Thoughtful comments that are factually wrong should be downvoted.
Seriously. If your code doesn't compile, the compiler doesn't care how much effort it took you to write it...
Seriously. If your code doesn't compile, the compiler doesn't care how much effort it took you to write it...
Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing's for sure. It you think something is "factually wrong", your reply provides much more feedback than a vote.
I'd like to think that judgment based upon data is what separates hackers from posers. Let's see that data please.
1) Withhold my down-vote because I don't have time to explain it?
2) Withhold my down-vote unless someone else has taken the time to explain it?
3) Down-vote and hope someone else explains it or at least hope that this helps other comments percolate to the top?
I honestly think 3 is the best option and I can see the point in 2, though I think it's withholding signal from the system.
Related question: is it relevant what the comment's score was? If it was -7, should I make it -8? If it was +200, does it decrease the burden to comment?
Yes, if someone says something that is factually correct (or at least not incorrect) based on a different world-view, then I agree, don't vote them down. If they say something that is factually incorrect but accepted in their worldview, I don't know that that changes what I was saying before.
Edit: you know, it's usually my policy not to comment on how comments have been modded, but I do find it hilarious that in this discussion, someone's down-voted this comment (at the time of this edit) without replying.
Voting based on opinion reinforces groupthink. Voting based on fact helps keep the level of discussion high.
Maybe it's because we already agree on the main point, and are just trying to settle the finer points?
if score < 1
option 1
else
option 3
if score < 2
option 1
else
option 3
Here's a different hypothetical where upvoting based on agreeing opinions, rather than quality of reasoning, can be a problem. It sometimes crops up in sites with rating systems like the one we are reading right now, and it could be on any blatantly wrong, or merely not-widely-held opinion.
1) A person writes "a comment that honestly and eloquently makes a claim based on the perceived fact that the world is flat" (or any other well-reasoned claim based on an incorrect premise, or simply an opinion which is disagreed with).
2) Either because it was well reasoned or because of a number of otherwise quiet flat earth believers agreeing with it, it gets up-voted highly.
3) A few passionate replies are written to rebut the highly voted claim, but the majority of which do so caustically, without good reasoning; perhaps even name-calling.
4) In order to push forth their opinion, people who believe the earth is round up-vote the rebuttals, regardless of their quality; and the tragedy is that sometimes (often?) the rebuttal most up-voted is one that simply appeared earliest, rather than the one which rebuts most clearly.
So, I don't know what the ideal voting method would be, but voting based on quality of reasoning, not agreement, would have avoided this problem -- at least in the case of arguments.
A side note: as others have noted, the distinction between "fact" and "opinion" is, well, a matter of opinion in many cases.
Don't punish (downvote) someone for earnestly taking part in the conversation. Other people probably have similar beliefs so this person did everyone a service by bringing the question out into the open so it can be discussed.
Votes encourage discussion, not correctness.
You should do what feels right to you.
What would I do? Probably click reply and challenge my fellow hackers with something like, "Who you gonna listen to, Galileo or Thomas Friedman?"
FWIW, I was trying to posit a situation in which you don't have time to respond. I was using flat earth as a stand-in for a wrong statement, and oftentimes, it takes more than name-dropping Galileo to demonstrate that the writer is factually incorrect. I agree that if you have time, demonstrating the truth is the best option.
Most compilers make a large effort to give you good error messages with file names and line numbers so you can correct your mistake.
Downvoting is like reporting an error with no context: not very useful in determining what is wrong with the comment.
1) Downvoting and responding aren't mutually exclusive.
2) Downvoting and the presence of comment that already states the exact reason for the downvote aren't mutually exclusive. You downvote one post and upvote the comment that explains the downvote.
You really wouldn't want everyone that downvotes a post to repeat the same reason over and over again.
It seems more correct to downvote those posts or replies that do not follow the vein of intellectual conversation that HN tries to promote, those comments that distract you from the main topic instead of giving you more info to chew on.
Similarly, those that do make you think, whether you agree or not, have contributed to the conversation and should not be downvoted. If you only wanted correct comments, then this wouldn't be a conversation, it would be going over what you already know, saying out loud what you read in a book or just plain brain masturbation.
Let's have a conversation.
Thoughtfulness has little correlation to the quality of a comment. A one-liner from a subject matter expert is worth more than an entire paragraph of mere hearsay.
I think one liners, unless they are reminders of something that's universally obvious, are worse than no comment at all, because they can't contain much information.
On Reddit, since they added in the "suppress entire thread once the parent goes below -4", yes. On HN, which never suppresses the thread, no. I for one occasionally check even the -8 posts, though usually if you make it to -8 it's for a reason. I've "rescued" a few -3s with replies before.
On reddit stupid stuff usually gets a plus vote, and people express agree/disagree via votes.
This is NOT the way HN is run, and people coming here from reddit have a hard time adjusting. So we need threads like this approximately monthly.
Maybe PG can require all new members to read some kind of etiquette guide (with a quiz).
I’d guess that by the time the downvote button shows up, most people should have had time to realize HN generally offers more interesting discussion because it works the way Reddiquette FAQ says Reddit should work: do not downvote points of view.
// Now I’ll go back to lurking.
Additionally, sometimes the original poster was in fact correct, and the responder correcting him is proven incorrect.
Below 0 is only for spam and things like "Me too".
Since HN reports the final number, not +/-, information is lost.
I posted this on the suggestions page long ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107060 It has only 20 points, I don't know if it means almost nobody else wants that...
So it goes with most prescriptive uses of the word "should," actually.
Voting is good for filtering large amounts of content. It's useless, even offensive, to make a point that way.
This goes to show pretty clearly that someone's facts are someone else's opinion. How much of a nitpicker do you want everyone to be here?
Trying be a compiler for somebody's though ;)