No, the equivalent would be to click reply, and then type "I think that your point of view is dangerous."
I actually believe that it's okay to use voting to express whether you agree or disagree with a point. Where's the harm?
I think that the experience of reading HN is enhanced when there's contrast between popular and unpopular ideas. If a post is unpopular, it doesn't mean that I don't read it. If anything, I might pay more attention to it.
In some cases its lack of popularity might spark more debate; like it has in this case.
This is a bad point of view and is what is leading to the degradation of HN as a place for people who see the world through a different lens. We have already lost a lot of beautiful minds due to heard voting. Downvoating is for items that do not belong on HN, nothing more nothing less. If you downvote because you do not agree with an idea you are actively suppressing discussion, no matter how strongly you disagree. Many time from people more brilliant that ourselves.
On HN people I've found that many people use voting to signal whether they agree (or disagree) with something. If that wasn't the case, I'd see my karma rise - rather than rise, fall and fluctuate.
As far as I can tell, if something shouldn't be on HN, we have the ability to flag a post.
I can agree that a post shouldn't needless be hammered into negative space, just as a person's point of view shouldn't be needlessly trampled on in meat-space. But I think that down-voting in general has found a place.
We can say that it might be better to never down-vote - but many users have the ability, and it's a regular practice. Neglecting the fact is a little like ignoring the fact the emperor is wearing no clothes.
You cannot flag comments downvoting is there to discourage, trolls and abuse.
We can say that it might be better to never down-vote - but many users have the ability, and it's a regular practice. Neglecting the fact is a little like ignoring the fact the emperor is wearing no clothes.
I am well aware of that and it has lead to a decline in the standard that HN used to be (while my account may not reflect it I have been around here for a long time, and witnessed the decline first hand). It has been complained about on HN ad nasium. No one is neglecting the fact that it happens, I am just stating that doing so makes HN a worse place the results are obvious and have already lead to some valuable people leaving.
I think the decline is largely due to a rise in meta-discussion about HN and a rise in articles which are mainly designed to self-promote their authors.
I apologise for playing my part in the first ... ;P
Thank you, you learn something new every day.
Really this is all silly, if you upvote for agreement, why not the opposite?
For the record, I personally believe that you're right.
I don't believe down-voting discourages discussion .. I'd argue it often provokes it.
Not that I have been able to figure out the magic that gets you the ability to downvote, but I don't really feel the need.
But indeed it sinks discussions, since the points are one the ways (not the only one) to sort comments.
Not that I'm really worried about it one way or another, though.
That being said, I strongly believe that if a system is being misused, it is the system not the users which are at fault. In this case, my first suggestion (doubtless in need of refinement) is that there should be prominent agree/disagree buttons on every post to allow everyone to express their opinion, and then a separate "flag" link for people to mark spam or useless comments.
From a UI perspective, there are tradeoffs. Multiple vote options means better sorting, more thorough meaning. It also means more confusion and more work.
Also, instead of single vote tallies, has there been social experimentation with preferential voting systems on comments? (This still has the problem of needing more than one flavor of preference.)
I rarely ignore the comments at the bottom of a page - in fact, sometimes the least interesting comments are those that are highest ranked.
What's the difference between having upvote / downvote buttons and agree / disagree buttons?
But although the system never makes posts inaccessible (to do so would, I'm sure, elicit complaints of "censorship"), it does, if you're using a normally configured browser, grey out negative-voted comments so that they require deliberate effort to read (by -4, you need to highlight them with the mouse). It moves lower-voted posts down the page: even if you have time to read every post, which many people don't, you probably lose focus and pay less attention by the time you get down there. And it reduces the karma of people who make downvoted posts, which some people probably care about (e.g. because they lose/don't get the ability to downvote) and some people probably don't, but which is clearly intended as discouragement.
I think it's clear that the system is designed with the assumption that posts that get downvoted are posts that it intends to discourage. (And I think it's agreed for purposes of this discussion that spam and useless comments are deserving of discouragement in a way that comments one happens to disagree with are not.)
I wonder if this kind of metric is used in ycombinator interviews?
You should focus on upvoting. Downvotes should be reserved for abusive, trolling, or spam comments.
Downvoting posts you disagree with amounts to an attempt to suppress contrary opinion.