Ask HN: Is there a way we can prevent down-voting for disagreements?

Well I too get down votes very often. And basically if I comment something on HN I count it as success if my karma doesn't go down after I comment.

Because of this I tend to see HN as this club of extremely narrow minded people where any opinion that differs is punished. But this is mostly citral thing. First by the fact that I am not a English speaker and second that even if most people won't admit it they have very binary thinking. To which the up vote / down vote buttons fit perfectly :)

So if you want your not so mainstream opinion to be appreciated I think HN is very poor place for this.

I agree - HN is an echo chamber. A few patterns: 1. Generally left leaning politically 2. HN prefers SQL db to MongoDB, despite Mongo's suitability to certain use cases 3. GPL == Holy. Somehow all software should be given away with the most copyleft license one can apply. Yet, the GPL hardliners gather in droves here - a website that isn't open source, run by a VC company whose mission is to make money, mostly off software. Ironic

Don't forget the PC Police - if you want to say something even remotely not politically correct better keep it to yourself, or you'll be downvoted to oblivion.

Isn't PC just code for offensive?

Can you give me an example of something you consider not PC that isn't also offensive?

This was an interesting challenge. Here's my attempt: "Merry Christmas."

The more PC term is "Happy Holidays", but I'm not so sure "Merry Christmas" is offensive contextually -- at least, not always.

I think this does not answer the question. I don't think "Merry Christmas" or "Holidays" is the type of example @iovrthoughtthis is looking for.

I'm also not sure those are the type of "PC" that was meant initially.

Though I could be wrong. Does HN get up in arms when people say Merry Christmas?

Most of the actual conflicts that get reported as people being "offended" by "Christmas cheer" or similar involve legal challenges against government entities endorsing or privileging a religious interpretation of Christmas, such as local governments dedicating public space exclusively to a nativity scene. This sort of thing is a pretty blatant Establishment Clause violation. This then gets spun by right-wing media as a "War on Christmas" waged by liberals who hate Christianity, which then turns into parts of their audience believing that saying "Merry Christmas" as a private citizen is somehow a noble act of defiance.

Interesting that this is downvoted.

> 1. Generally left leaning politically

I'm always surprised to hear this, because to me HN has a dominant right-wing bias.

I've long wondered if it would make sense to have a separate agree/disagree vote for each comment separate from the comment's normal upvote/downvote count. The totals for agree and disagree would be shown on the comment, but would not otherwise be used. I'd probably go one step further and allow users to simultaneously agree and disagree with a comment.

So you get something like:

  [upvote] [downvote] [agree] [disagree]

  2 points 7 agree 4 disagree (2 both agree and disagree)

The idea is to separate comment quality from agreement/disagreement.

I'm not sure this would be a good fit for HN since we can't generally see comment scores anyway, but it might work for other sites like Reddit.

I think this is a really good idea.

Also it would be interesting to test adding a compulsory text field when someone downvotes to include why you down voted.

Then add votes to down-vote reasons. Over time you would develop a good database of people who add value through downvoting (vs I disagree mentality) and weight these accordingly for better auto-moderation.

Interesting idea, i.e. the text field. In real life, though, people would be too short of time, to click buttons and open menus to find out what other people have written in those text fields (I'm assuming the texts woudln't be shown direcly on the page?). There'd be barely no meta-votes, I'm afraid. And the insightful reasons for why-downvote, would be in effect hidden.

What about a little tweak: To instead let people add ordinary replies = ordinary comments, to describe why they downvoted? Maybe a downvote icon, could be shown, somewhere next to the reply, and the computer would know that "this reply is an explanation about why the author downvoted the parent".

And if someone agreed with that downvote-reason, they could maybe click the Like button, for the reply. And then the system knows that "People like this reasoning about downvoting", and henceforth give slightly more trust to the downvoter's downvotes.

A local news site has such a system in their comment section. Judging by the scores, most people just end up using both for agree/disagree.

Yes too I think "Upvote" and "Agree" are too similar.

Actually I've implemented a 4 votes discussion system:

- Like = I agree / useful / insightful

- Disagree — does not affect post sort order or karma

- Bury — for moving well-intended but boring comments, like "Thanks!" and "Me too", downwards. Without having to delete or actually downvote them.

- Unwanted — this corresponds to HN's downvote. Core members & staff can use it, if they don't want that type of comment, at the site. Reduces the commenter's karma, moves the post downwards.

Here are two demo pages: (scroll up a bit to see the "Some disagree with this" warning)

- https://beautiful.demo.ed.community/-6#post-14 - https://insightful.demo.ed.community/-7#post-3

A comment is not always atomic. We should be able to agree/disagree with the subset of a comment.

I feel that down voting without any currency is too cheap. Instead, if people have to use up 1 karma to downvote then people would be more considerate about down voting. This would also restrict people who are just negative in general that likes to downvote everything. People who has looks of karma is free to downvote however they like.

It's an interesting idea, but it would systemically tendency towards ossifying views that the community already holds/has held in the past. If those who hold a certain opinion already have more karma, a feedback loop is created whereby they're more free to downvote the opposing opinion, the other side is less able to downvote theirs, so the original group doesn't lose as much karma, etc etc.

I don't like it because I think HN/YC should be a place to voice unpopular opinions.

I think it's fine to downvote an opinion you don't like. The whole purpose of upvote/downvote would be more to 'bump' opinions you think is useful. I sometimes upvote an opinion I disagree with if I think it should be more visible. But I think most people just use it as a boo/cheer button.

Downvoting in general is a pretty poor tool. What exactly would be lost if you could not downvote? Upvote or flag it if it's blatantly wrong; better yet, respond with the correct info.

The main problem with down and up voting is that it's "apparent" which results in people just doing it to further support an already up/downvoted item. This results in not actually attempting to understand, imo.

Don't. Embrace it...

Let me ask and then answer a question: Why do you CARE that something was downvoted? Because when things are downvoted you lose privileges, comments are hidden/greyed, and you can even be shadow-banned. So downvoting or "disagreement" is problematic because it is PUNISHED. Reddit has an identical issue.

That's a problem with the site's design. People aren't going to stop using the downvote as a disagreement button but yet the site is designed around the concept that it is a moderation tool? That's completely irrational, and only results in group-think.

So what's the solution? Well you can hope that people change and start using the site as you intended, or you can design the site around people as they are rather than as you'd like them to be.

Three buttons:

- I agree

- I disagree

- I believe this is inappropriate/rule breaking/low quality/flag it

Neither the first nor second are moderation actions. They're opinions and will be displayed as such e.g. (+10/-100) for a controversial opinion, and (+100/-10) for a popular one.

With the third option, you have to mitigate abuse. It is not a "super downvote" or a "super disagree." If someone uses it:

- They can either vote OR flag

- They can either reply OR flag

- The flag has a cooldown

- You abuse the flag you lose the flag

As soon as they flag a post that post is dead to them, they cannot interact with it. This stops them from using it in their own little vendetta, and frankly I believe people would prefer to add to the public disagreement score (or reply) than to abuse the private flag function.

I've implemented something like this, in another discussion system. I added a comment about that, here on this page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15798037

I have 4 vote buttons: (a Bury vote, in addition to the ones you mentioned)

- Like = I agree / useful / insightful

- Disagree — does not affect post sort order or karma

- Bury — for moving "Thanks!" and "Me too" comments downwards, without having to delete or downvote them)

- Unwanted — if you don't want that type of comment, at the site. Reduces the commenter's karma, moves the post downwards. This is the only vote HN has right now.

Two demo pages: (scroll up a bit to see the "Some disagree with this" warning)

- https://beautiful.demo.ed.community/-6#post-14 - https://insightful.demo.ed.community/-7#post-3

Paul Graham seems to think downvoting as disagreement is fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

He also thought it was a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057338

I used to agree with the comment you linked, and this other one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683

But then people pointed out a bunch of comments that got downvotes. These were polite comments, making a coherent point, on-topic and not attacking others.

And there are a couple of accounts who appear to have most of their comments insta-downvoted, even if there's nothing wrong with them.

One solution: almost all logged-in accounts have the ability to upvote. Few accounts have the ability to downvote. So if anyone sees a downvoted comment they can supply a corrective upvote.

What about adding a "Disagree" button? And show the text "Some disagree with this", if some people disagree. Or "Many disagree", if many disagree. — So, there'd be two kind of downvotes. One for "disagree", and another for "I don't want this kind of comment here at HN" (currently HN in practice only has the last one).

Look, a demo of how this can work and look: https://insightful.demo.ed.community/-7#post-3

— scroll up just a little bit to see the "Some disagree with this" warning just above the comment. And if, below the comment, you click the `V` button, to show various types of votes (in addition to the Like vote), you'll see there's a Disagree vote.

I wonder if anyone has any ideas as to how we might improve this aspect of the community without also ruining it in the process?

In general, I'd like to see voting and flagging on HN become more transparent. While there are some good arguments for maintaining the current "anonymous" approach, I testing some alternatives could lead to something better.

One quick change that I'd like to see would be to privatly expose the total vote count to the poster instead of just the net total. As it is, it's hard to distinguish a contentious issue from one that only a small number of people are interested in.

For example, instead of showing a comment as "-2", it might show "-2" with a mouseover that shows "+20 -18 = 2". This would be a tiny change, the data is already being recorded, and it could just as easily be rolled back if it doesn't produce a desired effect.

Both interesting thoughts.

I've thought about the transparency bit before. I guess keeping it opaque has the effect that you can't have a vendetta for someone who down-voted you and in general the down-voters has had to acquire enough karma to get the privilege in the first place, so we hope we can trust them.

Showing more detailed voting stats is something I hadn't considered. It does seem like an step forward and it doesn't seem to pose any danger as far as upsetting the ecosystem that has been built.

They do that on ArsTechnica. It doesn't really seem to have mitigated the issue much.

What I do, if I see a greyish comment on HN, and it's obvious that the opinion/idea expressed is being downvoted by groupthink, I upvote it. Even if I don't agree with the comment. Mostly because I don't believe ignoring/burying those whom you disagree with as solving anything. My choice of doing this is more of a means than an end. It's odd how narrow-minded and self-reinforcing a group of out-of-the-box free thinkers can be, especially out here. I can't impose open-mindedness on the masses, but I can try to at least help the voices of the dissenters remain visible.

I think this change would be for the better. What about something even easier to see, than +2 or -2 and hovering with the mouse? Most people aren't going to mouse-hover ... And it can be good to know if something has 103 upvotes and 100 downvotes, because then it's probably a rather dangerous comment/advice.

Maybe showing the text "Some disagree with this", if some people disagree? Or "Many people", if many. I linked to a demo about how that can look, in another comment here — search for "Look, a demo" on this page.

One thing not mentioned so far: most people have the ability to upvote. Fewer people have the ability to downvote.

When you see a downvoted comment it's not only had downvotes, it's failed to attract upvotes.

If people upvoted more unfair downvotes would be less of a problem.

I think if the amount of downvotes someone could cast in a given 24 hour period were limited to some smallish number, perhaps 5 or 10, then some people might save their downvotes for the comments that that really detract from the tone of the discussion.

I recommend not caring.

I up-vote everything I think people should see (often controversial/unpopular opinions I agree with), and down-vote everything else (giving my up-votes more weight).

I would like the ability to invest in comments I find particularly important (i.e., spend 100 karma), and reap the benefits if it ends up being useful to those who would otherwise not have seen it.

I've often felt web sites need an inverse mode. On some sites, I prefer all the negative comments to the upvoted comments.

PG said downvoting for disagreement was fine. Like it or not, that's the way the community runs and the way culture is - optimized for quality and cultural reinforcement, not freedom of speech.

Most of the time petty downvotes get balanced out or just sit at -1 anyway, it doesn't matter.

Could you post a link to where he said that?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Thanks. This must have taken you a little work to dig up again.

there are two:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

But he also said it was a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057338

I always upvote the interesting things, sometimes i strongly disagree with, but it bring an good reflexion, or simply another point of view.

I am surprised some people upvote comments just because they agree, should go facebook if you want that kind of social media.

What if everyone could see who down voted each comment. Make things super transparent.

Don't have a downvote button. They tried it before.

Implement 'I agree' / 'I disagree' and 'New information' buttons.

Hellban people that hellbanned without reason other people.

There is remarkably low value to be extracted from hn comments. Very rarely there is something wonderful! But like 99/100 comments are some combination of showing off, punching down, pushing a crackpot agenda or cryptotrolling. Why do you care if you get downvoted in such an environment? Perhaps, and this isn't meant to be nasty at all, you need some social activities in your life?

If you care to share, I’d be interested in examples of the 1/100-tier comments that you’ve seen. I have a more positive view of the discussions here, of course maybe my standards are lower. But I don’t think a comment necessarily becomes lesser because the author is “showing off”. If what they’re talking about is really damn special, maybe the bragging can’t be helped