They ARE meant to be a disagree button

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

I was not only referring to HN but the many communities that employ up/down voting. And for the record, I disagree with pg's take. Here is Reddit's official stance on downvoting:

>Think before you downvote and take a moment to ensure you're downvoting someone because they are not contributing to the community dialogue or discussion. If you simply take a moment to stop, think and examine your reasons for downvoting, rather than doing so out of an emotional reaction, you will ensure that your downvotes are given for good reasons.

https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439-Reddi...

I feel following this advice leads to better communities with more diverse and more useful conversation.

> My main issue with downvotes is they are almost always used incorrectly. Including here at HN. They are not meant to be an "agree/disagree" button, but rather a way to filter out content that is not relevant to the discussion at hand.

Says who? And why should anyone listen to them? There seems to be a lot of talk about how it's not being used as designed, but absolutely no one provides any evidence to support that there's "One True Way" to use voting buttons.

Sure, that may be technically correct and in practice people downvote for any reason they choose. Nothing can stop them. But if they were used to promote viewpoints and better discussion, the end result would be better communities.

As for the "says who?", for example, that is Reddit's official stance on voting, which I quoted elsewhere in this thread.

You've said it would lead to better discussion. I'm not convinced that's the case. I think flagged and grey comments being filtered out actually helps conversations more often than not. Can we empirically determine which will lead to better communities? Based on my experience than nearly every single community with lax moderation (official moderation and community moderation) turns into a cesspool. There's a reason you're here for conversation after all and not on 4chan.

In my experience flagged comments are typically off topic or abusive. I don't recall ever seeing a flagged comment that was an honest attempt at discussion. As for grayed comments that are an honest attempt at discussion? Very common. I upvote heavily downvoted comments that didn't deserve it almost daily here. I've also been the victim of massive downvoting merely because I present a viewpoint that the hive-mind doesn't like. If you're only interested in a single viewpoint and don't want to see all sides to a topic, then sure, this system is great. I like seeing more viewpoints and perspectives.

Maybe what's needed is explicit Agree and Disagree buttons, with indicators, to skim off such pollution of up/downvotes-as-QC?

That would be an interesting experiment. Make it a 2D axis... Agree <--> Disagree, and Low Quality <--> High Quality. Only allow voting on one of the options.

... left and right vote in addition to up and downvote?

Do not specify any rules nor instructions about when to vote left and when to vote right, but too much votes in either direction and the comment starts getting hidden.

If you disagree with the trend where any particular comment is going, figure out the horizontal direction you should click by yourself.

edit.

I think there is no need for up/downvotes after this system is implemented. Some secret amount of horizontal votes in either direction is good (counted as upvote). Too much over the limit and the extra is counted as a downvote. Hide the score from voters. Ban comments that attempt to discuss the score of any comment. Now everyone has a reason to be a bit more careful when voting (...except when a comment is obviously too left or right).

There are some opensource, reddit alternatives that might be willing to implement this. https://lemmy.ml/ comes to mind. You could suggest it there and it might fall upon open ears.

I would suggest you email that idea to dang. I'd like to see it tried here.

Hold on, HN has downvote buttons? I don't see them. Are they for mods?

HN's voting system is a bit complicated. They will remove the downvote button for various reasons. For example you can't downvote replies to your comments, only upvote. I think also if you are a newer user, you can't downvote.

You have to have >500 karma, iirc.

This is correct.