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The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

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Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#171

Post by type0 »

ryandrake wrote: post #122
amznthrwaway wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that HN is well-moderated is bizarre. HN is exceptionally hostile to those who hold beliefs contrary to HN-acceptable norms. If you want to get banned quickly, criticize pg portfolio companies (even politely, with valid criticism), point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite; point out that responses to hate speech are _not_ tolerated..... The community here u…

> These days, that doesn’t happen. The discussions are lower value, less open minded, and more strident. It’s a pile of shit. The decline of open-mindedness is what I've noticed the most. The assumption of good intention on the part of someone with an opposing view. The willingness to at least entertain a thought or argument, even if you ultimately don't accept it. Much easier to just hit the down-arrow and move on,…

> The willingness to at least entertain a thought or argument, even if you ultimately don't accept it. Much easier to just hit the down-arrow and move on, satisfied in knowing that wrongthink was punished with a nice -1.

Yes, but at least unpleasant discussions usually just stop at that, unlike Reddit or even worse Twitter where you get a shitstorm of insults.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#172

Post by kodah »

vict7 wrote: post #138
amznthrwaway wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that HN is well-moderated is bizarre. HN is exceptionally hostile to those who hold beliefs contrary to HN-acceptable norms. If you want to get banned quickly, criticize pg portfolio companies (even politely, with valid criticism), point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite; point out that responses to hate speech are _not_ tolerated..... The community here u…

As someone that just stopped lurking, it's clear downvoting is used primarily as a "disagree" button. Case in point, this comment I'm replying to. I believe they're making a meaningful contribution to this discussion. Yet the downvotes have already commenced.

Take a look at GP's previous comments and their contexts.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#173

Post by jerrac »

jerrac wrote: post #19

I initially loved the idea of voting posts up and down. Thanks to seeing how it actually works on SO and here, well, I am not much of a fan anymore. At the very least, if I ever implemented it myself, I'd require that people explain why they are voting up, or voting down, before they could vote. And I'd not limit users from being able to vote until they magically get to the right amount of "karma". Without requiring…

To expand on my thoughts a bit, my goal with voting would be to get people to actually engage with each other. That's the whole point of a community site. Adding "points" is just a way to encourage more engagement.

With that in mind, I'd likely just not have downvotes period. If something is low quality enough to deserve a downvote, then it should be in violation of my community standards. Downvotes are designed to stop engagement. That's not the kind of thing I'd want unless it's something bad.

Then maybe do something a little different with upvotes. Say after you upvote with a comment a certain number of times, you get access to a quick upvote option. Or canned upvote comments.

And maybe general comments would count as an upvote unless you uncheck the box. That way we could keep generic upvote comments like "well thought out argument" or "he used good references" in their own little section without stifling good interactions.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#174

Post by LinuxBender »

jvanderbot wrote: post #124
benlivengood wrote: post #40

I've been through several forum deaths. The cause is usually large growth from people with very different mindsets that downvote for essentially political reasons instead of encouraging good discourse. This makes the best people leave in short order. In a sense there's no way to structure a forum to avoid this. Being outnumbered by people who don't value open communication is unpleasant with or without downvoting. Fo…

>The cause is usually large growth from people with very different mindsets that downvote for essentially political reasons instead of encouraging good discourse. You've quite well described my latest experienced with StackExchange sites that are very popular (like Stack Overflow). The downvotes rain for any question without feedback. A comment provides an answer, but not an "Answer" that can be pinned. Vague "Opinio…

I've had similar experiences on ServerFault part of StachExchange. If I simply answer a question with the correct technical answer, my answer is basically ignored. If I take that exact same answer and add a bold title, some cute paragraph formatting, some no-format text boxes, add some flowery wording like I am giving a Ted Talk, then people love my answers. So that is what I do and why I rarely answer questions any more. They also try to encourage me to edit other peoples posts, but I already have a day job.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#175

Post by kergonath »

ericmay wrote: post #13

I really like downvoting where you lose one of your past upvotes in order to downvote. It's a nice little filter that people who care about how many upvotes they have won't use, and puts an end to some amount of frivolous downvoting. In a meta way, you kind of have to use a little bit of your own point capital to downvote something, so if you're highly upvoted by the community then calling BS on something is easier f…

I am not sure adding a cost to downvotes would promote diversity so much. It is easy to game the system and post popular opinions to farm upvotes. If you do what you say, you give more power to the people already playing the reputation game.

You also let garbage fester because nobody will use points to downvote a stupid, agressive one-liner.

My experience is that:

- voting on HN works well for its intended purpose, which is surfacing the interesting conversations

- dead comments really deserve to die (I can’t remember a counter-example)

- greyed out comments tend to be right but unpopular, or right but rude, or wrong, or just stupid. Of these, the problematic cases are “right but unpopular”, which is not that frequent. And when it happens that’s fine, they are still readable.

> I also wonder, for a site like hacker news what's the point of even showing the user the # of upvotes they've obtained?

I assume it promotes engaging in the comments. It’s true that popularity contests should not be encouraged too much, but at the same time I can see how having a number that can go down would make some people think twice before knee-jerk posting or casual trolling.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#177

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

chalcolithic wrote: post #120
klyrs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of downvoting, or how Stackexchange gets it wrong about HN's voting system. It's hilarious that they start with some misconceptions about downvoting, notice that they're wrong, and forge boldly ahead without updating their understanding. If my hottest takes are any indication, the reputation floor -4 for a comment, not zero as they suggest. I haven't noticed a ceiling on upvotes. Upvotes help stories rise t…

I always assumed SE got voting right because why else are they the top dog? I never felt any need for them to exist because programming forums (or usenet groups earlier) exised since forever and once Google give us usable search(sorry, Altavista) I could find an answer for basically any question.

I think SE has terrible voting. Voting fundamentally doesn't work for what they're trying to do, because if you want wiki-style best-of answers to specific questions you cannot use a simple counting algorithm.

For one, answers change over time. The best answer five years ago will have accumulated the most votes. The most current and correct answer will never be able to catch up with that.

Two, there's a lot of nitpicking and irrelevant point scoring. Making answers a competition instead of a collaboration brings out the worst in some people.

Three, there's an assumption that voters know what the best answer is. Because they often don't - which is why they're looking for answers - the answers with the most upvotes are the ones that look plausible. They're not necessarily definitive, or ideal.

Four - for code - the code sometimes has obvious bugs or typos. Upvotes are supposed to fix this, but clearly they don't.

Five - the mod problem, where valid questions are closed and duplicates aren't really duplicates.

I think SE would work better as a collaborative semi-wiki, or something else in that ballpark. I don't think the karma scoring does a good job - except in the very basic sense that you get some relevant answers in one place, and it's still up to you to decide which one (if any) solves the problem.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#179

Post by type0 »

oceliker wrote: post #59
klyrs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of downvoting, or how Stackexchange gets it wrong about HN's voting system. It's hilarious that they start with some misconceptions about downvoting, notice that they're wrong, and forge boldly ahead without updating their understanding. If my hottest takes are any indication, the reputation floor -4 for a comment, not zero as they suggest. I haven't noticed a ceiling on upvotes. Upvotes help stories rise t…

> the reputation floor -4 for a comment, not zero as they suggest Correct, -4 is the lowest a comment can go: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

Do title submissions also start at -4? I noticed that there is often almost a hard line where article submission gets much more visibility if it goes over 4 points.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#180

Post by TeMPOraL »

dmos62 wrote: post #126
wvenable wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagging is necessary to keep the site on-topic in my opinion. People will happily upvote controversy that has little value or importance to this site.

> controversy that has little value or importance to this site What do you mean by "this site"? The participants in this forum are the site. I've had discussions flagged that I thought to be valuable. Why would you want to get rid of controversy anyway? Do you want to discuss only popular old hat things? Stability under diversity is a sign of health in an ecosystem.

> Stability under diversity is a sign of health in an ecosystem.

And yet part of that diversity is that ecosystem has different niches :).

You can discuss politics, sports and controversy anywhere else on the Internet. HN has a different focus, and many of us (myself included) would like to keep it that way - because that's literally the basis for the whole value of this place.

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