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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

#231

Post by kbelder »

crb3 wrote: post #154
city41 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main issue with downvotes is they are almost always used incorrectly. Including here at HN. They are not meant to be an "agree/disagree" button, but rather a way to filter out content that is not relevant to the discussion at hand. Disagreeing does not mean it is irrelevant, especially if it is well written and in good faith. We should allow all viewpoints that are put forward with proper intentions. Upvotes are e…

Maybe what's needed is explicit Agree and Disagree buttons, with indicators, to skim off such pollution of up/downvotes-as-QC?

That would be an interesting experiment. Make it a 2D axis... Agree Disagree, and Low Quality High Quality. Only allow voting on one of the options.

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

#232

Post by sebringj »

In my experience of HN and StackOverflow, at first, I did not like people downvoting my naive or thoughtless comments. Throughout the years, my reputation on StackOverflow grew and a little bit on HN since the bar is so much higher seems... but in any case, this has been a learning journey in being a more thoughtful and respectful contributor and without those downvotes, I wouldn't have had the self reflection to be better, as trivial as that may sound.

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

#233

Post by shoemakersteve »

dmpk2k wrote: post #172
minikites wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Me taking a shit? :)

Is it right for you be taxed for using the sewer system? What are the environmental impacts of the massive scale of human shit having to be processed in treatment plants? Why does the government prevent me from shitting wherever I want, infringing on my freedom? First they take away your rights to shit on your neighbour's porch, then they take away your rights to see your kids on weekends. Stepping stones to tyranny.

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

#234

Post by bigbillheck »

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 just don't want to be involved in a community where supposed professionals act like that; frankly is scares me that such malicious and petty people might have power.

That's a fine opinion to have, but why are you then in academia?

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

#235

Post by chairmanwow1 »

I think opining on the internet should be rethought. I think that instead of the relatively opaque up/down, it should be a 2D grid of agree/disagree and good/bad argument. Allowing you to still commend users that you disagree with by noting they make solid logical arguments.

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

#236

Post by Akronymus »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #138
BEEdwards wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or even small subs that are against the prevailing opinions of the plurality of the userbase of all of reddit.

Those regularily get called out as "bad", "toxic" or "hateful". Or banned.

Which actually is the reason I got rid of my reddit accounts.

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

#237

Post by Y_Y »

okareaman wrote: post #78
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 mind downvotes on my comments, I just wish a downvote required a comment stating some kind of reason for it. Even a short comment "I don't like this" would be telling because it would indicate they don't have a reason other than emotion. Often I initially get a bunch of downvotes and then later enough upvotes to even it out.

I downvote stuff because it's either low-effort or inflammatory. I don't know if it would be valuable to tell the commenter this, because they're unlikely to agree.

(I know that this isn't what everyone does, just wanted to offer a data point.)

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

#238

Post by merpnderp »

dane-pgp wrote: post #103
merpnderp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I posted that according to my local state utility, installed wind power cost per year was 4 times the latest price of installed nat-gas per year, both for the newest installations. And from that I concluded nuclear power was the only viable alternative to CO2 producing energy. Now this is the highest heresy in our new world religion, yet I only lost a single vote. Granted I didn't get any useful feedback…

> installed wind power cost per year was 4 times the latest price of installed nat-gas per year I don't know which state you are in, but for the US as a whole "recent [2018] wind farms have gotten so cheap that you can build and operate them for less than the expected cost of buying fuel for an equivalent natural gas plant." https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/wind-power-prices-no...

But that's my point, none of these studies ever cite a utility's actual costs. When I got curious and looked at what the actual cost to the utility (not counting any federal rebates) just their actual outlays, versus how much power was generated over the year, it was ridiculous.

And the easy way to know this is true is that utilities are still building nat-gas plants. It's not like they love nat-gas, they love money and profits. If wind was actually cheaper than fuel, they'd just be over building wind farms so that no new nat-gas plants were needed.

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

#239

Post by Y_Y »

adventured wrote: post #203
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 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 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 I've got a tip for that, that HN has rather amusingly t…

Maybe you can't respond to this, but I'd like to know if that's not less satisfying. I don't get much pleasure from just having my day ("shouting into the void") what I'm really here for is engagement, and the high-quality responses I get (or sometimes just acknowledgement). Without feedback there's nothing in it for me.

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

#240

Post by Akronymus »

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…

> If you write a comment that is against what the majority of the site beliefs you will be downvoted.

I don't think this is a regular occurence on HN. But on reddit? All day every day.

Personally, I often upvote posts I disagree with, because it is a good discussion starter or just generally a good comment/discussion/disagreement.

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