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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.