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Comment by wglb | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. I see, and myself, do downvote comments that I disagree with, if it is a strong disagreement. I think there is also a post where pg says something similar: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347

I have found that comments of mine that get downvoted cause me to think about why.

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I don't think it's clear whether pg is endorsing the downvote as a form of disagreement or simply making the observation that it is often used that way.

Petercooper wrote a great response in that thread. Disagreement by downvote stifles any attempt at honest debate.

Check out http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006808

Downvoting people who are mistaken is different than downvoting people you disagree with. Something that is factually incorrect should be downvoted because it contributes negatively to the discussion.

In this case, that would be "DH3" according to the article. Contradiction with no supporting evidence.

Sure, but you could probably argue that calling someone a "fag" without evidence is also DH3. But I think the nuance is that down voting is not explicitly stating a contradiction, only stating that you disagree (albeit anonymously), which is slightly more like DH0.

So yea it technically is also DH3.

I try to not down vote for disagreeing, because most of my opinions are wrong. I have changed almost all my positions more than once and it will happen again. If people disagree without trolling it is valuable, even if they are more wrong than me. It helps me be less wrong.

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!).

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