I believe that rebellious '-1 downvote' comments will be far fewer than the actual downvote so original idea seems better. In fact such rebellious comments should be deleted/flagged in case they don't provide any additional reasoning behind downvotes similar to what happens on HN.
I disagree. Being able to downvote comments to -4 (and no farther) seems like an excellent system to me, as it allows us to punish comments that are detrimental to discussion while preventing comments from being so downvoted that they have no hope of redemption (in the case of controversial but contributory comments). I'm curious - if downvoting were done away with, how would you suggest that we flag comments which are contrary to the spirit of HN?
I would agree. But think of the logistics for this feature: in order for you to downvote, you have to provide a reason. Should we show the userId for the comment? If so, we defeat the anonymous voting feature. If not, comments can become fertile ground for trolling. (Of course admin can identify the anonymous comment writer but we do not want to create a mods-heavy forum a la Reddit).
I think a standard choice list for downvoting may not be a bad idea. The choice list can begin with all the regular logical fallacies (ad homimen, non-sequiter, false equivalance, appeal to authority etc). That way, I'd guess, the community improves its ability to argue thoughtfully and logically.
I love HN. It's the one forum I will never consider a total waste of time.
I think the existence of the downvote is good so the community has a tool to self-regulate and avoid the guideline-breaking-but-not-inappropriate comments, like the low signal-to-noise ones.
I am against the use many people give it to silence people they disagree with, but the problem is, what's a good alternative UX?
I think keeping the functionality while presenting it as something different than the opposite of the upvote might do (maybe use an alternative counter, too?), but on the other hand it seems to just overcomplicate things.
The functionality as-is might not be perfect, but it might be better than any alternative I can come up with.
Better yet, remove the downvote entirely. People are using it unthinkingly in drive-bys to say they disagree, rather than it's original intended purpose of "This is inappropriate for HN." Soliciting a comment won't make them comment - they'll ignore it, or insert something inane.
You can't change people's behavior, and I think the "down vote" should disappear. Let us work on reinforcing rather than punishing.
Things that genuinely don't belong should be flagged. Further, things that are flagged should be raised in the rankings, not lowered, until they get to the point where they have enough flags to be deleted. This would mean that genuinely inappropriate items/submissions/comments would become more visible, so they get more flags more quickly and get deleted more quickly than happens now.
The idea should be to discourage petty and arbitrary downvoting. That also isn't great comment etiquette, and it's far more corrosive to discourse than discussing downvotes, yet it's encouraged here.
I don't think that's a bad idea. However, anyone who has been around here long enough to accumulate 1000 karma (or whatever it is now) should know better than to downvote anodyne comments with which one mildly disagrees.
I think people are getting emotional about certain subjects and lashing out by downvoting any comments that provoke rational discussion on those subjects. In other words, downvoting exactly the kind of comments pg is trying to foster in HN.
Or simply force a comment if none already exist from a previous down voter. That way first one in has to give a reason for the downvote, which others can then +1 (or is it -1..)
Yeah I was thinking much the same. I really do believe that we should just remove the downvote button entirely, too many people abusing it for the wrong reasons. An entirely upvote-oriented site would work reasonably well. You could still flag offensive comments if need be.
Perhaps a gentle warning built into the voting system will suffice. I like the concept of downvoting to express disagreement (rather than cluttering the thread with replies), but I don't think anyone should downvote a comment into negative figures unless it was actually abusive. That creates bad will, which breeds more bad will, et cetera. So what about a little message that pops up saying
"Are you sure you want to downvote this comment? Doing so will push its karma into negative figures. At HN we don't encourage this type of downvoting except in response to abusive content. "
In my experience some people just don't have a clue how to behave online and it's not even expected of them in most places. HN is different.
Considering the relative rationality and aversion to groupthink that people on HN seem to have, this seems to me (although I don't have much experience with moderating online communities) like a generally bad idea. I would expect people to see that Post X has -Y points and desist because the poster doesn't deserve -(Y + 1) karma for the comment. Hiding this information from the downvoter makes him do something he might otherwise not do, and I would expect this effect to be far greater on a site like HN than the drive to "pile onto a downvote frenzy."
Sometimes I think that downvoting, including on websites like Hacker News, is a bad idea. It's easy to see the symmetry with upvotes and think that if you have one, you should probably have the other but psychologically speaking it's a very different type of interaction.
In particular, and even on HN, the good old mantra "don't downvote if you disagree, downvote if the comment doesn't contribute to the discussion" is, from personal experience, not really followed by a significant chunk of the userbase. I try not to care about karma but it's always frustrating when you spend a few minutes of your time carefully composing a comment only to see it grayed out because people didn't like it. It's really toxic too because you don't feel welcome to express your point of view, even if it's in a completely respectful manner. When unchecked this tendency ends up with what you see on most of Reddit: dumb, content-free comments that go with the popular opinion raise to the top while insightful but controversial positions are buried under downvotes. Then you end up with echo chambers.
I wonder how different HN wouldn't be if there were no downvotes at all and only the "flag" button to tag non-constructive comments. Basically the way it works for submissions.
Personally I very rarely downvote comments on HN, if I find a comment that I don't find very insightful but is still technically contributing to the discussion I prefer to find a sibling comment that I deem more interesting and upvote that instead. I turn a negative interaction into a positive one. Instead of focusing on pushing people down you help those you find more interesting.
The solution is simple: Use downvotes for rude and disrespectful comments. I am all for moderating a forum for pointless and useless comments. Most downvotes now-a-days are about disagreements. Using downvotes as a tool to push others into conformity is the shittiest part of HN.
I don't particularly enjoy being down voted but it is interesting to try to figure out why a comment was down voted.
In real life, our friends might not tell us if, for example, our little political rant is boring. We do get that feedback on HN.
One thing that really irritates me however is when someone takes the time to respond to one of my comments and gets down voted. For me a big motivation for commenting is to see what responses I get. So, I like the current system, but perhaps down voting is overly used.
So let's consider the alternative - forcing people to comment on downvoting.
Let's say I see a post that is clearly not contributing to the discussion (on my personal opinion of course, not that I have any other one :) or is too misguided to even argue with, or lacks any redeeming merit, etc. Now, I want less of this on HN, so I am going to downvote it.
Now, let's say I'm forced to comment on it. I can't really say anything useful about it, and maybe even if I could I don't want to bother - if it was worthy discussion-wide, I wouldn't want to -1 it in the first place - so I'd say something like "this is just stupid". Or "-1 for not presenting a sane argument" or something like that.
Now, what happens when the comment author sees it? He comments "no, your face is stupid!" of course. And so we get a whole mess we wanted to avoid.
And now people see this whole mess and want to bury it so it doesn't stink up their nice discussion. But they are forced to comment too, so instead of removing the mess they are making it worse and make people hate each other for no reason but disagreeing on who started this mess.
There is no particular purpose for HN downvotes other than to express dislike. It's not needed to move 'stupid' comments down, because only 'non-stupid' comments rise up. The comments which are never voted on have no intrinsic value, so they might as well be stupid anyway.
I wasn't even aware of flagging on comments until someone mentioned it, and to be honest it's so inconvenient i'd probably never do it. Downvote is an easy enough way for me to say "I don't like this" and it helps reinforce the group dynamic, which is what they want (this whole post is about manipulating group dynamics).
The only way to fix downvoting is to put an express purpose behind it, like a button that says "I disagree" next to a button that says "I dislike" next to a button that says "Inappropriate comment". But for some reason forum admins always prefer generic feedback which give rise to unexpected behavior. Heh, it probably keeps people upset, which reinforces user engagement.
I like that a comment requires at least one comment before a downvote. Maybe not a comment for each downvote, since that might encourage dogpiling. Imagine a new user makes a social faux pas and suddenly receives ~4 relatively negative comments.
I've always had the idea for a comment system where you can only down vote with a comment on why, and that comments down vote power depends on its votes.
reply