Ask HN: Please be more thoughtful when downvoting
Lately I've noticed far too many constructive comments that have been downvoted (usually without any explanation). Please stop this. It's okay to have comments that are not in support with the original post or your own thoughts. We don't have to shoot them down.
Downvoting is meant as a management tool to filter out comments that negatively impact the community, or ones that provide no substance or insight. Please do not downvote legitimate comments.
Thank you.
84 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadThe same is the case with Like buttons and upvotes, there's no difference.
The only person to lose karma is the one that gets downvoted.
It's free.
EDIT: Heh, I'm assuming the downvote came from testing?
That's not really the problem, top comments very often contain counterpoints to the submission. It's deeper in the comments where you can easily slip into the light grey even with pretty uncontroversial posts citing scientific sources but I think that's just caused by a low number of votes in general for those comments, not particularly "unthoughtful" downvoting.
Oh, and it's apparently OK to use up/downvoting to express dis/agreement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
I think that what a downvote says, regardless of what's intended, is "I do not want to see this type of post anymore." This makes sense if someone is misbehaving. I think it also makes sense for very extreme opinions.
But for simple disagreement? Just because I disagree with you does not mean I want you to stop expressing your viewpoint.
EDIT: So, be nicer to new users, otherwise they'll end up like dailyllama: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dailyllama
I used to get pissed about it and want an explanation, but the consequence of posting on controversial threads is getting downvoted. If you don't want to be downvoted just preface your comment with something like "I'm not dissing X, but <something that points out some major flaw in X>" it seems to mostly do the trick.
What's the bar for downvoting anyway these days still 200 points?
The only way I've ever seen this used is "I'm not dissing X, but fuck X, I hate it because of A, B, and C"
On more popular threads, being down voted will push a comment down to the point where it may not be seen. If the comment is constructive and adds value to the discussion, downvoting it is a disservice to the community and hurts the discussion as a whole.
Perhaps comments with negative scores should not be grayed out. This would remove the incentive to downvote a comment to silence an unpopular opinion. I don't think this happens a lot, but some people disagree.
Then, there is the problem of "good" comments in response to the "bad" comments. When I see a grayed out comment with responses, I end up reading the grayed comment anyway. I doesn't make sense to make it more difficult to read the original comment than the responses.
[edit typo]
It has been observed that as online communities like HN grow, the signal-to-noise ratio falls on a progression that can be summarized as HN -> Reddit -> Digg. No one knows how to permanently stave off the Diggization of HN. But, in the mean time, it is worth trying to delay as much as possible.
As we become more complacent regarding downvotes on well-written comments because we disagree or not downvoting empty, witty fluff, HN slides farther and farther into the noise pit.
NEVER downvote:
1) Just because you disagree with a post.
2) Because you dislike the poster.
3) Because others have downvoted a comment into oblivion and you want to jump on the bandwagon. i.e. No need to kick a comment when it's already down.
4) When you have not explicitly reasoned out why you are downvoting beforehand.
DO downvote:
1) Because the comment is derogatory or offensive.
2) Because the comment is factually incorrect.
3) Because the comment is off topic and/or does not add to the conversation.
4) Because the comment lacked any meaningful content. Ex: "Yes!", "Nice post!", "LOL!", etc.
Ultimately the golden rule applies here. Do not downvote any comment for a reason that you yourself would be upset over if someone used that same reason to downvote a comment of yours. In short, just put some thought into it.
It is better to reply and correct wrong facts, also people just sometimes get things wrong and can write a good post in the context of something that might be a bit inaccurate.
Also it may be beneficial if something is wrong but believed by many people to have the content and the correction displayed prominently on the page.
Remember, downvoting is supposed to be useful. That's why it exists.
However, regardless of what we intend, I think upvoting and downvoting equate to 'I like' and 'I no like'. We should embrace this de facto reality.
People, including good people with sound judgments, cannot always explain their choices at the time they make them, nor is this desirable.
When people downvote foolishly, in many cases they will have lost their tempers. In such cases sober rules like 'only downvote comments which do not add to the discussion' may go out of the window.
This can't be fixed by exhorting users not to get angry or not to comment when angry, for people can be goaded into anger in subtle, malicious ways (which cannot themselves be easily captured and prevented by other rules). And people can deny that they are angry, even to themselves.
Anyway, effective rules must remain stable under such conditions, which is no mean task.
One way is to engineer new rules into the system itself.
For instance, improvement might be brought about if downvoting, in addition to costing the downvotee one point, cost the downvoter one karma point. People would then refrain from frivolous downvoting, but I believe would still downvote inappropriate, thread-damaging comments. This is partly because good people tend to have more karma and well as better judgment. It also reflects human psychology. Getting angry always costs the angry person.
In fact, I would argue even if the original poster was misinformed, starting a thread of conversation which will inform him and potentially others, will still have an overall positive outcome for the community.
Aside from this, the other criteria are a good list in my opinion.
I'll confess I've been guilty of this in the past: downvoting comments I disagree with, or those which I think are false. On reflection, that is obviously wrong. Downvotes are for comments which are off-topic, unnnecessary for anyone to read. Not those with with there is legitimate disagreement. For those, commenting is the appropriate response.
I can only reinforce the OP: Downvotes are for off-topic, irrelevant, spam comments. If you disagree with a comment, comment to say why, or upvote a comment that expresses your disagreement. Downvoting a comment signifies nothing.
BEG HN: Quit UpVoting Total Bull Shit Like This!
Speaking only for myself, I don't often see substantive comments which are downvoted into oblivion: at worst, they hang out at -1 or -2 until someone notices them and upvotes. Most good comments eventually recover; mediocre ones might stay at barely-downvoted. ( I see substantive comments go [dead] because the user's been hellbanned, but that's different.)
Maybe the solution is just to not start graying text until -2 or -3? Then one or two early downvotes would have less effect.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782072
and I'm trying to get over the dissonance between what you said there and what you're saying here.
- The post doesn't have a tone that fits the HN ideal.
- The post says something that they disagree with.
This is a problem, because those two cases should not be treated the same. A post containing an unpopular opinion should not be considered equivalent to a post that is insulting or derogatory, for instance.
From a user interface perspective, the sensible approach would be to provide an outlet for the user to do express two things independently, rather than attempting to modify behaviour through appealing to their better nature.
A separate 'flag' option would make a lot of sense.
AIUI flagging comments (posts in a thread) is for spam or blatant nastiness, and down-votes are to encourage better behaviour. ("not a nice tone" / "factually incorrect" / "big claims with no evidence" / "missed point of thread by wide mark" etc.)
If a post gets down-voted and you really don't understand why either leave it, and wait to see if other people up-vote. (People can accidentally down-vote, although they'd normally mention that.) Asking politely for more information usually works.
In HN's UI, the downvote is presented as directly equivalent to the upvote. Since the upvote button is to be used if one agrees with the tone, sentiment or facts within a comment, its visual link to the downvote button causes people to infer that the downvote button should be used when one disagrees.
If this isn't the intended purpose of downvotes, the UI should change so that it isn't the exact mirror of an upvote.
Edit: TIL I should use the link link instead of the reply link, so I can see new answers before posting mine.
I've noticed it's like a snowball effect. I've commented on a post and for hours it wasn't downvoted or even upvoted. But as soon as one person noticed that it had been downvoted, it would get 2 or 3 more.
And I've noticed this impulse in myself. I feel much more compelled to downvote a comment that is already grey than one that isn't, even though the grey one may be a perfectly valid point.
Maybe a good idea would be to only show it greyed out after 3+ downvotes. That way people wouldn't have that knee-jerk reaction to downvote just because someone else has.
But yeah, let's make sure we get on this downvoting "problem" post-haste.
PS: I downvoted every single comment in this thread that rubbed me even a little bit the wrong way, regardless of its constructiveness. I left no comment in explanation. I took special delight in doing so for comments with an especially righteous tone. The world is no worse for my having done so. The community would have been no better had I restrained myself.
Downvotes are not the problem.
Without idealism, where do you think my disappointment in the community would come from?
>HN's community is a pit of sexist villainy, unnecessary pedantry, empty sycophancy, and vapid self-aggrandizement.
Then why are you here? I'm not asking you to leave, but that is such a thorough indictment that I do wonder why you stay. There must be more to the site than that.
>PS: I downvoted every single comment in this thread that rubbed me even a little bit the wrong way, regardless of its constructiveness. I left no comment in explanation. I took special delight in doing so for comments with an especially righteous tone. The world is no worse for my having done so. The community would have been no better had I restrained myself.
One person downvoting like this is not much of a problem. If very few people behaved like that the OP would not have needed to post this. If everyone behaved like that the site would be unusable.
>Downvotes are not the problem.
Thoughtless downvoting is _a_ problem. I don't know if it's the biggest problem the site has but why would you let that stop you from addressing it?
The obvious reason – occasional boredom. Oh, and the inherent joys of venting my spleen.
You could just browse articles without creating an account.
Same deal. Occasional boredom.
I think to fix that, either remove downvoting entirely, or add a secondary system where downvotes are reviewed, and the downvoting right is taken from people who abuse it.
1) Karma bullies abuse the down voting system.
2) Unpopular disruptive knowledge is trivially targeted by bullies.
3) It's not just down voting and bullies which are BROKEN --- the karma implementation lends itself to bullying through its mysterious behaviors (as alluded to by this topic, e.g., hellbanning) and negative spiral powerplays.
4) Informed opinions trivially get lost in the "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." --- YCombinator passive aggressive powerplay. I.e., rapid threads and frequent participation leads (automatically) to censorship. Just the opposite of healthy discourse! (Not to mention: censored posts are automatically lost via "slow down" powerplay. I now copy-to-pasteboard all my HN postings --- as a form of self-defense and time-saving... just in case. Ridiculous.)
5) There's no practical recovery for victims of karma bullying.
+1) I now consider negative karma (on YCombinator Hacker News) a badge of honor due to the fundamentally broken "karma" system touched on by this thread.
I love YCombinator Hacker News. It's so unbiased, open discourse, and balanced. :-)
-18 "karma" is hellban territory.
I think in the past, if people saw a comment they really disagreed with, but it had only 2 or 3 points, there was a tendency to say "Of course it's got no points, nobody agrees with it." But once points went away, there's now a tendency to say, "I'd better downvote this stupid comment, just in case there are idiots out there voting it up."
What to do? The wise solution is to just ignore Karma -- who cares about that except for the egomaniacs? But the truth is that we are all human, and when I offer something that adds to the discussion but got downvoted to oblivion in return, it hurts, at least sometimes. And in those cases when I couldn't care less, I feel a little bit wiser.
The problem is that this very quickly starts to feel like any other forum where things generally degenerate to the point where only seven people are posting because anyone else becomes afraid of the wolves attacking.
My opinon: Down-voting ought to cost you (the down-voter) a significant chunk of points, say, 10%. And, you should be obligated to post a reason. And, if the reason is bullshit and it gets downvoted, you loose another 10% of your points.
In other words, it better be valid.
The rules could be a little more elaborate than that, but this might be a good start.
It may be a bit complicated to implement the follow-up adjustment of karma, so I'm not too strong on that.
I disagree a bit on the fan-boy downvotes. From what I have observed, anecdotally ofcourse, there are many fan boy comments with no downvotes than those that get downvoted by fanboys..
1) About the negative points for the downvoter 2) The concept of "fan-boy downvotes".