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Comment by DanI-S | Hacker News Reader

People downvote to express one of two things:

- The post doesn't have a tone that fits the HN ideal.

- The post says something that they disagree with.

This is a problem, because those two cases should not be treated the same. A post containing an unpopular opinion should not be considered equivalent to a post that is insulting or derogatory, for instance.

From a user interface perspective, the sensible approach would be to provide an outlet for the user to do express two things independently, rather than attempting to modify behaviour through appealing to their better nature.

A separate 'flag' option would make a lot of sense.

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There is a separate flag option. It's hidden. For example, clicky the [link] URL in the menu bar for my post.

AIUI flagging comments (posts in a thread) is for spam or blatant nastiness, and down-votes are to encourage better behaviour. ("not a nice tone" / "factually incorrect" / "big claims with no evidence" / "missed point of thread by wide mark" etc.)

If a post gets down-voted and you really don't understand why either leave it, and wait to see if other people up-vote. (People can accidentally down-vote, although they'd normally mention that.) Asking politely for more information usually works.

Oops - I somehow wasn't aware of that! If flag isn't helping, perhaps this is true:

In HN's UI, the downvote is presented as directly equivalent to the upvote. Since the upvote button is to be used if one agrees with the tone, sentiment or facts within a comment, its visual link to the downvote button causes people to infer that the downvote button should be used when one disagrees.

If this isn't the intended purpose of downvotes, the UI should change so that it isn't the exact mirror of an upvote.

There is a flag option, it shows only when you are replying. I don't know its moral purpose, but I guess you are supposed to post whenever you flag a comment.

Edit: TIL I should use the link link instead of the reply link, so I can see new answers before posting mine.

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