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

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

#71

Post by DanielBMarkham » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:12 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #70

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. Of course you are correct. I made the mistake of not being fully informed about the conversation before responding.

But I still think overall this process works fine. I just need to take some time to check out the entire thread first.

I view the board more like IRC -- a conversation can start one place and end up somewhere else. So as long as you have 2-3 parents in mind when commenting, you're free to go in a slightly new direction. Some folks, I imagine, view the topics more hierarchically. The site design encourages both views, actually.

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

#72

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:14 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #51

mquander wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it boils down to this: I have absolutely no interest in reading a website with comments like that. If a large proportion of comments were one-line opinions and purely argumentative back-and-forths, I would just not bother reading the HN comment sections. So I downvote it. Now, I understand that you feel the opposite way. The only objective argument I can make for my position is that there are a great number o…

That's essentially what up voting is for. It is a one way distillation that would also avoid any possible majority silencing of unpopular views. We don't punish people for being dumb, we reward people who are smart. Jail time is physical intimidation, but it is just one example of intimidation. My point is that such physical intimidation is no different from social intimidation upheld by the majority view in society.…

Meh. I've never had a problem with throwing out a dissident opinion on forums with up/down moderation. I've often been surprised how fast I've gotten modded up when I've done that. People do react well to interesting, thought-provoking arguments, and many will avoid down-modding them even when they strongly disagree.

People do not react well to complaints that people who disagree with them are repressed or afraid, especially when the dissenter's expressed fear is that they will be down-modded. (The same goes for the "This will get me down-modded, but..." tactic.)

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

#73

Post by fnid » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:14 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #63

fnid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

says whoever upvoted me.

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

#74

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:18 PM UTC

fnid wrote: post #73

Semiapies wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the effect is undesired by most" Says who?

says whoever upvoted me.

One person upvoted you, at the time of my writing this.

One person is not "most". Everyone commenting in this topic is not "most". Everyone who's ever started a thread against down-voting is not "most", as best as I can tell.

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

#75

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:24 PM UTC

SlyShy wrote: post #19

iamelgringo wrote: post #13

The possibility of downvotes creates an element of risk in posting a comment. Without that element of risk the only deterrent to trolling or violating community standards is deleting or banning by the moderators. Moderating a site like this is an awful lot of work. The down vote arrow allows the community to police itself. It's certainly not perfect, people have been down voted to oblivion. Pg has put in safeguards s…

Respectfully, I doubt downvoting is a deterrent to any troll. Trolls are already determined to anger the community. Downvoting is more of a deterrent to people who care what the community thinks of them--they might refrain from posting their contrary opinions as a result. That said, I still think downvoting is a useful function, because the point is to filter discussion.

I personally like that trolling comments tend to rapidly vanish into light-gray text.

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

#76

Post by bhousel » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:25 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…

I actually think that the newcomments page is part of the problem. My theory is that people reading newcomments tend to downvote something that seems even a little bit controversial, without seeing the context in which it was made.

I notice that after a few hours the scores seem to settle into something more fair. A lot of people will fix unfair 0s and -1s.

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

#77

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:30 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #33

viraptor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what action do you propose for a situation where some person writes an incorrect post and is then corrected, but the whole thread doesn't deserve to be upvoted? If you just upvote the correction, you mark it as significant in some way. But if it's only correcting a flamebait, why would you? It seems to be better to leave the correction there (so that people who read it get more information), but force the whole th…

> The problem of course is: what is correct / true and how sure are you about it. Exactly. So rather than try to determine "correctness" because sometimes it is subjective, just try to determine what's clearly "better." Up voting better comments will have the side effect of pushing down comments that are not as deserving.

If you can't judge a comment for a degree of "correctness", you can't judge one comment as "better" than another.

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

#78

Post by Semiapies » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:33 PM UTC

jeremyw wrote: post #65

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 y…

Someone can be off-topic or troll in opinion threads. "What's your favorite X?" is not the place for "Stop using different types of Xs and start using Ys, noobs.", for example.

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

#79

Post by chrischen » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:43 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #67

chrischen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I say threatening I mean with the intent to discourage. so when you down vote someone you disagree with you essentially discourage them from voicing their opinion. Why? Because when I'm downvoted I'm being punished. I don't want to be punished, so I either leave the community and decrease the variation in opinions or refrain from voicing it again. Is that what we want to allow here, or anywhere?

We ignore the kkk. We do not jail them. That is essentially what freedom of speech is about.

Furhermore we can't all have a consensus on every topic. It's good to have differing opinions and it's unavoidable to have disagreements. Being voted down for having opposing viewpoints is inevitable if the system permits it.

So to have a perfectly free speech community, we shouldn't provide the mechanism to condemn speech. We can however provide the mechanism to delete spam and blatantly trollish comments and perhaps even blatantly negative comments. But to give the majority the ability to hurt the minority will have negative long term consequences to the community.

So no one should have to think to themselves, "are people going to like what I say or should I just keep it to myself?" when posting a comment. No one benefits from that and we could all one day miss out on a great learning opportunity.

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

#80

Post by chrischen » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 11:48 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #72

chrischen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's essentially what up voting is for. It is a one way distillation that would also avoid any possible majority silencing of unpopular views. We don't punish people for being dumb, we reward people who are smart. Jail time is physical intimidation, but it is just one example of intimidation. My point is that such physical intimidation is no different from social intimidation upheld by the majority view in society.…

Meh. I've never had a problem with throwing out a dissident opinion on forums with up/down moderation. I've often been surprised how fast I've gotten modded up when I've done that. People do react well to interesting, thought-provoking arguments, and many will avoid down-modding them even when they strongly disagree. People do not react well to complaints that people who disagree with them are repressed or afraid, es…

There will always be many who will downvote simply to supress dissident opinions.

Dissident opinions do not show up as much as mainstream ones, for obvious reasons. So the opportunity for a good dissident response to be disregarded is less. But when it does happen, it's much greater a loss to the overall community.