".

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

#227

Post by Shish2k »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #175
brightball wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably not popular, but I always thought that Slashdot had the best voting system for comments or was at least on the right track.

I used to think that, but /. comments devolved into dumb jokes around 2003-2005. Which I think is the main reason that hn down votes jokes so aggressively. I do like the meta-moderator system. however, without holding back mod points to begin with there is no incentive to do it.

I haven’t visited /. for years so maybe out of date, but IIRC this was largely helped by separating voting from type - so even if a comment gets a lot of upvotes for being funny, my personal settings of “ignore funny comments” means I still get a decently high-quality signal, which is something I’ve not seen anywhere else

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

#228

Post by minikites »

Veen wrote: post #192
minikites wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was the art you're enjoying created in a vacuum? Art is often extremely political.

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

#229

Post by gruez »

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…

>My hypothesis is that a two-party system creates the divide because it encourages such a powerful "us vs them" feeling.

any more than a >2 party system?

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

#230

Post by at_a_remove »

gruez wrote: post #225
at_a_remove wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Curiously, just mentioning the existence of Windows LTSC / Windows LTSB used to get me four to five downvotes as an expected behavior Just to be clear, you expect to get downvotes when mentioning LTSB? This does not match my experience, and I also made several LTSB mentions.

Well, my comment is already at -1, so yes.
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