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Comment by yakkityyak | Hacker News Reader

I think like/dislike ratios suck and promote mindless dogpiling.

Now tell me more about the gray comments here on HN. If this system wasn’t designed to promote brigading and hive mind reflex… well… unintended consequence?

Often people will post comments which are inflamatory, off-topic, advertising, etc. and 'the community' can mark them down.

The parent poster saying "I've never hit a like or dislike button in my life" is a little bit like saying "I've never thrown litter or picked up litter in my life". Both understandable, one respectable, the other a bit weird - if you like the environment you are in but leave all the litter collecting to others and don't contribute to it, what's that saying about you and your one-sided use of the environment?

If you want HN or YouTube to have stuff you like, and not be overrun by the wild west of the internet, and there are no paid editors like the newspapers of old, not adding to the collective voting is like saying "everyone else, moderate this for me into a place I like, thank you".

> "I've never hit a like or dislike button in my life"

The Prime Directive protects lesser-evolved, unprepared civilizations from the dangerous tendency of well-intentioned starship crews to introduce advanced technology, knowledge, and values.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive

HN and reddit have a similar problem of conflating accuracy with "I (dis)agree with this"

And even then, HN's guidelines say the downvote button is for comments that don't add to the discussion. Even a comment with incorrect information can add to the discussion (though admittedly much less often than an accurate comment), so it's not really about accuracy, either.

(But I will admit that I often downvote things simply because they are inaccurate.)

In general, that's the risk of crowdsourcing signal on anything... You get the wisdom of the crowds.

What that means depends on the crowd.

I think they're a great way to tell which two minute "how to remove [x] from your computer" video actually works.

Why should that be up to the viewer to deduce from likes or dislike count?

The videos that people fully watch, have a positive comment section, and receive many more likes than dislikes are the videos that should result from searches.

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