Ask HN: Why can I only downvote some comments? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why can I only downvote some comments?

49 pointschatmasta69 comments

Recently I noticed I can only downvote some comments. I used to be able to downvote any comment. Looks like the difference is age of the comment?

Is this a new development?

View on HN

Off-topic but it seems that a change to upvoting has recently been implemented: https://news.ycombinator.com/voteclosed?id=11923301&how=up

We used to be able to upvote old items but now it seems there's a limit on that too. Too bad, I always liked being able to express that I enjoyed discovering something old in someone's record of contributions, even if no one would notice my upvote.

Especially given that HN offers no support for saving items other than upvoting.

Looks like someone heard you ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675

> 3. Save and share the best stories and comments. Click on a post's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'favorite' at the top. Your favorites are linked from your profile, and you can browse other users' from theirs.

As I understand it, you cannot downvote a comment if:

1. You have too low a karma (points, look top right)

2. The comment is a reply to yours

3. The comment is quite old

4. Something vague about a mechanism that stops you stalking someone and downvoting (spread the downvotes, don't focus them like a meanie)

5. It's already been downvoted to nothing (you can do it, but I think it has no effect)

Generally, upvote the positive rather than downvote the negative.

"Quite old" in this case seems to be about 8 hours, based on anecdotal evidence.

It used to be 24 hours but it was shortened a couple of months ago.

That seems a bit extreme. Does anyone know the rational?

OP is asking if time length for item 3 has changed.

It has, it is shorter than before.

Agreed! I reserve downvotes for unhelpful comments. Helpful comments should be about the topic, and not other commenters.

6. The comment is a reply to a story you posted

7. You may think you are able to vote, but it may still be ignored

>> Generally, upvote the positive rather than downvote the negative.

The exception, at least for me, is top level comments. They have so much power to shape the conversation that even a merely mediocre one should be downvoted.

There's at least one thread today (the toxic oil one) where the highest top-level comment was factually wrong, and clearly responding to the title without actually opening the article.

Sure, it's possible to comment with a correction (people did), but it's an absolute waste of a comment thread to have the first experience be a bunch of people debunking gibberish. Downvoting plays an important role in sanitizing stuff that's going to waste time and prevent good discussion.

HN needs comment folding. I can ignore those discussions easily on reddit by simply folding the comment. I find down voting here to be quite arbitrary and at times really mean spirited. It's discouraging to know that people are doing it merely to order the posts.

It's in beta right now. Just a little while.

I use the Hacker News Enhancement Suite Chrome extension for exactly that. (It also monkey with fonts and adds tagging a bunch more things, but I honestly only care about the comment folding).

It's trivial to add via userscripts, at least: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/2960-hacker-news-collapsib...

#2 is a great rule! I've noticed some (what I consider) vindictive voting. Good thinking.

#4 interesting. That is thinking a few steps ahead.

Eventually #3 applies to upvotes too (I'm not sure what the time-frame is).

I have also noticed what OP has noticed, and it's not covered under any of your above cases, which I was also previously aware of.

To expand on OP, from what I have observed it's not just related to the newness of a comment, because I have seen new comments with downvote button right next to a slightly older comment with no downvote button (just for clarity, none of the five conditions above apply either, e.g. it's not a reply to mine, it's not already dead..). It also seems to affect top level comments more than others. The mystery remains.

Edit: This thread has been banned from the front page. It was on the first page two minutes ago and now it's not even on page 2 or 3. Can only be found in Ask section. Why?

> Edit: This thread has been banned from the front page. It was on the first page two minutes ago and now it's not even on page 2 or 3. Can only be found in Ask section. Why?

As far as I know it's almost always user flags.

This is a meta thread, and so people flag it.

Is there a place where all these rules are detailed by the way ? not that I want to game the system , I'm working on a HN clone, and it would be interesting to know the business logic behind comments and submissions (how comments are sorted on an item page, how an article makes it to the homepage, is there something manual curation ? an algorithm ? ect... ) . While looking simple in terms of functionalities , HN is actually quite complex when it comes to content management,moderation and curation. I mean if all this is managed automatically.

The logic behind the time limit on down voting is almost certainly to prevent people from going into someone's history to downvote everything they ever said. Since your karma is literally the number of (upvotes-downvotes) you've ever received, doing that to someone could remove a huge chunk of their karma.

You can't downvote old comments (don't know what the threshold is) and comments that are responses to what you wrote. The time threshold seems to be on the comment itself, rather than article - I remember seeing pages where only half of the comments are locked.

> (don't know what the threshold is)

Some time ago I think it was around 24 hours, but recently I noticed I can't downvote comments older than 12? hours.

And yes, it's tied to comment, not the article.

I think it's 8 hours.

The fixed time limit doesn't make that much sense as what often happens is that the EU morning crowd sees the US West Coast's evening stories as the top trending stories, with a load of comments that can no longer be down voted, even though they are the most recent comments and barely debated.

Then again, why make it too complicated.

I cant downvote anything and always wonder how people do that, curious to hear answers.

I think you need > 500 Karma before you can downvote.

soon™

I think that's not sufficient, other factors like time since account creation and possibly activity too seem to be taken into account too.

That may be true. My recollection is that the ability to downvote became active right as I crossed the 500 karma mark, but it's possible there are other factors.

The other factors seem quite mysterious. This is the only page in which I've seen downvote arrows in ages.

Looks like we have official confirmation now :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12074198

Imho, if an option is not available, it should be grayed out, and the reason should be shown on hovering.

Why, out of interest?

To prevent users from wondering what's wrong and asking questions like the ones in this topic. It's just a good rule of thumb for UI. "Don't make me think," as it were.

Why are people focusing on downvotes other than upvoting what's important?

If you upvote important comments, the ones you dislike will fade away... so why focusing on so much negativity?

Does it makes anyone feel better downvoting an opinion they disagree with? Why not try to prove your point instead, adding your comment and upvoting the ones you like the most?

Again, here we go.. the invisible hand, the warrior without face.. and my comment being downvoted...

Do people really read 1k+ comment threads? Isn't this supposed to work as a community? If people would upvote comments they agree with wouldn't the most voted ones be on top?

So what's wrong with what I just said?

Well, suppose you think a comment is really bad for whatever reason (pick the vilest comment you can think of for political, personal, or other reasons.) It is unhelpful, angry, incoherent and whatever else.

Now for some reason the person has some friends who upvoted the comment.

Do you really think you want to express your displeasure by upvoting every other comment relatively speaking? What if you don't particularly like any of the other comments, or don't have time to read them all?

I agree that upvoting every other comment is not a solution. But maybe the 'art of ignore' is. If no one would comment, that someone would eventually give up. After all, that's what those bad comments are seeking for: attention, support of any kind or just annoying someone.

Have you thought that by downvoting you could be leaking to that person that he/she annoyed you, therefore empowering him/her to continue with such bad comments?

In the other hand, if you downvote a comment just because you disagree with it you may be leading that person to give up on commenting/contributing.

The purpose of downvoting is not to signal your displeasure to the person making the comment.

It is to lower the priority of the comment for the majority of regular viewers, and to replace it with the better comments.

An upvote and a downvote are just two faces of the same thing. Upvoting everything you think adds to the conversation is functionally the same as downvoting everything you don't think adds to the conversation. You aren't more positive just because you prefer upvotes to downvotes. By choosing to not use downvotes, what you're actually doing is treating neutral comments (that neither add nor detract from the conversation) the same as comments that actively detract. You are making your rating binary when you don't have to.

I'll be entirely honest, I downvoted your comment. The question was about why downvotes are sometimes not available, and your comment about how it's negative to use downvotes at all seems unhelpful. So I downvoted it. I don't feel like that makes me negative. I also don't feel like it makes me positive when I upvote. I'm helping the comments sort more effectively, that's all.

Also, complaining about downvotes is also a sure way to get more.

That would all be true, except for the greying-out thing. Its quite a bit different to downvote, particularly as an early responder. It can make disagreement appear as disapproval.

Do comments turn gray after a single downvote? I honestly don't know. I personally don't care much about whether comments are gray unless they've turned the "I can barely read this" gray. The standard (first level?) gray just tells me that someone (or a couple of people) downvoted the comment, but that doesn't mean much. I've often "rescued" gray comments. The ultra-light gray often does indicate something and I'm less likely to read those.

Thank you for your explanation. It was helpful on understanding your motion towards upvoting and downvoting. I upvoted it, and am now explaining you why, because I think this is how we should justify ourselves.

I kind of agree on you downvoting my comment for being off-topic, but is it really? I think I tried to bring something to this discussion, although not necessarily answering the OP question. Anyway, it's up to the individual but I think we shouldn't be that closed. Otherwise this would be solely a Q/A forum.

Regarding the downvotes, I was already aware of that, and was expecting them. I don't care much about the 'karma' thing and am now actually thrilled to see the outcome of this experiment. I give much more value to an answer like yours, as I can learn with it, than the whole point system really. Thanks!

> I upvoted it, and am now explaining you why

Be careful with this. It's generally not a good idea to explain how/why you voted. It's really just for the person whose comment you voted on, and detracts from the conversation for everyone else. Most people will not care why or how any particular person voted.

> I kind of agree on you downvoting my comment for being off-topic, but is it really?

I wouldn't classify your comment as off-topic, but rather tangential and kind of uninteresting in the context of the initial question. It mostly feels like complaining about the voting system rather than discussion of the system. Complaints about downvotes are also generally discouraged (per HN guidelines), and while your initial comment was not a complaint about a specific comment being downvoted, it is still a complain about downvotes.

On the other hand, I did not downvote your second comment, because it's clearly relevant to the comment thread you started.

These are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to both upvote comments you like and downvote comments you think don't add to the conversation.

Voting gives a sense of agency in that one can influence HN in a positive way. By upvoting, I am making HN more positive by promoting comments that I think add to the discussion. By downvoting, I am making HN more positive by demoting comments that I think detract from the discussion.

That you think a downvote is focusing on negativity says more about you than those who downvote. To be honest, I find your attempts to convince others not to use a core feature of HN to be negative and, as such, I've voted accordingly.

Thank you for your answer. I think you made my point actually. By commenting, you gave me the opportunity to discuss with you and we now can both learn from it. For me it became more than a downvote, it became positive.

I sometimes both downvote and reply when I feel that it would be helpful. At other times, the comment is self-evident as to why it was downvoted (and/or already has replies from others) and a reply only adds noise instead of signal. The signal I'm adding is "-1 fake internet points".

Ok, I can see your point but why downvote other than leaving it as is, for the reasons I wrote down below?

Edit: The reasons I wrote as a reply to user projectramo

If nobody downvoted, then the author of the comment would be unable to distinguish between "the community doesn't value my comment" and "my comment was ignored". A downvote sends a clear signal vs. a lack of signal which is important to establishing/maintaining community norms. If we didn't have that signal, there might be reddit-style pun chains on HN and new users who see that might think it's accepted by the community since those threads are indistinguishable from other comments due to the scores being hidden. Seeing comments downvoted to grey is an important signal.

Of course, replying is also a signal but it's not appropriate in every circumstance. It's redundant when sibling comments provide correct information vs. the downvoted comment's incorrect information and an in-context reading of the thread will make that apparent. Or when the downvoted comment is flamebait/trolling and you don't want feed the trolls. Or when the comment clearly doesn't fit the community norms. And, most importantly, I have neither the time nor the inclination to reply to every comment on HN offering constructive feedback so I pick and choose carefully when I do that... as I'm doing here.

Long story short, HN deemed it acceptable to allow users with a minimum karma level to downvote. It's a feature, not a bug, and as long as it's used with discretion it sends a valuable signal to the comment's author. That feedback mechanism also confers positive benefits to the entire community.

There were a few points you mentioned I wasn't considering altogether. You made it very clear. Thank you for you input!

What's never discussed is HN's "voting hellban". That is, you are permitted to upvote/downvote, but your votes don't ever actually count. This is the case with my account, but it's never discussed or documented anywhere.

Or a throttling delay versus other posters. I caught someone's eye on HN, and now I'm limited in how many comments I can post in a sliding window compared to other users.

That is a highly nasty and unethical thing to do to an unsuspecting user who spends time carefully moderating the discussion and trying to help the site.

On the other hand, it's a great way to handle someone who assists spammers or astroturfers.

What did dang say when you emailed HN?

I've found he's always happy to talk about this kind of stuff. The software sometimes makes mistakes.

At your suggestion, I did. I don't know what their typical response time is, but as of yet nothing.

Ok, yes, it seems nobody responds to the HN email address regarding issues like this. They likely filter out those not as popular as you.

That's neither true nor fair. We sometimes fall behind on emails, and I had several dozen to answer before getting to yours, which is currently next in the queue.

Coming here to see the context before answering your email is an ironic moment to encounter snark about us not answering emails. If you'd merely said we were too slow, I'd fully agree.

Apologies, I wasn't aware of the backlog. It wasn't intentionally snarky - if I ran a board as popular as this, prioritizing popular accounts would be sensible thing for me to do, so I assumed.

How do you know it's the case with your account?

Verified it with both a throwaway and a friend. Also, my 0 minute posts always end up near the bottom of the page, as if I had on the order of 10 karma.

Right, but I mean what did you look at to "verify" it? The upvote count of the post? Why did you need a friend to verify it? If you are logged in vs. out, is the upvote count different?

HN has various software and moderation penalties that can be applied to accounts that routinely break the site guidelines. That is the case with your account.

Some of these penalties involve voting, some involve ranking, others involve all kinds of different things. Taken together, they're one of the most important devices HN has to stave off a summary collapse into a disastrously worse place. There's no "voting hellban" (including on your account, some of whose votes count), but there are provisions for dropping votes and weighting them according to various criteria, which we're not going to disclose.

People sometimes think that HN maintains the quality it has (not great, but could be worse) purely by its own equilibrium. That's far from true. It takes major, conscious effort, and much of that effort—as much as possible—we encode into software. Without that it would be physically impossible to keep this place up, and would drive anyone mad to try.

Thank you. I understand why you wouldn't disclose the specific algorithms used, but perhaps issue a set of guidelines for not falling afoul of them?

For instance, I always access HN via a public VPN service, and I suspect coming from a shared IP may have an impact (I'm guessing, anyway). If this is a criteria, it would be nice to know.

Again, thanks for the clarification.

Sorry if too OT, but I thought I'd put it here:

Why not let people see the scores of replies to their comments? I can understand hiding scores in general, sure.

But it would be nice to know how popular certain replies are, so I know if it's worth continuing the thread. There are a lot of times when there's exactly one comment, which isn't grayed out. I have no idea whether zero or a hundred people think it's a good reply.

If there are multiple replies, then that indicates interest and I can reply to the top one. But that doesn't help for the case of single replies.

In my experience when a thread gets too much chained replies you can't down vote any more.

I suspect this is to prevent down voting wars in heavy discussions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com