Trolls (2008)

There is a difference between trolling, making a funny statement and saying a contrived opinion. On HN, all of these get down-voted equally.

Often time, I find something funny, say it as a comment, and get down-voted. It's not a stupid joke or something inappropriate, just a comment that'd make the reader smile. And I know it's hard to judge because I keep saying the score of these comments oscillating (I.e. people upvote it because it's funny, and people downvote it because it's funny (or they don't find it funny.))

About contrived opinion, that one is sad. There's a difference between something wrong and saying your opinion. For instance, someone saying "I don't like Backbone.js because x, y, z" will get on average a really small or negative score. Why? People who agree with this statement in small minority +x, people who disagree with this statement but agree that it was some good arguments and points: +y, majority of people who disagree with the statement -z. It just so happen that z>(x+y) with controversial statements.

Lastly, trolling is more about searching for trouble or pissing of people. For instance, they'll say "Wtf, stop wasting your time with perl. It's a DEAD LANGUAGE, WAKE UP". This kind of posts should just get deleted and the user warned and then banned from HN imo. Note that there're a couple of wrong things with this statement. First, it's extremely aggressive and provocative. Personally, I hate this but some well known people act like that and are really appreciated so I won't judge. Secondly, there's no argument or fact.. it's just trash talking without ground to base yourself on. Lastly, there's usually lots of words in caps and 'wtf' 'lol' 'trololol' which make it look unprofessional for readers of HN used to read well written text. (Ironically, I know this current text isn't well written but it's because english is not my main language, not because I'm trying to skip words or be unprofessional).

Anyway, what I'd suggest is to have a way to differentiate between theses. 1- A 'flag as spam/troll/non-respectful'. 2- A +1 (like what we have) to say this is an interesting post/comment. 3- A Agree/Disagree button to express your opinion.

So basically, someone saying "You guys are fucking stupid; 1+1=2" would be flagged as unrespectful but could still be valid and agreed by the majority.

But in the end, is it worth it? As they say in engineering, it it works, don't fix it. HN is not perfect, but I still enjoy reading the comments and I learn quite a lot.. is it worth trying to fix it for a minority of trolls or disrespectful people?

The downvote button means, literally, "this comment should appear less prominently, and its author should get a very small penalty for having written it". Similarly, upvote means, literally, "this comment should appear more prominently, and its author should get a very small reward for having written it".

With that in mind, "perfectly valid" takes on a different light. While sometimes downvoting does get used to reinforce groupthink, sometimes it just thwacks a comment with incorrect but authoritative-sounding information, or an off-topic comment, or a rehash of an well-known unresolvable debate (valid or otherwise), or in general a comment which will produce more heat than light.

In this case, I disagree with your comment, but I've upvoted it because I think it deserves more prominence and more discussion.

Can you give an example of the kind of comment which you think received unwarranted downvotes?

Facebook has an interesting solution to the content quality problem, and trolling is a very specific type of content quality problem. Positively reinforce good content and HIDE everything else. The "Like" button accomplishes this well.

If you've used facebook for a few years, you might remember the introduction of the "Like" button. Facebook before the "Like" button was very different from a UGC perspective. People did a lot more bitching and moaning. People posted much more inane ramblings about what they ate for lunch lunch or random happenings in their day. The "Like" button created a positive reinforcement loop and consciously or not people started to try to post content that would get more likes. Someone being emo about their shitty boyfriend or girlfriend is probably not going to get likes, probably wont get surfaced in the news feed and will never be heard. Eventually when people stop seeing those posts they are less compelled to post those things themselves. Facebook describes this as the virtuous cycle of sharing. Someone posts something, they get patted on the back. YOU see their post and their pats on the back and you tend to want to do the same thing. If you have friends on twitter and friends on facebook, just put the two feeds up next to eachother. You'll see a HUGE difference in the types of updates that people post.

We're talking about the time period leading up to the Civil War, aren't we?