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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)

#351

Post by smogcutter »

rcurry wrote: post #311
Hiopl wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also baffled by his position. I often think that downvotes on HN serve to reinforce conformism to an accepted set of values and ideas. Which might be okay if, say, you want to "immunize" a community against racism, sexism or fake information, but isn't great if issues (as in politics or even in tech on a social level) are a lot more nuanced and there might be plenty of room to explore ideas off the beaten path (a…

I agree with you 100%, I love HN and have been here for years but the downvoting feature disgusts me. Either allow a post or don’t, but this weird “fading” of someone’s post just because some people don’t agree with what someone has to say strikes me as petty and cheap. HN should be bigger than that.

I see what you mean, but I think the “fading” is meant to systematically steer downvotes away from meaning plain disagreement. Whether it succeeds is another issue.

The fading indicates that what an HN downvote means is “I think people shouldn’t see this/this shouldn’t be part of the thread”. Whether it’s bc the post is off topic, flame bait, trolling, just plain boneheaded, etc., is kind of beside the point, although ideally it isn’t simply disagreement.

But that means replying to a post you downvote makes no sense. Why further a conversation you’re trying to bury?

Also, if an opinion is so unpopular it gets downvoted into oblivion, maybe a forum based on votes just isn’t the right venue for it. Start a blog.

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

#352

Post by oblib »

Personally, I think the "karma" and up/down voting of comments is a cool feature but they need to be taken with a grain of salt.

It's fun to see a submission get upvoted and get karma points and disappointing to see one get buried, and frustrating to see a post get buried and than another covering the same topic go big, but taken in perspective to what's truly important the points are trivial.

The main reason I visit HN most days, and generally several times a day, is to find something interesting and most days I do, and some of what I find and learn here is important.

I never come here looking for stuff to down vote. That's kind of hard to even imagine because you'd almost have to pass over the interesting and important to do that.

Be interesting to be able to see how many down votes a user has made. That could make one a bit less trigger happy.

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

#353

Post by krapp »

dang wrote: post #324
krapp wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For many years now, we tell users that we're banning them when they have an established history on the site: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... . Shadowbanning is mostly for spammers and serial trolls. There's lots of past explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... . I think vouching dates from 2015. If…

Things have been a lot more equitable since pg was running the show.

Although to be fair sometimes you come along a bit late and people don't actually see your comment. If it's not still on the first page of their threads list they're probably never going to notice it. Maybe there should be a message when someone logs in to let them know what flags are against their account.

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

#354

Post by pseudalopex »

dragonwriter wrote: post #291
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…

> If you want to get banned quickly, criticize pg portfolio companies I've done that. Not been banned. > point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite Well, I mean, aside from being false, that’s also going to often be a specific labelling of something here as “white supremacist” or “hate speech”; flagging exists pretty specifically to deal with content where that descript…

All their comments start dead. People call it shadow banning or hell banning. And some other accounts have [banned] after the name but keep commenting.

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

#356

Post by saalweachter »

downandout wrote: post #144
joering2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would actually like to see a list of largest karma-wise HN members who left. By leaving I would say over 180 days inactive. Dang can you post the result please: SELECT hn_name, hn_karma, hn_last_active FROM comments WHERE TIMESTAMPDIFF(DAY, hn_last_active, NOW()) > 180 ORDER BY hn_karma DESC LIMIT 100

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…

Browsing your recent comments, have you considered ... not commenting about downvotes?

I see a lot of "Why am I getting downvoted for this?", "Group think, downvotes, blah blah blah.", "I'm going to get downvoted for this but...", all of which are just magnets for more downvotes.

I think if you just stopped commenting on the downvoting, well, you'd still get the odd comment downvoted from time to time, because hey, you say things people don't like, you're going to get the downvotes, and yeah, people don't always explain why, which I know is annoying ... but you'd at least no longer be compounding it with the three or four follow-on comments that also all get downvoted, and your net karma would probably be fine.

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

#357

Post by intrasight »

Hiopl wrote: post #289
crazygringo wrote: post #198

It's kind of amusing that the entire premise of this article is undone by the aside: > update: Apparently it is possible to downvote comments, which I never realized. But while downvotes seem useful for comments where there's a lot more scope for false information, trolling, etc., I'm not sure what the additional value would be for posts -- they're either popular or not, and you can still flag posts that are actively…

I'm also baffled by his position. I often think that downvotes on HN serve to reinforce conformism to an accepted set of values and ideas. Which might be okay if, say, you want to "immunize" a community against racism, sexism or fake information, but isn't great if issues (as in politics or even in tech on a social level) are a lot more nuanced and there might be plenty of room to explore ideas off the beaten path (a…

While the downvote feature is there, you don't have to use it. I only upvote, but I wouldn't consider campaining to remove the downvote. Having a rule to require a response in order to downvote is not a good idea - we just don't need more roles. But I think that is is proper and respectful to give a comment explaining why you downvoted. I often see such comments in response to my downvoted comments. But I might make this suggestion. Have upvotes and downvotes public. If HN has this information then so should we.

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

#358

Post by diob »

crispyambulance wrote: post #350
diob wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I've seen a lot of downvotes simply on things that aren't pro capitalism. I wish comments were used instead.

I'm not so worried about it. There's certain number of "tar-baby" subjects/opinions that can get someone downvoted on HN really quick... like suggesting Peter Thiel is an asshole, or saying anything negative about crazy libertarians. But HN is ALL about discussion. It's a relatively safe place to float an idea and hear some provocative opinions. The techno-libertarians don't actually bite. Stackoverflow, on the other…

Case against it being all about discussion though, my original comment has been voted down for some reason.

Please folks, just debate me or post a counterpoint.

I think at the very least tie ability to vote down with commenting. In other words, once the user has replied to the original comment, they can vote it down if they desire.

You might think this is a safe place, but I've come to just avoid commenting anything like this that might get "hive minded" into oblivion. I'm sure I'm not the only one. In that sense, it's safe place for a certain "kind" of people with a certain "kind" of opinion.

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

#359

Post by strken »

huffmsa wrote: post #335
rcurry wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you 100%, I love HN and have been here for years but the downvoting feature disgusts me. Either allow a post or don’t, but this weird “fading” of someone’s post just because some people don’t agree with what someone has to say strikes me as petty and cheap. HN should be bigger than that.

I've long held that you should have to reply to the comment when downvoting. Even if it's just a "no", that's better than the ability to hide a comment you don't agree with

The problem is that extremely low-quality comments (e.g. anything from "agree" and off-topic memes to irrelevant political sledging to the kind of thing that will get the user banned when a moderator sees it) are the majority of downvoted comments. Requiring a reply would give them long chains of unnecessary comments until they hit the threshold to be hidden.

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

#360

Post by r00fus »

Graffur wrote: post #282
rurp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In fact it seems like a no brainer decision. Why should a day 1 account be able to downvote content?

There's a lot more. You shouldn't be able to downvote replies to your post. Rate limits. Metamoderation. Hell/shadowbanning. Most good forums rely on an active superadmin moderation a lot - when that goes away or is unreliable the site dies.
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