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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

#491

Post by underseacables »

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…

That solution is absolutely horrible. Now you’re asking a moderator to decide what has merit and what does not. Who are they to decide? If I down vote something, I don’t want someone coming behind me and saying you know what this down vote doesn’t have merit, so I’m going to ban him. Imagine if we did that in the workplace. Your disagreement doesn’t have merit so I’m going to exclude you from now on from these meetings. The older I get the more I feel that the people who are upset about their comments getting down voted, somehow need their opinions validated, or maybe it’s anxiety, but there’s something deeper going on beyond just a comment on a message board. What you’re suggesting is completely counter to a democratic society.

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

#492

Post by underseacables »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #62
_v7gu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

everything is political Can't stand this phrase that literally came out of nowhere. People will try and justify it with walls of text about the oppressed, blah blah, when it's just an excuse for them to chide you about why you're wrong and why this issue intersects with their politics.

Everything is political now. Remember a year ago when you couldn’t wear a red hat in public without fear of someone attacking you physically? People are being canceled, fired from their jobs, ostracized in their communities, because they dared to have an opinion that differed from the mob. It’s all political now, and there’s not much we can talk about that someone isn’t going to try to make it political.

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

#493

Post by underseacables »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #73
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'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. Tangential but whenever I read something like this, and people do post them a lot, I tend to assume they're actually normal, sensitive people who have learned that not showing any sign of harm means…

To an academic, they are never wrong, you just don’t understand. The more you try to argue will get swatted down as hateful.

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

#494

Post by underseacables »

LinuxBender wrote: post #383
denton-scratch wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Opt-In self moderation is great. You can even do that here on HN with add-ons like uBlock. From My Filters ycombinator.com##.itemlist > tbody > tr.athing:has-text(political) ycombinator.com##.itemlist > tbody > tr.athing:has-text(political)+tr ycombinator.com##.itemlist > tbody > tr.athing:has-text(political)+tr+tr More examples [0] and there are a few other incantations of this. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/it…

Filters would be fantastic. I would love very much to be able to filter out specific words and phrases from my HN view.

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

#496

Post by baq »

goatlover wrote: post #477
baq wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but yeah, that was the point. Humans are social, thus political, animals.

That just means there’s a political element to human interaction, not that everything is political. Astronomy is about the cosmos, not politics, but astronomers engage in politics like everyone else. There’s an entire world outside of humanity, and some people are not interested in turning that into more human bickering, which you can easily find in explicitly political and news discussions.

People being allowed to look at stars is a political issue. I’m a big astronomy fan and I’d like more money to go to astronomers to do more research. That’s political…

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

#497

Post by GoblinSlayer »

musicale wrote: post #480
Pxtl wrote: post #176

I've noticed a difference between downvoting and non-downvoting discussions systems. In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion. Note that this isn't "the truth" or "the consensus of the community" but of the people engaged on the subject. For example, if you see an otherwise-liberal community discussing gun-rights, the gun owners within that community…

> In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion I wish I saw more consensus - things that are agreed upon by multiple sides - but in practice I tend to see a tyranny of the majority - whoever can win the upvote vs. downvote contest. The winning side rises to the top, while dissenting voices are silenced. One sensible thing that I thought HN did but I don'…

>downvoting isn't supposed to be a "dislike" button but is intended for comments that are spam, trolling, etc.

That rule actually rigs the system in favor of irresponsible voters.

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

#498

Post by hutzlibu »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #461
pessimizer wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it even simpler. Mark yourself as the only source of karma. Then when you upvote people, they also become sources of karma; and when you downvote them, they become sinks (their upvotes might actually subtract karma.) This effect should attenuate with distance from you (i.e. your upvote is +1, the person you upvoted's upvote is +0.9.)

That sounds like a recipe for creating filter bubbles.

It is. But diverse bubbles.

I think this is still better, than just one bubble, even if the intention is a "pro-science" bubble. Because there are not many people claiming to be opposed science. Allmost everyone claims to be "pro-science", even flat earthers. So it still comes down to what the specific mod thinks.

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

#499

Post by hutzlibu »

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…

"Like the thriving, polite, constructive exchange of ideas that took place on /r/the_donald for instance?"

I have never visited that subreddit, but since the rest of the world, downvote button or not, was also not really involved in a constructive exchange of ideas on that topic - I do not see the point here. Emotional topics are hard to discuss, if the people involved use it to vent out emotions and to evangelize.

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

#500

Post by GoblinSlayer »

anigbrowl wrote: post #372
hashkb wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with downvotes, we ensure that only popular opinions get visibility, defeating the entire purpose of sharing ideas within a community.

Unpopular ideas may be ahead of their time, but they may equally be just stupid or deliberately proposed in bad faith. There are potential benefits to considering any given idea (you learn something useful or get smarter), and there are also costs (time to evaluate, possible bad outcomes). Unless you are taking the negative possibilities into account, an all-beneficial 'marketplace' of ideas' does not and will not wo…

Usually people think in terms of likes and dislikes, "stupid" and "bad faith" are rationalizations, that don't even need to be provided, because they can't be requested.
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