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Ask YC: Voting and Karma (Call to action)

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask YC: Voting and Karma (Call to action)

#21

Post by walterk »

All these attempts at

1. distinguishing multiple metrics for comment evaluation, and

2. declaring that up/down voting should not be used for some of these metrics

are doomed to failure, so long as

1. there is only one dimension on which to express anything, and

2. the interface for voting lacks any obvious affordances/constraints on how it should be used, even if those affordances/constraints are merely rhetorical (e.g., a JavaScript popup that asks you to confirm your up/down vote only if complies with some set of criteria).

I suspect PG is unlikely to complicate the voting interface to map to multiple metrics until some threshold of community deterioration has been reached, so a lot of this debate is pretty pointless. The only way to enforce norms about how generic up/down voting should be used, that are not implied by the interface itself, is to constantly comment on uses of voting that are suspected to be illegitimate and to start threads like this one.

After seeing several such threads, I suspect that, at best, you will only be able to convince a fraction of the community to conform to whatever norms you think are best. Everyone else will simply use the up/down arrows as a catchall for any positive or negative sentiment they feel like expressing. Total conversion is pretty much impossible, partly because some people will disagree with those norms, and newcomers will be oblivious to them.

In my opinion, there are much bigger problems here than how up/down votes are used. Constant submission and upvoting of news that's utterly irrelevant to hacker-entrepreneurs is one.

Re: Ask YC: Voting and Karma (Call to action)

#22

Post by msg »

"be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others"

As a commenter, you have the responsibility to raise the level of the discussion. As a moderator (with the down arrow), you have the responsibility to be generous with where others are taking the discussion.

Slashdot does meta-moderating, but it works because downvotes and upvotes have categories that it's possible for a relatively neutral observer to agree and disagree with. Here, there's a lot of ambiguity when you upvote or downvote.

Re: Ask YC: Voting and Karma (Call to action)

#23

Post by xlnt »

jobeirne wrote: post #12
cperciva wrote: post #2

In your opinion what is the purpose for the upvote and downvote? Upvote = "I'd like to see more comments like this". Downvote = "I'd like to see fewer comments like this". I don't think that people having different reasons for wanting more or less of a particular type of comment is a problem.

Modified: Upvote = "I'd like to see more comments like this" || "I agree with this". Downvote = "I'd like to see fewer comments like this".

the problem with downvotes is that the parent of this comment being downvoted is more likely to be because someone didn't know what || means rather than because someone wanted fewer comments suggesting minor, helpful improvements on the parent idea.

Re: Ask YC: Voting and Karma (Call to action)

#24

Post by DanielBMarkham »

The only thing that makes sense to me is two sets of dropdowns, instead of the up and down arrow. The dropdowns would have various positive categories "agree", "insightful", "humorous", etc. and various negative categories, "disagree", "inane", "troll", etc.

Instead of clicking up or down, you click the positive or negative attribute you use to categorize the comment.

What with clicking the drop-down, it's a two click system instead of a one-click system, but heck, to me it makes a lot more sense.

Re: Ask YC: Voting and Karma (Call to action)

#26

Post by LPTS »

If all of your comments are getting upvoted, and none are getting downvoted, you aren't being contentious enough. Divide people. Argue your point, forcefully, and let the people you think are wrong downvote you. It tells you more about them, then you, if you are right, and if you are wrong you can learn things. Win-win.

Who cares about Karma? Vote me down, please. I got 325 Karma. Vote them down, I don't care at all. Why should you?

Re: Ask YC: Voting and Karma (Call to action)

#27

Post by gscott »

ideas101 wrote: post #6

i think there should be no down-vote - because i very rarely notice that someone comments that doesn't make no sense at all - also if people who get up-voted will automatically gain more value anyway... so for example if i make a comment that doesn't make sense then nobody will up-vote me (and nobody can down-vote me either as there is no option to do that either) and i will end-up having lowest score (which is 1) co…

It is very difficult to get upvoted but it is far easier to be downvoted, if that is what you mean I agree but if there was no downvote, then there would be nothing stopping a mass flood of useless posts.

Re: Ask YC: Voting and Karma (Call to action)

#29

Post by blogimus »

I see a practice here which I find unhelpful: "bandwagon upvoting" where it appears that people vote up the leading comments. Do we really need to vote the top comments in a post out of the park, please tell me what utility this provides?

I saw this a lot on slashdot when I used to frequent that site. Comments that were at 3 or 4 got pushed to 5, but comments at 2 or less got ignored. But on that site, there was a hard upper limit of 5 points.

As far as my voting practices: I upvote select comments I think are particularly lucid and have not been voted up "significantly"

I downvote what I think are innapropriate comments such as hateful, vulgar, insulting (see this site's guidelines) "excessively" whiny or demanding or just plain babble (rarely, usually I just ignore babble).

I do NOT downvote opinions I disagree with. I either ignore them or reply.

Overall, though, I think the lack of hard and fast rules to voting adds more than detracts. If we all vote in different ways, then that makes the site more dynamic.

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