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Comment by jerrac | Hacker News Reader

I initially loved the idea of voting posts up and down. Thanks to seeing how it actually works on SO and here, well, I am not much of a fan anymore.

At the very least, if I ever implemented it myself, I'd require that people explain why they are voting up, or voting down, before they could vote. And I'd not limit users from being able to vote until they magically get to the right amount of "karma".

Without requiring an explanation, votes are more akin to boos and cheers than anything useful. Not a very good way to encourage a diverse culture.

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Yeah, I really wish that HN required you to comment in order to downvote. Or even just required that a comment had replies before it could be downvoted; I don't care so much that every single person justifies their downvote as that the person getting downvoted gets an explanation.

I think this could backfire. Toxic/trolling comments do not need to be dignified with a response, and requiring one may increase the incentive to write inflammatory posts (assuming that at least some people do this—consciously or not—to instigate reactions).

For well-intentioned posts that are factually incorrect, it seems that there are usually replies that explain the reason for the downvote. When a comment is wrongfully banished to the grey nothingness, oftentimes others step up and defend it. The community immune system functions well as is.

Also, I adore the fade-to-grey side effect of the downvotes. It’s like spritzing a cat with water for scrounging on the counters—an ultimately harmless but super effective reprimand.

Posts like that should be flagged for moderation, not voted on. A community site should have guidelines that everyone can reference, and if something is in violation, there should be a way to flag that post.

That only incentivizes people who have all the time in the world to disagree on the internet. Most users with expertise just don't have that kind of mental-bandwidth to spare. Just as it is not worth your time to get into a verbal argument with flat-earthers, its not worth your time to comment on most posts that you disagree with.

I like that a comment requires at least one comment before a downvote. Maybe not a comment for each downvote, since that might encourage dogpiling. Imagine a new user makes a social faux pas and suddenly receives ~4 relatively negative comments.

I initially really liked this idea. I think the only problem is that it could lead to requiring more moderation. It's very hard to enforce quality. Right now I'm imagining a bandwagon chain of "You suck!" or other low quality comments just for the price of downvoting. I guess you could impose a minimum character requirement. At any rate, the idea of it being visible only to the user being downvoted is somewhat novel as well.

Removing content from a discussion IS moderation. That's why the idea is tying a 'reason for moderation' (the reply, or any reply existing at all at least) to the moderation action.

Such a moderation comment might be anything, but the more egregious examples:

Illegal content (of some sort); A threat upon persons or property (E.G.); Hate Speech; other things that a reasonable person would agree do not belong with a discussion; or just being Wildly off-topic.

Having to work harder at moderation seems acceptable to me. And it'd be fairly simple to implement a "You can't just say 'you suck' when downvoting. If you do, you lose your downvoting privileges permanently." policy.

To expand on my thoughts a bit, my goal with voting would be to get people to actually engage with each other. That's the whole point of a community site. Adding "points" is just a way to encourage more engagement.

With that in mind, I'd likely just not have downvotes period. If something is low quality enough to deserve a downvote, then it should be in violation of my community standards. Downvotes are designed to stop engagement. That's not the kind of thing I'd want unless it's something bad.

Then maybe do something a little different with upvotes. Say after you upvote with a comment a certain number of times, you get access to a quick upvote option. Or canned upvote comments.

And maybe general comments would count as an upvote unless you uncheck the box. That way we could keep generic upvote comments like "well thought out argument" or "he used good references" in their own little section without stifling good interactions.

> Not a very good way to encourage a diverse culture

I'd guess that's the point - giving power over visibility to users who've proved themselves in line with the forum zeitgeist helps maintain a site's culture as-is and prevent it "diversifying" into Smaller Facebook #50691.

Comment and explain your downvote, you'll likely be downvoted for doing so, or be accused of trying to be a mod, or waste your time explaining yourself to someone who wasn't even interested enough to post a substantial comment in the first place. The main reason I downvote is "low quality comment" which is subjective and I don't want to enter into a debate about arguing that it is against the author arguing that it isn't; it's a voting system, I vote, you vote, we all vote, and a consensus comes from that. I don't want it to be "my judgement is better than everyone elses", I want it to be my vote among many.

(Or rather, I do want it to be "my judgement is better than everyone elses, and I want to be able to delete other people's comments", and I recognise that's bad, and that a vote system limits the maximum damage I can do to one vote per comment).

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