Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

theapeiron.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 553 posts

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#361

Post by fidesomnes »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #62
_v7gu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Avoid political threads. Coupled with the new catchphrase "everything is political", this is quite impossible to do.

everything is political Can't stand this phrase that literally came out of nowhere. People will try and justify it with walls of text about the oppressed, blah blah, when it's just an excuse for them to chide you about why you're wrong and why this issue intersects with their politics.

> Can't stand this phrase that literally came out of nowhere.

I don't know where you have been or how new you are here but this phrase has been around since at least the 1960's New Left ideological frameworks.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#362

Post by fidesomnes »

crazy_horse wrote: post #86
spywaregorilla wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. Tangential but whenever I read something like this, and people do post them a lot, I tend to assume they're actually normal, sensitive people who have learned that not showing any sign of harm means…

Hey, wanted to respond to your comment because mine could come off as unhealthy. I simply mean that I'm old enough, have experienced enough that there are very few people in the world that can say something which I haven't already been told or I haven't imagined myself. Some rando on the net can't possibly hurt. But yeah, I don't mean to suggest suppressing your feelings.

> I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it.

All a student has to do is call you racist or touch one and you are fired. Have a nice day "manning up" to that one!

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#363

Post by anigbrowl »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #291

I think it should be required that when a person downvotes a post or comment, they should need to supply a comment as to why. That would have multiple benefits. One, it is maddening to make a comment in earnest and get downvoted but no feedback why it was downvoted. Two, it would reduce the number of people who downvote a comment simply because they disagree as they would have to expose their own opinion and risk the…

Shouldn't they do the same if they agree with you? What if they are wrong, or agreeing with you for purely strategic reasons rather than because they sincerely thing you're right? Any argument about downvoting is equally applicable in the opposite direction.

Conversely, it's highly inefficient for people to take time to write out their reasons if someone else has already done so and they are merely echoing that. Trolls exploit this because many of them derive amusement from stealing others' time and attention by deliberately posting drivel and then demanding it be taken seriously or that people educate the troll out their misconceptions (a wholly insincere request).

Nobody owes you agreement, and sometimes you will be rejected for unfair reasons. That's life. Expecting to only get positive reinforcement or always be fully supplied with context will only lead to disappointment.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#364

Post by Larrikin »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #291

I think it should be required that when a person downvotes a post or comment, they should need to supply a comment as to why. That would have multiple benefits. One, it is maddening to make a comment in earnest and get downvoted but no feedback why it was downvoted. Two, it would reduce the number of people who downvote a comment simply because they disagree as they would have to expose their own opinion and risk the…

Arguing with people posting in bad faith or complete ignorance is a waste of my time.

You can come with a mountain of evidence and/or a well written edited thought out post and they'll just ignore it, post elsewhere with the same argument, or complain about inconsequential things. In my younger days I used to waste time arguing with racists, Nazis, etc but the argument comes from bad faith and they've already made their mind up. I just down vote or report them and move on.

They are specifically egregious but similar people are not owed my time and if it's an actual good faith argument they'll eventually learn to word their statements better.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#365

Post by khawkins »

zug_zug wrote: post #244
drstewart wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my experience has been that any downvote system will turn an audience that's divided 51-49 to one that's partitioned 51-0 in very short order. If anything, I've come to the conclusion that downvoting should be completely removed from most online platforms.

Not so. Reddit's system works that if a post get 1000 upvotes and 500 downvotes (66% liked), it will be scored worse than a post than gets 10 upvotes and 0 downvotes. Basically what it does is penalize controversy, which is the perfect decision for a website that is about mining the most humorous and widely-liked response. Anything that is 51% liked and 49% disliked (e.g. political individuals mentioned in a non-poli…

The point is that the 49% eventually leave when their every contribution get bombed to the bottom immediately. Then the 49% of the remaining 51% get bullied out.

Reddit's system encourages purity spirals, especially when the main topic of discussion is how terrible everyone else is.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#366

Post by anigbrowl »

crazy_horse wrote: post #21

I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…

I partly disagree with your comment (HN isn't an academy) but you make a good point that 4 downvotes are enough to effectively make a comment disappear. That can be abused to easily wreck good comments, adn genuinely shitty comments don't get enough negative feedback.

When you add in flagging and other factors, the 'mysterious black box + benevolent moderator' approach satisfies nobody and is easily gamed by bad actors. It's just an attempt at community security through obscurity, and like all STO approaches it doesn't work. There's also evidence to suggest that flamewars do a better job of eliminating toxicity over the long term than the approach outlined above.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#367

Post by [deleted] »

notriddle wrote: post #66

Has this person even used Reddit? Or StackOverflow? Or even GitHub? I’ve used social platforms with downvote buttons; saying that they make you feel bad and should be removed is like saying that cigarettes should be removed because they smell bad. But to be specific, instead of just using metaphors: * A downvote carries less information than an upvote does. If a feature request gets a lot of upvotes, the voters are s…

[deleted]

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#368

Post by cutemonster »

aaron-santos wrote: post #332
twirligigue wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people can dislike something but they are unable to articulate the reason. Yet the reason may be valid. So I would say: permit downvoting, but as well as removing one point from the downvoted, let it cost the downvoter one point also. This reflects real life where it's possible for me to lose my temper in a conversation but it always inflicts a psychological cost on me for doing so. I don't get to express d…

It's pretty easy to farm karma here. Would double-edged downvotes incentivize more submission karma farming in order to spend it in downvotes?

Maybe building up and selling high carma accounts with lots of downvote ammo?

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#369

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Veen wrote: post #192
minikites wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a subject or domain that involves people which isn't "political".

My love of my partner and my nephews and nieces. My enjoyment of art. My appreciation of the natural world. You can do a political analysis of those things, but they are not intrinsically political. Of course, some on the left believe that there is nothing that isn't political. But I don't think they're correct.

You made it 4 words into your reply before using veiled political language regarding your relationship with whomever you are romantically involved with. "Partner" became common in the mid 80s because it was a way for gay people to refer to their love interests without revealing their gender.

You say that art and love aren't political, but that's only useful when trying to split hairs about the subject.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#370

Post by tstrimple »

city41 wrote: post #324
tstrimple wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My main issue with downvotes is they are almost always used incorrectly. Including here at HN. They are not meant to be an "agree/disagree" button, but rather a way to filter out content that is not relevant to the discussion at hand. Says who? And why should anyone listen to them? There seems to be a lot of talk about how it's not being used as designed, but absolutely no one provides any evidence to support that…

Sure, that may be technically correct and in practice people downvote for any reason they choose. Nothing can stop them. But if they were used to promote viewpoints and better discussion, the end result would be better communities. As for the "says who?", for example, that is Reddit's official stance on voting, which I quoted elsewhere in this thread.

You've said it would lead to better discussion. I'm not convinced that's the case. I think flagged and grey comments being filtered out actually helps conversations more often than not. Can we empirically determine which will lead to better communities? Based on my experience than nearly every single community with lax moderation (official moderation and community moderation) turns into a cesspool. There's a reason you're here for conversation after all and not on 4chan.
Post reply on HN