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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

dang and kogir tuned the algorithms to make some downvotes more powerful. We've been monitoring the effects of this change, and it appears to be reducing toxic comments.

That's interesting to me because I find myself downvoting much more often than I used to. But the comments I downvote are not that often toxic in the sense of being nasty. They're more often low-content or low-value comments that don't add to the conversation.

The jerks and trolls are out there but I'm not positive they're most pernicious problem.

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I am very circumspect about downvoting, and rarely do it as I am still unsure of the criteria. I rarely have the opportunity to downvote vitriol and trolls, as others have usually done that and there seems little point in piling on.

I personally have a much higher threshold for comments which are worded aggressively, sarcastically, or humorously. I occasionally find myself upvoting comments which have been downvoted by the community due to "tone," if I think the core statement has a bunch of validity.

Where I am most tempted to downvote is statements that repeat sticky memes that have been repeatedly disproven, but "sound true" within areas I have the most expertise, especially when they are presented as fact. Those kinds of comments lower the bar more than any other, IMO, by forcing a debate over whether the sky is in fact blue every single time the community attempts to discuss weather patterns and cloud formation. However, it is unclear to me whether that is valid criteria for downvoting, so I rarely even do that.

TL;DR I am unsure when to downvote so I mostly don't.

The criteria for downvoting is simply "do you feel like downvoting". pg stated a while back that it is perfectly HN-acceptable to use the downvote as a mere statement of disagreement. I haven't noticed any forum staff mention otherwise.

I've seen downvotes on my comments even when they're neutral statements of fact ("dang is a moderator, recently announced" got a downvote from some HN denizen). Most people seem to follow the criterion you lay out though. Ultimately if a good comment gets a downmod that makes it less visible (why, oh why, does only one single downmod do this?) someone else usually comes along and 'corrects' it back to normal visibility.

Some original guidelines suggest it was ok to down vote for disagreement but I'm not sure "perfectly acceptable" would be the best way to put it. And more recently I believe he was even less encouraging of the practice. My own view is that down voting should never be used for simple disagreement (as long as argument is decent and good faith).

I'd agree with that. Comments I disagree with that are well-thought-out often add a lot to a discussion, or at least to my understanding of what's going on and other people's points of view.

I do tend to downvote comments that contain obvious factually-incorrect information, though, even if the information seems to have been provided in good faith.

How often do you upvote comments like that? Those comments you disagree with, yet are well-thought-out, add a lot to the discussion or at least your understanding of what's going on and other people's points of view.

I don't think people do that enough and it leads to comment-bloat. "I'll make my point and then add in a platitude to draw in the upvotes, hopefully balancing out the downvotes I'll get for my opinion."

I'm probably slightly biased toward upvoting comments that I agree with, assuming similar good quality, but I tend to upvote comments I disagree with fairly often as well.

Well, 'perfectly acceptable' doesn't mean 'actively encouraged'. If you don't have a problem with something, it's acceptable to you, whether or not you endorse it.

I haven't seen a recent comment where pg spoke against the practise, but it'd be very easy to miss in the firehose of content (which is why I specified 'I haven't noticed'). Do you have a link to the relevant post?

I downvote when I think it might make HN better, or at least keep it from getting worse. Sometimes this means I downvote just because it can substitute for some stupid reaction I might post in response.

In other contexts, I often have a much higher threshold both for what I think is appropriate and how much civility plays a role in filtering what I post. But that's because elsewhere on the internet incivility often provides a substantial portion of the entertainment value. On HN, the entertainment value is largely in thoughtful discourse.

I tend to downvote when someone is mean spirited, overly pedantic or takes the discussion off topic in an unproductive manner. Or if it appears that the commenter has not read and considered the comments/article that preceded his/her comment.

Are you saying the are not as pernicious because they are not as common?

I down vote the same as you, but I would hesitate to assume that the algorithms are tuned one way or the other. In reality it's probably more about velocity or even the voter.

I have noticed the absence of low value comments near the top (except in fresh threads) so to me, it's working.

I think the hardest behaviors to manage are the marginal ones, such as the mechanical turk who calculates how little work he can do and not get kicked.

I think he's agreeing with the absence of low value comments near the top but suggesting that comments that may add value are being forced from the top.

Yeah, lower-content posts, narcissists, etc. I find more harmful in watering down the content than the obvious trolls or "cruel" posters, which don't tend to last as long.

The community is nice, but I'd rather focus on the interesting comments and stories I wouldn't see on any other site.

When do you get the ability to downvote?

The threshold has been 500 karma for years.

It's actually 501.

(I spent a few days at exactly 500 wondering why I couldn't downvote yet...)

  (> (karma user) downvote-threshold*)

Right you are.

Is HN open source?

It was open-sourced at least two years ago[0]. I believe it hasn't been since to prevent gaming of the system, but I don't remember where I heard that.

[0] Based on this handy Github repository: https://github.com/wting/hackernews Original: http://arclanguage.org/install

No, but dang's a mod, so he has access to the source code.

I wonder whether being able to downvote makes you a more thoughtful commentor. Perhaps run an analysis on quality of comments (maybe as simple as avg. karma per comment) 400 to 500 vs. 500 to 600?

Perhaps not a good thing to admit:

I have a couple of handles* on HN. One of them is this one, which has enough karma to downvote, and the other has too little karma to downvote. After being really thoroughly raked over the coals for a time, I began mostly logging in under my other handle in part because some people had been really horrible to me and I found myself going "YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE -- DOWNVOTE!" I didn't like interacting with the site that way and was also worried it would have negative consequences for me personally, especially since pg was not handling things in a transparent manner and there was no clear, easy way to get with a mod and sort anything out. I returned to active use of this handle at a point where I was less bitter and also the culture seemed less toxic and I no longer felt like I was just being consistently shit on, all the time. So that isn't an issue for me anymore.

And my main point is that moderating is a human thing. Karma and other technical tools are just that -- tools. There are no magic solutions. Algorithms and what not have their uses but we are all human and building community is more about how people treat each other and making judgment calls and all that then about any specific technical anything.

* This is not a secret and there is no reason to believe they cannot be readily connected to each other -- it was not done to fool anyone here, it was done for other reasons.

Downvoting is still abused IMO; people who simply disagree with you will downvote without explanation.

If they wanted to make an adjustment to the downvote karma threshold, I would suggest "require comment with down-vote" would be an interesting thing to test.

To me, the sets of "downvote-worthy" and "response-worthy" comments overlap very little. I downvote when a comment is not even wrong. When I comment in response to another comment, it's because I've seen some sign that the other person might be interesting, correct, amusing, curious, or any combination of those. A requirement to compose "justification" comments would just about end my downvoting.

Why? If it's so cut and dry, it should not be a problem to explain this.

I would of course assume that less people downvoting + more specific complaints would lead to more moderator action on the more obnoxious/distracting posters, if that wasn't the case I wouldn't recommend the change either.

They're supposed to do that. It's an HN norm. A downvote is better than a boring rebuttal.

> It's an HN norm.

I'm aware this is how the majority of HN members use the down-vote feature, but the first time I've seen it presented as working-as-intended.

The fact that you're saying this makes me think we need more formal guidelines on the proper use of this feature. More often than not I see it claimed that down-voting should be an expression of "adds value" vs. "does not add value".

If I had to choose, I'd pick the latter.

"adds value" vs. "does not add value"

Actually, that may not be a bad way of putting it. Comments that are blatantly false do not add value. Comments that get something wrong, but are otherwise high-quality, still add value. So this distinction may capture the nuance we want here. Let's think about it.

HN discussion is only sometimes technical, mostly it's opinion, so the norms should be different.

On a site like stackoverflow where the goal isn't discussion but answers to questions it makes sense to use a combination of mostly upvotes (for good material), lack of any votes (for mediocre material), and very occasional downvotes (for actively bad/outright incorrect answers). In that case it makes sense to engage with the poster and explain the problems, which can increase the potency of the downvote by providing context, while also helping to correct the original poster's misunderstanding.

On a site like HN that is mostly just opinion and commentary those patterns don't make sense. Most of the time comments that deserve downvoting are the sort that are either poisonous to productive conversation or just so monumentally wrong they need to go away. In that case engaging with the poster is precisely the wrong course, because doing so usually exacerbates the problem. Either by validating the behavior (if it's trolling) or by dumping a side-discussion into the larger conversation and polluting the SNR.

Well, then why do you have to earn the privilege to downvote after 501 karma?

Your karma is proof of your ability to judge a comment without the need to refute it, whereas anyone with <501 karma should only be left the opposite?

I don't know what the karma threshold has to do with the norm, but it's a norm because Paul Graham said it is.

It would be a neat thing to test for DH1 and above comments. But do you really want to have to comment on "The author is a self-important dilettante" or "u r a fag!!!!!" However maybe I should be flagging these comments instead of downvoting them?

I've had comments downvoted that might have expressed an unpopular but not necessarily wrong opinion. Getting downvoted with no comments as to why is really frustrating. Especially if I'm making a good-faith effort to participate honestly rather than trolling or whatever.

I get that not all downvotes NEED a comment categorically but there's some meat on the "downvotes deserve comments" bones.

Yes, and it's especially frustrating when you are a newer user and trying to "learn the rules" and contribute constructively. Although I understand HN is cautious about welcoming new users in general, it probably ought to welcome more warmly new users who are trying to be constructive.

Also: A couple times I have accidentally hit the down arrow. There is no undo. How does this relate to comment quality? The only remedy is to add a "Sorry, I downvoted you accidentally" comment, which I've seen people do. Although it's good etiquette that's a relatively low-quality comment.

I think that downvotes without context or downvotes without comments would me more tolerable if downvotes didn't also automatically white out text - maybe there should be a margin of two or three before that happens to allow for the inevitable drive-bys and people who just don't like what you say but don't care enough to refute it.

Requiring justification is a super bad idea. Some people will just not get on well and being able to downvote anonymously and move on is probably about the least harmful way for two people with unresolvable personal friction to deal with each other. You are basically asking for shitshows here, which is very much the opposite of the goal of the culture and I think would drive off a lot of people.

Being on both sides of the table is always instructive. I'm sure voting has made me more thoughtful. Hours spent considering comments that combine a useful insight with snarkiness and deciding whether to up- or down-vote them has made me lastingly less snarky on the internet.

Possibly. But I think people shouldn't be able to up or down vote on threads they're in, it's a conflict of interest. (If they did vote, give it back to be fair.)

One of the things I noticed was that when I was just over the threshold I was more choosy about downvoting because each downvote reduced your karma by one (so over-zealous downvoting would result in you losing the ability to downvote).

I don't think I've ever seen this. I don't downvote all that much but my karma seems to stay the same if I do.

Once you get 500 karma, you are able to down-vote (with certain restrictions).

Yes, the restrictions are interesting -- I've personally noticed (corrections/additions welcome):

- Cannot downvote comments in threads older than 24 hours

- Cannot downvote comments in response to you

You might be holding on to 'outdated' definitions. Here they are as they stand now:

Troll: Disagrees with individual or community. No/little/inadequate attempt to soothe egos potentially damaged.

Toxic: Disagrees and presents an alternative that is dangerous to the ego of the individual or community.

This comment is now considered "trolling" and I, a "troll".

Edit: An especially correct "troll" (as above) can be promoted to "toxic" without presenting an alternative if the disagreement is particularly damaging to the ego of individual or community.

"Troll: Disagrees with individual or community."

It's not that they disagree or "hold an unpopular opinion", it's how they express said opinion.

Some people can champion unpopular opinions in insightful and interesting manners. Others are kneejerk contrarians and collect opinions that are likely to get themselves the negative attention they seek.

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