Ask HN: Why can't I downvote? I've been a member for over 10 years | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why can't I downvote? I've been a member for over 10 years

61 points37104 comments

Does HN not have downvotes? I feel like I've seen people talk about being downvoted before...

You need to have enough karma to do so. I'm not able to downvote as well. By engaging and adding value to the discussions posted you will hopefully be able to have this and other features unlocked.

Oh okay wow. And you've been here longer than me. I understand the push for engagement and the idea of preventing mass bot accounts, but I'd think after a few years they would give the ability. Wonder if they have considered this...

If someone cannot contribute to discussion in a meaningful way, why they should have the right to downvote?

Interesting question.

I think there are those of us that enjoy following along with a discussion as opposed to directly participating in it. A “lurker” if you will.

For myself, I like to do this to see opposing viewpoints on a topic, to help crystalize my own thoughts. Also, I often read on mobile and don’t have the patience to write lengthy replies on my iPhone keyboard.

I’m not necessarily saying that users like myself deserve the right to dowvote, but I do consider myself part of this community, even if I am not actively “participating” by writing comments.

Thanks for putting it in those words. I am very much a lurker. If I did have the ability to downvote, I would do it maybe two or three times a year, like I do on reddit.

>Also, I often read on mobile and don’t have the patience to write lengthy replies on my iPhone keyboard.

This also rings true. Or sometimes when I don't have the time or energy to sit down and write out a reasoned response.

Disclaimer: I have been here way less than 10 years. At least w/ an account, lurking before that without an account even.

Lengthy replies are not needed at all. Look at this recent article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29756714 and find my reply. Very short but it adds information to the discussion in that Microsoft is not alone in this and other large vendors have such problems too.

I did a CTRL-F to see if anyone else had mentioned SAP already and since they didn't, I did a quick Google search to find corroborating evidence of what I knew from work like 10 years ago about SAP production systems shutting down due to DST changes. People upvoted this.

Maybe, just maybe (!) - going out on a limb here that might get me downvoted, I didn't go through your comment history - there's a hint in your and your parent's reply: no patience for a reasoned response. I think if you really try for reasoned responses, even force yourself to type out that reasoned response, especially on the phone, as it slows you down, it can give you the time you need to make it a reasoned response. It's very easy and fast to write an inflammatory response.

Side note: I don't know if you have ever been downvoted yourself but that obviously doesn't help w/ the karma you got ;) If that is the case, there are other things we can discuss about how to change that but for now I won't just assume that this is the case and shut up.

Just contribute some links and you'll get karma as well. No need to engage in discussions.

Been here doesn't mean I was active in any meaningful way or made any significant contributions to the community. I do encourage you to be active, there are several users out there with great insights and the level of discourse is pretty high even if people have a different point of view or opinion in a subject matter.

For lack of a better term it’s proof of work. Simply making accounts and waiting is easy, you don’t want the temptation to create a lot of accounts then heavily downvote people you disagree with.

Voting rings seem like an easy way around this but tend to be easy to catch.

I mean... I guess I understand, maybe just the threshold feels a little high for introverts like me (and the others who have commented here with accounts lasting many years and <501 karma).

Also, for some reason, I sorta had the assumption that HN users wouldn't be that level of malicious (maybe because these rules exist, or maybe because they seem smarter than the average bear, or maybe because I'm crazy and see HN as some getaway paradise oasis that I can escape to and get some rational reasonable informative content).

In think that this would not really work in HN.

First of all, these are truly internet points. What you have has zero impact on your life. I can imagine that a developer could care about their SO points, or Github stars because these may (and it is a big may) have some impact.

But HN points? Who cares?

I love HN mostly because of the various kind of information, but especially because of the quality of the comments (that I read before the post they relate to). I have no idea about the karma points of the ones making the comments, and this is great.

So I can hardly imagine someone building an elaborate plot to downvote someone whose points are invisible.

Now, there are the psychopaths who will do everything to bury a post just because. Hopefully HN is not a practical playground for them.

Thank you for putting it in these terms. I think I agree with your reply 100%.

>Now, there are the psychopaths who will do everything to bury a post just because. Hopefully HN is not a practical playground for them.

I also think that (1) no, HN is not a practical playground for them, and (2) this may very well be due to the fact that the rules voting are what they are. I think it may be because of the voting rules that HN seems so composed or not willing to build "an elaborate plot" or whatever.

> I'd think after a few years they would give the ability.

That would just encourage bots to sit for years and let their timers expire before letting themselves known.

Are people really that petty? Or is it like a mass-agenda, control-the-narrative type of thing? For some reason I didn't(don't?) think this would happen, especially on HN. Maybe I'm being obtuse or naive.

I’ve observed that the world operates on the principle of: “if someone can, someone will”.

So if HN worked the way you describe, someone would create “sleeper bots” that would emerge only after x years.

Why should age of account be factored in at all? What does it prove?

That you have had an account for a long time, other than that I'd say essentially nothing.

Just like anything else, should seniority be measured in time served, accomplishments, potential, passion, social skills, or other?

You're not missing much! Being able to downvote people isn't going to make your HN experience much better.

My guess is that the justification for requiring a certain amount of karma to downvote is that if you have that, you've given evidence that you understand the tone and rules of the community enough to be trusted to help moderate it. This assumes that people upvote comments not because they agree with them, but because they contribute to the kinds of discussions HN wants to have. In practice, of course, that's not what gets upvotes a lot of the time, so I'm not sure that particular "game mechanic" is working as intended. To be fair, there is no practical way I know of to accomplish that intended goal, and this is as good a solution as any.

It’s not everything it’s cracked up to be. I hardly ever use it. In principle, downvotes are meant for messages that are irrelevant, off topic, insulting, belligerent (can you believe my phone turned that into beliebers?) etc. The effect stops at -1 or -2 points, I believe, so it’s quite likely that a really upsetting comment has already been downvoted maximally. And you can’t downvote replies to your own comments, nor submissions. Not worth losing any sleep over.

>In principle, downvotes are meant for messages that are irrelevant, off topic, insulting, belligerent (can you believe my phone turned that into beliebers?) etc.

In principle this is what it's used for, however it's mostly used to vote down comments people disagree or agree with.

For example if I say something like global warming is an incorrect theory on a related topic I'd get voted down simply because most people disagree. Technically that statement did no fit the formal criteria to get voted down but people use it incorrectly.

You are mistaken about the "formal criteria" for downvotes on HN. "Don't downvote to disagree" is an official rule on reddit, but not on HN (although a good chunk of the community thinks it should be).

I am saying "downvoting to disagree" is not a formal criteria on HN.

Not sure what you mean by 'formal' but downvoting for disagreement has always been ok on HN.

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

Formal as in listed on a faq. Not an obscure comment from pg. Generally I assume everyone respects freedom of speech to a reasonable degree with no censorship... and that is the general behavioral criteria I assume of any place in the united states. If that's not the case here maybe you should "formalize" it and make it clear?

But none of the other things you listed as "correct" use are listed in the guidelines or a FAQ either.

The other things I listed I stated are "assumptions." Similar to the assumptions I have when traveling to another foreign country.

For example, I assume murder is illegal everywhere I go.

Thanks for the clarification dang! Appreciate it and all you do!

I have an opinion which is not shared by many people here. When I express this opinion I usually lose a few points. I shrug and think to myself, these points aren't worth my ire.

Some people really think out of the box and their opinions are often censored all the time.

Climate change is a tricky one, in this context: it’s widely accepted, and supported by heaps of evidence. If I were to say that gravity doesn’t exist (eg in a discussion about dark matter), I suppose I’d be downvoted too.

Climate change is also highly politicized. That just makes it harder to tell the reason behind the downvotes, because chances are that other people see your comment as a way to push a (very dangerous) agenda. I’m that case, adapting the tone of the message can perhaps help, although -as I pointed out before- it doesn’t take much to reach the bottom score.

When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths ... We've been wrong on things like global warming before, and we're likely going to be wrong again. That the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade and ideas.

In light of that knowledge that we may be wrong, the best course of action, the safest course of action, is to go ahead and listen to the uncensored ideas of the other side.. even when we disagree that climate change is false. The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the marketplace of ideas.

Those are the ideas that we can safely act upon. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based on imperfect knowledge. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.

Just yesterday someone called me a "little shit" on here and I have absolutely no recourse.

no worries, others took it upon them and now that message is dead

Only because I complained here.

that's what the flag button is for.

I can't flag comments.

You can. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag

What is the current threshold for comment flagging? (I thought it was the same as for submissions, but a few weeks back another commenter already claimed it was higher: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29485995 - and I can't really check myself)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

You (and pvg) are right. It's the same for comments and submissions.

People with karma > 30 who think they can't flag comments are usually missing that there's an extra step to go through for comments (as explained in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag).

> simply because most people disagree

Or maybe that's just why you think you're getting downvoted for?

Not me. Others. I've seen others just state a one sentence opinion that I myself disagreed with. Then I've seen these people get voted down.

Stops at -4 I've recently learned. Also I guess I haven't asked before because I don't care that much. I read HN every day and would probably use the downvote feature maybe 2 or 3 times a year, just like I do on Reddit.

I don't think that is what downvotes are meant for, and AFAICT the intent is not defined anywhere. Here's a thread on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29564976

> can you believe my phone turned that into beliebers?

To be fair, that would have fit your list just as well.

Perhaps it is a good thing that you can't downvote. I'm not sure. Is being able to downvote a necessary condition to "engage"? Or does not being able to downvote force us to engage, not with an easy click, but with a considered comment?

Perhaps this condition adds to HN's value as a venue where you can expect to encounter thoughtfulness? It's why we come here after all. Or perhaps it trains the new user how to use the site in ways best suited to HN's culture?

I think downvoting is a crucial tool in preventing echo chambers.

I get the “encouraging engagement” but sometimes it’s not worth engaging trolls and comments should get buried, not responded to.

I wonder if facebook eliminating the thumbs down contributed any toxicity in that platform.

Is it really such a useful feature, though? I have mixed feelings about the way this is used on StackOverflow, for example. I post there extremely rarely and it always bugs me to get a quick downvote without any explanation or anything. I'd very much rather see my post get no or very few upvotes and maybe some constructive comments on how to improve it than to have people use the lazy one-click solution to downvote it into oblivion.

With no down-voting, you'll inevitably end up with a different metric: engagement/popularity, where controversial opinions are featured as prominently as agreeable ones.

>where controversial opinions are featured as prominently as agreeable ones.

This is a feature if meaningful discussion is your goal.

I've felt for a long time voting of any sort is poison to quality discussion, and downvoting is downright deadly for it.

I'm not sure that having the ability to downvote prevents this issue. Do you have any explanation on how it works in practice? I'd be curious to see some study with real data.

I'd love to see a study with real data on this topic too, but at the the most basic level, with up/down voting you can figure out several metrics:

- quality (or rather, agreeableness): up - down;

- engagement: up + down;

- controversy: min(up, down).

First one is the most common (HN, reddit, ...). Second famously is (was?) one of the core metrics for youtube recommendation algorithm, and also something pretty close to the only metric upvote-only forums end up with (twitter); same goes for forums where "reactions" are intentionally orthogonal/ambivalent/confusing (facebook). Third feels a bit dangerous for direct use, but might be a good signal to flag for a human moderator to review.

Interesting, thanks for that! I'd guess the one which Facebook added is quite skewed, because the default action is thumbs up and the rest are hidden, especially on mobile, where you can't just hover to see them and people are lazy.

Downvoting this! Just kidding. Seriously, while I don't think downvoting is intrinsically bad -- I think it can be a good signal -- I definitely get the impression it's occasionally used less as a signal of quality (e.g., this comment is off-topic, incoherent, or just trolling) than as a signal of identity (e.g., this comment seems to align with ideologies I oppose). The latter tends to happen more on political topics, of course, but not exclusively so.

And, "controversial vs. agreeable" is kind of at the heart of that, right? I'm pretty sure there are a small handful of people who just aggressively downvote anything that sounds too [ socialist | capitalist | libertarian | communist | ... ] because they don't find it "agreeable."

Personally I would say that the downvote features is extremely useful and valuable. Especially on Hackernews, as it helps to protect the community standards which are quite different from for instance reddit or other tech discussion sites. You very rarely see anything like blatant flamebate, trolling or flamewars, because they quickly get downvoted and grayed out, and are generally ignored instead of going to the top of a thread because "controversy increases engagement".

It's driven by the top x% of the users, though, who I'd guess are not that many (maybe 1%?). This makes me think that HN managed to select a healthy moderator community, but I doubt that the downvote feature was the main driver for that.

StackOverflow is basically different communities segregated by language or tag

The Javascript one is pretty toxic, where instead of something constructive you get a bunch of leetcode studiers racing each other for karma, and can get a totally different experience by using another tag/language

The C++ one felt similar, TBH. It put me off after using it extensively for a while.

I'm not really a StackOverflow user, but it sounds like some other communities I know. Basically, upvotes equals visibility, so other posters will downvote your post so theirs becomes more visible. For some reason I didn't think HN users were that shallow, or that HN would fall into that trap.

You can find the details here: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downvo...

Summarizing here: Looks like you need >=501 Karma points to be able to downvote

I really hate the topbar on my new account and I can't change it.

You need karma > 500 (IIRC) for downvotes.

Oh okay. At the rate I'm going I will be able to downvote after about 57 years. Hmm...

For what its worth, karma is gained not only by discussion but also by article submission. If you found 1 article per day that evokes curious and thought provoking discussion then you would be well above the threshold in no time.

Hint: anything with Rust in the title is upvoted regardless of the (lack of) content, if it stay positive towards the language.

I know this is tongue in cheek, but really I could never do that kinda thing. Feels like I would be watering down the quality content that I see here every day. (also: I know nothing about Rust, never click on those discussions)

It can be part of your new year's resolutions. Downvote at least one person you disagree with before the year's over.

I don’t downvote very often and I don’t do it simply because I disagree with someone.

People downvoting for simple disagreements will create groupthink, and we loose the opportunity for having interesting discussions.

I meant it as a joke, but indicating it's a joke ruins it.

I suspect most downvotes come from disagreements, but there is no way to verify that.

For the record, I interpreted it as a joke, but also somewhat of a inspirational challenge. But I don't care enough about downvotes to try that hard, so yeah. Also dang says it's never been against the rules to downvote because of disagreement.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772167

I know Paul Graham explicitly said it's ok to downvote for disagreeing (I read it a few weeks ago, I cannot provide a source), but it's not like his words are religious scriptures haha.

There's no real point in having rules you can't enforce anyway. If you wanted to stop that you would have to get rid of downvotes alltogether.

I used to think downvotes were a good thing and I wished some other forums had them, but HNs downvote system changed my mind. I wonder if that would increase the load on the mods because then people would use flagging for that? I don't know. It's not my forum, I don't have access to the statistics and I don't get a say anyway!

Been here 12.5 years and have 439 points. So I'm _almost_ there :)

Keep it up phaylon! +1 internet points to you!

You can get a decent amount of upvotes if you comment with a summary or include the best quotes from the linked article.

Honest question: If in over 10 years you've contributed to discussions so infrequently that you've barely accumulated 100 karma - including this post that accounts for a third or more of your karma now - and (as you said in another thread) you think you would only downvote a max of 3 times per year...

Why do you want it?

Just yesterday someone called me "little shit" on here and I have no recourse. I'd like to be able to report that to the admins, but apparently the admins are OK with this type of behavior on here.

You can't downvote replies to you.

I'm aware. Notice I didn't ask to downvote, but to report to the admins.

What on earth makes you say that the admins are OK with that? It's obviously against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You can report comments by flagging them or in egregious cases by emailing hn@ycombinator.com.

I don't have the right to flag comments.

Are you sure? Click on the time on the comment, then you get a detailed view of that comment -- I think you should see the "flag" button there (a bit of a round route, for sure).

Everyone with karma > 30 has the right to flag comments. jjgreen is correct. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag.

Thanks for the honest question!

>including this post that accounts for a third or more of your karma now

(Holy crow! Thank you everyone!)

Clearly I don't care that much, which is why it took me 10 years to ask the question... I know it's just internet points, etc etc. I guess when I see someone saying something that I absolutely know is objectively wrong, I would like to show my disapproval without sitting down and actually fleshing out a response. I'm not the best at putting my thoughts into keystrokes (this little response took me a good 30 minutes to write).

Also (sidenote) I don't love how I had to scroll through a bunch of comments to find this response, or even to know that you responded to me. I wish there was some "notification" or something that let me know that you cared enough to take the time to reply to my comment.

> I would like to show my disapproval without sitting down and actually fleshing out a response.

I think this is exactly the reason why there is a limit. That downvote wouldn't contribute to the discussion whereas your fleshed out response would.

Also, if I recall correctly, when you downvote you're supposed to explain why.

And ofc up and down votes should indicate contributions to discussion. Meaning that if something is incorrect or you don't agree with it, doesn't necessarily mean that it should be downvoted.

> I guess when I see someone saying something that I absolutely know is objectively wrong, I would like to show my disapproval without sitting down and actually fleshing out a response.

I mean no disrespect in this follow-up question, but given how little you've participated in this community's discourse, do you still feel like you've earned that anonymous and concrete voice of disapproval?

I mean "concrete" here in that a downvote can actually help bury/remove a comment, and so you have actual power to influence this community when you have that ability.

Edit: to your "note" about finding replies, if go to your profile, you can view a list of all your comments, along with replies to them. It's not great but it's easier than scrolling a whole comments section.

You can also use something like "HN Enhancement Suite", a browser plugin that improves the overall UI of Hacker News (although I think you said you mostly browse on a phone so that won't help you there).

Probably the best (only?) option for reply notification is that there's an RSS feed of all replies to a user, like this:

https://hnrss.org/replies?id=37

I’m pretty sure the ratio of lurkers and posters on HN is not as even as other social media platforms’.

I'd love to see those stats!

I think the conventionally accepted stats for mainstream social media is that 10% of the users account for 80% of the content, or something similar to that?

I don't know if HN has ever published these kinds of stats but it would be interesting to see.

I have been a member 14 years and also can't downvote - I assumed it was to do with karma...

You need 501 karma for downvoting.

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downvo...

I also can't downvote because i'm a little bit too shy and insecure about my written english skills

I've got >500 karma. Why can't I downvote certain users or comments, reply to certain comments, and occasionally appear to partially lose the ability to downvote for a period if comments I post receive downvotes?

You cannot down vote immediate replies to your comments, perhaps that is what you are experiencing?

Also you cannot downvote old comments

That looks like part of it.

Randomly in threads there are also comments that don't have any vote toggles or can only be upvoted. Occasionally the ability to downvote everywhere is also removed.

I generally only vote on threads, but it's been a curious thing.

It’s based on how much karma you have. The more you engage the more features are unlocked.

Personally, I think flagging should require 5000+ karma, not sure what it is.

I think up and downvotes are >500 karma

You must write popular, agreeable, and very politically correct posts that everyone will have no other option but to up vote.

is there a karma limit that turns on ability to down-vote articles rather than comments?

IFAIK their is no down-vote option for submission.

I have a few accounts with downvote powers if you need one... they expired their few months life, for me.

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