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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)

#411

Post by grawprog »

jorvi wrote: post #408
grawprog wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem when it comes down to it is there's generally more than one kind of comment as well as more than one kind of reason someone downvotes. You've got your objective factual comment Your subjective factual comment And your opinion based comment. I'm probably missing some. These can all be combined sometimes into one comment. Then you've got your reasons for downvoting. Disagreeing Factually incorrect W…

But that would still happen in an upvote-only system. The 'good' comments would float to the top and the 'bad' ones would stay low in the threads and sub-threads. To be honest, I feel the most damaging in the HN voting system is the greying out of comments. It often leads to bandwagoning where if a comment even goed to 0, some people just blindly ram the downvote button because someone already (visually) decided for…

True, the greying out does tend to have this effect, then again, sometimes I see a greyed comment I agree with that I think was downvoted unfairly and upvote it where I likely would have just read their comment and not upvoted had it not been grey. I forget sometimes when I'm just scrolling through to be honest.

But, I do agree, systems with upvotes only works sometimes, it seems to depend though. On one forum I post on, they only have upvote equivalents, but it tends to lead to fairly quality conversation a bit like hn, though memes and jokes tend to get upvoted far more than here....or maybe without downvotes you actually get to see the upvotes on jokes, I dunno, I've made a few of those one liner joke comments hn frowns upon and watched it go up and down over and over until it settles between -1 and 2 depending I guess on whether more people found it funny or annoying.

But...with upvote only systems, you also get horrendous trash like Facebook.

Then again, with upvote/downvote systems you get decent places like hn and horrendous trash like reddit and SO(an over exaggeration to allow me to keep this paragraph similar in structure and phrasing to the last) so who knows what's best really?

I think in the end it always comes down to the community and the mods.

It doesn't matter what kind of point system you have, what matters is the people who are most involved in the community, the rules of the community and how the mods act.

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

#412

Post by pwr33 »

fouric wrote: post #123
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…

> Daniel Gackle will ban your ass if you point out, for example, that he tolerates and even welcomes extremely bigoted shit. Citation needed - this claim is very far from my own experience. If you think you'll be banned, then email me with your evidence and I'll look at it.

He usually bans people for using mean words.

If you express some completely heinous ideas in polite, mostly grammatical writing then normally you will not be banned. This is based on my experience of over a decade of various accounts and occasional banning on "Hacker" News.

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

#413

Post by busymom0 »

biasKillsHN wrote: post #317
dang wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with the opposite view see the opposite "extreme" bias. It's basically entirely in the eye of the beholder. What's odd is how common it is, and how absolutely people are convinced that their particular strain of these contradictory generalizations is the accurate one.

That's not what I'm referring to. I see political topics better debated and I'm radical. It's just Apple comment threads. You know dang.

Just yesterday there was a post with high engagement and criticism of Apple's App Store:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228

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

#414

Post by aeternum »

coding123 wrote: post #402
grawprog wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem when it comes down to it is there's generally more than one kind of comment as well as more than one kind of reason someone downvotes. You've got your objective factual comment Your subjective factual comment And your opinion based comment. I'm probably missing some. These can all be combined sometimes into one comment. Then you've got your reasons for downvoting. Disagreeing Factually incorrect W…

Most of the time I see downvotes with no replies it means the person generally disagrees. I upvoted you by the way :)

I think sites would benefit from having more rich voting options, for example: agree but weak-argument, disagree but well-stated, changed my view, etc.

Would yield some more interesting ways to sort and rank comments.

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

#415

Post by robomartin »

Interesting article.

From my perspective HN voting, for the most part, works very well. I've been on online discussion groups since the days of USENET. HN is great.

What really bothers me is zero information down-votes and the "downvote army" as someone called it in this thread. Nobody learns anything from this at all. What's the value when a downvote carries no consequences whatsoever for the voter while delivering a penalty to the author?

One idea I had a while ago is that a downvote should cost the person money in the form of karma. Want to down vote? It'll cost you ten points. No problem.

The point of this idea is that a down-vote out of spite or just to pile on someone or an idea is a bad thing. People who behave that way with some consistency would have to give up more and more for each downvote.

Paying for a downvote with karma could be an interesting evolutionary solution for downvote abuse, particularly if the cost increases based on a range of criteria. You downvote a comment on a thread and it cost you 10 karma, you continue to downvote the same author on the same thread and it cost you more each time. If people are piling one, the cost goes up. Etc.

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

#416

Post by diob »

clairity wrote: post #367
diob wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ‘I've come to just avoid commenting anything like this that might get "hive minded" into oblivion.’ that’s exactly when you should be commenting, otherwise the community is lulled into false conformity. contentious topics require more diversity of thought and more considered words, not less. internet points don’t matter, just the food for thought that comes with broader discussions.

I know, that's why I'm suggesting it be tied to commenting. No comment, no voting down available.

The reason why I don't bother as much anymore is I assume if my overall points get too low, I probably get shadow banned (I can comment, but no one will ever see it, or something to that effect).

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

#417

Post by [deleted] »

pwr33 wrote: post #412
fouric wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Daniel Gackle will ban your ass if you point out, for example, that he tolerates and even welcomes extremely bigoted shit. Citation needed - this claim is very far from my own experience. If you think you'll be banned, then email me with your evidence and I'll look at it.

He usually bans people for using mean words. If you express some completely heinous ideas in polite, mostly grammatical writing then normally you will not be banned. This is based on my experience of over a decade of various accounts and occasional banning on "Hacker" News.

[deleted]

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

#418

Post by KMag »

dheera wrote: post #384
FalconSensei wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peers express disapproval and disagreement by commenting within the post. As I am doing precisely right now. ;) Exactly. And this is actually something that I like about Twitter, and hate about Reddit. Don't like what I post? Reply and say it.

A lot of HN doesn't do that, they just downvote. I think it would make a lot of sense to require a response before you can downvote.

I fear required responses would be similar to checked exceptions. They're great in theory, but in practice, without a lot of discipline and actively maintained culture of quality, they both tend to devolve into low-quality boilerplate.

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

#419

Post by utucuro »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #365
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.

It gets faded to signal to other people "this has been downvoted" because you can't see the karma score next to the comment anymore like you could in the early days. One of the things this signal does is it provides the opportunity for corrective upvotes by people who feel "That didn't deserve to be downvoted" which is one of the cultural traditions here. I think the downvote system here works remarkably well. It's a…

Visually, the low contrast from downvoting is tiring to the eyes if it's longer than a short sentence or so. As the reader, I do not see why my eyesight should be punished for this purpose. There are some really good decisions in HN, but the visual representation is not one of them.

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

#420

Post by DoreenMichele »

utucuro wrote: post #419
DoreenMichele wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets faded to signal to other people "this has been downvoted" because you can't see the karma score next to the comment anymore like you could in the early days. One of the things this signal does is it provides the opportunity for corrective upvotes by people who feel "That didn't deserve to be downvoted" which is one of the cultural traditions here. I think the downvote system here works remarkably well. It's a…

Visually, the low contrast from downvoting is tiring to the eyes if it's longer than a short sentence or so. As the reader, I do not see why my eyesight should be punished for this purpose. There are some really good decisions in HN, but the visual representation is not one of them.

If you click on the timestamp, it shows up as black again. I do that often because I have very serious eyesight issues.
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