Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The problem is that a simple up/down vote system is too crude.

- low effort for drive-by downmods (there are stupid numbers of comments blasted to nothing despite being insightful or informative)

- upvote doesn't distinguish between 'I agree' and 'hey, this is really informative'; the former is mostly meaningless, the latter is useful

- single downmod diminishes what you said and makes it harder to read (on an already low-contrast site). Hardly fair given the ease of 'drive-bys'.

The forum I spend most of my time on has a reason required for the mod - it's not this brainless +/- system that the web is moving towards. You get an idea why people are up/downmodding, and it raises the bar ever so slightly so that it takes actual effort to mod (that is, critique) a comment. The displayed point value is also capped - while the user gets the karma for the mod, it's not displayed beyond a certain cap.

Mostly I see the benefit of this system as stopping mindless up/downvoting - requiring the tiniest bit of effort produces better quality results. Still not perfect, but much, much better.

The up/down voting system is indeed crude -- but it's both simple and relatively well understood (and popular).

Also, what you characterize as "drive by voting", I think of as being "lightweight feedback". Sure, we could make things a wee bit harder so a (much) smaller fraction of people would vote with with more deliberation, but I'm not sure that actually improves things.

It's not well understood, as evidenced by the continuing arguments about how upvoting "should" mean informative but "does" mean agree.

Agr... whatever.

Seriously though, this is a problem I think a lot about. One solution that keeps popping up in my head is implemented in an OS forum somewhere (don't recall specifics), so that each comment can be marked as informative/funny/shocking/etc instead of mere upvotes.

Downvotes should go along similar lines so downmodded people don't have to beg for reasons. If "it makes boring reading" [1], don't make people write it!

[1]: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Requesting a reason for a mod via an associated dropdown is not hard for anyone to understand - and I would expect users of "Hacker News" to be able to figure it out even if it were slightly difficult.

The "lightweight feedback" is "throwaway feedback", because you really only see how unpopular a comment is (is it dead yet? oop! there it goes!). Only the owner knows how popular it is, and even then, doesn't know if it's just a bunch of 'yeah, me too!' or 'that was informative or insightful!'

The most egregious example of 'why is this modded so' is this comment, so much so that I've stuck it in my profile:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3087822

The thread was about RMS and what an eccentric he is, and about his comments subsequent to Steve Jobs' death. The comment is defending RMS using an oft-quoted verse of Jobs', where he defends mavericks making their own rules and violating the status quo. The comment makes a very insightful link, and is not offensive or malicious. Yet it's downmodded to dead status, something that other comments in the same thread didn't have happen despite being much more fractious. Why was it downmodded? Who can say? It's probably fanboys, nothing else makes sense from a mature point of view.

Which reminds me of another issue with the mod system: it's totally anonymous. There is no accountability. You can diminish someone else's statement without giving a reason why nor standing behind it with your own name/pseudonym. Again, the forum I come from gives you the option to see who modded a comment whichever way - which while there is the occasional problem, is overall a significant net gain for an online community that strives to keep things mature.

I like your feature request of showing my (up/down) voting history within my HN profile.

Can we at least have it so that the arrows don't disappear when you click on them? I can't tell you the number of times I've clicked on the wrong arrow and been frustrated by not being able to correct my mistake. This is especially bad on a small touchscreen (i.e. phone).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com