Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?
For example, I'll sometimes see a massively downvoted comment that's constructive and beautifully written, but it carries an opinion that is not currently popular for whatever reason.
I believe that downvoting someone just because you disagree with them is terrible for a discussion network like HN. Moreover, I would say that I learned the most from the comments that I disagreed with - on all levels, politically, technologically, personally.
I will downvote a comment if it's not constructive, only written to be provocative, etc. It doesn't matter if I agree with the author's opinion or not. If someone puts in the effort to explain their opinion politely and constructively, my thinking is that it's positive for all the people in the community.
So, what kind of a downvoter are you? What are some of your reasons for downvoting a comment?
99 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadThe only time I get really annoyed for being downvoted is after presenting a provable factual statement, which riles up a fanboi of some sorts..
That said, I don't think I ever complained about a downvote. It's not worth it, detracts from the discussion flow and is almost always self-correcting by upvotes from others.
* It has little to no content relating to the conversation.
* It is also unnecessarily provocative.
Basically if it looks like a troll, walks like a troll, and acts like a troll it get's the downvote.
I try to avoid both upvoting and downvoting based only on whether I agree or disagree with the comment, though I can’t guarantee that I have stuck to this policy rigorously.
I sometimes reflexively downvote but when I see the comment collapse, it gives me pause and makes me think about my own motivations - do I really think that comment simply shouldn't appear for me, or do I just disagree with it? Even if I think it's ignorant or badly written, I still have to think twice.
In contrast, other platforms let you downvote and reply, which I think lets you try to have it both ways: I want to tell you what I think of your stupid comment, but I also don't want you to be part of the conversation. Maybe that's fundamentally wrong.
I agree with the other person who said people can be too think skinned about the whole business though.
But on Reddit, I now tend to downvote things I dislike. I originally acted like on HN, but I noticed that _everyone_ else is downvoting because 'they don't like it', so I got on it too.
Edit: I think that the common idea of downvoting on HN is that it’s not your own opinion on a post content, but actually a public moderation mechanism allowing you to decide if that comment fits HN, not you, without flagging it to a moderator.
Long story short: I try to focus on what has value and encourage that behavior with upvotes and further comments.
PS: What's the required karma to downvote? I'm currently not in the position to be able to downvote anyway ^^
Edit: (1) "I'm not cynical, but ..." Well, not a good start... I try not to be, maybe I am. But I don't want to be. (2) Karma required to downvote is 500 according to another commenter
I have dead comments turned on and see a lot of well-made thought provoking comments that that are flagged because they are contrary to the popular narrative.
On the other hand there are a lot of bad comments that deserve to be flagged so it's a double-edged sword.
Would be interested to learn the proportion of flagged:vouched comments.
The problem is you have to have dead comments turned on to vouch, but the ability to flag comments is default with enough karma.
I didn't even know there were so many decent flagged comments until I turned on dead.
I think it would be cool to have a mechanism where if someone's flagged comments get vouched for so many times they lose their ability to flag for a period of time.
I've come across many, many helpful and thoughtful comments that I can't revive simply because this thing that should work has stopped even though I have about 30x the karma needed for it.
More seriously, I almost never downvote, when I do, it's mostly if it's outright offensive, either literally or intellectually, that is, not an argument that I disagree with as such, but one that I find offensively uninformed, self-deceptive or is nothing but value-signalling. That can include arguments that align with my own opinion [1].
1. Contrived example: I may find a proposed law a bad idea because it limits freedom in socity. If someone else agreed that it was a bad idea, but argued it was because the law would be friendly to "some ethnic minority they dislike". I'd still downvote them for being idiots, (to be fair, it'd probably also make me reconsider my own position).
examples of actual comments in the past 24 hours that I wish I had downvoted:
> 2022 will finally be the year of Linux on the desktop! /s
> So... fuzzy logic. Everything old is new again! Again!
> piety contests have consequences
> Top level commend: "in the fullness of time JAX might prove to be more important than either. don't give people fish, teach them how to catch fish and all that..."
> wtf I love crypto now
I'm looking for a more specific example but nearly every day I see an interesting article where there's one long comment chain which is just "textual memes", sort of a Markov-chain of pop culture references for internet nerds. There's no extractable commentary or perspective, but rather the purpose of the comments were for the commenters to have "participated" in their group activity. (Often it's a type of "Hello there, general Kenobi" call-and-response chain)
Some pithy-one liners hold great insight. That's fairly rare but it does happen. Its certainly possible to creatively utilize a one-word reference to a larger topic to contextualize the discussion in a surprising way. But rehashing a cluster of xkcd comics as a form of commentary, for the 10-millionth time, seems to more often just lead to a "circle jerk" of comments. Its easy to ignore, but I fear that by not aggressively downvoting zero-value comments, we abdicate our responsibility as HN's "immune system"[0]. That attracts and grows more culture of low-value comments on HN.
I would love if HN's collective moderation grew to be much stricter than it is now. To be clear - I don't want this to be applied to unpopular views that are constructively written. I just want us to remove low-effort drivel and reflexive (non)-responses.
Also many of my own comments fail my own standards when I review them 24 hours later. I would greatly appreciate it if HN could give me quicker feedback when I post low-value comments, so that I may better raise my quality floor.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7590569
I try not to downvote opinions, even if they are blatantly stupid. On the other hand, disagreeing in a clever way will earn an upvote from me.
- the comment contains information that I know is either factually incorrect, or
- is making bad assumptions.
I have upvoted comments I disagree with in the past because they were well-reasoned, good, thought-provoking comments.
I do this rarely when someone is commenting in a way that’s going to drag a thread into a muddy, already-well-trodden non-sequitur.
New and more interesting ideas deserve as much of a chance as they can get.
I virtually always upvote comments, which I see downvoted for expressing an opinion, which is obviously presented in good faith. That's even then the case when I violently disagree with the opinion in question.
What's even worse than people downvoting a well reasoned opinion are downvotes for factual statements.
And yes, it's usually self-correcting anyway.
I think, in the case of downvotes, it's easy for them to be used for reasons other than their intended purpose because they are the least time consuming way to express displeasure, and there is virtually no downside to using them for that purpose.
It would obviously add complexity to have a separate mechanism for voicing disagreement with an argument presented in good faith. But it might make it easier for people to use downvotes appropriately for cases where the person is not acting in good faith or violating the forum's rules.
I wouldn't downvote someone who said something like "Shouldn't we all make time to ensure our code is always secure" (even though this might not be realistic/true) whereas someone who said something like, "Anyone who doesn't make time to ensure their code is always secure deserves to go out of business" implies that it is always possible to secure all code; that people choose to not secure certain parts; and therefore they deserve to fail. I am more likely to downvote this.
I don't mind opinions though so if someone said "I always use PHP and it has always been fine", is no problem even though that's not my experience.
I am pretty good at rants so I will go on a rant on the comment section instead. I like to vent to strangers and I think some people love a good rant to read.
I've had well-written comments downvoted into oblivion in threads that also included another comment stating the exact same opinion slightly differently. I've had zingy one-liners upvoted to 100 or so. I've had discussions where the back and forth statements alternated between negative and positive karma.
I'm treating it as a study in human behavior around communications. So far my takeaways are:
- a zingy one-liner that agrees with the zeitgeist will be upvoted to the sky
- the same type of comment expressing a contrarian view will be buried
- timing matters: if you get a few downvotes early on, the downvote brigade will help ensure a continued slide
- downvoting to disagree is natural (meme theory and all that). What's interesting to me is how can one overcome the impulse to downvote and potentially seed a new idea in someone's brain.
I think the comment kind and timing matter together. If the comment was reasonable but contrary to popular views, it will usually attract early downvotes, but over time I’ve noticed the score will normalize as more measured people visit the story over the day.
It still riles me, when well reasoned opinions are downvoted.
Edited to add: Your comment is a brilliant example and I really don't get why it's downvoted <shrug>
I can throw the pedantry right back at you though: I didn't quote a percentage of randomness so I made a true statement. Some degree of randomness is present (if nothing else, it would be the percentage of readers having a bad day at that moment). So there :P
Ah, you're right, I blurred it with the comment that said they agree 100%.
>so I made a true statement.
No, you didn't, and it's not pedantry to say "don't dismiss a rating system because you can find the occasional outlier". That would be a big mistake, and merits being called out. Even speaking loosely, none of that justifies calling it "basically random".
The test of a discussion forum is whether good comments are generally pushed up (and vice versa) and how well that does compared to discussion forums in general. The occasional pathological case does not suddenly make it worthless or "basically random".
Thank you for an interesting discussion!
"Basically random" looks nothing like what we see on HN.
At the end of the day I think everyone just upvotes comments they like, and downvotes comments they dislike, people just have different reactions to things that impact what "dislike" means to them.
A hefty part of education and social interaction should bring (at least some) abilities in emotion control, intellectual integrity, and, first of all, reflection.
I try (but probably fail often) to downvote only on fact or form, not opinion.
if only those comments could just disappear from HN.