Ask HN: What is your method for up/down votes? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your method for up/down votes?

48 pointsclassicsnoot67 comments

I upvote any article i read fully and i upvote comments i believe to be worthy of prominence.

What is your method?

I have to admit I am a little careless with upvoting stories (I upvote a lot of stories). I upvote articles that seem to fit HN rules, generates curiosity for the audience, something critical to know (i get a lot of news from HN like sites being hacked etc), encourage a decent Show HN etc.

But I upvote comments selectively. I do this to try and ensure that my vote helps to get really good quality comments on top of the page. Of course, sometimes controversial comments get a lot of upvotes. I also upvote helpful comments including when someone adds a clickable link to a Show HN in comments etc. If I learn something new with a comment, I upvote it. I sometimes upvote comments that have been downvoted incorrectly.

I seldom downvote but when I do, those comments are one or more of these:

1) Blatant hate speech, personal attacks, racist remarks, sexist remarks etc. For these type of comments, I just downvote with no comments.

2) Irrelevant comment that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. Comment that adds no value really and distracts from the main topic. For example, someone commenting like "NSA is coming for you" in a topic about "privacy" etc. Again, I don't add any comments for the downvote for these.

3) Factually incorrect information added as a comment. Sometimes, the commenter might not even know that they are providing false information while sometimes they don't care. In either case, I downvote those comments not because I am trying to prove them wrong but because incorrect information should be marked as such. But be careful with this. I said "factually incorrect" and not "opinionated". For these though, I always try to add a comment with an explanation.

4) Criticism that is not constructive. It is easy to say "you are so wrong" or "Why do we need another site builder" etc but it takes more to write a comment explaining how somone could have done something better.

It is tempting to hit the downvote arrow for things that you "disagree" with and I am sure most of us have been guilty of this (I have been) but we should watch out for this temptation.

I downvote comments that strike me low-effort, trolling or as part of the "HN echo chamber", and I upvote things that seem to give rise to interesting discussions, sometimes even regardless of their quality (which might contradict my downvoting principles).

Kind of related: Did HN happen to change the way the site responds to votes recently? It seems that it was possible to see the effect of a vote immediately by reloading the page up until a couple of weeks ago. Either they have changed something (a new CDN, score blurring as on reddit), or I have somehow lost my comment voting powers. Perhaps it’s because my avgage score has dropped below 1 lately?

noticed that myself. i wonder if the PIC are screening comments more vigorously. Off topic but IMO relevant nonetheless, heavy moderation will be an inevitable side effect if we as a community get sucked into the cyber proxy war.

If your average dropped below 1, I'm sure that would do it.

I downvote (and sometimes flag) mean comments. In my opinion they are toxic to the community and should not be tolerated. Other than that I upvote comments and stories that are thoughtful and/or contribute something new to the discussion.

respectfully, i feel that this is a bit heavy handed. i take issue with the use of 'mean'. it is mean to say someone's breath smells of poo, but that does not make it inaccurate or unnecessary. maybe i am assuming too much from your statement about your intent. i come from a crowd where there was a fair amount of hazing, razzing, and general meanness applied to the newer members. this served to discourage folks who did not want to take the time to learn the way of things.

TBC, i only take issue with you flagging a mean comment. i believe the downvote is the best option if you are opposed to mean comments.

...please dont flag me bro

Many other parts of the internet do more to encourage or tolerate or ignore meanness. That's what makes them other parts of the internet and not HN.

The degree to which StackOverflow has more actively discouraged these things and succeeded to a greater extent than HN is one of the reasons for its success.

I find I am having a much easier time upvoting people I disagree with here than I do on Reddit. So I systematically do so if I believe the person has a worthy point.

As for articles, I upvote anything that I think has had an impact on me, however minor. Usually it's articles that actually made me think for a few minutes, but sometimes it's also serious lessons I learn.

Regarding downvoting when disagreeing here's what pg said a few years ago:

"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness."

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

I think that's a terrible approach. There are plenty of times when the most popular opinion isn't necessarily correct. Downvotes are a way to suppress discussion—they should only be used in obvious cases of factual errors, logic fallacies, mean spirit, etc. The proper response to disagreement is a follow-up comment.

The problem is that up/downvoting is used by the software to determine how prominently the comment should be shown—even, in extreme cases, hiding it completely. If the metric was simply displayed, with no further action taken, then I might agree with pg's statement.

Funnily enough, I found myself instinctively hunting for a downvote button (even though I don't have downvote powers yet) to mark my disagreement with pg's assertion. That behavior seems to be deeply embedded in many of us, even if we intellectually hold to the opposing view.

It's not a great approach but it's probably better to acknowledge that people will use it that way than to make a unenforceable policy against it and have people whine about HN-iquette when they get downvoted.

I'm not sure I agree here, because I think down voting is more serious than up voting. The threshold for an up vote could (and probably should) be lower than for a down vote. Think of it this way - if some of your compliments may be a bit more than what was truly deserved, does it follow that the same should be true for your castigations? I think it's probably wise to be liberal with the former and conservative with the latter.

I'm sure I don't live up to my standards completely. But my aspiration for myself would be that I would only down vote when someone is clearly harming the quality of discussion on HN, not when I just happen to disagree with the point of view.

i feel this way too, but i wonder why. i do not why i feel the downvote has more weight... i wonder if it is because it is grayed out? What if enough upvotes == emboldened text?

This discourages people from dissenting, moves their opinions to the end of the thread (or deletes them), and suggests to commentators they're not welcome in the discussion. PG is not the pope; I don't think we're bound by his stance.

I upvote when something is important, insightful, or interesting. Thought-out comments or ones that add real value to a discussion get one too.

Downvotes are carefully considered. Probably less than one a week. I reserve them only for comments that are either actively hostile to the community or demonstrably false. Even then, I think about it two or three times before clicking.

I try and spend 20-30 minutes everyday going through the "new" tab and up-voting the new submissions I find interesting (think of it like volunteer work). Somehow I tend to up vote Ask HNs more often than posts that are links to website.

that behavior is definitely analogous to volunteer work in one's local community. i used to spend a lot of time on Imgur; now i just spend my time in User Submitted.

I upvote articles which interest me and I think I might want to read later, because they appear in "saved stories".

I also upvote stories I think that would interest others.

I rarely upvote or downvote comments.

i have just started using Pocket app in an effort to gather all of the things i do not have time to read. i have only been using it for a few days, so i am not sure if it is worthwhile or not.

I don't upvote a lot of articles, but with especially good ones I usually remember to. I really don't read a lot of the articles, and always after reading the HN comments -- I'm not going to click through to an article with no summary other than an often-abstruse headline until I know what it's actually about. (Slashdot > HN here, since Slashdot at least had article summaries, even if they were often biased. [1]) If I actually go read the article and like it I usually remember to upvote it I think.

I flag articles every so often, usually political rants and such. As far as I am concerned, the purpose of an article being posted to HN is so an interesting discussion can follow it: if the article is not going to generate a worthwhile discussion (which political articles don't) then there's no reason for it to be on the site.

For comments, mostly I upvote grey comments that I don't think deserved downvotes. Rarely do I upvote comments that are already at the top of the discussion -- they don't need more help. I upvote other comments too if I like them, I suppose.

I probably do use downvoting as just a "disagree" button too much though. But I figure posting an arguing reply just adds more noise to the discussion; it's better to just downvote and move on.

[1] I like how I refer to Slashdot in the past tense here.

I rarely upvote stories, unless they were either very interesting, or were interesting but didn't seem to have enough votes yet.

I upvote comments when they raise an interesting point that I hadn't though of before (even if I disagree) in an intelligent way. I rarely upvote just because I agree with something, and I never downvote out of disagreement.

I only downvote when the poster clearly has no idea what they are talking about it. (Or is just being pedantic and critical to no apparent benefit).

I vote purely emotionally. If a comment makes me feel something, I click the appropriate button.

I never downvote. I don't believe in it. I believe downvoting promotes echo chambers and group think. Should there be an alternative? Perhaps, and it would be "flag with a reason", in other words, choose from a list of common reasons why something should be flagged (like reporting posts on Facebook and other social networks). Anything flagged sufficiently would be investigated; until an admin determines that a post is abuse, it might remain (cannot decide clearly about this). Excessive false flagging would result in the flagger being dinged on karma. And losing the ability to flag. (Another would be to allow one flag per 100 karma points or some such thing.) We know from behavioural psychology that punishment rarely works, that rewarding desirable behaviour is far more effective. Why do we, a supposedly intelligent crowd guided by facts and well established science, behave like schoolyard bullies, shouting down the voices of others?

I upvote anything that piques my interest, intrigues me, expresses well what I thought myself, expresses well a thought completely counter to mine (which often means it is the first two things listed as well), and I often upvote downvoted items; the first paragraph implies why.

I upvote most of SHOW HN, because I like supporting guys who are doing projects.

I upvote articles on which I would like to see more discussion. I upvote insightful comments and rarely downvote as it discourages participation. I think downvoting should be only used for extremely rude or misleading comments. If I disagree with a comment I reply with my point of view.

When commenting, I first immediately upvote the underlying story before I even begin to write, with little exception.

The reasoning is that doing so does everything in my (limited) power to maximize the number of people taking part in the discussion I'm about to enter.

For stories: I upvote only ones that I've completely read myself and found to be high-quality, and only after I've also read the comments (to make sure there aren't any obvious inaccuracies or other problems with the story).

For comments: I try to upvote ones that contribute to the discussion, but to be honest I do catch myself using it as an "I agree" button from time to time. My goal is to promote a high level of discourse, especially on both sides of controversial issues.

I don't have enough reputation to have downvote powers yet, but when I get there I plan to use it sparingly. Codegeek's approach to downvoting (sibling to my comment) strikes me as a model to aspire to.

the 'upvote as agreement' stance seems pervasive, as well as largely justified. i wonder if having a selection of up-'s and down-'s might worthwhile.

The problem is that the software uses a post's score to determine how it is displayed. Therefore, upvote-to-agree philosophy can have the effect of promoting the most popular opinions rather than the most well-argued ones.

To make a real-world comparison: If this were an in-person forum, an up/downvote would be the equivalent of raising/lowering the volume of the speaker's microphone. As much as it is in our nature to do so, we don't want to simply raise the volume of the speakers whose views align with our own. In fact, we should be trying to do the opposite so that we can seek to learn—we have a lot more to learn from our detractors than from our adherents.

If the score was simply displayed as a metric of who has expressed [dis]approval, then I'd agree with you. A system of specifying a reason for up/downvotes could accomplish this (i.e. maintain separate scores for the displayed count vs. the metric used to alter the comment's presentation), but the UI could get fairly convoluted.

agreed on the UI clutter aspect. Thank you for the mic metaphor, it was excellent, i got the warm feeling of clarity in my gut as i read it.

I upvote articles that I find interesting or want to follow up on later, as the vote puts them in my "saved stories" list. I used to flag blogspam and like, but that got my flag button disabled for a year or two.

I downvote stupid posts and obnoxious posts. I upvote interesting posts and posts that make me think. I see a lot more of the former than the later, the last few weeks...

I also tend to downvote any post sticking up at the top that doesn't seem highly worthwhile. Kind of like that recent reposting of the Fogus list of papers every programmer should read, where the top-rated comment was by a guy who complained about the title and indicated he hadn't even read the article.

I always forget to upvote articles (sorry).

I upvote comments that speaks the truth and not the politically correct thing to please the HN crowd.

I sometimes upvote comments that have merit but I know will be massively downvoted (any criticism of PHP falls in this category ;-)

the -vote habits of users (HNari is how i refer to this particular crowd) are an interesting window into the community itself.

Criticism of PHP will be down-voted?

Fair criticism is acceptable. But too often you see unhelpful comments like, "Why anyone would put themself through the hell that is writing PHP code is beyond me."

Your example is exactly the kind of comment that speaks to my soul and I would upvote it ! ;-)

It's not objective nor fair, so maybe it's a disservice to the community.

Based on a suggestion from a long lost comment on here, I avoid upvoting the first top level comment in a thread, unless it was just posted. Too often a mediocre comment gets pinned to the top because it is the first thing everyone reads.

I mostly upvote intersting articles in 'new' (coding and science things), comments that advocate rational and logical approaches to problems, and replies to my comments that challenge my assumptions. I rarely upvote things on the main page because they're already publicised, and I rarely downvote things because a comment explaining why something is worthy of a downvote is far more useful than a downvote.

I also upvote articles in 'new' that I've commented on so they're more likely to hit the front page and get my comments votes. I have no idea if it works but it makes me happy.

do you thing some sort of color code to the upvotes would be worthwhile? say, a red up- means a lurk up-; a blue up- is an upvote from someone actively commenting? it might be an interesting perspective on how the discussion is proceeding.

I don't upvote many articles. From time to time during the day I go through the "new" articles, and I'll upvote a few articles that I'd like to see on the front page. They usually relate to programming or general science topics.

I upvote comments that I think are strong contributions to the discussion. Simple enough. HN has enough quality participants that I often find several comments per article to upvote.

I tend to save my downvotes for comments that are overly snarky or pedantic, as I think we see a bit too many of those sorts of comments on HN, and I reward them with downvotes.

Articles: upvotes for things I read, or things I want to comment on (because of the flamewar weighting.) Occasionally I'll upvote an article that doesn't fit these criteria, e.g. because it is important but I don't have time to read it right now (it then appears in my saved articles list, for later.)

Comments: I upvote comments that teach me something I didn't know, or which are particularly good rebuttals to parents, or if I came to say the same thing. I downvote intolerance (of people, ideas, languages, etc.) and poorly thought out/obviously flawed assertions.

I downvote poorly thought comments, although given some of the abusive uses of downvoting here, I would rather that it not exist.

I upvote articles I find to be interesting reads, articles worth significant discussion on subject matter (tech or non-tech related - does not even have to be math/science/engineering related), or comments to counter bad downvoting. I also will upvote comments I like due to thoroughness, even if I disagree with the argument(s) made.

I vote stories up when It looks interesting and I want to here what other HNers have to say on the subject. I tend to upvote a wide variety of subjects, I just like it interesting.

I don't like down voting for disagreeing, but I tend to down vote when something is factually inaccurate. I'll upvote stuff I disagree with as long as it is well written. Cannot really have a discussion without different points of view.

Pretty simple:

upvote what I value and want to see more of on HN (this often includes substantive, well-presented comments that I disagree with.)

downvote what I find to be a waste of time and want to see less of on HN (this specifically does not include material that is well-presented, seems topical for HN's stated focus, but that is just not particularly interesting to me.)

I upvote articles that seem particularly interesting and/or that I want to read later. Since recently receiving some harsh downvotes simply for expressing an opinion, I've changed my strategy to upvote comments that I feel have been similarly mistreated. I rarely downvote anymore.

I downvote all comments that have only one link in them yet the author puts the link as a citation.[1] Same goes for footnotes.[2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703949

[2] ...

Why do you do this? I find this improves readability.

It absolutely does not improve readability when there's only one think to cite or reference and when it's a comment as short as the one I linked.

I'm usually logged out, so I only upvote if it's worth my typing in my password to log in.

I don't have enough points (263) to downvote. I should probably engage more.

(I logged in to upvote the Schwab post. This comment was secondary.)

I up-vote the stories I intend to use or share with others in the future. These stories usually resonate with me on some level so I find myself reading significantly more stories than ever actually up-voting them.

Other that interesting stuff: stories and comments by known commenters, both parties on interesting discussions (so they think that some people aggree and continue talking).

I upvote articles for archival purposes (read it later, reference, etc.), and on topics I am collecting opinions on.

I downvote political stories and comments. I upvote anything I find funny, insightful, or polite.

interesting. is that because you feel like they [political flavored typings] do not belong on HN, or because you personally dislike their presence? No judgment whatever the case.

I upvote anything that I find interesting, amusing and/or makes me think.

When I feel like it, I click on an arrow.

If I shared it with anyone, I upvote it.

I upvote randomly as a sort of meta-trolling

That'll show 'em!

im upvoting all of the posts ITT for the same reason.

Agreement with my own point of view, and also posts that are clearly contributing to the overall discussion. For down votes: posts that are clearly wrong and/or nonconstructive. Also to spite people I don't like.

Oh, and I upvote submissions that I like, and also submissions that I want to see more discussion around, even though I might not like the submission.

your candor is refreshing. thank you for being honest.

Pretty sure most people treat the downvote button on comments as an "I disagree" button, which I don't think is helpful.

I downvoted you... not because I disagree (I believe you are somewhat correct), but because not only aren't you answering the OP's question, you are actively sidetracking it which I believe is harmful to the topic at hand.

Paradoxical, I know. YMMV.

Whilst no-one wants off-topic discussion, sticking rigidly to the original point with no flexibility whatsoever is a bit claustrophobic for good discussion to ensue. So I'm upvoting the original comment, but not downvoting yours :-)

Well, I meant what I said about this entire ordeal being paradoxical. OP asked about our own private upvote/downvote policies, and them being applied within the comments of the thread itself leads to this actually being very much on-topic.

ah, the downvote + instructive comment method. originally, i always thought this was a bit of a half-assed kind of apology, but the more i think about it, if one must downvote, then a cogent explanation is a good thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com