I know there isn't much HN can do about it but can we stop opinion-based voting? | Hacker News Reader

I know there isn't much HN can do about it but can we stop opinion-based voting?

19 pointsTimothyBurgess15 comments

I do realize this issue has been touched a number of times but I don't believe it has ever been truly addressed.

I will go ahead and mention the comparison to reddit because I know it will be brought up. I stopped visiting that site for this very reason. There's nothing more annoying than seeing a legitimate, well-thought-out comment offering perfectly capable intellectual stimulation... downvoted because it doesn't agree with the general population on HN. It's counter-productive to HN's cause (progression, which can't come about without some opposition of current standards)... and every time I see it I lose more and more hope in humanity. I upvote these types of downvoted comments every time I see them. I'm tired of it and I may end up putting HN behind me like I did reddit.

So can we please all just come to an understanding and agreement to not downvote comments you don't agree with? And better yet, upvote comments that provide intellectual stimulation even when you disagree with them.

I haven't seen this problem quite so much on Hacker News -- or at least, it's nothing compared to more mainstream sites. On Reddit you can actually watch (particularly on slower sections, like proggit) as single people come into the thread and every single post expressing opinion X loses one point.

I don't think it's caused by disagreement per se. I think it's because people (whether they realize it or not) want to promote their opinion on certain topics. An upvoted comment expressing a contrary opinion seems like an endorsement of that opinion by the community (even if it isn't). So they downvote it to try to reduce the appearance of that endorsement, thus promoting their own opinion in its stead.

Most of my downvotes are not solely because I disagree with a particular point of view, but because the opinion presented seems to have been formed because the poster is missing a fundamental fact that is crucial to the opposite point of view.

I can't tell if he is ignorant of this fact and would change his view if he knew, or if he holds his opinion despite it. Expressing a contrary opinion requires suitable acknowledgement and refutation of the arguments going in the other direction if it is to have any merit.

If such a fact is acknowledged and refuted, then I am happy to upvote.

The problem is that voters like you are coming fewer and farther between.

I think an upvote is basically equivalent to saying 'I concur'. It's not equivalent to a '+' grade.

The problem is other people (rightly) have their own opinion about the meaning of an upvote.

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I think voting serves a dual purpose; 1) to moderate via community consensus and 2) provide a meta-game designed to entertain members.

I don't think voting should be taken too seriously .. in the end - points and karma are just a distraction. I don't think it's worth taking it too seriously.

HN is becoming a victim of its own success. It really needs to be taken to another level so its easier to use. Right now its alot of noise which is increasing on a daily basis because more people are using it and is making it more and more difficult to use. The voting system is just one problem.

I voted for this post because I agree with it, we should definitely stop opinion-based voting.

;-)

As I said, people should upvote to promote intellectual stimulation, and this thread directly addresses that - so it should be upvoted. Upvoting this submission solely because you agree with it is not what you should have done.

What? In the real world, if you say I'm fat, that I should stop eating fast food, and I'm a douche-bag, then that's your opinion.

My opinion is that I am am very fit, I have awesome pecs, I can lift a burning car off a pregnant mother etc.

;-)

Unfortunately your own post is mostly an opinion and is not providing much intellectual stimulation. If you have any ideas to control opinion-based voting or detect patterns, then that would be more interesting rather than an emotional appeal.

Which is why simple voting sucks! See http://frankhirsch.net/nbtsm.html#nbtsm

I just read your thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2095500 ...and that's a great idea. It would be very difficult to implement accurately, but definitely not impossible.

Yes, it would be a challenge to make it work, and work fast! Lots of numbers to crunch! But it's definitely possible, you could e.g. use idle threads to collate data in the background while not handling requests, and serve results leveraging the collated database.

The simplest way would probably be to cluster the users according to their preferences and serve your results according to which cluster a user belongs to. More complex mechanisms, like detailed preference correlation graphs might be possible, but would consume huge amounts of storage. But I really fancy this idea, and I do seriously believe it to be one of the next big breakthroughs which are going to happen.

Unfortunately I do currently not have the time to handle such a big assignment, so I decided to throw the idea out there, free for the grabs. I want to have that thing, and I don't care much who's gonna make the big bucks from it!

But try to convince anyone that an openly touted idea is actually worth something. People still seem believe that if you're not secretive about your ideas, they probably suck... :-(

Another one: Right now some people are talking about so-called "niche social networks", i.e. concentrate on users within a certain niche, which are automatically much more homogeneous in their interests and preferences. HN is actually kind of an example of one. I'd rather have one social network for everyone which automatically sorts the users into niches (clusters), where the same user might fit into multiple niches.

The big advantage is that the networking site will find the people with common interests for you instead of the users having to find (and tend to) the adequate niche networking sites!

Let's just focus on keeping politics off HN; the worst opinion-based voting seems to be politically motivated.

This is pretty vague. Can you point to specific instances where you have observed a problem?

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