Ask HN: Would it be nice to know who upvoted you?
As HN currently works, you'll know neither who up- nor downvoted you. I overall agree about the downvotes. But I'd personally also really like to see who upvoted, and some of the best reasons of why you don't see your downvoters do not really also apply to upvoters.
So, would you be okay if I saw that you upvoted a comment of mine?
[Edit: Typos and formatting]
24 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 66.4 ms ] threadSay I wrote an article that was controversial but was everything you wanted to hear. So you upvote it. Then, the trap sprung, I name-and-shame you for going against the grain.
Pretty much a corner case, though.
I'd like to see an experiment: Downvotes bifurcated into "I disagree but this moves the discussion forward" and "this post has no value whatsoever", then the uprating system, instead of giving posts with the largest net upvotes the top billing, giving posts with the highest product of upvotes and positive downvotes the top mention.
A healthy mix of disagreement is so much more valuable than every lurker clicking "hear hear" on a popular but old news topic.
No. I have better things to do. Sometimes I wish I knew who donwvoted me, so I could hunt them down. Probably not knowing is for the best. :-)
So no. If someone really wants to engage with me, they can leave a comment... that I will see or not.
Let's say that my consumption of HN is not social media-y - I don't care about the people that post, it took me 3 days to see your answer because I was checking for answers on another thread, and my focus on HN is content, not people.
I do understand what you mean. IMO, HN is closer to crowd sourced information than personal branding and personality cults that I see in 'social media' sites.
But there I am, answering to your comment. I am dooooooomed.
Most of us here are for getting balanced perspectives, sharing knowledge on diverse topics and growing smarter/wiser as a community, not just an individual. So no, I do not see any value in finding out who upvoted/downvoted me. Anonymous is the right choice!
No. Bad idea IMHO.
> So, would you be okay if I saw that you upvoted a comment of mine?
Please note this is a entirely different question. But still: no, it wouldn't be OK.
I fail to see how what you suggest could improve in any way the quality of the discussions.
It seems it would be an invitation to a "us-vs-them" attitude and other ad-hominem pseudo-reasonning.
One of the best parts of HN is that discussions are focused on ideas, and not on the people expressing these ideas.
if you agree upvote this!
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.
What I'd love however are these two features:
1) The ability to be notified that a user you are interested in "following" has recently commented or posted.
2) The ability to see which comments/posts of yours have been upvoted or downvoted in chronological order. (Sometimes I will sit with a static karma number for months and then I'll see a surprising +1 but fail to decipher which of my historical posts suddenly got upvoted. It's a good feeling but I'd want to know which post was responsible.)