Ask HN: Why would you downvote without replying? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why would you downvote without replying?

7 pointstxrx000010 comments

Or rather, why is downvoting without replying even allowed on HN (which is supposed to be a place for discussion and enlightenment)? The real life equivalent of this is yelling "boo", and then refusing to elaborate. This is a horrible thing invented by social media: it incentivizes people to behave like booing monkeys rather than intelligent humans that communicate using language. Can we change this on HN?

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It would make a boring read to have all these "negative reviews" of every other comment.

I'm inclined to agree. But occasionally, someone is so dead set on talking past every point made and or is just posting flame-bait. Engaging with them doesn't help.

I think at least one chance for them to clarify their position, or genuinely answer to critique should be given. If it's clear that it's just a drive-by low-effort comment, or if they just have an axe to grind, only then should they be downvoted. If they are serial offenders, they typically get shadow-banned.

Because time is my most precious asset.

There are some arguments which have been rehashed to death on internet. Yes, I could write yet another version it, but why? Author has likely seen it a lot of times already, I am unlikely to change their mind. So downvote and move on.

And I think hiding others' scores is a very important part HN's culture - making up/down votes is direct communication with author, not "virtue signalling". And authors themselves have no way to compare them with others. (Unlike Reddit, where large negative score often invite even more downvotes from "regulars")

Sometimes someone's wrong and it's clear it's not gonna be worth anyone's time to thoughtfully engage with that the user. I know the guidelines say to go with the strongest interpretation of a comment, but when the comment is if the level of "Wake up sheeple, 911 was an inside job!!1!" I'm sorry, but that gets a drive-by downvote from me.

Not everyone is discussing in good faith, just because it's "enlightened" HN. And just because I have an opinion doesn't mean I want to argue with them endlessly. Accounts are free and require no credentials, we get bots and Nazis and fools like anywhere else.

However, I disagree with you on a second point. If you comment, don't downvote at all. Your words make your opinions known and downvoting feels both disrespectful to your conversational partner and arrogant. Like voting for yourself for prom king.

I would like to hear others' opinions as well. I guess for me it's a simple mechanism shared with many other social sites. A series of downvotes without explanation demonstrates the zeitgeist disapproves. Maybe the reason why is obvious, maybe it's not and thus deserves elaboration for the sake of everyone reviewing.

As our species looks pretty ill fitted in its niche these days, the zeitgeist is usually about preserving paradoxes at all costs to keep status quo. And that's reflected here pretty strongly. Much of what's come out of SV appeared at one time beneficial, and now it looks like the industry has shifted to dystopian. The zeitgeist that enforces that may be lost.

That'd be a stronger argument if there was an actual up/down vote count visible. Right now, there is not one - for users other than yourself, all you have is "positive/not" indicator.

So if you see someone's grayed-out comment, it could be a single disagreeing user, or hundred of them - you have no way to know.

Comments here only go to -4 before becoming dead and hidden by default. So if you're seeing a greyed out comment, at most four people found it disagreeable enough to downvote, and no one felt like upvoting it. Or there's been a lot of downs and ups but it balances out to, say, -2.

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