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Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

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

#501

Post by hutzlibu »

adventured wrote: post #203
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…

> 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 respond to something in good faith and then someone comes along with their four accounts and downvotes every comment I got because I'm not sufficiently ideological I've got a tip for that, that HN has rather amusingly t…

" It's a wonderful freedom, to not care whether you get upvoted or downvoted. Give it a try. "

I agree to that.

But do not agree to just leave comment and leave approach in general. Then it is not a discussion anymore. You will never experience if there are any counterpoints to your opinion/facts, if you do not read replies to your opinions/facts. But if you experienced you get too emotional ... so aybe better this approach, than the furiated insulting one I guess.

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

#502

Post by wraptile »

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'…

The solution to tyranny of the majority is NOT to hide down-voted comments and provide sorting options. Big problem with reddit is that it hides comments below certain threshold essentially silencing minority opinions.

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

#503

Post by HallowDance »

An opposing opinion:

https://www.mcmillen.dev/blog/20210721-downvotes-considered-...

The TL;DR:

"Any voting system where most posts mostly receive upvotes, but also allows downvotes, has a huge problem:

No matter how you do the math, downvotes count more than upvotes do."

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

#504

Post by nextlevelwizard »

I am all for downvotes, but just like here you shouldn't be able to downvote anyone who comments your comment. This will just lead people to instantly downvote anyone who doesn't 100% agree with them.

Secondly all downvotes should be acompanied by a reason for the vote and those should be publicly visible both on the comment/topic and generally in the profile of the user. This way it would be apparent if someone is just downvoting based on ideology and should be ignored.

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

#505

Post by chii »

wraptile wrote: post #502
musicale wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

The solution to tyranny of the majority is NOT to hide down-voted comments and provide sorting options. Big problem with reddit is that it hides comments below certain threshold essentially silencing minority opinions.

> below certain threshold essentially silencing minority opinions

These are not minority opinions, but unpopular opinions. Just because something is downvoted to hell and hidden, doesn't mean it's a minority.

A minority opinion is one which few people have, not one which is downvoted by the majority.

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

#506

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

I disagree with people being attributed as credible, because I think content can suffer much more from heavy handed moderation compared to being "brigated" by motivated individuals.

Because the latter is easily identifiable. You basically complain that people upvote the wrong opinions, which I would not disagree with.

Credible sources have also spread misinformation. I think the current system is fine and heavy handed approaches and information hierarchies are counter productive. There are great communities without a leadership and hands off approaches. You idea would lead to "Influencers" getting more control on content because those would be the "leaders". Can be good, can be bad. I think the latter would be the more common occurrence.

But people too invested in online communities also tend to do a large amount of damage. An example would be the people at the top of Reddit karma.

If we had "credible" leaders, there would be less room for objections, which I would like to see more often.

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

#507

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

I have been accused of bad faith arguments when that wasn't my intend.

> 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).

You don't have to evaluate every comment. You just let it stand and let others that want to invest the time come to their own conclusions. Perhaps you misunderstood the comment, have a different perspective or fail to get the context. This can be true for any comment you read.

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

#508

Post by raxxorrax »

anigbrowl wrote: post #428
Pxtl wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see a site like Reddit or HN experiment with using relationship graphs to research this. Start with some fixed points of "this person is a credible source of information" vs "this person is a neo-nazi conspiracy theorist" and examine the networks of people who support them and oppose them, and use that to establish credibility-scoring system-wide and weigh people's votes based on that. I mean, it would be…

I'm very into that (because I spend a great deal of time studying neo-nazi conspiracy theorists and similar people). I think platform operators to some extent have to eschew moral judgements and let things play out, eg if a variety of distinct and persistent clusters emerge naturally, and 98% of people in a community make nazis' lives miserable for being in the 'nazi cluster' then it doesn't need any additional help…

> because I spend a great deal of time studying neo-nazi conspiracy theorists and similar people

Really sorry to hear that. I hope it is a hobby and not your job.

I remember when Nazis where a joke on the internet. That they are not quite that anymore is not completely their own making as there are some people obsessed with them and even start to mirror them. Or others that want to build a profile about standing against the obvious.

Suddenly there is a significant group that denies civil liberties like free speech or freedom of association. Free speech in interesting here, because it seem to trigger those that fear that Nazis are overtaking the internet. To me this is very indicative of reactionary behavior towards a vastly overestimated threat.

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

#509

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

HN has a bit of the opposite policy, but it would be interesting to only allow downvotes if you have responded to the comment.

You would need a separate mechanism for flagging though to filter low effort contributions and it is questionable if that wouldn't just replace downvotes with flagging. Alternatively maybe only have that rule for comments above a certain length, although that isn't a good metric either.

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

#510

Post by tomjen3 »

underseacables wrote: post #491
tomjen3 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 meetin…

I am not proposing this for a democratic society, but for a message board. The goal of a message board could be to be democratic, or it could be to fulfill the idea of the guy paying to keep it running.

I assumed the latter, because those places tend to be places worth sticking around, and because this is definitely where HN falls in.

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