Ask HN: Should you downvote based on disagreement alone?

That is particularly egregious. From the author's perspective the conversation is basically this:

"I'm with you alex, I tend to only use classes when I've got to maintain state, I just use a function otherwise. Here's how I'd likely code this ... <long code example>"

"You're not welcome here."

It takes seconds to say he should have used pastebin, or to point out mistakes or bad practices, or whatever (I'm not sure why he was downvoted, exactly). Way less time than it took the guy to write the post in the first place.

I would have downvoted it. He posted a big honking main function and other irrelevant parts of code.

You trust? Unfortunately, unless something is put in place that makes it clear this is intended (in the site guidelines, or by changing the down arrow to something else), this won't change.

Eh, are you saying that's why it's important not to downvote comments just for disagreement? So they don't get grey (and eventually dead)?

I tend to agree that using a down vote to express disagreement eventually isn't constructive. I've seen a number of posts that didn't say anything objectionable or controversial, nor were meaningless in the context of the discussion, and yet were down modded.

My theory is that while the risk of being down modded on HN is a helpful factor in keeping discussions more courteous than on an out-and-out anonymous forum, the same cannot be said of down votes, which are in fact anonymous. As a result, users tend to be more careless or perhaps even callous in the use of down votes. I'm not sure what the solution is though: making down votes transparent might help in creating a bit more discreetness in their use, but might spill things over into flame wars into the comments themselves when exercised. Still, I think it's the total anonymity that causes its over use.

@DanBC: I think your suggestion for agree, disagree, etc. provides better granularity to the process. Strong up vote for you.

Agreed. I think we could do without "disagree" and merge "doesn't belong here" and "obvious spam".

A flag link becomes available while you are writing a reply post.

Ditto. First comment(s) downvoted here too... by karma bigwig. I call it karma bullying. No explanation, aside from bigwig contradictions + downvoting. No real discussion, no arc of learning, no social reality check. Just a lot of specious scientific gobbledygook... and the karma bully downvoting. Hideous and abusive... especially to a first-timer.

Also, YCHN has all sorts of (undocumented) nasty consequences for anyone unlucky enough to get bullied into negative territory, e.g.: throttling posts (so bullies automatically "win" discussion), effectively censoring victim, losing posts before posting, pretending posts show (but not showing them publically), losing posts even after "successful" posting, getting negative points from no discernible source, and ultimately... hellbanning (all new posts invisible) ≡ permanent (?) bully victim censorship regardless of content topic, quality, or timeliness. E.g., you can not read this post (if you can, please reply to it explaining where and how you read it). Then perhaps I'll know there's a recovery path from hellbanning. Otherwise, once a YCHN hellban karma bully victim, always a YCHN hellban karma bully victim.

Net effect (as I gather): you can never recover from a ruthless negative karma bullying. Meanwhile the bullies get more karma for bullying. What a load of bullocks!-)

One funny thing is that I didn't even know what was going on at the time. I was "learning the ropes." Unfortunately, I was too "slow" learning the ropes to know I was being ruthlessly bullied. I still do not know where all the -18 points come from. Even ignoring any positive points from a few posts before the hellbanning effect kicked in, I count only -14 points. I guess at YCHN, they're using new math or something.

Now (still ignoring any positive points), if I count each of my four posts with negative points as a negative point, each, then I get another -4 points for "the" total of -18 points. But that's really pushing to find those missing -4 points. YCHN should make its "modes" explicit: Here are all your negative points; here's why you got negative points; here's where you became hellbanned (and define the term; I'd never heard of it before I became karma bully victim); and here's how you become un-hellbanned.

Unfortunately, in a computer forest, noone can hear you scream. I.e., noone cares at YCHN --- YCHN hellbanning AI is smarter than humans, so humans do not need to care.

    Welcome to the Matrix.

Really a laugh riot when you think of the negative spiral effects of YCHN from what is supposed to be such a karmic hotspot of technology news and activity. I suspect the programmer/designers are very proud of themselves. Laugh riot about sums up my YCHN experience from first interaction, indefinitely, and, without any fix for the current karma beartrap, forever.