HN Explorer

Ask HN: Downvote, differentiate “I disagree” from “Not useful comment”

1 points by lucio ↗ HN
On polemic/emotional issues, a lot of HNers use the downvote to express "I disagree", effectively censoring comments, downgrading the quality of the site's comments.

Humble proposal: to add a "I disagree" downvote button (make it the default downvote, give it to everyone) separated from the "Not useful comment" downvote button, so there's a fairer exchange of ideas on polemic/emotional issues.

The "I disagree" downvote is counted and the count is shown, but it does not push non HN-mainstream opinion down to the bottom.

6 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 25.6 ms ] thread
johnny_kinds
Why would HN ever do this? HN has become an echo chamber of specific views.

The censoring reminds me of 'safe spaces' we now have at universities. Nobody wants to even see text they disagree with, so they downvote it.

It really makes it difficult for us to have open and honest conversations.

I suspect that people are either using bots to down vote (which would be so easy on this site), or manually down voting people they don't like (regardless of the comments).

A few months back, I posted a few comments with a different account that were down voted. From then on, everything I posted went to 0 or -1 within an hour or so (even comments that were on topic, friendly, and agreeable).

We really need a better system where trolls are removed, but personally disagreeable comments stay. It means that unless you completely agree with the current narrative, your voice gets silenced.

I thought we were better than this.

DanBC
As far as I know HN has detection in place for that kind of drive-by downvoting.

What did dang say when you emailed him?

Mz
Tech is wonderful, but you cannot really solve social ills this way. You have to push back against the culture of "groupthink" directly. Otherwise, all you are doing is changing the manner in which censoring occurs, not the degree to which it occurs.
DanBC
Some people will always use downvote to disagree.

Adding an extra button just means they will now use both buttons to disagree.

Almost everyone with a logged in account can upvote, so you might be better off persuading people to upvote unfairly downvoted comments than trying to persuade people to stop downvoting for disagreement.

Don't forget that a gray comment hasn't just had downvotes. It's also failed to get any upvotes.

DrScump
<Adding an extra button just means they will now use both buttons to disagree.>

This.

GFK_of_xmaspast
If you're going to make posts on this internet forum, you should stand by them and own up to the consequences, which generally speaking are limited to watching a number go down.