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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

#311

Post by mattgreenrocks »

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 feel you on this. I rarely post online because there's about a 50% chance I'll run into hostile replies written in bad faith. Also, as I've gotten older, I've gradually grown into the realization that I don't need to justify my opinions to Internet randos. :)

(Even writing this I worry someone's going to tell me this is wrong somehow, but the objective function for my value of time has become very ruthless.)

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

#312

Post by motohagiography »

While I don't think they are useful, I have come to relish downvotes because if I have provoked a snide response at least it is sincere, where a downvote means I have threatened the integrity of a narrative - and that's when you know it's quality writing.

Downvotes are a substitute for discourse. If want something better, post it. It's like someone wanted to design a product for a braying, superstitious mob and created an electronic thumbs down button. I'm all for giving voice to the voiceless, but downvotes aren't speech or a voice, they are a manipulation tool that encourage and reward the absolute worst quality of thought and reasoning.

On HN they are somewhat and relatively judicious by convention, but it is not an exaggeration to say there is a cadre of even educated people who believe their intellectual role is not to establish truth or find consensus, but to direct "narrative," which means specifically to lie and decieve for power. Downvotes are not discourse, they are the exclusive tool of this so-called narrative control. I tolerate downvotes because they draw engagement, even if it is of an inferior kind, and ideally they will be converted from boos to discourse, perhaps even a snide remark.

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

#313

Post by greggman3 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #291

I think it should be required that when a person downvotes a post or comment, they should need to supply a comment as to why. That would have multiple benefits. One, it is maddening to make a comment in earnest and get downvoted but no feedback why it was downvoted. Two, it would reduce the number of people who downvote a comment simply because they disagree as they would have to expose their own opinion and risk the…

downvoting to disagree is totally acceptable on HN

I complained once and dang corrected me.

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

#314

Post by _ykl9 »

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…

This is an idea I've been interested in since it came up last month (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27582145), but I don't personally feel strongly enough yet to land on either side.

That being said, for all its faults, I would expect that reddit does indeed have more productive discourse than most other (non-HN) social media platforms, particularly Twitter with its enforcement of shallow/short-form comments. /r/the_donald is obviously an extreme example of an alt-right cesspool, but it's not obvious that it was less polite or constructive than the equivalent communities on other platforms.

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

#315

Post by popcorncentury »

_v7gu wrote: post #48
gus_massa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then someone comes along with their four accounts and downvotes every comment I got In HN you can send an email to the mods so they can take a look. Also the site may detect it automatically (the details are unclear, it's part of the secret sauce). > because I'm not sufficiently ideological Avoid political threads. Everyone is talking pass each other, and you will not convince anyone. Upvote grey comments if they a…

> Avoid political threads. Coupled with the new catchphrase "everything is political", this is quite impossible to do.

More accurately, everything is ideological at its core. I say this as science.

Even tabs vs spaces is an ideological battle. And so is for and against downvoting. I am against downvoting because I am against censorship and for free speech.

And to then say "avoid ideology" or to be modding a platform based on a "no ideology" ideology is like being against meaningful conversation on a conversation platform.

So we are left with excessive pampering and everyone walking on eggshells. Whenever something gets ideological, we can't handle it and so we censor it. Or hide behind a downvote. All because we're not allowed, and hence have had no practice.

The platform that can handle political discourse without breaking will be the next great social media platform. We owe it to ourselves to build it, instead of pretending this is already it, whatever your platform of choice.

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

#316

Post by Layke1123 »

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…

Or maybe, you are just wrong and can't actually take it. Being professional doesn't mean people have to take your opinions seriously.

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

#317

Post by smolder »

ohreallynow wrote: post #287
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'm surprised dang isn't on this like flies on shit because usually when we discuss downvoting brigade he links us to the guidelines and hem-haw's around how we shouldn't be bringing it up. I've seen The_Donald be handled with more decorum than this place - and I've been here for over a decade.

This discussion seems to be more about downvoting in general and across multiple sites, rather than specific accusations of certain groups downvote-brigading on HN, which dang usually responds to.

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

#318

Post by gus_massa »

jjav wrote: post #308
gus_massa wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's fine to vouch the [dead] comments (if they are fine) How does one do that? Haven't seen any option to do that.

Click on the time/age of the comment (currently "3 hours ago") and you will get a direct link to the comment with more options, like "vouch" and "flag".

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

#319

Post by xphos »

neogodless wrote: post #213
squeaky-clean wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 faili…

So like I think this is kind the authors point. Downvote isn't going to solve everything but it is a tool that let people signal to one another of something being a miss. You can have spammers that downvote everything but like thats also detectable and can signal biases. In response to spammers, there is away to cancel out those biases with upvotes. And if there are spammers on both sides you'd expect to arrive close to 50/50 in which case that signals something to a read. If its 80% negative that also signals maybe we should understand why this is bad or why its to be avoided. However without a balancing force whats the difference of +50 and +1000? Both are positive even if the +1000 has 1000s of negative comments not everyone has the time to engage on a topic completely and +/- give a quick way to understand the content that should be engaged with on a deeper level because it is divisive. Without the tool not only would you never know the difference but you can never know the difference without engaging every topic at max effort which no person can do

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

#320

Post by city41 »

asiachick wrote: post #306
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…

They ARE meant to be a disagree button https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

I was not only referring to HN but the many communities that employ up/down voting. And for the record, I disagree with pg's take. Here is Reddit's official stance on downvoting:

>Think before you downvote and take a moment to ensure you're downvoting someone because they are not contributing to the community dialogue or discussion. If you simply take a moment to stop, think and examine your reasons for downvoting, rather than doing so out of an emotional reaction, you will ensure that your downvotes are given for good reasons.

https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439-Reddi...

I feel following this advice leads to better communities with more diverse and more useful conversation.

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