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

371–380 of 553 posts

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

#371

Post by loceng »

dmkolobov wrote: post #336
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…

Something that I've learned: nobody owes you an explanation for why they disagree with you, nor are they bound to care whether you learn something. Furthermore, I would argue that self-reflection about why people might disagree with your viewpoints is a valuable experience in that it provides an opportunity to practice empathy and awareness in how your words are perceived by others.

What makes you think no one owes you an explanation? If they're downvoting you and influencing how visible your comment(s) are I'd argue they do need to explain.

Likewise you seem to need to take your own advice to brainstorm to understand why it is likely to add value to someone else leaving a comment and not simply requiring you to brainstorm and make guesses, e.g. bias and blind spots a person may have; what other possibilities are there?

Edit to add: 2 upvotes then down to -1; it's hilarious how bad and poorly used downvotes are.

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

#372

Post by anigbrowl »

hashkb wrote: post #208
Pxtl wrote: post #176

I've noticed a difference between downvoting and non-downvoting discussions systems. In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion. Note that this isn't "the truth" or "the consensus of the community" but of the people engaged on the subject. For example, if you see an otherwise-liberal community discussing gun-rights, the gun owners within that community…

But with downvotes, we ensure that only popular opinions get visibility, defeating the entire purpose of sharing ideas within a community.

Unpopular ideas may be ahead of their time, but they may equally be just stupid or deliberately proposed in bad faith.

There are potential benefits to considering any given idea (you learn something useful or get smarter), and there are also costs (time to evaluate, possible bad outcomes).

Unless you are taking the negative possibilities into account, an all-beneficial 'marketplace' of ideas' does not and will not work.

Consider a farmer's market or flea market. If you go there with a bad product and it fails to sell, or previous customers tell you it turned out to be bad, then you either improve your product or start losing money. But if you could go a small market with a big sound system and a team of marketing people to loudly insist that your products are the best you would quickly wreck the whole market.

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

#374

Post by loceng »

Pxtl wrote: post #176

I've noticed a difference between downvoting and non-downvoting discussions systems. In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion. Note that this isn't "the truth" or "the consensus of the community" but of the people engaged on the subject. For example, if you see an otherwise-liberal community discussing gun-rights, the gun owners within that community…

So post more quality content.

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

#375

Post by ferdowsi »

greggman3 wrote: post #313
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…

downvoting to disagree is totally acceptable on HN I complained once and dang corrected me.

Downvoting to disagree is effectively a heckler's veto to make minority positions literally disappear. It rewards organized brigading from motivated parties you don't want to see particular criticisms be surfaced.

I don't understand why that type of discourse should be encouraged.

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

#376

Post by [deleted] »

dmkolobov wrote: post #336
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…

Something that I've learned: nobody owes you an explanation for why they disagree with you, nor are they bound to care whether you learn something. Furthermore, I would argue that self-reflection about why people might disagree with your viewpoints is a valuable experience in that it provides an opportunity to practice empathy and awareness in how your words are perceived by others.

[deleted]

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

#377

Post by city41 »

tstrimple wrote: post #370
city41 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

In my experience flagged comments are typically off topic or abusive. I don't recall ever seeing a flagged comment that was an honest attempt at discussion. As for grayed comments that are an honest attempt at discussion? Very common. I upvote heavily downvoted comments that didn't deserve it almost daily here. I've also been the victim of massive downvoting merely because I present a viewpoint that the hive-mind doesn't like. If you're only interested in a single viewpoint and don't want to see all sides to a topic, then sure, this system is great. I like seeing more viewpoints and perspectives.

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

#378

Post by anigbrowl »

hashkb wrote: post #217
Pxtl wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the unpopular opinions are things like "COVID is just the flu" and "climate change is fake", both of which have a substantial contingent that will support them, those ideas getting downvoted into oblivion is not a bad outcome.

Sure. But it's a double edged sword. "You should wear your mask" is getting downvoted (edit: I'm using the term loosely here, I hope it tracks) across the country and responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. We need to engage with ideas we don't like, and be open to persuasion. Downvotes preclude that.

No we don't, and no they don't. If you engage with ideas you don't like and debate them in good faith, and the promoters of said ideas keep just pumping them out (perhaps even using botnets or whatever) while ignoring all your good-faith attempts to refute them, then you are wasting your time.

At some point you have to cut your losses; you stay open to persuasion by people who consistently exploit your willingness to listen, you're being played. Downvotes do serve the excellent purpose of saying 'I disagree with this and am not willing to waste further time on it.'

Downvotes can also be abused. But an easy way to get around that is to make the system fully transparent and then do cluster analysis. If a downvoter or group thereof only ever puts out negative votes or habitually downvotes everything fromeone they don't like, that will show up after a while and people can weight away those negative opinions. Absent transparency, then the incentives to game the system go way up, and system operators usually wildly overestimate their own ability to guard against that.

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

#379

Post by _trampeltier »

dmkolobov wrote: post #336
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…

Something that I've learned: nobody owes you an explanation for why they disagree with you, nor are they bound to care whether you learn something. Furthermore, I would argue that self-reflection about why people might disagree with your viewpoints is a valuable experience in that it provides an opportunity to practice empathy and awareness in how your words are perceived by others.

I'm almost just on HN so I can't talk about other places. But the few times I get downvotes I would like to know why somebody voted me down.

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

#380

Post by deegles »

temp0826 wrote: post #305
deegles wrote: post #299

I don't want to downvote articles or posts, I want to downvote people . Especially across multiple platforms. If I downvote a person's blog post, I want their Reddit comments to be less prioritized. I want them to show up less in my Google results. I want that to flow over into the results of people who have upvoted me , creating a web of influence over good vs bad content. I know, tons of pitfalls and shortcomings t…

So like...codify cancel culture?

More like Web of Trust with reputation scores.
Post reply on HN