It makes me wish downvotes weren't a thing. I'm okay with flagging, since I mostly see comments flagged that clearly break HN's simple rules.

You've got your objective factual comment

Your subjective factual comment

And your opinion based comment.

I'm probably missing some.

These can all be combined sometimes into one comment.

Then you've got your reasons for downvoting.

Disagreeing

Factually incorrect

Wrong opinion

Again, probably missing some...

When you start combining all these comment types, with downvote reasons under one generic down arrow, there's going to be some ambiguity, some good comments that get down voted, some bad comments that get upvoted and everything in between.

And...furthermore, it's impossible for other users to determine why a comment was downvoted. Maybe, they were all disagreement downvotes even if it was a factually correct statement. Maybe they were factually incorrect downvotes for a correct opinion post.

There's no real way of knowing, so in the end, better just not to worry about it either way and unless you're clearly posting something against the rules, just try again next time and write something that hopefully doesn't get downvoted.

To be honest, I feel the most damaging in the HN voting system is the greying out of comments. It often leads to bandwagoning where if a comment even goed to 0, some people just blindly ram the downvote button because someone already (visually) decided for them that that particular comment is 'bad'. No consideration required!

But, I do agree, systems with upvotes only works sometimes, it seems to depend though. On one forum I post on, they only have upvote equivalents, but it tends to lead to fairly quality conversation a bit like hn, though memes and jokes tend to get upvoted far more than here....or maybe without downvotes you actually get to see the upvotes on jokes, I dunno, I've made a few of those one liner joke comments hn frowns upon and watched it go up and down over and over until it settles between -1 and 2 depending I guess on whether more people found it funny or annoying.

But...with upvote only systems, you also get horrendous trash like Facebook.

Then again, with upvote/downvote systems you get decent places like hn and horrendous trash like reddit and SO(an over exaggeration to allow me to keep this paragraph similar in structure and phrasing to the last) so who knows what's best really?

I think in the end it always comes down to the community and the mods.

It doesn't matter what kind of point system you have, what matters is the people who are most involved in the community, the rules of the community and how the mods act.

I notice sometimes a comment goes negative quickly. If it sinks to -3 then it is probably doomed, but if it only goes to -2 or less it can rise up again, if it has some form of logic that enough people can see, and isn't just a dumb or offensive comment.

Presumably the first two downvotes of a nuanced but serious comment sometimes lead to mindless followers taking it down to -2, which is a quick pile-on, but by then, it has reached enough views that it may be counterbalanced by people of the opposite view upvoting.

I have occasionally seen comments go back to positive from -3 too, although it is rare. These are invariably comments which state an uncommon position, which look like an unpopular trope, but which can be decoded by knowledgeable people who think it through and upvote.

Would yield some more interesting ways to sort and rank comments.

Yeah, I think that would work. Especially if 'disagree' is a neutral reaction rather than a negative one, so downvoting for disagreement stops being a thing.

I think the downvote system here works remarkably well. It's a very big problem to never allow any kind of signal of disagreement or whatever and the system here is intended to keep singal-to-noise ratio high.

It's a big forum and anyone can join. There is no fee to join. You don't need an invitation to join.

You need mechanisms for helping people learn "This is not welcome on HN. This is not how we do things here." to try to keep Eternal September down to a dull roar so HN can do what HN does better than any other forum I have ever seen, which is why I hang here so much even though it's never been an easy thing for me to be here.

Can we use flags for this purpose?

Problem is even though a comment does not violate any rule, it gets down-voted as hell if you say something that majority of people would not like. e.g there are posts about hyped programming languages, go check out down-voted comments, most of them does not deserve to be down voted.

There some topics, these topics have “fan-boys”, so even a comment is constructive, it gets down-voted.

You already show disagreement with comments. If a comment violates a rule, we can flag it. If a comment does not get up-votes, it moves to bottom of the page. So, I think down-votes don’t add any value to HN.

It would be vastly worse for men to only be able to express sexist garbage by openly attacking me and trying to find some plausible excuse for hostility that is sometimes rooted in "She won't date me!" basically.

I'm a very controversial figure in part because I am getting healthier when that is not supposed to be possible and the world generally has a big issue with me because of that reality. HN has handled my "disruptive' presence better than any other forum I've been on. I've been banned from several forums and I've had mods elsewhere tell me that the abusive treatment heaped on me by others that was a clear violation of the stated rules was not the problem, the problem was somehow my behavior.

Since I'm not making any of that up, I'm kind of painted into a corner here socially and I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to not end up essentially murdered over it, like Semmelweis was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

I do everything in my power to behave in accordance with the rules and blah blah blah, but I'm a woman and HN was as much as 98 percent male when I joined and I'm getting healthier when that isn't supposed to be possible and so forth. And HN is the only forum that is able to cope with that constructively and help me talk to people who are knowledgeable about areas of science that are pertinent to my needs as someone trying to survive in the face of an incurable genetic disorder.

I say all kinds of things that are not "popular" or even socially acceptable and as long as I am not violating the rules of civility, the mods here don't have a problem with me being here and that's extremely unusual. Most mods are all too happy to just get rid of me as the easy answer to their problem while not caring that this is de facto a polite way to quietly commit murder against someone whose crime boils down to "I am a scientist who is doing cutting edge work and my credentials include I'm a former homemaker and spent years homeless."

It sucks to be me. It sucks majorly for a long list of reasons.

And most forums find me intolerable and HN is willing to let me stay and that's literally life saving for me.

So I feel strongly that I am the ultimate test case for how well their rules work. The entire forum can literally think you are nuts and you can say things here that people literally believe is you being a deluded fruitcake making shit up, and if you behave you can stay.

So I think they are doing something amazingly well that's incredibly hard to do and I'm a huge fan in part because it has helped to save my life.

I'm sure there is room for improvement. I'm also equally sure no one else on the planet does it better.

It certainly is not, one can verbally signal one's disagreement with a reply. I very much do not believe that it has anything to do with “signal” and “noise” which of itself are rather vague terms and I find that very often people will consider something “signal” simply because they already agreed with it before they read it.

I see no reason for comments to be “rated”, and I certainly see no reason to pœnalize users for lowly rated comments as I see plenty of them that otherwise provide an interesting perspective.

> You need mechanisms for helping people learn "This is not welcome on HN. This is not how we do things here." to try to keep Eternal September down to a dull roar so HN can do what HN does better than any other forum I have ever seen, which is why I hang here so much even though it's never been an easy thing for me to be here.

“This is not welcome.” means “Ðo not disagree with what the nonrepræsentative portion of H.N. that votes thinks says.” and I stress that it is not repræsentative. — it yields more power to those that are willing to downvote something for mere disagreement and gives lesser to those that would not do so, in my opinion very much the type of person whom one should not yield such power to to decide what is and isn't welcome.

For those who are interested:

Add-on page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-backgrou...

Github repo: https://github.com/m-khvoinitsky/dark-background-light-text-...

Compared to even niche subreddits there is much less room for "freewheeling" (can't think of a better term for it) comments. It has costs but what for what you pay, you gain in a more serious and sober environment.

On Reddit, if one's all time score be negative, one is throttled to one post per 10 minutes.

H.N. throttles to five posts per day if one's recent comments are negative I believe the number is that I've read.

HN is bigger than it used to be which has helped introduce an Eternal September effect, but HN is the funnel for YC. You need an HN handle to apply to YC.

For people interested in starting a business and applying to YC, there is potentially millions of dollars at stake. Especially in the beginning when it was smaller, your comments here were used to help them evaluate your application to their seed funding and business mentorship program.

Lots of latecomers seem oblivious to that function and think it's just a silly discussion forum. But there are people who still know better and the people who understand that what you say here can make the difference between becoming the next Reddit (a YC company) or Dropbox (another YC company) or never getting anywhere with your business dreams help skew conversation here in a more serious and respectful direction than you are going to find on most forums that really are just discussion forums and that's it.

That's not what HN is. HN is the foyer you have to get through to have any hope of joining a large and powerful "old boys club" that has created many millionaires in a relatively short period of time.

Being an ass here is a good way to be politely turned away without ever knowing why: "Sorry, not YC material." Because they pick which applications to approve and fund primarily based on the people, not the idea.

That's not a secret. They talk about it incessantly. Anyone who doesn't know just hasn't paid attention to the huge volumes of info they put out about their application process.

Their "No assholes" rule is widely known.

I see, it [apparently] may still have serious implications. I still consider a serious discussion to be one where you can be right and I can be wrong - politely. It is then up to you to enlighten. Next round you get to be wrong and ill be there to point it out.

> I initially downvoted this. I've reversed that and decided to reply.

The exception not the rule. Normally I don't reply if I disagree and you downvote.

Now that I think about it the downvotes should make an interesting data-set to judge the founders by.

That still goes on here. It just is a smaller percentage of the discussion than it was when I originally joined in 2009. It's less obvious, but still possible to find that here.

There are more people here who don't participate that way, so you need to be a bit more careful about whom you try to engage that way to avoid having it go pointlessly sideways.

It's harder to stick your neck out about such things than it used to be and I don't know how to remedy that. It used to be much more possible to have a vigorous debate and have both sides remain civil in a way I have never seen anywhere else.

The fading indicates that what an HN downvote means is “I think people shouldn’t see this/this shouldn’t be part of the thread”. Whether it’s bc the post is off topic, flame bait, trolling, just plain boneheaded, etc., is kind of beside the point, although ideally it isn’t simply disagreement.

But that means replying to a post you downvote makes no sense. Why further a conversation you’re trying to bury?

Also, if an opinion is so unpopular it gets downvoted into oblivion, maybe a forum based on votes just isn’t the right venue for it. Start a blog.

The same opinion in a different thread will probably just be ignored, because people self-select into threads based on what they care about, and the FB dislikers won't be so concentrated.

Nastiness and "can't you just" statements tend to get downvoted regardless of context though.

See also ; https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/

And this regardless of the fact that downvoted comments are often more nuanced and interesting than the content surrounding them

Still, it falls on the creators and maintainers of HN to do something about it.

I'd be interested to read any discussion in suport of down votes from the crew who run the site.

I meant horde.

If you habitually find yourself on the receiving end of this it's worth re-examining why you think it's not offensive and if it looks like everyone else actually agrees with you. To a certain extent you are correct: It is to be expected that when you say something that's too "nice" you get a ton of downvotes (and the same goes for something too "rough", probably), that's just how things are. On balance though, you get so many more upvotes for constructive posts on issues that aren't loaded at all (or where your opinion is so centrist you don't post anything controversial) that it ends up not mattering.

I'll allow that none of this applies when you are an extremist, but to my mind being an extremist means that unfortunately a lot of what you say will be offensive. That loops back to the beginning of my post :)

I'd argue HN isn't a cohesive whole, there are factions / demographics what have you, along with timing. I've seen comments get pounded and even flagged to a death only to later see them revived and constructive conversation below.

I agree with you though, down votes are a net-negative.

There's certain number of "tar-baby" subjects/opinions that can get someone downvoted on HN really quick... like suggesting Peter Thiel is an asshole, or saying anything negative about crazy libertarians.

But HN is ALL about discussion. It's a relatively safe place to float an idea and hear some provocative opinions. The techno-libertarians don't actually bite.

Stackoverflow, on the other hand, has higher stakes. People are trying to figure something out at work and running into a brick wall. If they make the mistake of posting an earnest question they make themselves vulnerable and have a good chance of being humiliated and made to feel like shit by some smug prick who's having a bad day. You really need to put on some psychological armor before attempting to question or answer on Stackoverflow. It's an intrinsically toxic environment.

Please folks, just debate me or post a counterpoint.

I think at the very least tie ability to vote down with commenting. In other words, once the user has replied to the original comment, they can vote it down if they desire.

You might think this is a safe place, but I've come to just avoid commenting anything like this that might get "hive minded" into oblivion. I'm sure I'm not the only one. In that sense, it's safe place for a certain "kind" of people with a certain "kind" of opinion.

that’s exactly when you should be commenting, otherwise the community is lulled into false conformity. contentious topics require more diversity of thought and more considered words, not less. internet points don’t matter, just the food for thought that comes with broader discussions.

The reason why I don't bother as much anymore is I assume if my overall points get too low, I probably get shadow banned (I can comment, but no one will ever see it, or something to that effect).

i wouldn't worry about getting shadowbanned unless you're constantly posting thoughtless and provocative craziness (which doesn't seem likely based on a very quick perusal of your comment history). i read with showdead on and find very few accounts being shadowbanned, and those that are continuously and blatantly violate hn rules (nevermind common courtesy).

I think this ignores the concept of purpose. If you are optimizing for popularity, then this works. But a lot of forums (including Hacker News, theoretically) intend to optimize for relevance, which is contrary to popularity in many cases.

For a really clear-cut example, Kim Kardashian's Instagram posts get far more likes than pretty much any post on Hacker News. Would Hacker News be better if it were replaced with a redirect to Kim Kardashian's Instagram feed? In terms of how popular the content is, this is an unambiguous yes. But that would not be a better Hacker News, it would just be more popular because you've replaced Hacker News with something completely different.

That's an extreme example, but the same applies for content that's more relevant than Kim Kardashian's instagram feed. Popularity measures breadth of appeal more than anything else, so if you're trying to appeal to specific interests or cultivate some kind of niche content, popularity can be a negative. Downvotes can function as a way for a site's userbase to say, "Whoa, this is not what this place is supposed to be about, even if it is broadly appealing."

Can be. I'd argue it would appear to me down votes here are overwhelming used for simple disagreement.

It's fun to discuss what a thing could be, spherical cow in a vacuum, it's probably more useful to discuss how that thing actually gets used and how each of us weight the value of those uses.

In terms of the social structure of Spolsky thought "How do I move the Turtle in LOGO" [1] was a good question for the site (he wrote it).

Atwood thought it was a bad question. Judging people's character by the questions they ask became standard. And people have an excuse to be rude and abusive on the site.

Which is unfortunate.

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-th...

Exactly. And this is actually something that I like about Twitter, and hate about Reddit. Don't like what I post? Reply and say it.

I think it would make a lot of sense to require a response before you can downvote.

Any upvotes would be greatly appreciated.