Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it. • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#61

Post by chrischen » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:29 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #59

chrischen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that down votes have more potential for abuse than to increase the efficiency of sorting. A factual error, corrected is just as valuable as any other average comment in my opinion. Perhaps they should be pushed down, but then you have people who will down vote to suppress opposing ideas and unpopular ones. By only allowing up votes, it becomes much harder for people to manipulate any single com…

While upvoting better comments is a really good thing, I don't think it's enough. Let's say that instead of trying to give a counter example for your idea, I simply write something like: "No - that's lame and you should be downvoted, because you're wrong right now." If that was the last response - everything's fine - the thread gets lost. But if someone tries to explain that I'm not correct, we get a standard war tha…

I think you're talking about a different problem. And this problem specifically deals with responses to threaded comments that are on top.

I think in this case simply flag it if it seems trollish. Or only allow down votes on responses. Because allowing down votes on all comments introduces a whole new set of problems like majority induced silencing.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#62

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:40 PM UTC

abefortas wrote: post #44

bendotc wrote: post #5

I always find opinions like these to be illuminating whenever people claim that people don't care about karma, as it's obviously just a silly number in some computer running this website. As it turns out, some people find losing just 1 point to be indistinguishable from throwing a rock at the person. For what it's worth, the downvote is for the comment, not the poster. It influences a sorting algorithm that shapes th…

Wouldn't it make more sense to downvote either to eliminate spam/noise or to signal disagreement? I'm all for stoning spammers, but I think it's more constructive to write a response if you disagree with someone.

Sometimes a response is not worth writing.

If people make reasonable (and even to your knowledge correct) arguments for X, then someone replies to say nothing more than "X is wrong/bad/inefficient" with no counter-argument or evidence, why answer that? If someone makes a bigoted remark (anti-gay, anti-American, whatever), why answer that? If someone's trying to drag a discussion off-topic, why answer that?

The answer is "I don't have to write an answer." You have a channel for expressing a reaction, and just as it's unnecessary to write "That's so right!" replies instead of up-voting, it's unnecessary to give gratuitous replies instead of down-voting.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#63

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:41 PM UTC

fnid wrote: post #28

warp wrote: post #4

Most people, I believe, downvote because they do not agree with someone's opinion. If they do, they're doing it wrong. Downvote someone for not contributing to the discussion.

One of the problems is that people don't down vote for the same reasons. Some down because they disagree, others to resort topics, others because they don't like the person's comment, tone, bias, etc... Without a consistent use of the down vote, the effect is undesired by most.

"the effect is undesired by most"

Says who?

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#64

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:43 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #41

I like to scan the newcomments page to see if there is anything worth commenting on. Doing that, I noticed a long-time poster making the point that the community has changed and asking if anybody else has noticed it. So I said yes, it has changed, and quite a bit. The reward for my comment was several downvotes. As it turns out, his comment was part of some Rand thread. My comment was viewed as supportive of his posi…

Maybe responding to single comments out-of-context is a questionable methodology.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#65

Post by jeremyw » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:43 PM UTC

I'm impressed by the shifting voting trends when a new, dissenting (sub)opinion is attached to a comment. A string of upvotes now is halted/reversed. And the polarity change can happen several times. An articulated position unleashes the silent thinker or is this a characteristic of mob rule? (When it happens to me, it's mob rule. :)

I'm also terribly sad when someone is downvoted in an opinion-thread (e.g. what is your favorite X). I wish one could mark a post as opinion or even upvote-only.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#66

Post by DanielBMarkham » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:49 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #64

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #41

I like to scan the newcomments page to see if there is anything worth commenting on. Doing that, I noticed a long-time poster making the point that the community has changed and asking if anybody else has noticed it. So I said yes, it has changed, and quite a bit. The reward for my comment was several downvotes. As it turns out, his comment was part of some Rand thread. My comment was viewed as supportive of his posi…

Maybe responding to single comments out-of-context is a questionable methodology.

I understand what you're saying, but my initial reaction is WTF! Now I need a freaking methodology to surf the net?

I like to think of users as always being right, even when they do things I do not expect or would not approve of. So in this case, even if it weren't me we were talking about, I'd have to take the side of the user poking around at the system, trying to get it to work as well as he can.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#67

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:56 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #23

tokenadult wrote: post #2

I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them. You don't think there is any difference between throwing a rock at someone and reducing their overall vote count by one vote in an electronic voting system? If someone downvotes me, I have a reason to look again at what I posted and whether or not it fit the discussion. If someone throws a rock…

Both can be threatening. So certain types of comments that may be not accepted, but may not necessarily be wrong, have the risk of being censored by the mob via this social means. And so this risk in censorship by social degradation can be powerful enough to sway certain viewpoints from gaining traction here. It may not happen all the time, but it certainly does happen. And since the "ranking algorithm" that is the v…

"Both can be threatening."

I submit that if one is threatened by others disagreeing with or not appreciating one's contribution to a discussion, one needs to find a more harmonious discussion.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#68

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:56 PM UTC

araneae wrote: post #53

shrughes wrote: post #43

I downvote the following kinds of comments: - comments that have a high excitement to information ratio, such as brief comments that include profanity or attitude, and of course garbage one-liner humor comments. But not good one-line comments (such as the best comeback of all time), and usually not the kind that are nested two or more levels deep in the tree. - most comments made in reply to an article that definitel…

And yet, my only comments that actually get upvoted are garbage one-liner humor comments. EDIT: I believe this is what we call irony: http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss323/araneae/hn.png

I didn't bother with that topic, but your comment seemed like a valid, even if tongue-in-cheek, proposal to me. Apparently 9 other people also had that reaction.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#69

Post by amalcon » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 10:59 PM UTC

Turn it around: why upvote someone? A downvote is equal and opposite to an upvote; what makes the former "bad" and not the latter?

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#70

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:01 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #66

Semiapies wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe responding to single comments out-of-context is a questionable methodology.

I understand what you're saying, but my initial reaction is WTF! Now I need a freaking methodology to surf the net? I like to think of users as always being right, even when they do things I do not expect or would not approve of. So in this case, even if it weren't me we were talking about, I'd have to take the side of the user poking around at the system, trying to get it to work as well as he can.

"Now I need a freaking methodology"

Sorry, I was trying to be less blunt than ending that sentence with "is a bad idea."

"I like to think of users as always being right"

Here's the problem - you weren't a user being resisted by software in that context. You were a person interacting with other people. You weren't poking at a system, you were having a conversation.