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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

#351

Post by bee_rider »

ohyeshedid wrote: post #349
bee_rider wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought an evolution on the threaded messageboard system where 1) Votes are tied to comments inherently 2) People can argue with those comments 3) Eventually, when a consensus may be reached in the follow up comments (by having most objections to an argument downvoted to oblivion I guess) 4) If so, the thread is replaced with a stub that summarizes it (maybe participants can vote on the person who they'd…

Have you ever thought about becoming a Wikipedia contributor?

Wikipedia is cool (so is stack overflow). However I prefer to engage in arguments that do actually terminate at some point.

Actually, though I think there's something to be gained by reading something that is explicitly phrased as a back and forth argument, rather than an explanation. Arguments between informed people usually bring up objections that I wouldn't have thought of, or that somebody writing an encyclopedia entry wouldn't want to deal with.

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

#352

Post by avel »

bmn__ wrote: post #295
avel wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Downvotes matter because they often tie into visibility. On HN, a few downvotes make the post fade out so it is difficult to read. On Reddit, two downvotes collapse a post so that its text becomes hidden. This means on these platforms downvotes are a weaponised tool wielded by someone who can destroy the effort that went into post with but a mouse click.

Then such forums where your posts can be manipulated so easily are a lost cause, and there's no point in getting frustrated about them.

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

#353

Post by professoretc »

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…

That's kind of how Slashdot used to work: you couldn't just up/down vote, you had to pick a reason why, from a list. "Insightful", "Funny", "Informative", etc. for upvotes, "Incorrect", "Trolling", "Off topic", etc. for downvotes. Of course, Slashdot also had meta moderation, where you could occasionally be given the job of up/downvoting other peoples' votes, which in turn influenced how often they would be allowed to vote in the future.

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

#354

Post by mindcrime »

avel wrote: post #350
mindcrime wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I appreciate your response, even if my question was perhaps 50% rhetorical. Of course I can understand the psychological part of it, but that's what I contest here. You write an insightful message in a forum. Perhaps 5,000 people read it, 100 upvote it, 200 downvote it, and let's say that 5 reply with disagreement or trolling. So in the end you find yourself frustrated with the 100 downvotes and the 5 trolls. It's ir…

I agree that it's irrational for the most part. But even understanding that on a cerebral level still doesn't stop it from being slightly annoying / frustrating / whatever at times. The vagaries of human nature, I guess...

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

#355

Post by wutbrodo »

nindalf wrote: post #347
milesvp wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please be generous with your comments. You don’t have to be crass to ‘ruin a place’. I’ve seen it happen just from sheer numbers. Even if the influx measurably improves the signal to noise ratio, just having more signal can make a place exhausting to participate in. Not wanting to risk any advertisement can be a very prudent thing to do.

I was being exactly as generous as I needed to be. This was a person who went out of their way to tell this thread "I belong to bunch of lovely subreddits and I'm deliberately not mentioning them so 'the average HNer' doesn't join". It wasn't even related to their point. They went out of their way in a footnote (!) to rub in the fact that we're so terrible.

> It wasn't even related to their point.

Your comment says:

> If the author could use examples from reddit to illustrate their point, it'd be great

My comment did the exact thing you had already complained about, and my footnote was explicitly addressing the reason for this gap.

It's an incredibly bizarre look to lash out childishly because you can't follow the conversation well enough to remember what you wrote in your previous comment.

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

#356

Post by denton-scratch »

LinuxBender wrote: post #209
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…

As an academic experiment, one could post a message here on HN and on Usenet to see how the interaction plays out on each platform. On Usenet, people can not vote or moderate your message. Messages are only removed from Usenet relays if they violate law for the most part. Anyone can reply if interested in doing so, with any text or content. Has anyone done this experiment recently?

On Usenet, you can moderate your own incoming messages. Assuming you have a suitable newsreader (I know of none that are not suitable for use with killfiles).

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

#357

Post by throw1f78aa0a80 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #198
not_jd_salinger wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: this comment initially made claims that it looked like HN was removing climate change related content from the front page. I still believe this to be the case, but don't really have strong enough evidence to back it up. I'll wait until I have something more convincing before posting about this again. Who knows, maybe I am just paranoid.

Do you have any examples of downvote-bombing simple claims that climate change is real? I'd be beyond surprised to find out this phenomenon is real, even just based on the demographic prior of HN. No worries if not, I get that it's not a trivial ask to dig up an example.

Not climate change. But three days ago this is a bit strange. Article regarding to anti-vax and astroturfing. First submission flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27946430 Lots of comments saying it is being artificially vote inflated. Second submission more objections https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27951293 stating conspiracy voting. Not sure what to make of it. And just one example.

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

#359

Post by denton-scratch »

TchoBeer wrote: post #75
aaaronic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoting here on HN does seem pretty arbitrary. (Either that, or I just don't post quality comments/posts :D) I do know sites like HN attempt to identify patterns of voting like you described in order to remove abusive accounts, but I don't know how successful they are. I could see downvoting requiring a minimal amount of feedback being a possibility, like you can only downvote if you are posting a public reply as…

Would it be better if you get down voted to hell and also get swamped with throwaway comments like "that's stupid"

I believe Hell has nine levels; HN downvoteland has only 4.

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

#360

Post by whall6 »

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…

That would be cool. In order for a downvote to be cast you have to reply
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