Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote?

36 pointsitchyjunk92 comments

I have been curious about how other people parse their way through HN. I think new accounts can't even downvote. It is common to see people ask about the downvotes even though the second last rule on the guideline [0] says not to question it.

I try to not downvote to disagree. I downvote misinformation, statements that are egressive towards a person and not the point they are making, responses that say "This.".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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>I think new accounts can't even downvote

You need 501 karma for downvoting, that exact number is undocumented on the FAQ page.

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...

For anyone else that curious about undocumented stuff, here are some previous discussions with that github link.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973 (Feb 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822 (Feb 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 (June 2020)

I downvote egregious misinformation, but not honest mistakes. A correction in a comment is more appropriate in those cases. Disagreement and differing opinions do not get downvotes from me - they are part of what makes the discussions interesting. But comments that are actively rude or try to take people down a peg do get my downvote. So do people who clearly are just pushing a personal agenda unrelated to the current discussion. I sometimes try to picture the comments as a real conversation... if you would have said the same thing in a group sitting together real life, would that have been a comment that fit into the conversation? Or would it make the group give you a 'WTF?' look and slowly back away?

At the same time, when I receive downvotes, most of the time they are correct - if I post a comment when I'm in a bad mood, my tone gets snarkier and I get downvoted more often. And that is fair. So I tend to just accept them, move on, and try to be more aware of my communication habits in the future.

The one thing I don't like is when comments become "dead", which I understand happens after too many downvotes.

The reason I dislike this, is that besides obviously racist or otherwise inappropriate comments, there are regularly normal seeming comments that are dead. Now, there may be reasons for this I am just not privy to, but I feel it hinders discussion when some opinions that don't seem problematic are just silenced like this.

[Edit]: And rereading my own comment, I think I want to clarify that I am not talking about free speech issues or political discussions here, but I regularly encounter factual seeming or explanatory comments in technical discussions that are dead and it just baffles me.

When you see a dead comment that you feel shouldn't be, vouch for it. With a couple of vouches it'll become live again and can be responded to.

Usually when I see a perfectly good, but dead, comment I check out the user's history. I usually see one of two situations here:

1. It's clear that they have a pattern of making nasty, off-topic, often vulgar comments. I'll still vouch for their good comments, but at least I can understand why they were dead to begin with.

2. If their history is of mostly normal comments except one bad joke at the start of their posting history that got them hell banned, then I'll vouch for them and let them know what's happened.

Thanks, that's actually a good point.

I knew there was an option to vouch for comments but just assumed I did not have enough Karma to do so. But another comment in this discussion mentioned the "hidden" flag button, which you only see if you click the comments timestamp.

And sure enough, the vouch button is just there. So the problem may just be that you have to know where to find it. Which I now do. And hopefully everyone who didn't and reads this now as well.

I probably should have mentioned that. Yeah, you have to click on posts (so the link isn't just visible in the normal discussion) in order to vouch or flag them. I think that that's a reasonable thing, it requires a moment's thought to do (even a brief one) so it can't be someone's reflex like downvoting.

I do appreciate that you can undo most of these actions now. There was a time when downvoting (and upvoting) were instantaneous and permanent. It was very frustrating when scrolling on my phone and accidentally downvoting someone because I used the wrong kind of press in the wrong place.

I suspect the intention was to create a small barrier to entry for the "heavier" features, to reduce petty usage. It only takes a little exploration to find (no offense, I didn't know about them for a while either).

In case 2 you should email hn@ycombinator.com. We watch for those ourselves and unban such users. Inevitably we don't see them all, though, and emails from fellow users are super helpful in that case.

Moderation is guesswork, and even if we guess 99% accurately about which accounts to ban in the early stage—a necessary thing to do, because otherwise the site would be overrun with spammers and trolls—that still leaves quite a few false positives who later turn out to be neither spammers nor trolls.

I'll try to remember that in the future. I don't see #2 very often, which is a positive of this site. Usually it seems to be newer accounts or infrequent posters which makes sense.

Registering an account through a VPN is an automatic shadowban without warning. How is a new user supposed to know this?

Hacker News is a lot less hospitable in reality than it seems to an outsider. If you just register a lurker account and enable showdead and look around it's a veritable zombietown in here.

> Registering an account through a VPN is an automatic shadowban

That's not true.

New accounts are subject to extra software restrictions because of past abuses by trolls and spammers, though. I don't see any way around this.

Ok. I can only speculate unless you want to document.

I'll guess again! My VPN just happened to be IP banned which I had no way of knowing before registering.

I'm sure new people appreciate being labeled as abusive trolls and spammers just for registering and I’m sure new people don't stay either.

A lot of "new people" who show up to complain about HN are not "new people" at all but ones who have been banned many times and are well aware of it. Typically they create a new account to come back in the front door before the back door has swung shut behind them. A favorite sport before doing that is to leave a message with the old account about how $snarkism HN is and how they're leaving and never coming back.

If you or anyone has suggestions for how to better write software to distinguish between genuinely new accounts and serial abusers, I'm sure we'd be very interested.

Another baby that gets thrown away with the bathwater are new throwaway accounts used to post controversial stuff or to whistle-blow their companies. Unfortunately there's no programmatic way to tell them apart from new accounts made for trolling as you point out.

Comments do not become [dead] after too many downvotes - only flags. The worst that happens to downvoted comments is that they get faded. If you want to read one, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page, whereupon the text should be normal.

I view downvotes as an incomplete feature. If you disagree with some content -- because it is misinformation, or useless, or maybe you just disagree with the argument -- you should be able to explain what's wrong with it. I would much rather have a system where a downvote required a reason, so instead of a downvote it would be more like a comment which can also -1 / 0 / +1 the karma of the parent.

The downvote button is not a disagree button. If you disagree with something, add your own comment. That's the point of a discussion board.

Downvotes are for comments which are not worthy of a response because they are not honest attempts at discussion.

> The downvote button is not a disagree button.

That's wishful thinking. In practice that's just what it is. I'd be in favor of some magical gui change that would fix that, but it doesn't exist.

There are some GUI features that address this. For instance, there is no downvote button if you reply to someone, or if they reply to you. But ultimately, the use of the button is up to the community.

Doesn't /. have this?

Yes. It's been a long time since I've been to /., but I used to be pretty active on it. You'd get 5 moderation points at a time, you'd only get those if you had good karma and you wouldn't get them very often. You applied them to comments and marked the reason for the up or down vote.

They also did meta-moderation. You could choose to meta-moderate and you'd be shown a post (or posts) with their moderation and could select whether the moderation was appropriate or not. So a post like yours that got marked "off-topic" by someone (it's not, it's a fair and earnest question) would result in the moderator getting some kind of penalty in meta-moderation.

Another thing I liked was that if you participated in the discussion your moderation points disappeared. So if I moderated your comment (up or down) and then replied elsewhere, your comment lost or gained a point.

A lot of times I decide not to contribute because I am afraid of being downvoted into the abysss, usually all it takes, is one reply to interpret my own comment wrongly or assuming things I don't specificy. Then the HN readers will read my comment and the disagreeing reply. At this point, I get downvoted (or upvoted) based on the interpretation of my comment by the reply.

So if I don't spend 20minutes making sure my reply is perfect, I will get downvoted.

Let's see if I get downvoted here too, as I wrote this on the go without checking all my facts.

So, out of curiosity: Why do you care if you get downvoted? Are there negative repercussions when using the site?

But you know, making sure your post is factual correct, nicely worded and thought out seems to be a good consequence. Reading that I actually wish I was afraid of downvotes so I put more effort into some of mine.

If you use HN pseudonymously, then downvotes aren't as impactful.

But if you use HN as a funnel for brand building, talent acquisition, or as an authoritative voice for your company, then they can be costly.

^ This, especially if you want to get somewhere near Ycomb in the future!

Why does it matter though? Beyond the 500 points required for unlocking the downvote functionality there is no difference in the site whatever points we have .

it shouldn’t really influence your behaviour?

You are right that quality of the response is rewarded .

It is lot more about timing if you contribute late to a thread or post it is less likely you will get any points .

I usually find myself doing that frequently , the lack of upvote/ downvote only bothers me when there are no replies, you don’t know whether people read it, not so much whether people agreed with it.

I downvoted you to build up your tolerance :)

(But let's say officially it was for this tiny grain of snark: "Let's see if I get downvoted here too, as I wrote this on the go without checking all my facts.")

I feel the same way as you - not about strangers on HN, but rather about people whom I will interact with who might see what I write, which is why I don't use this handle anywhere else. But downvotes? Who cares if you get downvoted? It's bad in that your thought is disappearing, but emotionally and intellectually it's useful information: What you said rubbed the HN audience wrong at a high ratio. You can either get upset and fall into the trap of blaming "them" because they have bad politics or are snowflakes or whatever, or you can allow that information to simply make the world clearer for you and use the chance to try to re-read what you wrote from an outside perspective.

I care, if people misunderstand what I wrote and downvote me, it makes me sad. If I get downvoted for talking crap, it's ok.

I downvote primarily bad faith arguments. If I disagree, think you’re wrong, etc I tend to respond (or upvote quality responses).

For instance, I downvoted a comment yesterday that said something along the lines of “you can get a cs degree and spend your life optimizing a companies ad revenue, or you can go into physics and work on problems like this” referring to an alternative gravity model passing some early tests for feasibility.

Obviously not all cs degree holders work on ad revenue, some work on important, impactful things. And I personally know physics majors who work on designing plumbing systems for a small company renovating houses in my area. It’s a bad argument, and it detracts from the quality of the conversation.

I downvote comments that I think are bad. Comments that are useless, unhelpful, non-constructive, etc.

For example, a few from the ruby post that was on the front page recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23990533

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995632

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23991570

I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted here - you have given concrete examples of comments that are bad. Whether one agrees with you or not, this is exactly the kind of answer that OP was looking for.

I think it's clear the downvoters probably didn't agree that those examples are bad enough to be downvoted. (I have no opinion).

I concur with all the points you already mentioned and will add "stray too far off-topic into bikeshedding".

It only takes a handful of comments to go from meaningful discussions about the article to talking about vim vs. emacs etc.

I consciously try not to downvote even if I strongly disagree with somebody or have negative emotions about their expression. I downvote if I think a comment is low-value. Examples include:

- Inordinately combative, mocking, sarcastic, or otherwise negatively emotional comments.

- Low value comments likely to provoke or distract.

- Comments complaining about downvotes (e.g. "I'll be downvoted for saying this, but...", or, "Why am I being downvoted? Is it because [I'm right | they're irrational | they have the wrong politics | etc]". There's even an example in this thread! This is essentially self-victimization, underdogging, etc. For the same reason, when I am downvoted, I never comment on it - I just accept that that's how people feel about what I said and try to learn from it rather than be bitter about it.

I notice I get downvoted every time I bring up an uncomfortable situation with anything that touches on the ethical side of automation.

I never get discussion on the issues I bring up. At best I get hand-waving.

Even though I admit the questions are hard and the problems are going to be difficult. But it is concerning that we aren't even thinking about the issues that come with "near-automation".

As for myself, I would like to think I only downvote people who seem to be unnecessarily combative. But, being a human, I'm willing to accept that my judgment may not be 100%. Or that I may have perceived the comment wrong. That would be my ideal, however.

I never downvote anything anywhere ever. I don't understand how can downvoting make any constructive sense. You are meant to flag whatever is spam, offense or blatant misinformation anyway.

I also believe many people would feel very bad if you downvote them so you should better have a serious reason. The fact you disagree or don't like them (let alone don't consider what they wrote interesting/useful for you) is not enough.

I was about to say you can't flag comments so downvotes are the only option, but I realized I have only been assuming that for years and never really questioned it. Looks like if you click on the "n [minutes|hours|days] ago" link on a comment, there is a "flag" option there. Now I know. So the questions is, why even have a downvote button?

Probably part of the reason people downvote is that the button is one click away, whereas the flag button for comments is two clicks away and probably many people aren't even aware of it.

I am pretty frustrated with downvotes, it seems a lot of users downvote for very different reasons that I do and so here are some reasons I downvote:

- blatant misinformation,

- posts that I feel are way off HN standards (for example just throwing expletives, writing "fr1st", generally wasting vertical space with no content),

- focusing on HN voting mechanics and generally complaining about downvotes (no, I don't want to hear why you think your post is being downvoted, if you can't take downvotes as what it is -- voice of multitude of people that may be right or wrong, stop posting)

- extremist claims with no proofs -- the truth is almost always somewhere between extremes. Claiming the truth is an extreme of universe of possibilities should be taken with huge caution and usually just means the person is blind and deaf. In my personal experience, people who really do know the topic will usually start their answers with "that depends" or "it is complicated", and there is very good reason for it. The world is complicated and here on HN we try to understand it a little bit better with all its gory details and not create groupthink closing asymptotically to extreme views.

> generally complaining about downvotes (no, I don't want to hear why you think your post is being downvoted, if you can't take downvotes as what it is -- voice of multitude of people that may be right or wrong, stop posting)

I sort of agree, but I also dislike comments being downvoted without any replies; it becomes a blind "people dislike and/or disagree with your comment, but good luck figuring out why".

I agree that people should engage more, to avoid the case where a comment is downvoted but it's not clear why from either the comment itself or its replies, but I think that case is somewhat rare. More importantly, complaining or positing reasons oneself that inevitably portray the downvoters as irrational doesn't help achieve that goal.

After being a member here for years I recently got the ability to down vote after making a well timed post. I've only used this power a little bit, and I think only on way off topic comments or jokes. I hope over the years I've up voted a lot more, and mostly on things I found insightful, even when I disagree, because that's the community I want to be a part of. Voting to agree or disagree is not really the best way to foster effective exchange of ideas. I hope that is what HN is still for. I've learned a lot here over the years thanks to the insightful and differing viewpoints one can find here.

I think I've also used this power to down vote completely incorrect information a few times.

But I usually read when not signed in and then I can't vote at all. And honestly, I think it was a pg comment that talking about voting and karma is boring. Either the post is valuable or it's not.

Why do I downvote? I downvote to do my part in making invisible the comments that I don’t want floating around here. Any voting system is meant for voters to help decide what’s important and what’s not. That’s the case with HN too.

It’s all fine and dandy to say that downvotes shouldn’t be used for disagreements (which, on the other hand, pg himself has said is fine to do), but no voting based system can prevent that. Voting by the masses by itself is a flawed system that depends on the attitude, mindset and knowledge of the voter.

There are many users on HN who downvote to express disagreement or dislike for certain comments. I too downvote some comments that I disagree with to prevent them from surfacing up because I do not value those comments. If upvoting is meant to help “useful content” (as perceived by the reader) surface to the top, then downvoting is meant for the opposite purpose. Whenever I see a downvoted comment whose content I believe I agree with or that others may have aggressively downvoted to express disagreement, I upvote them.

Nobody, in my recollection, has ever said that upvotes shouldn’t be used to express agreement. So using upvotes to express agreement while saying that downvotes shouldn’t be used for disagreement makes no sense. We don’t live in utopia. Not every comment is worthy enough to stay visible in a black font with text replies to express disagreement and go on with lengthy arguments. We are not objective beings who don’t care about that number on the top right that has no tangible value.

Looking only at the downvoted or flagged comments in this thread will show what the broader community wants or prefers.

Edit: After having said all this and admitting that I do downvote comments that I disagree with, I also believe that downvoting for this purpose is probably not a good idea for one’s mental health and emotional quotient. Most of the time, I browse HN comments without logging in (so no voting at all), and that’s a way to just observe and experience HN.

I don't have hard analytical data here but on highly partisan tech issues (Microsoft, Open Source and Licensing, Language strengths and weaknesses, etc) I've noticed there is often a significant swing in the direction of the voting over time with the first voters (who are presumably quickly refreshing the HN new page and responding immediately to everything) being the most hyper-tech-partisan, anti-Microsoft, pro-GPL, anti-TypeScript downvoters (but not commenters) pounding well-intentioned comments quickly into the gray, followed later in the day by the more mainstream HN voters and commenters who appear to be much less dogmatically anti-Microsoft, etc., and who commonly flip those initially grayed out comments back into positive territory and frequently well up into the comment rankings.

I'd love to see visualizations over time for the voting on comments. What I've seen often is as soon as I post something, it gets immediately downvoted, often multiple downvotes. Doesn't matter what I post. It could be pro-Company, anti-Company, pro-Language, anti-Language, right, left, doesn't matter. Immediately down. Then throughout the day, gradually the upvotes come (presumably from people who actually read the comment), and the comment long-term ends up around 1 or 2.

I've seen this initial drop followed by slow and steady upvotes over and over and over. The mods/admins must have tools to plot votes over time and I bet the visualizations are very interesting.

The great thing about the downvote feature is that is perfectly individually subjective, and thereby its affect on comments is an emergent property reflecting the subjective sentiment of the community. Perhaps more importantly, by only enabling downvotes after some period of time, new users are acclimated to the culture here (say, versus reddit), and thereby dampen culture swings.

To the OP's question, since the aggregate effect of downvoting is suppressing the visibility of a comment, I think of a downvote as my personal "delete" button.

>its affect on comments is an emergent property reflecting the subjective sentiment of the community.

Thank you for making this point - you stated it perfectly. Regardless of what you think downvotes "should be used for", the fact is that they are used to "downvote", whatever that means, and that alone is valuable.

I don't have the option to downvote yet but I don't feel it detracts from the experience.

> I try to not downvote to disagree. I downvote misinformation, statements that are egressive towards a person and not the point they are making, responses that say "This.".

I think vast majority of downvotes that I see on HN are more or less like that. Absolute trolls and disrespectful ones are on top of the list.

Usually the ones that people complain the most about are off-topic comments that get downvoted. I see them specially happening when the post itself is also kind of off-topic. Those posts tend to be open ended discussions. And if you are late to the discussion it's possible that the discussion is already headed to a more specific sub-topic. Some new comments are then considered off-topic by some users.

Upvote is more powerful. I personally try to use upvote to keep what I believe is relevant on the top. And that's what I see most of the users do as well. But, I also don't mind if my comment get downvoted. There is nothing negative about downvotes. It's just other users telling me that this is off-topic right now.

Generally, I try to avoid downvoting when there's been an honest attempt to add to/start a discussion, or when I merely disagree with someone.

So the only things I generally downvote are literal spam (this makes up the vast, vast majority of content I downvote, however small that number is) and deliberate misinformation.

I downvote for personal attacks, comments that are clearly off topic or add unnecessary snark or derisive language to the topic at hand, or very clear disinformation. That maybe leads to me downvoting maybe 1 out of... hundreds of comments I read on here a week.

I don't see many people admitting that they downvote opinions they disagree with, but I will. It's a simple way for me to assert "I disagree," even if the act will have no visible impact (unless many others do the same). It also lets me track which comments I've downvoted (via the "undown" tag) vs. those that I have upvoted.

Sometimes it's difficult to decide whether I should upvote or downvote a comment. Opinions are often nuanced, and there are many cases where I may disagree with some points but agree with others, or recognize that even though I disagree with the commenter, that person has put forward a strong or well-articulated argument.

I never say this, but I'd genuinely love to hear the rationale for people downvoting a comment whose only apparent crime is saying "I downvote comments I disagree with". (I don't deny there may be another reason to downvote this comment aside from simply disagreeing with it, but I don't see anything that sticks out).

I downvote anything I don't like and I upvote what I do like. Most of the time I'm upvoting someone who already made basically the same comment I was going to make. No point in saying the same thing again in another comment, just upvote. If someone says the opposite of what I was going to say, I downvote.

I never understood people acting like downvoting is some huge crime or being downvoted is some great slight. It's a little arrow on a web site. It makes a number in a database go up or down by 1. I don't care how many points my comments score, and neither should anyone else. Speak your mind, or don't, and move on with life.

The reason people frown upon the downvote is because we explicitly don't want people using it to express dislike. Rather, we should use it as a way for the community to self-police content that is not in line with our values as a community. Although it's unavoidable to some extent, I really don't want HN to develop a strong filter bubble where only things I agree with get shown. I want to see dissenting opinions and ideas. I often upvote things I dislike because they were well though out and challenged my thinking.

It's not about scoring imaginary internet points, it's about deciding what is and isn't acceptable in our community. For me the bar for "unacceptable content" is a lot higher than just "dislike."

As others have mentioned, if I disagree and think it's worth the time to engage, I'll respond and hopefully we have a fruitful discussion. Like/dislike doesn't really come into it. If I really dislike it I just close the tab or ignore the comment.

> we explicitly don't want people using it to express dislike

I was led to believe that the opposite was true:

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

I always liked the idea behind it and have tried to stick to it, but I think having only a single button to express a positive or negative reaction is a mistake (I only learned today that there is a way to flag comments but it's not part of the main UI for some reason).

I'd like to see a wider range of options that have different effects on a post/comment like specific agree/disagree buttons that don't have the effect of making the comment move up/down or be lighter/darker, maybe just shows a count for both agree and disagree, not a single number that moves up for agree and down for disagree like votes do. Flag-like reactions should require some type of write-up, single-click actions are too convenient for users in a rage.

> The reason people frown upon the downvote is because we explicitly don't want people using it to express dislike.

Who’s “we” here and on what basis are you able to speak for that group? It has been stated by pg himself a long time ago that it’s ok to downvote to express dislike or disagreement.

> Although it's unavoidable to some extent, I really don't want HN to develop a strong filter bubble where only things I agree with get shown. I want to see dissenting opinions and ideas.

HN already has a strong filter bubble on various topics. Yes, it may seem better than some other communities, but any place that constantly allows new users to view or participate will have them (the new users) see some sort of filter bubbles established and enforced by the ones who have been around for longer (and have these as blind spots that they cannot recognize).

You're being downvoted for stating you downvote things you don't like by others who don't like you downvoting things you don't like. The irony in that is worth savoring for a moment.

Thank you for pointing this out. My gut reaction was "glad they're getting downvoted for this" when I saw their comment.

I disagree strongly with your position, but I will upvote your comment after I submit mine because you stated it in a way that I felt deserved a reply. I vote toward the goal of surfacing good HN discussion.

If you vote according to your own views on a topic, then you're saying that you want everyone to see only views that agree with yours, and you want contrasting views to be hidden from everyone. This must be true because voting affects the presentation of comments on the site; it is not at all just an inert database column.

I would like to see well-expressed opinions regardless of how echoey or reprehensible they might be. I visit HN in the hopes of having my mind changed, and those kinds of comments are the very comments that might change my mind.

That's why I especially try to vote for any comment I reply to (because it was literally thought-provoking); comments that restated another jumbled comment well (they improve site readability); and comments that explain extreme viewpoints in rational if not reasonable terms (they promote further logical or at least empathetic discussion). None of these have anything to do with my personal opinion on the subject.

You're going to downvote my comment because I think voting serves to curate the site to make it a better place to visit, and you think voting is a popularity contest for your own world view. I want your viewpoint to be seen and discussed. You want mine to be hidden.

Most often for obvious bad-faith arguments, such as clinging to misinformation or logical fallacies despite having them pointed out as such. Sometimes for extreme rudeness toward another commenter (not a public figure). Never for mere disagreement. Also never for "not adding enough to the conversation" because I think the hostility toward short comments and "small talk" here drives every conversation toward pompous verbosity. There's nothing wrong with a "lighter" conversational style.

I downvote for the following reasons:

1. Outright abusive language, personal attack on someone, sarcasm or obvious self promotion.

2. Irrelevant to the actual discussion even if it is otherwise well written. Some examples: humor/joke without any other valuable discussion, talking about a totally different topic.

I never downvote even if I disagree with someone as long as they are not in one of the 2 categories above.I also don't downvote if someone makes an honest mistake or is wrong about something.

Wait, you guys can downvote?

That comment brought a smile to my face after seeing so many memes with that phrasing. To respond to the actual question though, sometime after you cross 500 karma points, you’ll be able to downvote comments too (posts cannot be downvoted).

pg says you can downvote if you disagree.

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

This was brought to my attention by the mods (dang) and they agree with it and enforce it yet they haven't documented it anywhere such as the guidelines. strange

I downvote sarcastic, jokey, snarky, or flippant comments. There are no shortage of sites where peanut gallery comments are the norm, and I think we should continue to discourage them here as much as possible.

I downvote when I feel like a comment doesn't belong to HN, be it quality, insults, etc.

Or stuff straight against the guidelines. Like shallow dismissals, or comments that try and pull people into arguments.

I only downvote trolls, it acts as more of a moderation feature for me

Not sure if I can say any general reason why I downvote sometimes. Perhaps mostly when people complain about being down-voted ...

I've come to the conclusion that one needs to have a healthy distance to ones points, and realize that it's just a gamification of discourse that is helpful up to a certain point, but that it quickly gets counterproductive when that's mostly all that people care about.

I sense that many people are extremely strategic about what they submit or comment on, where they comment etc, and therefore get sensitive about the downvotes as well. Unfortunately it is a seemingly unavoidable consequence of introducing scores in any context.

Better just accept that people downvote you for whatever reason, don't worry too much about your karma (what on earth for?). Care about the content instead.

I can't downvote (yet!) but if I could it would be rare and would be for one of these two reasons:

1) Extremely rude, disrespectful, or hateful.

2) Pushes conspiracy theories as truthful. Like anti-vaxxers.

One of the reasons I value HN is to read opinions that are the opposite of mine. Sometimes they bring up points that I've never considered, other times they make me think more about my own positions. At the very least I might better understand the reasons for other opinions.

I would rather read a news story on HN with the opinions than just read it on a "regular" news site, even something reputable like NYTimes. I feel I learn more about the topic.

Personally, I never downvote based on whether I agree with someone. I only downvote for low-effort comments that do not contribute, things like "lol" or 5-10 word comments with no evidence/explanation. Even if someone needs citations, I'm not going to downvote them, I'll ask for further evidence/citations, which in itself often gets downvoted.

I've been downvoted a number of times for posting well-written, thought-out responses which other people disagreed with. I've often been downvoted below zero within a minute of posting, just for playing Devil's Advocate. I think these downvoters react negatively to things they disagree with, and the downvote button for them is much simpler than actually dissecting and responding to an argument.

Do we want to live in a society where even the most technically minded forum, where objective truth should stand triumphant, falls to reactionary downvoters and fake news?

I think your last point is far bigger than just on HN. I think most people are this way, unfortunately.

Note: The parent was significantly edited while I was writing.

>for posting well-written, thought-out responses which other people disagreed with

I could write a well-written, thought-out argument in favor of segregating blacks. I'm not suspicious of you - I'm just saying, maybe you're making too much assumption about how valuable your writing is, since you've only used "well written" and "thought out" as evidence.

>just for playing Devil's Advocate

Do you announce that that's what you're doing? Do you think there is such thing as a comment that deserves downvotes, but that wouldn't if it was written the same word for word with the exception of being announced as a thought exercise? (Not rhetorical - I suspect my personal answer is yes).

>within a minute

A minute is a long time.

> They are coddled and react negatively to things they disagree with

This is a broad and specific accusation to level at people just because they downvoted you. It's also a very convenient way to convince oneself that one is "the better person".

None of that should really matter. Either it adds to the conversation or not. Conversation being the key word. Even if its a poorly thought out or written argument, if its mistakes generate good replies, its good for the goose.

The problem is that beside the comment, I am only left with one feedback lever, up or down.

Just image if I were given two feedback levers instead:

- This comment adds to the discussion/This comment does not add significantly to the discussion

- Agree/Disagree

Why do we need to signal agree disagree? If you disagree, reply. The reader doesnt need comments sorted by most popular sentiment, that just reinforces bubbles.

I don't upvote things I agree with, I upvote unique contributions to discussion that arent the platitudes spread everywhere else, even ones I disagree with.

Perusing their history for an example, the most recent is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23882425, which (lightly) thinks through the question "Are religions another form of MLM?" in response to another comment.

It's fine as comments ago, until:

> Downvote brigade has arrived, I love receiving downvotes for playing devil's advocate; respond to me if you're disagreeing, don't downvote and bury what you dislike.

Looking further, the next example is similar, ending with:

> Here on HN, we have our own orthodoxy, too. Those who work with Rust find safe haven for their views, and the downvote brigade on HN will descend if you even mention the word Trump.

Which seems to have been inspired by the next after that, which is an iffy comment in any case, but once again:

> Edit: Apparently someone downvoted this comment within 60 seconds...this seems contrary to HN's ethos. I asked a general question with a specific example; is someone triggered by the words "Donald Trump"? This is pushing a legitimate question about FB's effect on the world down into the gray...is that a good thing?

And so on:

> Edit: Someone want to comment and explain why this is downvoted to -2?

I liberally downvote low-effort, mean, and, if I'm not going to take the time to respond, objectively wrong posts.

More than any of those, though, I downvote people who complain about being downvoted. You lost some Internet points. Who cares?

Word of advice, WhompingWindows: Stop. You're always going to see votes in both directions, but being net negative is usually transient. In your case the downvotes are sticking most likely because you're calling attention to them.

"Who cares?" You're writing in a thread about "Why Do You Downvote?" and you researched numerous comments from my history. So, I think you care, and that proves that downvoting on HN is an interesting issue to you. I think HN cares too, because they disallow downvoting before 500 comment karma is reached.

Let's reset: I think the downvote should be used for low-effort, non-contributive comments like "lol" and "^this". Do you disagree on that point?

Next, I'll admit to self-puffery, no doubt my ideas are not as clever as I imagined when I typed them. However, I don't believe in downvoting merely based on philosophical disagreement. If I'm seen to "downvote brigade" against that practice, so be it, but I believe and will publicly state that downvotes shouldn't bury something that goes against HN/tech/societal orthodoxy. This is how hive-minds and pile-ons form; diversity of thought and opinion is healthy, and challenging one's own assumptions is illuminating. Do we want a community where a differing voice is grayed out and bottomed out within minutes?

Why do I care and fight for broader discourse? IMO, Social media can tend to reduce complex issues to mere scores based on camp-size, and I am fighting to re-complexify our dialogue. Let's upvote towards solid discussion and relish complexity and diversity of thought.

> I've often been downvoted below zero within a minute of posting, just for playing Devil's Advocate.

I just want to point out that playing Devil's Advocate is not as innocent as you make it seem. Most people, when they say they're doing it are posting poorly supported populist arguments, based on some unsubstantiated folk wisdom or straight up fake facts. Not saying you did that in that particular case.

Playing Devil's Advocate is only valid when you're dealing with normative scenarios, for example when advocating for one policy over another, both of which have drawbacks and advantages.

When someone says they're playing Devil's Advocate for issues where the science has been mostly settled, it's usually what I stated above in the first paragraph, and becomes very clear that the poster has some ulterior motive or is personally attached to their beliefs over evidence.

So the reason those get downvoted is that when you have a wrong populist argument at the top of the thread, more people see it and adopt it as their position, thus perpetuating the cycle. To break the cycle, people downvote it.

> I've often been downvoted below zero within a minute of posting

Quick downvotes typically do more good than harm. In my experience both voting and receiving votes, a undeservedly grey comment gets more upvotes than a comment that hasn't been downvoted.

Generally stuff that violates the commenting guidelines (which unfortunately can found in abundance each day now).

I still think it would be an interesting experiment to remove voting from comments altogether. I actually dont see much value in voting comments in general, since the provide such a wealth signal, especially as highly political articles find acceptance on HN.

Because I think sometimes people make comments on here that aren’t very good.

This is an example of a comment that should be downvoted.

I vacillated, but then upvoted you because I love a good paradox.

I was going to give you an answer but then I would likely get down-voted. See the problem?

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