How about a limited amount of down-votes allocated to each member to dish out? Possibly tiered based on karma level? Perhaps a member that down-votes a comment loses karma if the comment is then up-voted by other members (ie deemed an unfair down-vote by others)?
Ask HN: Downvoting
11–20 of 57 posts
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was once the case, but I think it's no longer true. Of late I've seen relevant and constructive comments down-voted, and I've been able to discern no reason other than the view expressed was an unpopular one. If there's a mechanism to indicate a comment is inappropriate, people will use it to indicate disapproval. If there's no mechanism to indicate a comment is inappropriate, inappropriate and off-topic will ab…
Isn't that what the flagging system is for? Removal of spam and inappropriate comments. With upvotes acting as a counter force to filter good content up...?
There's a difference between "int i = INT_MAX + 1 is legal C" (appropriate but factually wrong) and "fsck off, you moron".
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take as an example some comments I made prior to making this post in the climate change thread currently on the frontpage (ice age). Although I have now deleted these, I simply stated that climate change prediction was uncertain due to the number of factors involved. A simple 2 line or so comment in reply to a poster asking why conflicting views existed on the subject. I believe it was of value (it answered his/her q…
That is not a very valuable comment, though. You may have received a better score if you posted a not-so-valuable comment defending a popular position, but that doesn't mean that well-argued defences of unpopular positions receive the same treatment. Being downvoted has a much higher emotional impact than being upvoted, but it does help with sorting comments, obviously.
It does help in sorting, but i'd suggest it sorts by popularity, not by quality as we tend to assume.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm here to read interesting perspectives on interesting topics. I don't really care to reaffirm a popular opinion, irrespective of quality or substance.
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not a very valuable comment, though. You may have received a better score if you posted a not-so-valuable comment defending a popular position, but that doesn't mean that well-argued defences of unpopular positions receive the same treatment. Being downvoted has a much higher emotional impact than being upvoted, but it does help with sorting comments, obviously.
It does help in sorting, but i'd suggest it sorts by popularity, not by quality as we tend to assume. I don't know about you guys, but I'm here to read interesting perspectives on interesting topics. I don't really care to reaffirm a popular opinion, irrespective of quality or substance.
"Popularity, not quality" is the big problem of any social site. However, removing downvotes doesn't help: "anti-canonical" opinions won't gather many upvotes either. [EDIT: well, hopefully they will. But the trend is that they increasingly don't.]
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#15I would be interested in knowing how much of your description is deduction on your part, and how much is received fact from definitive sources. I would be interested in knowing how and why your comment was deemed "bad." I don't know of any definitive cases where someone made a comment that was appropriate, got vast numbers of down-votes, and then got banned because of it. I know of many people who have complained abo…
Take as an example some comments I made prior to making this post in the climate change thread currently on the frontpage (ice age). Although I have now deleted these, I simply stated that climate change prediction was uncertain due to the number of factors involved. A simple 2 line or so comment in reply to a poster asking why conflicting views existed on the subject. I believe it was of value (it answered his/her q…
I remember seeing it, and remember thinking - well, that's pretty content-free.
I simply stated that climate change prediction was
uncertain due to the number of factors involved.
I didn't down-vote it, but I can see why others did.
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not a very valuable comment, though. You may have received a better score if you posted a not-so-valuable comment defending a popular position, but that doesn't mean that well-argued defences of unpopular positions receive the same treatment. Being downvoted has a much higher emotional impact than being upvoted, but it does help with sorting comments, obviously.
It does help in sorting, but i'd suggest it sorts by popularity, not by quality as we tend to assume. I don't know about you guys, but I'm here to read interesting perspectives on interesting topics. I don't really care to reaffirm a popular opinion, irrespective of quality or substance.
In that case, why do you care about the voting? You will always get the group-think out-voting the carefully reasoned but unpopular. All you need to do is read - perhaps simply skim - all the comments. Find users whose opinion seems to be worth reading, and then seek out their comments.
Removing down-votes won't help the problem you've identified.
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that what the flagging system is for? Removal of spam and inappropriate comments. With upvotes acting as a counter force to filter good content up...?
There's a difference between "int i = INT_MAX + 1 is legal C" (appropriate but factually wrong) and "fsck off, you moron".
...but then, what is the difference between an opinion you disagree with (a "dissenting view") and one that you believe to be factually incorrect? I feel like downvoting the former "factually wrong" comment leads to the behavior that ColinWright is describing: where people downvote anything they disagree with. (One might even argue that this is a fundamental bug in having downvoting as a mechanism.)
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does help in sorting, but i'd suggest it sorts by popularity, not by quality as we tend to assume. I don't know about you guys, but I'm here to read interesting perspectives on interesting topics. I don't really care to reaffirm a popular opinion, irrespective of quality or substance.
In that case, why do you care about the voting? You will always get the group-think out-voting the carefully reasoned but unpopular. All you need to do is read - perhaps simply skim - all the comments. Find users whose opinion seems to be worth reading, and then seek out their comments. Removing down-votes won't help the problem you've identified.
That's what I increasingly find myself doing. The downside is that you get less and less exposed to new material; "old" HN would usually surface e.g. tptacek's comments, but there would also be some highly-voted and insightful comments by relative nobodies who were experts in the particular field being discussed. This still happens, but reading the highest-voted comments is becoming less and less worthwhile.
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#19I'd like to see it disappear, personally. The really bad comments tend to sink to the bottom of the page anyway and increasingly downvoting is being used capriciously and vindictively to ding opinions people just don't happen to agree with.
Re: Ask HN: Downvoting
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between "int i = INT_MAX + 1 is legal C" (appropriate but factually wrong) and "fsck off, you moron".
...but then, what is the difference between an opinion you disagree with (a "dissenting view") and one that you believe to be factually incorrect? I feel like downvoting the former "factually wrong" comment leads to the behavior that ColinWright is describing: where people downvote anything they disagree with. (One might even argue that this is a fundamental bug in having downvoting as a mechanism.)
People do down-vote anything they disagree with, and there's nothing that can stop that. You can't change people's behavior.
However, removing the ability to down-vote won't really change anything in this regard, except that it will stop people from feeling attacked when they get a down-vote. What would change is that there would be no feedback about genuinely inappropriate comments, and I think that would be bad.
The only thing I can think of is to separate "down-vote" (meaning "of little value") from "inappropriate", label them clearly as such, and have the consequences of a "down-vote" less apparent and less severe. Then you can only trust that the behavior will sort itself as the "community" decides on the meaning of "inappropriate" and "of little value."