Hacker News Reader

As an example:

There was a post about the birthday of the user edw159. Some people thought that the post wasn't hacker "newsworthy" and others thought it was ok. I commented "I think edw159 is one of the more active members and recognizing his birthday is ok" and I was downvoted pretty far. I think my comment was appropriate and it added meaningfully to the conversation, but a lot of people downvoted it to (I assume) show their disagreement.

Now I'm worried before I post any comments, partly because I'm worried I'll lose my precious karma but mostly because it's embarrassing to have a negative number next to one of your comments.

Exactly. I saw that and was really surprised. Burying you comment like that was an aggressively unfriendly act; two adjectives I never thought I would use to describe this place.

Initially you may worry about karma (as I did too) but we have to realise it does not exist (and that it does not matter)!

I now appreciate down votes and see it as a way for the community to 'teach me' (not in a negative way par se but as a guiding/helping hand) in the simplest way possible.

:)

knew that (karma hit) would happen :)

That brings up an interesting idea - karma is used to rank stories and comments, and make sure more interesting content is more visible. But the "game" aspect of karma (trying to make the top posters list, trying to appear a the top of threads) probably encourages some unhelpful behavior.

If users really shouldn't care about their karma, would the site be served better by not making karma visible at all, for users or for comments? You could keep upvotes and downvotes, and even let users know their own karma and how their own comments are rated (so they know when their contributions are being rewarded), but their would be no high-score table of top users, and users would only be able to guess at a post or a comments karma based on where it appears on the page.

This would take away the motivation some people have to contribute high-quality comments - I'm not sure whether the net result would be positive or negative.

Part of this discussion needs to include a serious discussion of what this site's core goals are. If this site were a web startup that needed to get high traffic, than a game-like system that gets posters addicted to writing comments to try and boost their karma makes sense. If the site is more about making sure it has the highest quality content possible for its original niche target audience, than that would make this approach less appropriate.

I've also learned from this. But sometimes it's hard because you are left guessing "why" someone downmodded you. For instance, I've recently been left thinking that I can be too brief with comments...but I'm not sure that is true. An intelligent and knowledgeable crowd needs and wants less wordiness.

I have learned to stay away from political discussions. Ouch!

I quite often up vote a comment I wouldn't normally touch if it's negative karma seems unjustified.

Downmod for bad grammar.

I'm kidding, but I've been dishing out karma lately, if I even so much as agree slightly with someone, or think that their viewpoint is slightly interesting/relevant.

edit: I suspect that the person that downmodded me has no sense of humour :)

I do the same; a while back there was a discussion on HN (approximately): "what do you do when you see someone being downmodded unfairly?"

Up/down votes on comments should be, in my view, for whether you thought the comment was worth reading or not, irrespective of viewpoint. Likewise for upvotes on stories.

I’ve noticed the same reaction. I’ve posted some comments that disagreed with others and I got downvoted – so it is really discouraging to disagree. I think that the solution here could be that next to karma there is courage section for people who are not afraid to disagree. There should also be something like “Karma Court” where respected guys from YC community decide if the post that got downvoted was plain stupid/disrespectful or just disagreeing. The members of Karma Court should bee respected fans of YC - motivation to become karma judges could be even bigger respect and recognition from other community members. What do you think of that?

I think you might be over-thinking this a bit! (uh-oh--here comes the Karma hit....)

You maybe right.

I think one issue is that there is no way to express disagreement with the worthiness of the original story. No downvote on stories, no bury etc. So instead some people most likely express that by downmodding any comments that agree with the storys worthiness.

I'd really like a downvote on articles, although it's a tricky decision I guess.

PG once before weighed in with "it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement" [1].

But, the mixing of the "quality" axis with an "agree/disagree" axis risks coarsening discussion. A disagree-downvote is mildly censorious: it lowers a comment's placement and docks the commenter's karma. It stings.

I don't want to downvote comments simply because I disagree, but if such comments are highly-placed because of some superficial popular appeal, and comments I more agree with are lowly-placed, I want to restore some balance of attention. I then tend to cast a few votes based on agreement/disagreement.

One possible answer is an idea I've plugged whenever this issue comes up: start a second orthogonal rating axis that is explicitly for agree/disagree [2][3]. It could be little left/right arrows, at the end of the comment. Then you might 'disvote' a comment you disagree with, but still 'upvote' it because it was well-stated... etc.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117196

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126917

If someone says "People should downvote to express disagreement." and I disagree with them should I downvote them?

I downvoted you because I can't stand it when people use footnote notation in a posting that is only 1/5 of a page long.

It looks longer when you are in the tiny HN comment text box. I think he is excused.

URLs inline look crappy:

News.YC as yet has no syntax for linking from text as in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Li... Wikipedia] or [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode]BBCode[/url] or [Markdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown).

News.YC also doesn't follow the recommendation of appendix C of RFC3986 <http://www.rfc.net/rfc3986.html>; with regard to angle-brackets as URL-delimiters -- and it even inserted that stray semicolon.

Hence the footnotes even in tiny comments... they look nicer, not breaking the flow of the writing so much.

I hate foot notes period... unless their are links to them... and links back. They aren't so bad in books... (but still suck there) but in web pages they drive me nuts.

The mixing of the "quality" axis with an "agree/disagree" axis risks coarsening discussion.

I think in practice there are only three useful situations:

- you post a good comment, and I agree

- you post a good comment, but I disagree

- you post a bad comment

I think we all want a scheme where I can reward you in the first two situations and punish you in the last one. Unfortunately what we seem to be getting is one that encourages rewards in the first and punishment in the second and third.

Here are my suggestions:

For comments, an upvote or downvote without a followup comment should only add or remove some fraction of a point in order to diminish the effect of people who silently agree or disagree. If you really want your disagreement to count significantly you'll have to comment and also take the risk that people will downvote (or upvote) you.

For posts, remove the upvote arrow from the main list until after someone has clicked on the link. People should have to at least read the thing they are upvoting.

Finally, make it possible for me to change my mind within a short interval of upvoting or downvoting.

I can agree with a comment and not want to karma-reward it, if it's mundane or repetitive. That might even go so far as to agree with the sentiment but find the comment of punishable quality, a sort of "OK but enough already".

The idea of weighing ratings from commenters in the same thread more highly is interesting.

Discouraging votes-without-reading and allowing quick corrections, as with comment text, both make sense to me too.

On occasion, I'll make a posting that's not terribly well thought out, or is flippant or even mean-spirited.

For the most part, I can look at a comment and ask myself if it really adds anything to the conversation. If it doesn't pass that litmus test, then I delete it.

I think that a lot of the downmodding around here is coming from the fact that sometimes people post things in a way that's similar to talking just to hear the sound of your own voice... They aren't applying that filter to ask themselves if they're really adding anything to the conversation.

Here's the thing: In the real world, you WILL be attacked when you disagree with the status quo, sometimes perhaps literally.

If you can't even handle losing a point in an imaginary karma system that doesn't even matter, how are you going to handle the risk of losing a job, a contract, a girlfriend, for believing in something and standing up for your belief?

As hackers and entrepreneurs we should embrace conflict and challenge. Losing a karma point for dissing the iPhone is I am sure a lot easier to handle than getting punched in the face for supporting gay marriage. If you perhaps do not have the courage to even consider the possibility that there is something you believe strongly enough to get punched in the face for, maybe facing the constant possibility of downmodding will toughen you up at least a bit. I see the potential of getting downmodded for your beliefs as a growth opportunity, one that should be embraced and not stifled.

This has been talked about before too.[1] I think the issue is generally that downmodding means different things to different people. Some use it to kill trolls, others to agree/disagree. I generally agree with you regarding how I downmod.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=147098