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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)

#201

Post by vict7 »

cassepipe wrote: post #192
vict7 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No the problem is that he makes accusations that are not backed up by any data and this is contrary to the guidelines. I consider myself more of a leftist than your typical hn user and when I have been abnormally downvoted I never felt it was because of my opinion but rather because I was too hot headed or too ignorant about what I was talking about. So I am very concerned by those claims but without any data about p…

I can definitely confess to being hot headed at times. I agree with you about the lack of data and will do my best to consider this going forward.

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

#202

Post by pessimizer »

amznthrwaway wrote: post #106
Tenoke wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flagging is for problematic stories. If you follow at all which stories are rejected flagging is used as downvoting on a daily basis unless your definition of 'problematic' is extremely broad.

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…

You're going to get downvoted and flagged to hell, but I mostly agree with your comment - there was a precipitous quality drop that came with the heavy moderation that people now think of as the identifying characteristic of HN. That being said, I think that after a few egregious missteps (such as the test ban on "politics"), the heavy moderation has been open and kind. I also suspect that there has been some mod meddling to keep my lefty-ass comments visible more than once.

I would like to point out that this is a silicon valley/SF tech forum; considering the demo, to mod out all of the vile sexist/race-realist objectivist bleating would be crushing. Just argue back. The left-liberal addiction to manager-calling is ruining their ability to defend their positions, heavily moderated "safe spaces" really become places where people can repeat their beliefs by rote, free from challenges. The reason libertarians are wrong is because their philosophy is intellectually bankrupt, not because it's upsetting. Practice in putting them down refines your own beliefs.

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

#203

Post by Cd00d »

CDRdude wrote: post #102
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…

I think slashdot’s voting system was well equipped to avoid that problem, but they faded anyway. Maybe it was the redesign? I think many of their innovations in 1999 would go a long way to resolve political downvoting today—-new accounts were unable to vote on comments, you were unable to vote and comment in the same posts, metamoderation to ensure fairness, and up or downvotes having to fit categories like ‘insightf…

Personally, I left slashdot when I felt the community changed. It started to feel less like excitement, and more like cranky libertarians complaining. I remember CmdrTaco leaving the helm, so maybe it was his steering that kept it good to me? No idea.

When I gave up on slashdot I put a call out to my social circle for a replacement, and that's how I learned about HN! That was nearly a decade ago, and I'm still grateful!

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

#204

Post by LinuxBender »

rhizome wrote: post #191
LinuxBender wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel like a lot more people qualify to do metamoderation in the SO network than ever do it. This is essentially sabotage in the form of benign neglect.

Very true and it gets even more complicated when there are small circles of full time editors that invoke elitism around document writing styles as well as chiming in on highly subjective answers and invoking dogmatic principals. In Unix/Linux, there are millions of ways to solve a problem, but the solution must fit into their perceived right way. Before long, people not in those elite circles or who do not get the hint are discouraged from editing or answering anything.

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

#205

Post by joseluisq »

TheManInThePub wrote: post #135
CDRdude wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think slashdot’s voting system was well equipped to avoid that problem, but they faded anyway. Maybe it was the redesign? I think many of their innovations in 1999 would go a long way to resolve political downvoting today—-new accounts were unable to vote on comments, you were unable to vote and comment in the same posts, metamoderation to ensure fairness, and up or downvotes having to fit categories like ‘insightf…

Frankly, I couldn't agree with this more. I've seen intelligent and insightful HN posts down voted simply because they went against the status-quo. If this is allowed to go on, people will be afraid of making controversial (but intelligent) posts, and this place will become another reddit.

Agree. And yes, privilege just uncontroversial standpoints or promote indirect pressure over the members will result in community fragmentation. Therefore HN could turn into "one of many" monotone sites to just pass around.

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

#206

Post by ipband »

rurp wrote: post #143
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…

This matches my experience as well. HN having a reasonably high karma threshold for downvoting was a great decision that guards against a lot of common problems. I think that feature, along with the community as a whole being very mindful about protecting the forum quality, plus Dang being an excellent moderator, have greatly contributed to keeping it strong for many years.

It's not just downvoting that makes HN strong, it's IP banning. Right now I'm commenting via a new user I created via my work VPN, because nothing on my home network is allowed to create new users on HN now or effectively comment, since I always did so using temporary accounts. I'm getting so much more done, so- thanks, HN!

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

#207

Post by tremon »

bhupy wrote: post #151
josephg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like downvoting on HN is a way of saying “No. We don’t behave like that here”. It’s one of our community’s tools for preserving, teaching and enforcing our values with newcomers. Yes, it’s open to abuse. But it fills an important social function. And from that perspective, of course it’s limited to people who’ve been involved in the community awhile.

Isn’t that what flagging is for?

Flagging is for spam, at least that what I use it for. I reserve my downvotes for conversational indecency: bad faith arguments, personal attacks, not acknowledging/engaging the parent post's points.

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

#208

Post by klyrs »

Buttons840 wrote: post #71
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…

As far as reputation goes, I see little difference between HN and Reddit. Why do you think HN does it right and Reddit wrong? SE prominently displays reputation points, which is different.

Reddit shows up/down totals on users, comments, and stories. It's really in your face. HN has a subtle little arrow or two, and you only see the sum of up/down on your own comments. We know when things have been downvoted, but it's much harder to tell if something has been upvoted. And when things do get downvoted, they're grayed out -- it takes more effort to read downvoted comments (click the date), so if you're skimming you'll just skip unpopular comments until it gets relevant again. So display-wise, I like the cleaner HN over the noisier and visibly gamified Reddit.

Also, not insignificantly, HN is a side project, not a startup. It can succeed at its goals and stay small, not worrying about "capturing the market" or whatever. Staying small means dang can generally be expected to read most of the comments on the site.

And by "small", I mean that there's rarely much action on the page-3 stories. Threads that get paginated are rarely worth wading into. If a million people started using HN, then it would quickly become so unusable that they'd all quit within a week. Reddit "solves" this "problem" by making subreddits, and now it's a poison-breathing hydra.

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

#209

Post by krapp »

disgrunt wrote: post #197
hellbannedguy wrote: post #148

To those of you addicted to Hacker News; I can offer this tip. Get a Hellban. It's not hard after all. I'll probally get hellbanned over this post? You will find you will still pruse HN, but very rarely will you feel the need to contribute. Your time here will decrease. Hacker News does not need much improvement. It does seem like it's on the back end of it's business cycle though, like all current social sites? I us…

For those of us unaware, what is a hellban?

It's a ban designed to make it appear to the banned user that they aren't banned. The intent is to allow them to continue to post (so they don't make a new account and avoid the ban) unaware that their posts are unreadable by the rest of the community.

It works, but it's extremely controversial. It used to be the case that talking about it (and making banned users aware of their status) could get you banned here, and vouching for banned users wasn't available until relatively recently. Some users have only discovered they were banned years after the fact.

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

#210

Post by downandout »

burnished wrote: post #193
downandout wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be incredibly active on here, and then I started getting downvoted on virtually every comment, likely for political reasons. I have all but stopped commenting compared to my previous activity. It just stopped being fun. Even posts I make that have nothing to do with politics, that only point out provable, factual information, get downvoted. I have over 13K karma, even after losing a few thousand points over…

What are some of your views that you think have become unpopular over time?

I don't actually know. I am who I am, and have been responding to things in the same way since I arrived on the site. I took a lot of flack for criticizing GDPR, which I agree with in principle but believe was very poorly implemented. Also people seem to have confused me for a Trump supporter, even though I am middle-of-the-road politically - which is why I suspect that I get many automatic downvotes regardless of the content of my comments. I try to call things as I see them, and any criticism of left-leaning principles/programs/policies on here - even the most misguided ones - tends to meet with instant, harsh rebuke.
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