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Currently, the downvote button is only supposed to be used for unproductive comments - drivel, and the like. Of course, people use it to show their disagreement (even though that's not how it's meant to be used).

No, that's wrong. Downvoting for disagreement is how downvoting is meant to be used, as pg has made clear on HN many times over the years.

[I edited the previous sentence to make it less ambiguous.]

The confusion persists because Reddit's rules are different, and people remember those and mistakenly assume they apply to HN.

I'm a bit confused by the wording of your comment. Are you saying that downvoting "is only supposed to be used for unproductive comments" or to show agreement? You use "it," but I can't tell which statement you are referring to.

Sorry for being unclear. What I mean is that downvoting something because you disagree with it has always been legitimate on HN. I'm too lazy to dig up the many links where this was discussed, but the point is that if upvoting is a legit way to agree, then downvoting is a legit way to disagree. This is a good thing, because it provides a silent way to disagree when you don't have anything substantive to add to the discussion.

The idea that downvoting for disagreement is not legitimate is a classic instance of the canonical invasive species on HN, the Redditism.

There is very little value in knowing that some people disagree with a comment, but there is tremendous value in learning other ideas. This is a bad policy.

That's a good point. But let me ask you: do you think HN actually has this problem, i.e. of ideas being suppressed because people disagree? If so, I'd be curious to see examples. Most of the downvoted stuff I see has some other readily available explanation; usually some form of rudeness.

It's not about being suppressed in an active way. For the problem I'm talking about, it's completely sufficient for the disagreed-with posts to simply not rise to the top of the discussion.

Remember, HN doesn't even show the vote counts on posts, so you can't extract hardly any agreement-disagreement info from a post (other than it's not so bad as to be downvoted to oblivion). The true and important function of the votes is to control visibility.

I see it a lot. What's worse is up and down votes are a corrective mechanism.

If you get downvoted, that kinda feels bad, if you get upvoted, that kinda feels good. It shapes your discussion and teaches you the rules of what the community finds acceptable/unacceptable.

What is the honest to god pragmatic result of this policy?

You're training people not to say something others disagree with.

Even if you don't agree with that, downvote to disagree causes pragmatic problems outside of training! Consider a discussion where someone starts off with an unpopular view, and then an interesting discussion happens back and forth between two parties discussing that position. Downvote to disagree hides that discussion.

> I see it a lot

If so, you should be able to find three examples. Can I please see them? Specifically, three comments that aren't in any way rude, downvoted for expressing an unpopular view?

The reason I'm curious is that I try to watch out for that, yet have only seen one comment recently which seemed to me downvoted purely for expressing an unpopular opinion, and even it was somewhat borderline.

> You're training people not to say something others disagree with.

That's not true if most such comments get more upvotes than downvotes.

I'm not going to go through my whole freaking history to highlight the 5 times I've specifically marked where a downvote to disagree has happened on otherwise civil text.

here:

this was 15 days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7381397

> That's not true if most such comments get more upvotes than downvotes.

so it's not true were training people to keep unpopular opinions to themselves, because if those opinions will also be upvoted... because why? Because people don't agree with them? What?

Try expressing a conservative or religious opinion. I've gotten downvotes for both even though I haven't been the slightest bit rude. I enjoy hacker news, but at times it can really feel like a hivemind.

I think you're wrong and are just trying up make some claim about Reddit. I don't think it is as simple as "upvoting in agreement is legitimate therefore the converse is true." Down voting as the effect of removing the comment from discussion and is even used to indicate there is something unfair, mean, or what have you. I think what you're talking is more for a site that shows the scores of comments but does not obscure them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691

http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

Yeah I know you can find pg quotes about this. Does that make it true? If that's the case then you win.

However, if you want to use reason, it is clearly the case that under this view then the voting and karma is a misnomer and little more than a way to stifle dissent. It's good thing, I think, that most don't hold this view.

> Does that make it true?

It makes it true that it's the site policy, yes.

>downvoting something because you disagree with it has always been legitimate on HN //

Um, no. You downvote when a comment doesn't contribute. If you disagree then you can state it and if that contributes it can get upvoted too.

I'm talking about what the HN policy has always been. This is a factual question, and it's not as you describe it.

What's interesting is how the opposite gets repeated far more often, usually in an authoritative tone, as if the speaker had just consulted a rulebook.

TBH that's the only use of votes I've seen agreed on as valid here.

Despite your relative long-standing I'll bow to your claim of factuality and request citation of that fact?

Do the first two links I listed here count? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7451438

I wouldn't say it's ever been agreed on; I'm pretty sure people disagreed about this from day one. And downvoted each other about it :)

Both of those links (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117118 [actually 117171 for the pg comment], https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683) appear to be simply pg saying people do downvote when they disagree rather than him endorsing that activity.

Indeed the first link says in part:

>"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement."

Which reads to me as having an implicit "also to express agreement" especially in the context of the thread. The thread consensus appears to favour not downvoting for mere disagreement (but I would say that !).

In the past when we had votes visible we'd have been able to tell better the general consensus from that information.

So, I upvoted you for making your point well; presumably you downvoted me as you disagreed.

Those two comments are far from the only data points, though. But now I really am too lazy to look any more up.

My memory is simply that PG always said downvoting for disagreement was fine and many users have always thought he made the wrong call. Still, it's his site, so his call to make.

The interesting thing to me is how confident these users are that they're quoting the site rules, when really they're contradicting them, de facto if not de jure. Just like a lot of us Canadians think that famous U.S. laws (e.g. Miranda rights) apply here, because we've seen them many times on TV, so a lot of HNers assume that this Reddit rule exists on HN.

> presumably you downvoted me as you disagreed

Couldn't! Also wouldn'tve.

>Still, it's his site, so his call to make. //

It's not his. He certainly has a lot of control over it though. Debate/Culture isn't owned by those who facilitate it. I find the idea that this is solely pg's plaything to be damaging.

>quoting the site rules //

De facto standards don't necessarily have documented support. Down-voting for disagreement seems fundamentally wrong [to me] on any site intended to be more than an echo chamber - unless there is a parallel means to promote quality - combined with the established [it seems amongst many long term users] and upheld viewpoint of voting for quality causes me to promulgate that position.

Here are two PG comments with slightly different takes on downvoting to signal disagreeing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589#up_1006808

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691

My takeaway has been that HN does not have Reddit's "don't downvote people just because you think that they are wrong" rule. Interestingly, PG's observation that people do not tend to downvote people who's comments are already gray does not seem to be true at all on reddit.

I've always thought that downvoting was for things that didn't contribute, and for things that were technically wrong (including logical fallacies and similar). However, disagreeing on opinion doesn't strike me as an area (on HN or otherwise) where downvoting makes sense.

So downvoting "1TB of data can easily be uploaded over a 20Mbps connection" (Takes 4.8 days, versus a 20 MegaBytes ps connection, which takes ~14 hours and while not easy, is at least more feasible) -- should be ok. But a comment with correction would normally be better...

Downvoting someone for saying that they prefer working in Eclipse (just because I prefer vim) doesn't seem very useful?

I don't think that the line between "I disagree with your opinion" and "I think this is incorrect" is always clear, particularly when new theories or analysis is being floated. As examples:

If I state that "chocolate is better than vanilla", and you disagree with me, it's not really that you think I am incorrect; you simply just disagree with me.

However if I state that I think "[country] will do [something] in Crimea", then you might disagree with me because you do think that I am incorrect. However in that case, because my statement was speculative, there isn't a strong sense of "objectively correct or incorrect".

I think that most 'disagreements' in online conversations are closer to the second than the first.

Downvoting someone saying they prefer some text editor is useful because those conversations are often very dull.

Downvoting the incorrect post is valid but as you say it would be more useful to provide a correction post.

> Downvoting for disagreement is how downvoting is meant to be used

Ha! I am so downvoting this comment, because I disagree with it.

(but but but ... yeah figure it out)

pg is wrong on this.

Currently, the downvote button is only supposed to be used for unproductive comments

pg has previously stated that it's perfectly acceptable to use the downvote button as "I disagree".

Seeing this comment downvoted is amusingly ironic (although perhaps undeserved).

Downvotes meaning "I disagree" contribute to groupthink, no?

I think the moderation system in use on HN is inferior to moderation systems seen on some forums as far back as the turn of the century. I am not a fan of it (see my profile page) and don't like it in the least.

I think it's better than having nothing at all (no up/down at all), but that's not saying much.

I wanted to downvote your above post just for the delicious paradox of it, but that profile page made me reconsider ;)

The problem is that downvotes affect karma, so someone with unpopular opinions will likely have lower karma than what their level of contribution indicates. Thus leading to an echo chamber of 1000+ endorsed popular comments only.

Agreed. This will only work to increase the echo chamber that is HN. Any type of debate will now need to go through the HN elite. I really didn't have a problem with the current system, any obvious troll comments were always downvoted out of sight. I rather see any unapproved comment and make up my own mind on its "worthiness" instead of someone else.

It's something that is somewhat worrying, but I believe that there is enough diversity of opinion in the "elite" (somehow I am barely included in that version of counting karma, I doubt anyone remembers my username for than a few minutes) that I don't really believe it will stop people from posting things that THEN get them downvoted to hell.

At least every other day I see someone being downvoted into oblivion for espousing a contrary opinion, and while there is not enough upvotes to save that comment, I still kick one its way if the comment is thought out and posted in good faith.

My biggest concern is still about the overall amount of eyeballs moderating the new comments, and losing interesting or useful information. I almost think there should be a pending "downvote" to limit the number of times that people are reviewing a specific pending comment, so that if it is trash it dies and gets out of the way of newer pending comments worth reviewing, or maybe something where there are subgroups of pending comments so that you don't somehow languish in a low priority queue if no one looks at it, but instead get a chance at someone looking at it.

The 24 hour rule also is a bit sad because as far as I can tell, HN dies down a lot during the weekend, and some interesting articles come out that dont receive the attention they deserve. I imagine the same thing would happen with new comments.

Yeah, the 24 hour rule seems a bit excessive. I see a lot of Show HN posts where the OP will respond to questions that users have about the particular thing they are showing off. The OP now needs to hope that a 1000+ user is continually monitoring their post in order for them to quickly answer any questions others may have.

> This will only work to increase the echo chamber that is HN. Any type of debate will now need to go through the HN elite.

I think that's not a bug, that's a feature. PG mentioned before that HN was growing too fast and that keeping up was hard. I'm guessing the problem trying to be solved is the Eternal September[1], and this feature does exactly that: you are only allowed to post once you learned how to behave the HN way.

[1] In case someone doesn't know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Cool, so how did that work out for Usenet? :)

There is no "do not endorse" button. So the people who would downvote to disagree are not able to suppress endorsement. They can ignore the endorse button, but other people will endorse valid posts.