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The Zen of HN

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I don't think downvotes should be used for disagreeing.

Right; that was intended to mean that people sometimes use them for disagreement, despite that they probably shouldn't. Any thoughts on a better wording?

Disagree by constructive counter-comment, reserve down-mods for disapproval.

Without putting much thought into it: "Downvotes mark comments without merit"

If something has educational, thoughtful, contrarian (encourages discussion), etc merit it's welcome on HN. If a comment has nothing going for it; is just lame, or a pun, or an unnecessary meta comment, then a downvote makes sense.

Actually, there should be no correlations between votes and agreement.

Upvotes should reward civil comments that feed the conversation constructively.

Aggressivity, and empty posts ("cheerleaders", etc.) should be downvoted.

Flags are for grossly offensive or illegal content.

That was the original intent IIRC: encouraging civil conversation. Tying votes with agreement leads to groupthink. We should encourage diversity unless we want to become a close-minded community, reinforcing it's own biases.

This is true, but I think mcav's point was that this is not how they're used. People should do this, but when you're on the receiving end of votes, you should remember this to explain why you got them.

It's easy to take the "upvote what you like" shortcut, I do

These principles are (were?) pg's whishes regarding comment threads. As time passes, the proportion of people who had been directly exposed to these ideas dimishes. The previous post was intended to them (and as a reminder for the rest of us, me included).

Are there any communities where this ideal has been met with a simple voting system?

I totally agree that you've described the ideal.

Unfortunately, with the UI and people's natural tendencies, it's unavoidable that votes be used for quick-and-easy agreement/disagreement.

And there's a certain alluring efficiency to it: once there's a couplet of opposed viewpoints, just weigh in with your "vote". That's what "votes" are for in a democracy, right?

The habit of only using downvotes to signal disagreement when a comment is highly-rated helps a bit, but isn't universally applied and and throws time-of-vote in as a confounding signal. (There are comments that I will upvote if <0, abstain if 1-2, and downvote if >2 -- so it all depends on when I see it. With others doing the same, totals are more reflective of 'the last few voters' than the community.)

These could be addressed by UI changes. One idea I've plugged before would be to offer a separate axis of voting which is explicitly agree/disagree -- so people aren't tempted to use promote/demote that way.

Agreement scores could also be hidden until a user votes -- so each vote is independent. This makes more sense on a pure agree/disagree scale than promote/demote. PG clearly wants to discourage demote piling-on; he first tried through suasion and when that failed now enforces in software the -8 floor. And discouraging piling-on makes sense: demotion-votes sting with a sense of community censure, while disagreement is just a normal healthy part of conversation. My ideal comment would be a +50 on the promote-scale, and a -50 on the agree-scale. It means people appreciate having heard something they disagree with, so some novelty/signal/thought is occurring.

Unfortunately, with the UI and people's natural tendencies, it's unavoidable that votes be used for quick-and-easy agreement/disagreement.

At the moment yes, but why not:

Agree/Disagree Good contribution/Poor Contribution.

Instead of just up/down.

Yes, that's exactly what I've suggested before:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=214521

I know it'd be a challenge to work in without clutter/confusion, but by -- (1) achieving some visual separation from up/down (perhaps by placing to the right, or near 'reply'); (2) keeping it faded/invisible until mouseover; (3) displaying the total subtly, as with a sparkline -- I think it could work.

The controls on Twitter web pages for favorite/reply/delete are an example of the state-of-the-art for unobtrusive per-item operational controls.

I like this idea. I think the clearest way to do this would be to have an Agree and Disagree link, which led you to a page with a reply textbox and a confirm button. If you wrote a reply, it would post it as a reply; otherwise, it could just count it as an agree/disagree thing, like facebook does it. (Then, next to the first line of each post, it could say "5 Agree; 2 Disagree" or something like that.)

That way, agreement/disagreement and good/bad are separated, and displayed nicely.

I concur with your proposal and suggest fleshing it out by having 4 directional modifiers:

UP for agree (Propably the most common action)

LEFT for good contribution / insightful / well-constructed argument

DOWN for disagree

RIGHT for bad contribution / troll

This would enable rating of votes in 2 dimensions and may possibly map to a page layout (ie agree+good at top left, then the not so good but still agreed being placed further to the right)

Could alternatively have the comments coloured based on good/bad value (probably some sort of logarithmic scale) and sorted vertically by agree/disagree value, which would still allow conversation threads...

I'd use right for agree. The mnemonic is easier. And up for a good contribution, because it ups the level of discussion.

It would help if, instead of the ambiguous up and down arrow icons, the ui provided something like a bulb to mark an interesting idea, and a zzzz to represent a waste of time - or something like that.

In the end, people can't help themselves, they want to express agreement/disagreement, so you'd still get some people using the buttons that way, but at least the ui would communicate the desired use.

Perhaps the downvoting icon should be one of those old 90s toy trolls, and the upvote icon a light bulb or something similar.

Nobody goes around upvoting every civil comment that feeds the conversation constructively: there are too many of those and they are various in quality. Nobody goes around downvoting every comment he disagrees with: there are also too many of those. Agreement/disagreement and civil/uncivil aren't the only scales involved and thinking about it in that way leads to simplistic judgments.

I upvote comments that I find valuable. That may mean I learned something from the comment, but it may also mean that I think others may learn something from it. If someone makes a point that I would have made otherwise: upvote. In some sense that means I 'agree' with the comment, but if someone simply relates facts, than the upvote means 'this is relevant information'. In a non-factual case it may mean 'this is an opinion/argument that people should take note of'.

Tying votes with agreement leads to groupthink

Untying votes from agreement leads to no votes at all. When you upvote a comment, you by definition 'agree' that it was a proper comment. Without agreement on the 'rightness' of comments, there is no reason to upvote any comment at all.

I don't understand this fear of 'groupthink'. It is perfectly clear what comments will get you a lot of karma. The fact that we don't make those comments isn't because they aren't upvoted: it's because we aren't interested in karma.

Upvotes mark value

Downvotes mark lack of value

Downvotes should be far more rare than upvotes

Four legs good, two legs bad.

If you simplify too much you're at risk of losing the original intent.

I downvote more than upvote because it's easier to pick on one or two comments to downvote than tens to upvote.

My internal version:

Upvotes mark signal Donwnvotes mark noise

That said, I do think I have a non-linear response. If I see a comment at -1 which I think has genuine signal I upvote it, even if I completely disagree with the point made. However if the same comment is at +10 I will not upvote it if I don't agree with it.

I am more worried about the duplicates though, I wish there was an easier way to figure out you are submitting a duplicate story besides conducting a prior search. Something like "Thank you for your submission, here are some stories from HN with the same keywords in the last few months, are you sure you want to go ahead?" would be nice.

We perceive what we agree with to be of higher value. Confirmation bias.

Regardless of what anyone tries to say about what anyone should or shouldn't do, we're always going to use downvotes for disagreement. The up and down arrows are ambiguous, and we'll tend to use "up" to mean "I like this", and "down" to mean "I don't like this". Generally, people tend to like opinions that they agree with, and dislike opinions that they don't agree with.

I think it's better to accept this and live with it. Unpopular ideas will be disapproved of, and disagreed with, and downvoted. That's just how it is. If you prefer to upvote well-put ideas that you don't agree with, then you are free to do that.

We could still discourage voting to show agreement or disagreement, even if sometimes people won't actually pay attention to the guidelines in the hopes of having better discussions.

If you had only one upvote, given the choice, would you give it to a comment that just says "me too" to an idea you agree with, or a well thought out comment arguing with that idea?

Once a comment is +5 or higher. I think down votes can record peoples disagreement without cluttering the page. This can counter people up voting into the strataphere because they agree rather than because the comment has merit.

Oops, I just upvoted your comment because I agree with you. Someone please counter balance with a downvote.

Man, see now I want to upvote whoever downvoted this comment. Because it's hilarious.

I think they should be used for disagreeing with things that are wrong.

When does one get the privilege of downvoting?

According to the FAQ linked to from the bottom of the page, when you get enough karma. If you search you will find that this question has been asked many times before.

Apparently at one hundred and one karma.

They almost exclusively are though. I think he was just pointing that out.

Python has cool, witty Zen. This is not as cool and hardly witty, but I figured I'd take a stab at it and let the rest of you improve or rewrite it. It's on GitHub, and I'm no poet, so feel free to edit/fork/dismiss as you see fit.

You could add something to the effect of 'say nothing you wouldn't say to our face'.

perhaps "say nothing rude you wouldn't say to my face".

There are lots of constructing things you can contribute here which you might not want to say to someone in a live debate (Im thinking, for example, the drugs discussion that went on a while back) :D

Ironically, this article violates its urge to "meta-discuss sparingly" by meta-discussing for a whole article. (Attempts to point out the same irony in this comment will suffer from the same problem.)

I think the article counts as "sparing".

It might be a personal thing, but I never submit anything I've personally written. I leave it to others to figure out if it warrants being on Hacker News.

(in reference to posting stuff from one's own blog lines)

test

this is good

Personally, I always downvote based upon human worth. Upvotes? Only if I think you're hot.

I think not many people feel attracted to you right now.

I know. My self-appraisal of my own human worth just went down the toilet.

In clapping both hands a sound is heard: what is the sound of the one hand?

If the crowd does not vote up the prophet, the prophet shall vote up himself

Downvotes are nothing less than barbaric. You are hurting someone just because you disagree with their point of view.

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