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Comment by waiseristy | Hacker News Reader

You have an interesting point, that I think comes from our ill definition of why we have downvotes on HN and why we have flagging. Flagging, from what I can tell is for "a comment that breaks the HN guidelines" or "a story does not belong on HN". It seems like your downvotes for comments that "don't have a good fit for HN." would actually be better moderated by flagging, no?

Flagging blatant racism and other destructive argument tactics is also fair game. So what are we actually downvoting for?

View on HN

I see flag as something more along the lines of report on Reddit - I assume it raises the flagged comment to the actual moderation team (dang et al) for review & action against the user if necessary. I don't think it's worth flagging someone and risking their account over a bit of self-promotion, punning, one line jokes, or abrasive comments. I see downvotes as my chance to shape the conversation without jumping in to comment and add to the fire.

An example: a common HN trope is to comment something tangentially related to the linked article, but the comment isn't directly related, isn't an attempt to discuss the linked item, and comes off with a "hustle" vibe (check out my project that is similar, check out the company I created that solves the same problem, I wrote an article about this last year go to my website instead) rather than actual discussion about the article. Sometimes these comments come off as extra slimy, but I'm not going to flag someone for trying to get attention, I'm just going to do what I can to shape the conversation by downvoting in cases I judge as egregious.

Good point, and great example. That is a situation which I would downvote too, given the chance. Have you seen the flagging system lobste.rs uses? It's a lot more friendly than HN's black-box flagging (and also the only way to moderate). Everything that doesn't really necessitate being flagged is on the users to ignore and not engage with.

https://lobste.rs/about#flags

I think we agree on the effectiveness of downvoting as a community moderation tool. But, I just cant stand sites that use it. They all eventually turn into an uninteresting echo chamber; it's happening to HN, it happened to Reddit, it happened to Digg. Etc.

I rarely downvote, but when I do it’s almost always for something that seriously detracts from a curious and open-minded discussion or is factually wrong about its main point (not “doesn’t match my opinion” but “provably doesn’t match the facts”).

I flag almost never. I probably vouch about half as often as I downvote.

I think I also downvote/moderate under similar circumstances, though I also fall prey to the exact kind of behavior that I'm calling out (flippant downvoting).

You point out a super important part of forum moderation : trolling and posts which "provably do[n't] match the facts". Aka. Flame-Bait

Downvoting is one way to moderate these posts, but the HN FAQ also mentions this type of behavior (suggesting Flagging as a solution) :

> Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.

Downvoting is a great tool to moderate posts, especially for users who wield the power wisely like a longtime user like yourself. But I don't think the 500 comment threshold is enough to sort out the wheat (you) from the chaff (me).

What's funny, is that HN voting is such a problem, it also dictates in the FAQ to not even complain about it!

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

I go on and off with having downvote arrows hidden by default: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165960

Makes for one extra step if I want to downvote.

Hah! I love that, we definitely share this same concern about how our lizard brains affect our actions

Or with uBlock₀ filter:

    news.ycombinator.com##[title='downvote']

Then for showing the downvote button someone can temporarily disable cosmetic filters from the uBlock₀ popup.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com