Ask HN: Are we downvoting comments because we disagree? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are we downvoting comments because we disagree?

46 pointsleonroy39 comments

I feel like I'm seeing an increasing number of well reasoned, well written comments being downvoted here simply because folks don't agree.

Back in the mists of time when I signed up here I remember reading downvote etiquette is to bury comments which don't add value to the discussion. You can disagree sure, but you don't down vote based on just that.

Did I imagine that?

I fear that ever increasing downvotes are going to discourage reasoned and wide ranging discourse from both sides of the spectrum. It would be a shame if we ended up as another one sided echo chamber and we'll certainly be the worse off for it.

Am I the only one seeing this?

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This has been discussed many times. Down votes have always been used for disagreement.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691

The HN from 2009 really is different from the one today.

For one, the downvote was only available for users with Karma > 250, which was a really high number at the time. Also, I think this discussion you linked to was PG's being descriptive and not normative: people do that, but it doesn't mean they should.

There is still karma threshold for downvoting. And correct me if I am wrong, you can't downvote replies to your comments.

To answer your question: yes, you imagined that—or more likely you read it about some other forum and it mentally hopped to HN.

Downvoting for disagreement has always been allowed here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16574021

These Paul Graham references are 12 years old, hasn't HN evolved a bit since then? Hasn't the world evolved a bit since then?

I think "downvoting for disagreement" generally works on discussion related to non-sensitive topics, but starts to break down once discussion enters the political realm. It turns into a numbers game. Since the dev community tends to lean to the left, the "downvote" numbers are skewed in that direction. It leads to non-left users getting frustrated and possibly no longer visiting the site (including myself), creating an echo chamber and eroding the overall quality of HN.

Why not set a max of 3 downvotes a day? Or subtract 5 karma points IF you don't include a reply with your downvote? There's gotta be a way to improve this.

Two things: firstly, I did not know that was the etiquette and secondly, it is very easy to imagine something you disagree with is poorly reasoned.

When someone says something you agree with (say, we need testing) then you automatically think of all the reasons you believe it and fill in the gaps in reasoning. If someone says something you do not agree with (we need more testing), you automatically summon the counter arguments to each point the person has laid out, and you roll your virtual eyes at this person for not thinking through "basic" things you feel you know.

In short, none of our intuitions on what constitutes reasonable or reasoned are innocent.

Well said. This irrationality cuts both ways. It's very common for people to jump to "I suspect people are downvoting simply because they disagree", but I think there are fewer people doing this irrationally on HN than one might be tempted to believe, especially if one's own comment is downvoted, and especially if one is acquainted with the rest of the internet. I think most people here downvote because they reasonably believe a comment is low value, written in bad faith, or contains misinformation, even if that is informed by bias. Bias is unavoidable and natural, but I think on HN it tends to be less severe and less poisonous/tribal.

This is all pretty subjective, but in the end I think downvoting is broadly useful in most communities. If I find myself being downvoted a lot in some community, I probably don't fit in there. That's fine - there are so many communities, and they all deserve to exist, and they can't all be for everybody, and when they have no capacity for self-moderation, their content inevitably becomes very low value (though potentially high in humor). The biggest problem with downvoting is that it tends to push people toward this oppressed, self-pitying, underdog mentality where people will start to act superior for the simple fact of having been downvoted, and attempt to rally others to identify with them and take their side against the "thought-policing elites".

> Two things: firstly, I did not know that was the etiquette and secondly, it is very easy to imagine something you disagree with is poorly reasoned.

> When someone says something you agree with (say, we need testing) then you automatically think of all the reasons you believe it and fill in the gaps in reasoning. If someone says something you do not agree with (we need more testing), you automatically summon the counter arguments to each point the person has laid out, and you roll your virtual eyes at this person for not thinking through "basic" things you feel you know.

> In short, none of our intuitions on what constitutes reasonable or reasoned are innocent.

I find an additional issue related to this is when attempting a meta-discussion on controversial topics are down-voting heavily. In the rare event that a reply is left, it usually suggests a belief that the purpose of the meta-discussion is to favor one of the positions in the topic. As if the purpose of having a meta-discussion can only be to cleverly sew seeds of doubt against or in favor a position, as if analyzing the question of "why are we asking this question" is never relevant.

I've often thought of making a web site with two voting mechanisms. Here's a million dollar idea you can have for free.

The two voting buttons on every post are:

Agree vs. Disagree

Important vs. Not important

Disagree/Important means that even though I disagree with this comment, it makes an important point, and I recommend others should read it.

Agree/Unimportant means that even though I agree with this comment, it doesn't add anything significant to the conversation, and you can safely skip reading it.

Any web site with only one voting mechanism will surely have different people with different opinions on what that one voting mechanism means.

This would be great. Also there are often duplicate arguments within posts. If users could use an HN function to create a 'Discussion Topology' (like on kialo?),we'd get alot of the position definitions out of the way. If you cared just a little about the subject you would just identify your position. If you had something actually new to say, you would argue for your position, or you could argue about which topology is best suited for the argument.

LOL ohhh the irony... Why is this flagged?

It's an honest question, 34 points in under an hour, 28 on-topic comments of people interested in and discussing the topic.

No doubt because it's off-topic. This is a meta topic that has been repeated countless times, and will balloon into voluminous size if allowed to, yet there is nothing new to say or hear about it.

You can't judge this by upvotes alone. Upvotes are an important part of the system but only a part. Flagging is also important.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I don't agree with flagging, but if I could downvote posts I'd downvote this one because it begins an old discussion but not from a new vantage point. Old discussions with blocks need blockbusters. As an exaggeration, I might offer P ≠ NP as a seed for discussion -- does it matter if I'm right?

My biggest problem with downvoting on HN is that it can make comments effectively impossible to read. This is not how to improve discourse.

Plus, we already have the flagging mechanism for auto-collapsing flagged comments, why are there two mechanisms to make comments unreadable?

Many times the grey comments bounce back to black after some time.

I usually upvote grey comments even if I disagree, unless they are offensive or very wrong. I also try to avoid downvoting grey comments, unless they are very offensive or extremely wrong.

Well reasoned is an opinion, can you provide links to examples?

This is nearly always a problem in open communities with voting. Even if such ettiquette is in place, enough people will ignore it or disagree on what it means that it may as well not exist.

As a result, discussions boil down to relatively inoffensive and well-accepted opinions as those who disagree with the hivemind's consensus are either downvoted or are afraid of being downvoted because they know their contribution won't be accepted.

The only online spaces I've seen where this isn't a problem are those that are strongly moderated, for example Reddit's /r/AskHistorians, and spaces where the community is small, tight-knit and known to each other.

In the former case, the responsibility for determining what has any value and what doesn't is left to the moderators, who follow strict, publicly visible rules. Anything left is required to be high-quality.

In the second, either people assume the best of each other or they're more averse to conflict. I like to believe the former.

Even if HN does not have a problem with irrational downvoting, some observers will always be biased toward that conclusion, since you can't see the upvotes people may be making on comments they disagree with, but feel are worthwhile, or feel are being over-downvoted.

I think this a useful question to ask and to hear comments on. I have observed this. Just as I am reading this discussion it gets flagged. :(

Should we think about making a suggestion for downvotes without comments not count?

Wonder what would be the repercussions of that.

I don't understand why HN even needs a downvote button. We've all seen what having one turns into.

On the other hand, having zero community-driven moderation also results in a place that's unfriendly to discussion.

I agree, but I see the upvote button as a weak form of that. Good comments & those within the echo chamber rise to the top, but comments "outside" the echo chamber still stand a chance to be seen and considered on their merits. Also, the authors are not as discouraged to comment in the future which keeps a better diversity of opinion.

Perhaps upvotes and responses should be weighed similarly. That way garbage/spam can be ignored and fall to the bottom while discussion is still promoted.

It's only for certain users

Additionally, down-voting an already grey comment which is not simply a trolling comment (or one the user likely knows will get down-voted such as for excessive snark), and then not leaving a comment simply makes for a terrible community.

I have a greater issue when a well-written, even if brief, comment gets down-voted heavily and nobody leaves a reply to explain why than when someone down-votes for disagreeing.

I would argue if you disagree with something don't be lazy and add a comment.

Not everyone is interested in arguing on the internet. Choosing not to comment is not lazy.

What I see people are down voting comments without reading and understanting them. Which is lazy.

How I noticed that? By writing unpopular opinion in first sentence then arguing with it in following paragraphs. When I write popular opinion in first sentence I get up votes instead of down votes.

In the end karma on hn does not have any meaning for me anymore.

You're underestimating language. Your experiment can't work because it's impossible to isolate something as subjective as the "popularity" using language, and it's impossible to control for the many subtle variables in language.

That's what you are interpreting, but it could equally be that your arguments were poor.

Now you are part of the problem. You did not take any time to read any of my comments which are available in my profile. But you state something. Why? That is just lazy. What would be better? If you don't write that comment at all.

I did, actually. Comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22870325 are downvoted because they are difficult to parse, they direct insults at the reader, and they felt that defending Amazon in this case was not a good position.

You've done the same here -- leaning on insults (lazy) and assumptions.

I agree: https://i.imgur.com/eKTeijG.png

Most of the time I don't believe I am informed well enough on a topic to be able to add comments that actually add value to a discussion, but other times I simply don't feel like arguing with some smart but often mean strangers even though I do have an opinion, like most people do. What's the point, anyway?

Both sides of what spectrum? What kind of echo chamber? It sounds like you have an opinion about which group is being excluded.

Is it always valuable to hear "both sides"? I'd argue that's a bad idea in practice. For example, if an anti-vaxxer came in and started commenting, I don't feel we owe them equal time or comment space. I'm OK with down voting and moving on.

Ironic that your comment is the very first that got negative on this thread.

But just so you know: your comment is being downvoted (at least by me) not only because you created a strawman and made an excellent display of an authoritarian/totalitarian mind, it is because your comment does not improve the quality of the conversation.

Really? I mean I suppose that's one interpretation. I'm more just saying that some things are well understood, commonly agreed upon, fundamental, or at the very least "settled for the time being". There must be things you'd say don't warrant giving both sides equal space.

Your strawman is on the fact that OP is not arguing for "always hearing both sides", and this is what you argued against.

The point is that there are some comments that are being downvoted simply because they are the downvoter is not in agreement.

And your totalitarian display is in the part where you indicate that anything that is not "commonly agreed upon" should be supressed instead of discussed or search for mutual understanding, i.e, "not deserving of space".

I agree with the parent post, and think the comparison of their opinion to totalitarianism/authoritarianism is overdramatic and perhaps emotional - it reduces the quality of the discussion.

First rule of HN: don't make posts about HN.

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