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Comment by sorbits | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes wish the up/down arrows would instead be a square a la:

    ↑ Insightful/Agree ------ Insightful/Disagree ↑
    |                                             |
    |                                             |
    ↓ Uninsightful/Agree -- Uninsightful/Disagree ↓

Seeing how the intent with the points are insightfulness (afaik) but often they are used to express agreement.

P.S. I found the video hilarious :)

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I actually briefly user-tested such a scheme back at university; if it worked well, I was going to put together a news aggregator based on the idea.

At least in my test, which was admittedly very small in scale, people almost always clicked "Insightful/Agree" or "Uninsightful/Disagree". I'd love to see a better test of this, though.

At least in my test, which was admittedly very small in scale, people almost always clicked "Insightful/Agree" or "Uninsightful/Disagree". I'd love to see a better test of this, though.

That’s very much what I would expect. You generally disagree with someone because you think they have poor arguments – how could something that is, say, factually wrong or not coherent also be insightful? I always cringe when people here say you shouldn’t downvote when you disagree. Should you really not downvote if a comment contains obvious factual errors or if the arguments obviously make no sense? (I have to add, though, that the “obvious” is important here. I think you shouldn’t downvote when someone made reasonable errors in their argument.)

I think there are cases where comments you disagree with can be insightful (when, say, a aspect of a problem is shown that you didn’t consider before) but I would also argue that those instances are rather rare.

I like this idea, but I'm not sure about the words upon a bit of reflection.

It seems like clicking "Uninsightful/Agree" is agreeing that I believe things that are uninsightful? I imagine that would be the least used option.

Insightful/Disagree seems like a contradiction. If someone has stated a conclusion that I think is wrong, how could I see those opinions as containing notable insights?

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