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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

#321

Post by LightG »

Hitton wrote: post #304
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…

Although I agree that downvoting alone is not very constructive, if the comment is obviously spam/troll or especially when someone else already pointed out what is wrong with it, I don't see a problem.

Isn't that what flagging is for?

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

#322

Post by billytetrud »

Why did this article feel the need to put the political divide chart up there? You can clearly see the divide started long before the internet was a factor. The political divide has been caused by first past the post voting (which causes the 2 party system) and gerrymandering (which drastically exacerbates political radicalism).

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

#323

Post by twirligigue »

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…

Sometimes people can dislike something but they are unable to articulate the reason. Yet the reason may be valid.

So I would say: permit downvoting, but as well as removing one point from the downvoted, let it cost the downvoter one point also.

This reflects real life where it's possible for me to lose my temper in a conversation but it always inflicts a psychological cost on me for doing so. I don't get to express displeasure for free. Which helps keep the discourse civil.

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

#324

Post by city41 »

tstrimple wrote: post #307
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…

> 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. Says who? And why should anyone listen to them? There seems to be a lot of talk about how it's not being used as designed, but absolutely no one provides any evidence to support that…

Sure, that may be technically correct and in practice people downvote for any reason they choose. Nothing can stop them. But if they were used to promote viewpoints and better discussion, the end result would be better communities.

As for the "says who?", for example, that is Reddit's official stance on voting, which I quoted elsewhere in this thread.

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

#325

Post by greggman3 »

I don't have a solution but my thinking at the moment is either (a) get rid of the downvote or (b) keep it to rank order of comments but don't show it to users including the commentor. That also means not showing it in aggregate.

I wrote an extension to hide points for myself

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-points-exorcism...

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

#326

Post by Groxx »

LightG wrote: post #321
Hitton wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree that downvoting alone is not very constructive, if the comment is obviously spam/troll or especially when someone else already pointed out what is wrong with it, I don't see a problem.

Isn't that what flagging is for?

It can be useful to have a range of signals. Flagging is a rather hard-line "this is not appropriate" mark that many are unwilling to make on borderline things, e.g. when only somewhat misleading or partially incorrect.

Plus it requires clicking into the individual message, so you are required to see the contents twice, and can't do it quickly. That friction alone slows down using it on any softer or higher volume cases.

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

#328

Post by notriddle »

Pxtl wrote: post #210
notriddle wrote: post #66

Has this person even used Reddit? Or StackOverflow? Or even GitHub? I’ve used social platforms with downvote buttons; saying that they make you feel bad and should be removed is like saying that cigarettes should be removed because they smell bad. But to be specific, instead of just using metaphors: * A downvote carries less information than an upvote does. If a feature request gets a lot of upvotes, the voters are s…

> * Ranking, in general, creates filter bubbles. Do you really think strengthening the filter bubble would help? Discerning between truth and misinformation is also a "filter bubble". Any community-driven system that discerns between "this is what we like" and "this is what we hate" is also being used to discern between "this is what is true" and "this is what is false". Online communities with healthy cultures and d…

That’s not wrong, but you want actual proof if you’re going to block something because it’s false. That looks more like mod mail than like downvoting.

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

#329

Post by shadowgovt »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #294
shadowgovt wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the original author would agree with your assessment on effects, but doesn't see either cultural echo chambers or social cooling as de-facto negatives. Lacking a downvote signal (i.e. a "most people who saw this disagreed" signal), a shared echo chamber is replaced with multiple echo chambers of equal apparent strength or value, increasingly divided by who upvotes what with no downvote counter-signal to bre…

> a shared echo chamber is replaced with multiple echo chambers So you mean a variety of opinions?

A variety of strongly-held opinions that are not proved against each other and don't intersect to build a coherent narrative.

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

#330

Post by throwaway675309 »

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 use a throwaway account and a really simple tamper monkey script that hides my current feedback score, this allows me to interact on this website without getting neurotically obsessed with how other people think of me.

It allows me to push back on polarizing posts without having to get too psychologically involved.

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