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I think HN does an above average Job with its comment moderation. I think this is a testament to the quality of the HN community.
The way to get a high modded post seems to be state a completely obvious refutation of a parent post. Saddly, I don't actually find such posts terribly interesting.
Fortunately, I don't think everyone posts for points here.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
from the keyboard of pg, expressing a differing point of view.
After edit: the low-rated comments that most disappoint me are the comments asking follow-up questions, to verify information asserted in the parent comment. I'd like to see a lot more upvotes for comments along the lines of "Could you cite some references on that?" or "What is an example of that?" or "What are some of the best online sources on that issue?" Most of us like to learn here, and the guidelines say that "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on topic, so anyone who asks a question to pursue curiosity ought to see that comment upvoted, it seems to me.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=967351
asking in full, "What online sources would each of you recommend as better articles on the meme concept and the strengths and weaknesses of that concept?" Alas, that comment received no answers, even though some other comments in the same thread had implied that some participants had read better sources than the submitted article that opened that thread.
So ideally a lot haters would vote down, and a lot of agree-ers would vote up. And it would balance it out. But this only works if we assume the right amount of people are backing a good idea.
What happens if it's an unpopular but good comment? Then allowing people to downvote would quickly suppress it without enough counteracting "I Agree" upvotes.
So upvotes can be used for more than quality indicator, but a downvote simply makes the system more volatile. If there were just an upvote and no downvote, then the novote will simply be the new downvote. Except the novote will be less volatile.
If someone makes a quality comment, but it happens to be an unpopular view, and they get voted negative, they are less likely to express their view in the future... and we are the poorer for it. No one wants a monoculture.
If that same person makes the same comment, and people merely upvote the opposing viewpoint, then neither person is being 'discouraged' from contributing. One is just being encouraged more than the other.
I realize it's all just a number and shouldn't matter, but we are human beings and it does... seeing someone else get told "good job" isn't near as bad as someone telling you "bad job"... especially when you thought that you had done something good by contributing a useful viewpoint.
(Obviously none of this applies to trolls/spam and things that are outright false... people shouldn't say things they can't provide evidence for.)
To make a rather tenuous analogy: If you don't like a product, you don't get to take money away from the company that makes that product. The best you can do is give money to their competitor. And to extend that, you can only take money (fines) from some company if they do something illegal. Here doing something 'illegal' is trolling/spamming.
I see a lot of people saying this, but judging by peoples' actions I'm not sure it's true. If I had to guess I'd say that maybe 1/4 (of hackers, a far smaller slice of the general public) of folks really do value a truly vigorous open exchange of ideas and welcome reasoned and thoughtful criticism, with the remaining 3/4 of folks implicitly willing to live within the cozy confines of an ideological fishbowl.
The idea of up/down voting expressing agreement/disagreement seems standard. At least, that is what I have seen. If we try to impose a new standard (downvote -> moderation), then users will (probably) ignore that standard or not follow it.
Therefore, why don't we try to do something different. Instead of having upvote/downvote arrows which implies the standard, we can use a plus sign (or an arrow up) for agreement, and a null sign or an 'X' for disagreement. That way, down voting might not imply disagreement, because an 'X' does not mean disagreement; it means 'not allowed'.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363
(linked to from the bottom of the main page)
or posted in other threads.
So now I downmod all the time, just if I disagree with a comment as it seems to be semi-official policy.
Here's a friendly suggestion for a slightly different policy. (I didn't vote up or down on your comment.) I upvote, first of all, whenever I see something I learn from or think that other people will learn from. I especially upvote new submissions that I think will help the hacker majority here learn about facts about the real world that aren't usually discussed in the hacker monoculture. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I especially like to upvote comments that ask follow-up questions looking for more information, especially those that take advantage of the hypertext nature of the World Wide Web to ask for links to more information to back up someone's statement about one issue or another.
My downvotes indicating lack of adherence to the guidelines or bad impact on the community expand to include downvotes indicating disagreement when
a) the comment to which I'm responding doesn't leave a good opportunity to be replied to by a comment,
and
b) the comment itself is repetitive, a mere declaration entirely unsupported by evidence, or flat-out in disregard to a more thoughtful comment that has already been posted to the thread for a while.
My goal is to upvote a lot more than I downvote. (But since I don't have statistics on my own behavior as a reader of HN, I don't know if I am achieving this goal.) I see a lot of statements that I disagree with that I just let pass. Statements that I disagree with have to be actively annoying, by the criteria above, for me to downvote. And people can disagree with me factually, even proving me wrong by specific evidence, and I will upvote that if I have learned something from the comment.
P.S. I wonder why there are so many more complaints about too many downvotes than about too few upvotes? I rather think that not upvoting the really good stuff here is the main problem.
I agree. Actually, I'd prefer there to be no downvotes and only upvotes. It works for the front page and doesn't lead to bad feelings or people trolling to get downvoted.
And no. I promise I won't downvote stuff I disagree with in order to get a 1337 karma ;-)
I am not sure if we can avoid this specific problem without a metamoderation system like Slashdot.
If you submit a link to old news, please warn us by appending [year] (the year of publication) to the title.
Justification: Revisiting "old" news can be very worth while, but we appreciate a warning that it isn't current.
By setting an example wherever we go. Be the change, that you want to see on the web.
[Y]Hacker News welcome | new | comments | ...
Edit: To be more clear I think the welcome link disappeared after a certain amount of karma was acquired like other little features on HN ( flag,downvote,topcolor ).
http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
I added this feature within the last year, so none of the established users know it exists, but I think it has helped stave off decline as HN has grown.
It works better on pages with images that are flush with the beige on both sides. If you indent the text, what do you do with the images? Indent them too? Maybe.
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"
Was that in the original guidelines, or a recent addition? It seems almost too perfect in response to the comment that iamelgringo was responding to. (As malte pointed out elsewhere in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978170)
It's always felt on the verge, but has never dropped off the edge. I suppose it's more exciting that way.
the first happened when pg said the site was having some trouble coping with an influx of new users due to some high-profile mentions on other sites. he suggested posting articles about erlang to make the site look boring. i guess people complied a little more than he was expecting, so then he asked people to stop.
the second time was when the site was overrun with articles about _why, right after his disappearance. some people thought it was a little too much, which once again triggered an influx of erlang articles. it looked to me like pg and the editors started killing erlang articles after that, and possibly the _why articles as well.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ycombinator.com/newsguid...
Edit: oh, just answering to which incident. In the comments, iamelgringo talked about submission guidelines, so I'm guessing that's why he resubmitted them here, so yeah, I meant the discussion.
"Don't downmod comments just because you disagree with them. Similarly, don't upmod a comment just because it takes your side. Instead, vote up for comments that further the discussion, and down for comments that do not."
This is a legitimate and rather frequently made suggestion, but a contrary suggestion was made in a comment by pg
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
where he wrote, "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."
On some threads, I can find occasion (as I do here) to post a reply indicating substantive, polite disagreement with a previous comment, to which I reply with my disagreement. On some other threads, I see comments to which it would not be good use of time to post a disagreeing reply, and sometimes in those cases (not all the time), I find it most appropriate to downvote to indicate disagreement. I can tell that I am not alone in that practice.
What I especially like to do is to upvote any comment that is good, where "good" is defined as helps me learn something I didn't know or makes me think from a new point of view. People can disagree with positions I hold and still get upvotes from me, especially if they post verifiable information indicating why they hold the positions they hold.
I'm fairly happy with where the quality of discussion is now, and I'd like to see it continue at the same or better level. I think a guideline that encourages conscious and non-reflexive voting based on quality rather than agreement would help, even if the other only difference is that people think more about why they are voting as they currently do.
I have had some fun myself. My latest: "Opening studiobriefing.net was like watching time lapse photography of some butt-ugly flower blooming."
These are the only times that I knowingly type something that I know has a good chance of getting downvoted. But I will stop if you guys tell me it is a bigger deal than I think it is. I just don't see the harm in commenting something silly into a submission that will likely get killed.
Please correct me if this is at all detrimental to the community.
As for my downvote. I had an idea of how my question would be received.
But, it was an honest question since -- and you have to agree -- the values of humor and sarcasm here are usually left at the front door. For some of us, it is hard to let go of since it is held in high regard in the real world and other internet communities.
So, I thought it was a valid question that deserved a response for those of us who are so new, that we're on the border of whether or not to completely abandon humor and snark. The appropriateness of this aspect of the HN community has been really hard to gauge, and is frankly a culture shock.
scott_s's comment was the final verification that I needed that, yes, when submitting silliness, to please be more careful.
Some recent examples:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=976321
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978683
I've found that humor is always acceptable in any community, but the standards and flavor can vary wildly. Unless you feel that you really have a good handle on what the community thinks is funny, it's best to avoid trying. I'm convinced that discouraging attempts at humor that are not funny is for the best in any online community. Humor should be used sparingly and skillfully.
I know what you mean by saying that attempts at humor are not welcome here. I'll see a comment that I think is pretty witty, but it has maybe 0, or less, points. I click the user, and it turns out they're respectable.
I've gotten a couple pretty well received comments in, and a few failures. So the whole point of my original comment was to eliminate an easy platform for humor.
I mean, it is pretty easy to make fun of a bad submission and I've seen a few respectable users do it. So I did it myself a couple times and had fun. But I wasn't sure if that was okay -- in the grander scheme of the community, detrimental -- which is why I asked here if it was a big deal.
As far as humor goes, I'm going to restate something I've said frequently around here: you're not as funny as you think you are. When a few dozen people who think they're funny try to be funny, you have a lot of noise.
I certainly don't say things on HN that I wouldn't say in a face to face conversation, but that's because I'm honest offline as well as on (read: not civil). It can get me into trouble, but I sure as hell am not going to stop saying what I think because of downvotes (on HN) or in the name of good manners (IRL).
Maybe for you; I don't doubt its possibility, I just want to say that I find it extremely difficult to do myself.
This book is also a good read: http://www.amazon.com/Games-People-Play-Transactional-Analys...
Which explains why my adviser is currently holding the contents of my bookshelf locked in her office until I comply with her demands. Score by her, but I tend to win these battles by not giving a shit.
...and now you all know how immature I am :D.
I do, and I have. I just wanted to say that it's one of the most challenging things I've ever worked on in my life. I still occasionally slip up, but in the main I've killed the impulse to argue combatively.
I'm not saying you should never simply call bullshit, but before you do you should analyse the situation and the people involved and try to work out what your best course of action is given the result you want to achieve. Going with your first instinct is often satisfying, but rarely optimal.
Passerby goes up, bangs violently on the window, and proceeds the tell the guy to STFU, and generally being angry at the (admittedly clueless) driver. Shouting match ensues and almost gets physical.
One has to wonder why the passerby couldn't have knocked on the window and just calmly informed the driver that there was an obstruction ahead - this seems like it would've solved everyone's problems without any trouble.
Sure, the passerby was correct in that the driver was clueless, inconsiderate, and lacking in manners himself, but his approach was lacking in tact, and created more problems than it solved.
Are you or are you not agreeable to following the HN guideline "Be civil"? Could you clear that up, please?
The times when I have been uncivil, I've generally been downvoted, which I think is perfectly fair. However, there are some times when I've been rather rude, and the comments ended up positive; but they were negative initially by quite a few points.
I really do think that "being civil" has its place, but to be civil all the time requires a certain dishonesty; perhaps not in literal meaning, but certainly in emotional meaning.
Being civil is always more effective for persuading people to your side. The only thing you can accomplish by being uncivil is rallying people who already agree with you (free upvotes), widening the divide between us and them.
Yes, that's a much better way of putting it. It does work well enough to be useful, it just has some unresolved rough edges.
I suppose it depends on whether or not you want to promote controversial discussion, which you may not. It would be harder to enforce etiquette through downvotes and might bring on eternal september sooner.
That said, if you wanted to experiment, one simple way to do this is simply to make the number of points an upvote grants different than the number of points a downvote produces. Not for purposes of karma, I think HN probably does that right now, but simply for purposes of comment ranking.
The downside is jokes that aren't that funny would likely be ranked higher than they should be under this algorithm. (The only instance I can think of where downvotes that came along with upvotes served as suitable chastisement under the current algorithm but might not under the approach I just outlined.)
Then again, I'm new here, so grain of salt.
I mean iterate, so that HN can evolve right?
I agree that public sentiment should not always be factored in, as we will naturally oppose change. So if you test a radically new system you'll get opposition. But as long as the actual results aren't negative, I think it's at least progress.
Proposed guideline: submit the "printer-friendly" version?
e.g.
http://example.com/2009/23137321.html?from=rss
http://example.com/2009/23137321.html
They are basically both the same article.
I've always used _foo_ for code-specific articles, or FOO for a more general audience, and reserved foo for parenthetical physical actions such as shrug or bows.
My bad.
First I'll start with submissions: all to often Hacker News looks like any run of the mill news site. No longer is it the spot I rely on to go and see what the hackers are up to. Because too often now it's the same junk on Digg.
Comments: the quality of comments on here is pitiful. They're used to be good discussions and relatively long, well thought and written comments. Again, like Digg it's getting where people are just doing a 1 line/sentence post where seems like they're just trying to hit on something that other people will vote up for more karma points.
One line posts can sometimes be better than rambling on and one. If you get straight to the point a pithy statement can be more rewarding. However, there is definitely a problem with snarky one line put downs as the guidelines suggest.