Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#11

Post by auferstehung » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 8:56 PM UTC

I think a method of ranking news based on the number and quality of comments would be better than voting up and down. This method would be somewhat analogous to page rank in that the rank of a story (webpage) is indirectly determined by the comments (links) and quality of the comments. Writing a comment is arguable less reflexive than clicking an arrow.

Also interesting news that was generating a good discussion could tend to persist and stay near the top. This would encourge thoughtful comments as you are not penalized for taking some time to think about the matter rather than hastily shooting from the hip.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#12

Post by bluemoo » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 9:08 PM UTC

kcl wrote: post #10

I wanted to downvote 'funny linux command lines'. When I couldn't find the downvote arrow my first instinct was to upvote everything else.

Perhaps you could start a news.yc Vote Exchange website. I liked the funny linux command line story, so in exchange for me not upvoting it, you can not upvote something else!

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#13

Post by Goladus » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 9:10 PM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #9

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

The entire up vote/down vote thing needs to go away. Voting on a story should be related to an action that the user is taking which implies an up/down vote. For example, in my Facebook application Wildfire stories are up voted only if you pass then on to your friends. As you mentioned to me yesterday, delicious/popular is interesting because it's based on pages people bookmarked for themselves. John.

I think the hardest part is finding what behavior to track. Click-through is obviously bad. Bookmarking and passing to friends will also slant the stories in a way that isn't necessarily good. I have a lot of friends that don't really care about hacker news, and tend to bookmark more reference-type material.

Comments are useful, but that slants towards controversial topics.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#14

Post by cyggie » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 9:17 PM UTC

I believe the problem with the down voting button is it often reflect more on the opinion of the voter rather than how well the article was written or its usefulness.

Good article that agree with the user = comment/up vote

Bad article that agree with the user = ignore

Good article that disagree with user = comment/down vote

Bad article that disagree with the user = down vote

Unless everyone actually vote up/down purely base on how good the article is and not their opinion, removing the down vote button is not a bad idea...

The voting button is a good idea if it's a poll, but the "hotness" of something is probably better tracked by the comments and other actions a user take...

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#15

Post by thomasptacek » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 10:14 PM UTC

auferstehung wrote: post #11

I think a method of ranking news based on the number and quality of comments would be better than voting up and down. This method would be somewhat analogous to page rank in that the rank of a story (webpage) is indirectly determined by the comments (links) and quality of the comments. Writing a comment is arguable less reflexive than clicking an arrow. Also interesting news that was generating a good discussion coul…

Clearly neither system works reliably, but just to put that suggestion in context:

http://reddit.com/info/2r8d8/comments

vs.

http://programming.reddit.com/info/2qbye/comments

"Quality" sounds like a good metric until you realize that upvotes mean "I agree!", not "Good comment".

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#16

Post by auferstehung » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 10:24 PM UTC

thomasptacek wrote: post #15

auferstehung wrote: post #11

I think a method of ranking news based on the number and quality of comments would be better than voting up and down. This method would be somewhat analogous to page rank in that the rank of a story (webpage) is indirectly determined by the comments (links) and quality of the comments. Writing a comment is arguable less reflexive than clicking an arrow. Also interesting news that was generating a good discussion coul…

Clearly neither system works reliably, but just to put that suggestion in context: http://reddit.com/info/2r8d8/comments vs. http://programming.reddit.com/info/2qbye/comments "Quality" sounds like a good metric until you realize that upvotes mean "I agree!", not "Good comment".

I agree. That is why I purposely did not equate quality with up and down voting, but left it undefined. Perhaps a solution could be that the quality of a comment was ranked by the number and quality of sub-comments. We would have the beginning of a highly ranked comment thread, for example.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#17

Post by imsteve » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 10:46 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

The best reason is because downvotes piss people off. They have been the cause of more flamewars on reddit than anything else. When you know you are right but everyone is downvoting you and upvoting the "wrong" guy, I know very few people who won't react aggressively.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#18

Post by benhoyt » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 11:00 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

Relatedly, I've submitted quite a few of my blog posts both here and on programming.reddit.com, and they'll often get a good number of points here, but on reddit someone will almost instantly downvote them to zero, and they of course never come back up. So I like News.YC's system.

Do other people find the same thing?

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#19

Post by pg » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 11:27 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #7

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

Could always have a downvote, but weight it as far less than an upvote. Personally I miss having the option of a downvote. Yes I agree downvotes can be an uninformed reflex, but removing any voice of disagreement seems overly harsh. I'd say have upvotes that count as 10 points, and downvotes that count as 1 point or something like that.

That's not a bad idea.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#20

Post by dood » Wed, Sep 19, 2007, 11:55 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #7

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

Could always have a downvote, but weight it as far less than an upvote. Personally I miss having the option of a downvote. Yes I agree downvotes can be an uninformed reflex, but removing any voice of disagreement seems overly harsh. I'd say have upvotes that count as 10 points, and downvotes that count as 1 point or something like that.

An alternative would be using flags, like reddit's 'report', the idea being you only use them for stuff that is really unsuitable, like spam, trolls and stupid stuff.