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Comment by nextstep | Hacker News Reader

How are they not logical opposites? Isn't an upvote exactly the opposite of a downvote?

Upvote = I like this. Downvote = This is noise/off-topic/abusive.

Thats the way it should work, and is part of what makes HN different to say Reddit. In reality, its becoming increasingly common for people to downvote something simply because they disagree with it.

Then upvote/downvote are the wrong semantics for what you are proposing. Change them to "like" and "spam". For a multi-lingual audience, that is easier to grok than to hash the up/down arrows.

I'm not proposing anything. "Upvote" and "downvote" are the names given to functions of the HN site. My descriptions of those words are my understanding of the consensus among HN users on what they mean and how they should be used. If my understanding of that consensus is wrong then I hope that others users will put me right.

Edit: Would whoever downvoted this care to explain why? I'm genuinely interested.

By downvoting you in order to show disagreement, it looks like the consensus is quite eloquently explaining why it thinks you are wrong.

Ignore the downvotes. Unless you get more than one.

It would be nice if Upvote meant "This is good quality (whether I agree with it or not" and downvote meant "this is low quality, and should not be here, but is not spam, nor flagable". But since PG has said (something like) downvote can be simple disagreement you're going to meet people who use it for exactly that.

Also, reddit is trying to move away from "downvote to disagree" - they have a lot of hover text saying this.

I agree, but I also believe a little ambiguity and heterogeneous modes of use are actually beneficial, make the place alive. I tend to up-vote people who make efforts and contribute important information or opinions, not necessarily those I agree with. (Will only down-vote trolls.)

It's also a reddit rule, though hard to enforce.

That is how it works, especially since downvoted comments are literally harder to read.

One could argue that an upvote is more often about agreement than a downvote is about disagreement.

People do it that way, but it's incorrect. You are not supposed to use downvotes to disagree. (Initially it was like that, but not anymore because it stifled the conversation and caused groupthink since people were too scared to post anything controversial.)

It is correct. What is incorrect is to thing that symmetrical interface elements can have asymmetrical actions. How would you like if turning steering wheel to the left would give left turn, but turning it to the right would stop the car? If you want asymmetrical meaning, please, use different elements.

When the site was initially made that was what the meaning was: Agree/Disagree.

However that norm changed when people realized that was a bad idea.

The UI didn't change with the norm change.

At one point the norm was you could downvote to disagree if the comment had a score greater than 1. But now that comment scores are no longer displayed, that norm changed too.

Now the downarrow basically means spam/stupid/useless, etc. Actually for spam you also need to click on flag.

By the time someone aquires 500 points, they will likely have spent enough time on the site to learn the distinction between the two. While using text labels would be fine, I do not think that would be better than using the symbols.

The reasons for clicking may not be symmetrical, but the actions when clicking are symmetrical. The points go down with the down arrow and the points go up with the up arrow. This is symmetry even if the reason (agree, disagree, quality, spam, etc.) for the increase and decline of the points is asymmetrical.

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