Downvotes are irrelevant, society needs to get off FB (today it marked a post of mine containing only a link to the CDC's website with no further text or emoticons as "misinformation") and possibly off all pure textual discussion media, since they mostly encourage spontaneous, irresponsible reactions instead of discourse. Even Tiktok's video responses are better than FB and Twitter...
Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
271–280 of 553 posts
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#272I'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…
> is not even close to the norm here
Maybe not here, but he said here and Reddit. It's definitely the norm on Reddit.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#273Earlier 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 know why people don't like them and I get that you are correct that it got pretty absurd on /. around the time period you mentioned.
But I miss the jokes sometimes. I have to resist the urge to reference Rob Malda when I'm reading HN occasionally.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#274Earlier 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. My experience on HN is that it desperately hangs on the words you choose and the threads you visit. The lower the barrier to entry (social subjects for example) the more delicate and convergent things become.
Yes lower barrier to entry topics are expected to increase the noise, and also the number of participants, which makes patterns easier to see, right? Possibly lower barrier to entry also correlates with lower expertise too. I'm not sure this is unique to HN at all, and haven't noticed it being any different or worse here than elsewhere. I think we have lots of words and phrases and platitudes to categorize and comment on how people behave, one that comes to mind immediately is bike shedding, or the Law of Triviality.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. I guess it’s just not dogmatic. Moderators and HNers are very strict about being constructive on more political topics.
Just for the record, the reply to this comment by bopbeepboop that was downvoted to "dead" status is a good example of the type of downvoting I disagree with. I also understand that this isn't my site, and that I have no control over the behavior of others on this site. I'm just putting that out there.
About bopbeepboop: The comment was not flagged, the account is banned. Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26735029 near the end of the tread, the post by dang
A good trick is to go to the comment history, and search until you find the last streak of not dead comments. It's fine to vouch the [dead] comments (if they are fine), and enough vouch unkill the comment. In the case of bopbeepboop it looks like many of the comments were vouched.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just for the record, the reply to this comment by bopbeepboop that was downvoted to "dead" status is a good example of the type of downvoting I disagree with. I also understand that this isn't my site, and that I have no control over the behavior of others on this site. I'm just putting that out there.
About bopbeepboop: The comment was not flagged, the account is banned. Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26735029 near the end of the tread, the post by dang A good trick is to go to the comment history, and search until you find the last streak of not dead comments. It's fine to vouch the [dead] comments (if they are fine), and enough vouch unkill the comment. In the case of bopbeepboop it looks like many…
OK, I guess I was working under the assumption that the comment was dead because it was downvoted enough times. My bad.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :)
Again -- votes don't matter. I absolutely love the parent post for making it so plain.
The parent post made an assertion, but did not really justify that assertion. Sure, it's easy to say that in some abstract sense "down votes don't matter". I believe that myself, in that sort of abstract / hand-wavy sense. But real life experience shows us that down votes do matter to people - at least some people, some times, in some situations. Why? I'm not a psychologist, so I'm not going to pretend to understand the deeper aspects of that. But it seems self evident to me that it's related to the other evolved responses we humans have, related to peer approval, social status, recognition, embarrassment, etc.
But _why_ does it feel kind of grating? Why does it frustate you?
In the specific case I mentioned, I think it's largely about the mismatch between expectations and perceived subjective sense of "right/wrong" and reality. I expect random throwaway comments that just say "taxation is theft" to get downvoted. But when I spend 30 minutes doing research, looking up citations, and crafting a carefully composed response to something, to try to make a point or provide a useful reference to help somebody and then that gets down voted, it triggers that instinctive "unfairness reaction" that we have. Or that's my approximate theory anyway.
Moreover, why do you only care about the downvotes?
I think because a downvote is a form of disapproval, and it's done in public, and it correlates to our desire to avoid being shamed / embarrassed, especially in front of others.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#278Earlier 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.
> hn down votes jokes so aggressively
"if you insist on taking up my class time making jokes, please see to it that they are funny."
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#279I'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…
HN was the way you describe. But I think that it is becoming less so. I feel the difference from, say, five years ago. It's not the same. It's more strident, less thoughtful, more reacting by reflex.
My own suspicion is that, as HN has grown, it has become more influential, and therefore more worth manipulating, and therefore more people are trying to manipulate it rather than just participating in it.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#280Can I read it without signing up?