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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)

#41

Post by technoguyrob »

parenthesis wrote: post #14
edw519 wrote: post #3

I almost never downvote. The only time I downvote is if something is extremely inappropriate, negative, trolling, or is degrading (IMO) to the quality of this community. I never downvote when I disagree. If I disagree, I reply with my disagreement. I wish others would too. Not much to learn from downvotes. Lots to learn from discussion and healthy debate. I upvote often, to anything that I think adds value.

That's pretty much my take too. Although I would further add that I often take a particular pleasure from upvoting a comment that I disagree with, if it is suitably thought-provoking, challenging, and constructive.

I disagree with your second sentence, but I upvoted you for it.

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

#42

Post by technoguyrob »

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.

I talked about this more in detail:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208748

To quote:

It is not ridiculous, since people aren't downmodding to express a difference of opinion about what the person said. They are downmodding to assert they do not want to hear any political opinion on Hacker News, because--as has been said--there are countless other venues for hackers to express and debate political opinion; Hacker News is not one of them.

Notice therefore we see something interesting regarding the HN system. In essence, this is exactly what pg had in mind. Karma is taken away for comments and not just submissions, so that users will adapt to the Hacker News atmosphere. As we have seen from this thread, politics (even "news" like the first ever black general election presidential candidate) is simply not something people are interested in seeing on HN, and if people keep discussing it, they will be downmodded into oblivion, effectively maintaining the current HN mindset (since, presumably, people with negative, or quickly decreasing karma, will not want to continue posting on HN).

The only thing that could break such a system is a vast shift in the mentality of the community (which is not a bad thing since it would still keep the community happy, although it's very unlikely to happen), or a massive influx of new people into the community (which is why pg wants to keep the number of new signups per day low).

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

#43

Post by technoguyrob »

tom wrote: post #33

At first it bothered me that I could make a comment on something, maybe not a comment that everyone would agree with, but a comment that I believed, and yet I'd be down-voted. I'd watch my karma tick away and be like "What are these folks doing? What on earth is wrong with what I said? How does it lessen the quality of the conversation?" Then I realized, it just doesn't matter. This isn't a contest, it's a community.…

Keep in mind some people might also simply click downvote without paying much attention to their action. I've seen this time and time again on Reddit and here that when someone replies "Why are people downvoting me? Could you please explain?" to their own downvoted comment, everyone wakes up and realizes the comment isn't that bad, or possibly even quite insightful.

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

#44

Post by sah »

edw519 wrote: post #3

I almost never downvote. The only time I downvote is if something is extremely inappropriate, negative, trolling, or is degrading (IMO) to the quality of this community. I never downvote when I disagree. If I disagree, I reply with my disagreement. I wish others would too. Not much to learn from downvotes. Lots to learn from discussion and healthy debate. I upvote often, to anything that I think adds value.

I often hear people advocate a policy of only downvoting offensive or trolling comments on news.YC. I think it's a bad idea.

My goal in voting is always to improve the experience for the next reader. That means that I vote up what I think is the most interesting or important information, and vote down distractions and annoyances of all kinds: not just trolling, but also poorly thought out arguments, boring observations, rambling, point-missing, and anything else that consumes space without providing value.

You can look at that as being mean to people who posted comments that were merely not top-notch, but I think of it as being kind to the probably much larger number of people who are skimming the comments looking for something worthwhile.

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

#45

Post by [deleted] »

walterk wrote: post #21

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…

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by notauser »

edw519 wrote: post #3

I almost never downvote. The only time I downvote is if something is extremely inappropriate, negative, trolling, or is degrading (IMO) to the quality of this community. I never downvote when I disagree. If I disagree, I reply with my disagreement. I wish others would too. Not much to learn from downvotes. Lots to learn from discussion and healthy debate. I upvote often, to anything that I think adds value.

I downvote for factual errors (such as 'Symbian is open source') because a high vote count implies that the comment is correct.

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

#49

Post by lst »

I don't like voting at all, since it favors the democratic dictatorship of opinion.

So, the positive thing about voting is: stupid or nonsense comments can be marked as such.

But the negative thing remains: sometimes the truth (read: reality) is not popular at all, and seems to be wrong for the majority of audience. And since such comments are always voted down, you end up building your opinion only on a democratic base -- but:

Democratic Opinion Dictatorship Is Evil.

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

#50

Post by philh »

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".

If enough people upvote purely for agreeing, it becomes possible to get karma for vapid posts that pander to the community.

I think it would be better to just factor in agreement as part of whether you'd like to see more. Maybe you agree with something, but the sentiment has been expressed so many times that it's getting tiresome.

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