A downvote signals disapproval/discouragement, yet it requires no legitimate counterargument or reasoning for it.
I haven't seen people calling each other "fags" here, but it seems the downvote is simply the HN version of calling people "fags."
For comments, there will be at least flags for incivility, fluff, and spam. Spammers, as now, will get banned instantly. People who accumulate a lot of flags for incivility may also get banned for some set period.
(Obviously however there are some comments that do not warrant discussion but this probably would end up fitting into the types of flags.)
It can result in less accurate filtering. Popular comments may be voted up simply because someone sees the amount of points, skims the comment with perhaps a bare understanding, and thinks "hey, this guy's probably right." And then, ding, a possibly unwarranted upvote. The same effect can apply to an unpopular comment, but the effect is probably stronger for unpopular comments, which is why I think it is so dangerous. An unpopular comment would suffer more of this effect because people who disagree may build up more negative emotions, and this emotion may lead to more impulsive, irrational behavior making them more susceptible to the bias.
Seeing a comment he/she disagree with, and seeing that a bunch of people agree with him/her about disagreeing gives that person a sense of approval which erodes his/her ability to truly evaluate a dissenting comment objectively.
A) Downvote the comment because the I think the conclusions are grossly wrong.
B) Upvote the comment because I'm so enamored of the elegance of the argument, it's contribution to the conversation, and how it made me think more carefully about my own argument.
C) Ignore it - and unjustly not provide my reasoned critique on what clearly took a great deal of effort by the author.
If I could only Flag it as "DISAGREE WITH CONCLUSION" and "ADDS TO CONVERSATION" then everything would be good.
The four flags that I think would be useful would be:
FLUFF vs CONTRIBUTES
AGREE vs DISAGREE
SPAM
INCIVIL
An author may then write an unpopular, but carefully reasoned discourse, and still enjoy the positive feedback of his peers on his contribution, even if he is challenging their perspectives.
Edit: On consideration, I should have followed my own advice and started this with: "A well reasoned, well written and interesting argument. But why aren't you adding the alternative of ANSWERING the argument instead of just moderating?!"
I sometimes invite people to write such comments if they disagree with me. Often, when a comment makes a factual assertion for which I know of no evidence, I will reply to ask for the evidence. I will say things such as "Citations, please?" or "What are some examples of this?" or in some other way ask for the participant to back up the statement to which I reply.
But there are cases when a comment is totally wrong, and not a good contribution to the thread besides (which has always been a generally supported basis for downvoting), and it's just too much bother to post a countering reply or to ask follow-up questions. In such cases, I don't feel embarrassed at all in downvoting the wrong comment. The site founder pg, who announced news of changes he is considering in flagging options on HN in this thread, wrote 681 days ago,
I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
Voting and flagging options today are still much as they were then, and so for the moment I don't think it's a bad idea to downvote for disagreement, particularly if a comment has other undesirable characteristics. I will happily adapt to a new system if the site management implements a new system. And I invite participants who disagree with this reply of mine to write a comment and explain why my argument is totally wrong, if that is not too much trouble to you.
That's the inherent issue here. It's that the arrows used to represent quality in theory are actually used in practice to indicate agreement. And then with the down voting, you effectively have a system of negative reinforcement because your comments are being downvoted because you're a dissenter, but interpreted as a sign of bad quality and discouraged to speak further. It's interpreted as a sign of bad quality because all the signs say so. You get grayed out if it's too negative and your comment gets pushed to the bottom. Perhaps you'll become alienated and leave the community, making the HN community slightly more homogenous.
I agree with you in that it's a good idea to allow people to indicate their agreement and disagreement, but to have it clearly defined as an indicator of popularity.
There is also the (strong) possibility that I really have nothing to add to the conversation other than a DH3 "Disagree" - which perhaps suggests that I have no right to be moderating that particular comment in the first place.
Personally I never even notice the person's name unless I'm going back and forth, so I'm not even sure how much effect this has.
Besides, it's human nature to always ask "who". Any system that tries to override human nature has its work cut out for it.
Not just nature, but efficiency. The statement, "In argument subject, not author, holds interest" may be true in theory but in practice this breaks down. People without established expertise may have worthwhile contributions but it's easier for people to receive contributions from people with known expertise. For example, I would just as wholeheartedly receive a comment from cperciva as one from "A well-known cryptographer and talented mathematician with a relevant and competitive PhD."
This is mostly notably seen in the physical sciences wherein most theoretical physics treatises are given little attention from the mainstream physics community unless there is a credible and relevant PhD backing it. Physicists simply don't have the time to pick through all of the papers from amateur hour and point out where they messed up the calculation that they should have learned in Quantum Optics 332.
This expedience is partially reflected in HN comments. While ideally everyone would have a chance to respond to every comment to point out where it is factually incorrect, few have the time. It is also disconcerting to see a factually incorrect comment with more points than the factually correct reply. In each of these cases, one could comment to express agreement with the reply and reinforce the incorrectness of the original comment, but a combination of vote up/vote down fulfills a similar function in a fraction of the time. Perfect? No. Expedient? Yes.
I mean I can already see some problems to being able to see a name, and having that "communicate a great deal" just by the name. If the comment communicates a great deal, then why can't the comment stand on its own merits? It just seems that more people will be inclined to upvote because of the person who said it.
And I understand the concern about being able quickly skim and find notable experts replying. This is a potential problem with hiding author names. But I think some of this problem can be alleviated by the fact that better comments usually float to the top anyways.
Also perhaps this feature can be something that is only disabled after reaching a karma threshold?
For example, I remember reading earlier comments about the negative impact of working all night long on a start up. If I had said this, people would (rightly) ignore me. But if someone who has a startup had said this, it should carry more weight.
Perhaps a way to balance this is making flagging (up or down) cost karma points, but that would lead to them (KPs) being visible to give immediate feedback on the user's actions. Likewise, upvotes give back the karma you lost modding some comment. A different cost for up/down seems also a good idea. This, simply, could create an incentive to post even when one has nothing to say and prevent constructive modding by people who post little.
Hmm.... Perhaps an agreeing vote would redeem part of the karma paid to up/down vote.
This balancing act is a very hard problem.
I asked last week
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006946
whether attempts to make the site better, which is what many downvotes and flags currently are, ought not to be rewarded with MORE karma rather than less. I think people who clean up the trash should be paid for their work.
I think a bigger danger is the suppression of dissent. Rewarding it with more karma would be a huge mistake.
By the way, it's an EMPIRICAL question whether downvotes or posting disagreeing replies does more to discourage expressions of certain opinions. It seems to me that someone thin-skinned enough to cease posting his opinions because his comments get downvoted (rather than reconsidering how he comments and seeing if he can improve how he comments) might be just as discouraged from posting minority opinions if he sees a lot of replies that disagree with him. If a person has courage of his convictions because his opinions are based on evidence and careful thought, there is little reason not to come back here and express the opinions, even if his comments don't get a huge number of net upvotes.
I respectfully disagree. A downmod supplies almost zero feedback to the recipient. Many posts I've seen with negative mod scores are complex and have a number of topics in them. A downvote at no time explains what precisely was wrong with the post.
It's like a presidential candidate not getting a vote, he doesn't know what part of his platform lost him the vote, just that he didn't get it.
In real life a candidate can pay for a poll and find out why, here it seems that asking why immediately results in more downmods.
(I admit the analogy is imperfect, but hopefully you see where I'm trying to go with it).
It seems to me, respectfully, that using the downvote to try and clean the community is like a small-town sheriff trying to keep the perceived riff-raff of city-slickers, with their strange ways and funny hair, out of his community.
And meta-comment, really? Your post was downvoted? Way to discourage ideas and effort....sigh
1) "worth reading" / "not worth reading" 2) agree / disagree
Then add a system of whatever flags you think are necessary, like "spam".
I treat the current voting arrows as if they meant (1). I vote up things that I think are worth other people's time to read; vote down things that are a waste of time to read. I very rarely downvote. In some cases where others might more liberally downvote, I simply don't vote.
Downvoting something you disagree with kills a discussion, IMHO.
I think the practice should at least be modeled liked a number-line. The default is 0, neither an upmod or downmod. Just as it is, an upmod (or +1) should be given if the post was particularly interesting (not agreeable, interesting), and a downmod (or -1) should be given if the post was particularly non-interesting (not disagreeable, non-interesting).
I think too many people only see the world as either +1/-1 with no option to just leave a comment alone.
If people have no incentive to refrain from bad behavior except the occasional posting of the commenting guidelines to the front page, then they will engage in bad behavior. People respond to incentives.
Flags can play the role of downvotes for controlling spam and totally rubbish comments.
Another interesting experiment would be to display the top downvoters from time to time. We'll at least be able to weed out some of these invisible trolls.
And if you notice, it's like pulling teeth from an angry lion to even get any of these guys to bother posting a reason. The answers so far seem to amount to either
1) My time is too important, I'm too important.
2) The downvote is enough reason, it should be obvious to the recipient that they weren't contributing anything.
I'm sorry, but I don't find either of those reasons even remotely satisfying.
I think you are taking downmods a bit too personally.
I don't want to limit the amount of times a person can disagree with me (at risk of allowing for disagreeable persons).
An upvote on the otherhand is "I'm providing positive feedback".
However, a lot of that might be solved by using words instead of arrows. E.g. a "Agree", "Disagree" and "Detracts From Conversation" button.
I'm anxious to see this experiment. If flags are not binary, I'm curious how the number of different types of flags will be used to bubble up articles and comments.
I like the idea of separating "worth reading" from "agree". If only "worth reading" makes things bubble up then people that strongly agree might mark things as "worth reading" because they want them to bubble up. An interesting problem.
I have found that comments of mine that get downvoted cause me to think about why.
So yea it technically is also DH3.
Petercooper wrote a great response in that thread. Disagreement by downvote stifles any attempt at honest debate.
I have started to down vote when people wastes my time: Trolls and sometimes for boring flame wars that show up in every discussion on a subject (like Perl 5 trolls that obviously don't know the language, but has Googled a reference to the operators of Perl 6!).
I thought this was on some sort of FAQ page or the guidelines but couldn't find it now.
Downvoting is not to be used to show disapproval/disagreement, but rather to filter out messages that add nothing to the conversation by being off-topic or just devoid of content.
If you use downvotes to show your disapproval and add nothing to the conversation, then I suppose you're right they are tantamount to DH0 comments, but when used correctly they can (in theory anyway!) help provide better, more intellectually stimulating conversations by burying useless banter.
On the other hand, if this site was seeded initially with thoughtful participants (as I believe it was before I got here, and as I believe it continues to be by visitors who come here from pg's personal website), being popular (upvoted) rather than unpopular (downvoted) may be a fairly reliable mark of a comment worth reading. Everyone here reads a lot of the best of what is on the Web, and observes the behavior of other users here, and I think there are many examples here of highly upvoted comments (or, from another point of view, participants with high karma) being signals of good quality. It may be that there are some equally clear examples here of comments with many downvotes, all the way down to the system-imposed limit of a score of -4, or users with very little karma, being examples of poor quality.
After edit: so my assertion, in friendly disagreement with you, is that popularity DOES correlate with validity to a useful degree here, so even if not every popular comment is factually valid, and not every factually valid comment is popular, noting popularity can still be a guide to busy readers here about what to devote time to reading.
Unfortunately, this doesn't scale. It is true now and that makes HN valuable. As HN grows there may be more people who express opinions that are not thoughtful and well reasoned, and then popularity no longer corresponds with useful. I think that's the problem that pg is trying to solve.
The idea being that new users are forced to observe the community conventions on the site and decide if they want to conform to them. By the time they "grow up" they can then move about with greater and greater freedom. This seems to work pretty well regarding arguments and comments.
However, as this topic most clearly demonstrates, the pain point on the site is not the nature of the comments or forms of argument, it's the up/downvote problem. The theory was that higher quality posts would naturally end up with higher scores from more upvotes. Lessons learned from this site should show that to not be entirely true.
During one exhibit, there was a giant game of 'breakout' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_%28video_game%29) projected onto a large ferris wheel. The crowd was supposed to play it by all waving orange lights. If you remember breakout, you know that there is a limit on the speed at which the bat is allowed to move, so if you let the bat get too far from where the ball is going to be, there will not be enough time to fix it before the ball hits the floor. It was impossible for the crowd to learn this, however, because an individual in the crowd gets no noticeable feedback from their actions once they have been averaged with those of the rest of the crowd.
There is a previous comment by pg on this subject
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
that I have had bookmarked for a long time now that says,
I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.
As we can see from this thread itself, pg is currently considering a different approach to marking comments for disagreement by multidimensional flagging. I am happy to adapt to any rule that this site sets up. For the moment, there is NOT a rule here that "Downvoting is not to be used to show disapproval/disagreement, but rather to filter out messages that add nothing to the conversation by being off-topic or just devoid of content." On my part, I mostly only downvote to disagree if there are thread-contribution-dimension reasons to disfavor the comment as well, and of course I upvote a lot to show agreement to try to emphasize the positive, but there currently isn't a rule about this here from the keyboard of the site management.
I imagine some guy in a black leather chair going "hmph," with an angry face, then clicking the down arrow.
This is why I find it annoying. I see a lot of DH3+ comments being downvoted with no explanation. Then I want to upvote the comment and, at the same time, ask why it has been downvoted.
My upvote probably wouldn't count. Then, in return, I'm afraid I'd get downvoted. From time to time I see someone else say "hey, why are you guys downvoting this? This guy is saying something worthwhile."
In which case, the situation reverses and the originally negative comment is +1 or +2. Or more. BUT, still lacking an explanation as to why the comment was downvoted to a negative in the first place.
Annoying.
Using downvoting to disagree with the comment isn't the intention afaik.
It may even be a subconscious act.
Personally, I tend to avoid down-voting, even for egregious comments.
1) Spam should be flagged not downvoted.
2) On/Offtopic is about as subjective as you can get. Some of the most interesting comments I've seen on HN were the ones that were non-obviously related to the post or were meta-comments, or even better, when an interesting conversation ran wild and flowed from topic to topic to topic.
3) Downvoting is being used more and more and more for uncommented disagreement.
Don't believe me? Visit any thread here and see which posts are sitting at <=0 karma. I guarantee the vast vast majority of them will be
1) Humorous and on-topic (even if the humor is bad).
2) On topic but non-specifically disagreed with by somebody (who? nobody knows since no comments were probably provided).
> 1) Spam should be flagged not downvoted.
Agree.
> 2) On/Offtopic is about as subjective as you can get
Roughly agree, except there are official guidelines from the HN HQ so it isn't completely subjective.
> 3) Downvoting is being used more and more and more for uncommented disagreement.
Maybe, but even if so I don't see it being a problem. HN isn't turning into an echo chamber because of it, HN has always been a self selected echo chamber, as are all self selected groups of people who choose to belong to a group focused on some area(s) of interest.
> Don't believe me?
Don't understand you.
This is true, but even within the guidelines, there is considerable room for topics. Some people seem to want to constrain that further to some smaller set of topics they are personally interested in by using the downvote.
> Maybe, but even if so I don't see it being a problem. HN isn't turning into an echo chamber because of it, HN has always been a self selected echo chamber, as are all self selected groups of people who choose to belong to a group focused on some area(s) of interest.
Self-selected, narrowly focused? Sure. But an echo chamber is not what we want, they are by definition, undesirable.
> Don't understand you.
I wasn't clear I guess. My point being is that posts that are off-topic and generally disagreeable are not the ones being downvoted because by and large we tend not to have those too much on HN. The ones that are being downvoted are the ones that are, on topic, but have some other characteristic that the downvote patrol doesn't want to see, such as humor or a dissenting or contradictory voice.
Nor does length equal quality: a good one or two line post can speak volumes more than a poor wall of text.
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/09/29/comments_size_does_...
In other words, you can only snark or troll for so long; there's only so many ways to call somebody an idiot.
>Just because you spent time constructing an argument doesn't mean it's cogent.
I'm (perhaps mistakenly) equating time spent constructing an argument with argument length, since longer posts tend to take more time to write. It's also fairly well established that longer posts tend to be of higher quality on most message boards, and I'm equating cogent with quality (again, perhaps mistakenly).
time -> length -> quality, therefore invoking the law of transitivity time -> quality.
I do not visit HN to argue epistemology or ethics and have little use for back-and-forth discussions between two people that nest twelve layers deep and which you can see after the first exchange are never going to end until they grow bored talking past each other and move on to some other comment thread. I would much rather that these disagreements and conflicting positions are handled in a way that does not take up space for other interesting arguments or points of discussion -- downvoting without a reply serves this purpose.
You forgot about "having to hit each and every individual key used in word formation in the correct order, some keys more than once (and a few several times), having to adhere to reasonable rules of grammar to string the words together into a sentence with meaning, and to remember to stay on topic and respond to the comment rather than slowly drifting off topic into a stream of consciousness, having to maintain visual focus on the screen while typing, and after hitting the reply button, waiting for the comment to refresh, and then another 30-40 minutes refreshing to watch my karma".
I think you assign far too much effort to the task of typing a single sentence.
I would understand the vote, and would still feel interested in engaging. I would view the downvote as a punctuation or an emoticon on your comment. Not a ricochet bullet in my living room.
Downvoting without comment can do far more damage to conversation than can upvoting.
Imagine a real life conversation where you are speaking to another party, as you speak your mind, the other party continuously nods their head yes -- an upvote. You don't particularly feel the need to stop and ask "why do you agree with me?"
While on the other hand if, in the same situation, the other party started nodding their head no - a downvote, you would probably stop and ask them "why do you disagree with me?"
The conventions of this site essentially say that:
a) You can shake your head no, and the speaking party cannot ask why you disagree with them.
b) If the party asks why they are being met with disagreement, the response is the real world equivalent of a beating.
c) If you compare their negative, comment-less disagreement with any other similar situation, the response is a beating.
The result is that, after a couple exchanges like this, a typical person will not bother to speak their mind at all since they may end up with the online equivalent of a beating. Thus we end up with people that don't want to suffer the consequences of speaking out.
For example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1014800
Upvotes are like cake, it encourages people to work for more cake. But people will similarly work to avoid a beating, and non-participation is the easiest path to do so.
No, I'd feel the need to politely excuse myself from that person's company. I have better things to do than blather on to bobble-heads.
"You can shake your head no, and the speaking party cannot ask why you disagree with them."
You can ask why you're downvoted. I've seen that asked and answered many times.
"the response is the real world equivalent of a beating."
The real world equivalent of a beating is a beating.
A downvote is not a beating. A downvote is a stuck out tongue, a disgusted look, a thumbs-down, or a shook head.
I can only assume you've never actually had a real beating or helped tend to the injuries of someone who's actually experienced a beating. Otherwise, I can't imagine why you would use such melodramatic terms to describe the mere act of strangers not following your personal protocols if they dislike one of your comments.
I'm guessing that you participate in remarkably few conversations then, since that just about characterizes every conversation I've ever had.
> You can ask why you're downvoted. I've seen that asked and answered many times.
No you can't, it's even mentioned in the guidelines. You'll also notice that requests like that are usually immediately downvoted, again without comment (or with a link to guidelines). Even requests on somebody else's behalf are treated like raw sewage.
Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
> I can only assume you've never actually had a real beating or helped tend to the injuries of someone who's actually experienced a beating. Otherwise, I can't imagine why you would use such melodramatic terms to describe the mere act of strangers not following your personal protocols if they dislike one of your comments.
The melodrama does not end with me apparently ;)
What I mean by that image is that beatings are usually provided with little commentary, and if commentary is provided, it's usually of the epithet variety. I'm equating the downmod not so much to the beating I suppose but to the abject lack of reasoning as to "why the beating?". Beatings are usually rather senseless and provided without much reasoning.
A comment that's immediately downvoted several times without comment is certainly a comment that's being ganged up on. And I can tell you that when a gang of people has set themselves on somebody, there's usually not a whole lot of interesting conversation during the altercation.
As the words of wisdom go, "Smile...and back away."
Then, more to the point, why don't you oppose voting in general on this site?
The point of HN is to encourage discussion ergo, upvoting is, in general, in line with the point of the site.
I agree that upvoting can also create an echo chamber, but since it doesn't outright suppress contradictory voices, the effect is much less pronounced.
what those two terms ["noise" and "signal"] mean varies from person to person and may in fact have wildly different meaning to the people voting up or down, but that seems to be the intended effect of the voting arrows
It's probably the ability to aggregate these wildly different meanings in an interesting way that makes the voting system good.
Sometimes just saying "no/yes, I (dis)agree with you" is sufficient and the site is better served by encapsulating these statements into up and down votes rather than encouraging the equivalent of "+1 I agree" messages
That's exactly right.
In this whole area, less is more. Many of the objections and suggestions for changing it strike me as overengineering. Given that the site is the creation of an inveterate minimalist, though, I doubt we have too much to worry about. :)
Maybe that should be added as a feature for up vote to. To up vote or down vote you would have to comment. This would ensure that only people who were really serious about their opinion would vote at all.
I often up-vote people that I disagree with (or who are disagreeing with me) because they are presenting their argument in a way that is reasonable and intelligent.
Ex. I would down-vote someone if they started name-calling, I would not down-vote them if they had an opinion that I thought was wrong. Of course, this would be dependent on how good the argument that they present is, or if the opinion is intentionally flammable.
edit lost track now it's down to -5....
I agree with it wholeheartedly. The reason why I downvoted this particular comment here is because I really don't think that it adds any value -- you're beating a dead horse.
And in this case, because you bothered to comment I don't feel bad. I feel engaged and I see your point. Not every post I make has a great deal of value, but I'd say that not every post anybody makes here has a great deal of value, even pg. Do they deserve a downvote? Not if the cost is that the poster will not bother in the future, we may loose valuable commentary because of that. And especially if the entire thread becomes contaminated because a downvote patrol has gone and tainted the entire thing, preventing other people from posting because they too might be downvoted.
But this is entirely different than my post a few levels up (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021131), that's now down to -5 at last look, which is topical, in response to somebody else, laments the use of the downvote as a shorthand for "fag" isn't snarky, or rude, isn't spam, isn't overly lengthy, conforms to supposed community standards on being short (as several posters in this topic have brought up) etc.
By merely showing agreement with the repondant, I took I a -5 hit to my karma and absolutely nothing in response as to why a downvote in this case is not shorthand for "fag".
And the main problem is that I can't confront my attackers. Their downvotes are about as anonymous as you can get (anonymity can breed abuse). And the community standards also say that I can't question "why the downvotes?". It's not questioning the votes, it's asking for a reason. So there is absolutely no resolution to this.
From the downvoters perspective, theirs is an perfect crime, they have no repercussions for abusing the system, the victim has no recourse, and no defense, and cannot even ask why, they cannot even metacomment that downvoting appears to be becoming a problem without martyring themselves and getting more downvotes.
If by some happenstance that the victim learns the identity of the attacker because they bothered to post a response, they can't downvote the response and at least see some reciprocity (maybe at higher karma levels than mine you can, but I have no option for example to downvote your reponse). Basically they have absolutely no recourse. They can't even flag somebody who has it out for them and downvotes everything they post because they don't know the identity of their attacker. It's a system perfectly setup for abuse by habitual downvoters as we are now seeing.
It's at these moments that I'm saying to myself "you know what, fuck all of you I'm done here" even though I know it's just a handful of people that run around in a downvote patrol and do that kind of thing.
There's lots of ideas here about how to fix the brokeness of the voting system, here's another, people who habitually downvote, say more than 5 times a month, are no longer able to downvote, and must post at least 20 comments and receive +20 points before they can downvote again. Basically it should be a weapon with consequences.
My gut reaction to this absurdity is to disengage and forget the entire thing. To stop posting, and stop conversing and stop trying to find and contribute to interesting discussion in what is probably one of the better forums I've come across in a great many years. pg hasn't commented on this aspect of the system yet as I'm suspecting he's still observing and watching.
I'm afraid though that unless each negative tag is balanced with a positive tag, and the tag scores are provided, that we'll end up in a similar state we are now, only with more complexity.