Ask HN: Is there a way we can prevent down-voting for disagreements?
My biggest gripe with HN is that it appears to me that comments are often down-voted over differing opinions rather than an issue with the comment as per the HN guidelines[0]. As someone who has unpopular opinions, this often leaves me fearful of participating in discussions. Maybe this fear effect is the very thing keeping our community more cordial though? :)
I like HN a lot and it really is the only site where I regularly read comments. Keeping that in mind, I wonder if anyone has any ideas as to how we might improve this aspect of the community without also ruining it in the process? It is quite possible that any solution will wind up with worse adverse affects than benefits.
One small idea I had was to add a section on "When Voting" to the HN guidelines[0]. I may have missed it but I do not believe there is anything pertaining to what one should be considering when voting.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Because of this I tend to see HN as this club of extremely narrow minded people where any opinion that differs is punished. But this is mostly citral thing. First by the fact that I am not a English speaker and second that even if most people won't admit it they have very binary thinking. To which the up vote / down vote buttons fit perfectly :)
So if you want your not so mainstream opinion to be appreciated I think HN is very poor place for this.
Can you give me an example of something you consider not PC that isn't also offensive?
The more PC term is "Happy Holidays", but I'm not so sure "Merry Christmas" is offensive contextually -- at least, not always.
Though I could be wrong. Does HN get up in arms when people say Merry Christmas?
I'm always surprised to hear this, because to me HN has a dominant right-wing bias.
So you get something like:
The idea is to separate comment quality from agreement/disagreement.I'm not sure this would be a good fit for HN since we can't generally see comment scores anyway, but it might work for other sites like Reddit.
Actually I've implemented a 4 votes discussion system:
- Like = I agree / useful / insightful
- Disagree — does not affect post sort order or karma
- Bury — for moving well-intended but boring comments, like "Thanks!" and "Me too", downwards. Without having to delete or actually downvote them.
- Unwanted — this corresponds to HN's downvote. Core members & staff can use it, if they don't want that type of comment, at the site. Reduces the commenter's karma, moves the post downwards.
Here are two demo pages: (scroll up a bit to see the "Some disagree with this" warning)
- https://beautiful.demo.ed.community/-6#post-14 - https://insightful.demo.ed.community/-7#post-3
Also it would be interesting to test adding a compulsory text field when someone downvotes to include why you down voted.
Then add votes to down-vote reasons. Over time you would develop a good database of people who add value through downvoting (vs I disagree mentality) and weight these accordingly for better auto-moderation.
What about a little tweak: To instead let people add ordinary replies = ordinary comments, to describe why they downvoted? Maybe a downvote icon, could be shown, somewhere next to the reply, and the computer would know that "this reply is an explanation about why the author downvoted the parent".
And if someone agreed with that downvote-reason, they could maybe click the Like button, for the reply. And then the system knows that "People like this reasoning about downvoting", and henceforth give slightly more trust to the downvoter's downvotes.
I think it's fine to downvote an opinion you don't like. The whole purpose of upvote/downvote would be more to 'bump' opinions you think is useful. I sometimes upvote an opinion I disagree with if I think it should be more visible. But I think most people just use it as a boo/cheer button.
The main problem with down and up voting is that it's "apparent" which results in people just doing it to further support an already up/downvoted item. This results in not actually attempting to understand, imo.
Let me ask and then answer a question: Why do you CARE that something was downvoted? Because when things are downvoted you lose privileges, comments are hidden/greyed, and you can even be shadow-banned. So downvoting or "disagreement" is problematic because it is PUNISHED. Reddit has an identical issue.
That's a problem with the site's design. People aren't going to stop using the downvote as a disagreement button but yet the site is designed around the concept that it is a moderation tool? That's completely irrational, and only results in group-think.
So what's the solution? Well you can hope that people change and start using the site as you intended, or you can design the site around people as they are rather than as you'd like them to be.
Three buttons:
- I agree
- I disagree
- I believe this is inappropriate/rule breaking/low quality/flag it
Neither the first nor second are moderation actions. They're opinions and will be displayed as such e.g. (+10/-100) for a controversial opinion, and (+100/-10) for a popular one.
With the third option, you have to mitigate abuse. It is not a "super downvote" or a "super disagree." If someone uses it:
- They can either vote OR flag
- They can either reply OR flag
- The flag has a cooldown
- You abuse the flag you lose the flag
As soon as they flag a post that post is dead to them, they cannot interact with it. This stops them from using it in their own little vendetta, and frankly I believe people would prefer to add to the public disagreement score (or reply) than to abuse the private flag function.
I have 4 vote buttons: (a Bury vote, in addition to the ones you mentioned)
- Like = I agree / useful / insightful
- Disagree — does not affect post sort order or karma
- Bury — for moving "Thanks!" and "Me too" comments downwards, without having to delete or downvote them)
- Unwanted — if you don't want that type of comment, at the site. Reduces the commenter's karma, moves the post downwards. This is the only vote HN has right now.
Two demo pages: (scroll up a bit to see the "Some disagree with this" warning)
- https://beautiful.demo.ed.community/-6#post-14 - https://insightful.demo.ed.community/-7#post-3
I used to agree with the comment you linked, and this other one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683
But then people pointed out a bunch of comments that got downvotes. These were polite comments, making a coherent point, on-topic and not attacking others.
And there are a couple of accounts who appear to have most of their comments insta-downvoted, even if there's nothing wrong with them.
One solution: almost all logged-in accounts have the ability to upvote. Few accounts have the ability to downvote. So if anyone sees a downvoted comment they can supply a corrective upvote.
Look, a demo of how this can work and look: https://insightful.demo.ed.community/-7#post-3
— scroll up just a little bit to see the "Some disagree with this" warning just above the comment. And if, below the comment, you click the `V` button, to show various types of votes (in addition to the Like vote), you'll see there's a Disagree vote.
In general, I'd like to see voting and flagging on HN become more transparent. While there are some good arguments for maintaining the current "anonymous" approach, I testing some alternatives could lead to something better.
One quick change that I'd like to see would be to privatly expose the total vote count to the poster instead of just the net total. As it is, it's hard to distinguish a contentious issue from one that only a small number of people are interested in.
For example, instead of showing a comment as "-2", it might show "-2" with a mouseover that shows "+20 -18 = 2". This would be a tiny change, the data is already being recorded, and it could just as easily be rolled back if it doesn't produce a desired effect.
What I do, if I see a greyish comment on HN, and it's obvious that the opinion/idea expressed is being downvoted by groupthink, I upvote it. Even if I don't agree with the comment. Mostly because I don't believe ignoring/burying those whom you disagree with as solving anything. My choice of doing this is more of a means than an end. It's odd how narrow-minded and self-reinforcing a group of out-of-the-box free thinkers can be, especially out here. I can't impose open-mindedness on the masses, but I can try to at least help the voices of the dissenters remain visible.
Maybe showing the text "Some disagree with this", if some people disagree? Or "Many people", if many. I linked to a demo about how that can look, in another comment here — search for "Look, a demo" on this page.
I've thought about the transparency bit before. I guess keeping it opaque has the effect that you can't have a vendetta for someone who down-voted you and in general the down-voters has had to acquire enough karma to get the privilege in the first place, so we hope we can trust them.
Showing more detailed voting stats is something I hadn't considered. It does seem like an step forward and it doesn't seem to pose any danger as far as upsetting the ecosystem that has been built.
When you see a downvoted comment it's not only had downvotes, it's failed to attract upvotes.
If people upvoted more unfair downvotes would be less of a problem.
I would like the ability to invest in comments I find particularly important (i.e., spend 100 karma), and reap the benefits if it ends up being useful to those who would otherwise not have seen it.
Most of the time petty downvotes get balanced out or just sit at -1 anyway, it doesn't matter.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
But he also said it was a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057338
I am surprised some people upvote comments just because they agree, should go facebook if you want that kind of social media.
Hellban people that hellbanned without reason other people.