"Thoughtful comments that are factually wrong should be downvoted."

Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing's for sure. It you think something is "factually wrong", your reply provides much more feedback than a vote.

I'd like to think that judgment based upon data is what separates hackers from posers. Let's see that data please.

Let me pose a hypothetical: I'm reading HN while I'm waiting for a particularly long compile or backup or whatever. I've got about 5 minutes and about 4 minutes in, I find a comment that honestly and eloquently makes a claim based on the perceived fact that the world is flat. This comment is highly rated. Should I:

1) Withhold my down-vote because I don't have time to explain it?

2) Withhold my down-vote unless someone else has taken the time to explain it?

3) Down-vote and hope someone else explains it or at least hope that this helps other comments percolate to the top?

I honestly think 3 is the best option and I can see the point in 2, though I think it's withholding signal from the system.

Related question: is it relevant what the comment's score was? If it was -7, should I make it -8? If it was +200, does it decrease the burden to comment?

This hypothetical "factually wrong" dilemma is a red herring. The real issue is disagreement, not factual correction. Much more often the case is that someone has written a thoughtful, honest comment based on some worldview that is very different from your own. In that scenario you should not downvote at all. Rather, take the time to explain your own worldview or just move on.

The "factually wrong dilemma" is in no way a red herring. It's actually precisely the point I was responding to in the grandparent post. Down-voting based on opinion is something else entirely. Of course, people will confuse opinion and fact sometimes, and I would encourage people to be skeptical of themselves on delineating the two, but that doesn't invalidate the idea that people can say things that are factually wrong.

Yes, if someone says something that is factually correct (or at least not incorrect) based on a different world-view, then I agree, don't vote them down. If they say something that is factually incorrect but accepted in their worldview, I don't know that that changes what I was saying before.

Edit: you know, it's usually my policy not to comment on how comments have been modded, but I do find it hilarious that in this discussion, someone's down-voted this comment (at the time of this edit) without replying.

To the sibling comment: yes, I agree on the main point and am just discussing a finer point, an issue that was raised by an earlier comment on this chain.

Voting based on opinion reinforces groupthink. Voting based on fact helps keep the level of discussion high.

It's a red herring because the problem that the OP is trying to get at is not about factually incorrect comments. The important message is that you shouldn't downvote comments you disagree with, and instead we're nitpicking about how to be the fact police.

Maybe it's because we already agree on the main point, and are just trying to settle the finer points?

What I would do personally:

  if score < 1
    option 1
  else
    option 3

But of course it's a judgment call. If it seems like the person is intentionally trolling, then by all means, go negative. If the person is just misinformed, zero is a sufficient slap on the wrist that hopefully says "make sure you know what you are talking about next time", and a reply makes it obvious why it got downvoted.

For me, it's:

  if score < 2
    option 1
  else
    option 3

Note that I don't want to penalize them for being wrong-- we've all been there (and sometimes when we think they're wrong, really we are). It's better to let them lie and reply with better information or a ("Are you sure that's right? I recall blahblah.")

I'm not totally sure, but I would say either upvote your favorite amongst the rebutting comments that will likely crop up if the incorrect post is highly rated, or stay quiet.

Here's a different hypothetical where upvoting based on agreeing opinions, rather than quality of reasoning, can be a problem. It sometimes crops up in sites with rating systems like the one we are reading right now, and it could be on any blatantly wrong, or merely not-widely-held opinion.

1) A person writes "a comment that honestly and eloquently makes a claim based on the perceived fact that the world is flat" (or any other well-reasoned claim based on an incorrect premise, or simply an opinion which is disagreed with).

2) Either because it was well reasoned or because of a number of otherwise quiet flat earth believers agreeing with it, it gets up-voted highly.

3) A few passionate replies are written to rebut the highly voted claim, but the majority of which do so caustically, without good reasoning; perhaps even name-calling.

4) In order to push forth their opinion, people who believe the earth is round up-vote the rebuttals, regardless of their quality; and the tragedy is that sometimes (often?) the rebuttal most up-voted is one that simply appeared earliest, rather than the one which rebuts most clearly.

So, I don't know what the ideal voting method would be, but voting based on quality of reasoning, not agreement, would have avoided this problem -- at least in the case of arguments.

A side note: as others have noted, the distinction between "fact" and "opinion" is, well, a matter of opinion in many cases.

A comment like that requires a reply. If you don't have the time, that's okay b/c someone probably will (but you could check back later to make sure someone has).

Don't punish (downvote) someone for earnestly taking part in the conversation. Other people probably have similar beliefs so this person did everyone a service by bringing the question out into the open so it can be discussed.

Votes encourage discussion, not correctness.

"...eloquently makes a claim based on the perceived fact that the world is flat."

You should do what feels right to you.

What would I do? Probably click reply and challenge my fellow hackers with something like, "Who you gonna listen to, Galileo or Thomas Friedman?"

I agree that one should do what feels right.

FWIW, I was trying to posit a situation in which you don't have time to respond. I was using flat earth as a stand-in for a wrong statement, and oftentimes, it takes more than name-dropping Galileo to demonstrate that the writer is factually incorrect. I agree that if you have time, demonstrating the truth is the best option.

To continue with your analogy, I would assume most people would be very irritated with a compiler which only reported that you made an error but didn't give you any context into where the error occurred.

Most compilers make a large effort to give you good error messages with file names and line numbers so you can correct your mistake.

Downvoting is like reporting an error with no context: not very useful in determining what is wrong with the comment.

Too many people in these discussions treat the issue as a false dichotomy. They fail to take two things into account:

1) Downvoting and responding aren't mutually exclusive.

2) Downvoting and the presence of comment that already states the exact reason for the downvote aren't mutually exclusive. You downvote one post and upvote the comment that explains the downvote.

You really wouldn't want everyone that downvotes a post to repeat the same reason over and over again.

Disagreed. If downvoting meant "you are wrong", then it would be kinda like a black-hole if it weren't accompained by a reply, because the obvious follow-up question "why is that wrong?" would go un-answered, and thus nobody learns. Since learning is what we are here for, please correct "factually wrong" posts with a reply, not with a downvote.

It seems more correct to downvote those posts or replies that do not follow the vein of intellectual conversation that HN tries to promote, those comments that distract you from the main topic instead of giving you more info to chew on.

Similarly, those that do make you think, whether you agree or not, have contributed to the conversation and should not be downvoted. If you only wanted correct comments, then this wouldn't be a conversation, it would be going over what you already know, saying out loud what you read in a book or just plain brain masturbation.

Let's have a conversation.

It is not an either/or - you can both vote and reply.

Thoughtfulness has little correlation to the quality of a comment. A one-liner from a subject matter expert is worth more than an entire paragraph of mere hearsay.

If you replied with a correction, it's implicit that you disagree, and then downvotes would be redundant.

I think one liners, unless they are reminders of something that's universally obvious, are worse than no comment at all, because they can't contain much information.

'If downvoting meant "you are wrong", then it would be kinda like a black-hole if it weren't accompained by a reply, because the obvious follow-up question "why is that wrong?" would go un-answered, and thus nobody learns.'

On Reddit, since they added in the "suppress entire thread once the parent goes below -4", yes. On HN, which never suppresses the thread, no. I for one occasionally check even the -8 posts, though usually if you make it to -8 it's for a reason. I've "rescued" a few -3s with replies before.

On reddit when things go to -8 it's for one reason only: They are pro religion, or pro israel, or conservative. (OK, that's 3, but it's basically the same thing.)

On reddit stupid stuff usually gets a plus vote, and people express agree/disagree via votes.

This is NOT the way HN is run, and people coming here from reddit have a hard time adjusting. So we need threads like this approximately monthly.

Maybe PG can require all new members to read some kind of etiquette guide (with a quiz).

Having “come here from Reddit” some time ago, I can vouch that for newly arrived redditors this is moot, since I’m still not offered a downvote button.

I’d guess that by the time the downvote button shows up, most people should have had time to realize HN generally offers more interesting discussion because it works the way Reddiquette FAQ says Reddit should work: do not downvote points of view.

// Now I’ll go back to lurking.

I disagree. Just adding a comment to explain exactly what is factually wrong is a much better way to continue the conversation. Downvotes should be reserved for vulgar, rude, or off-topic comments.

Does something which is factually wrong improve the quality of the conversation? I think that downvotes should be used to push down comments that reduce the quality of the conversation even if they are not vulgar, rude, or off-topic.

Yes. People who contribute things they believe to be correct, even if incorrect, gives other people an opportunity to demonstrate the correct behavior and others still a chance to be educated.

Additionally, sometimes the original poster was in fact correct, and the responder correcting him is proven incorrect.

In that case, the comment does add value to the conversation, whether it is correct or not, so I agree with you that in that case downvoting is wrong.

Comments that are factually wrong should go to 0 and no lower!

Below 0 is only for spam and things like "Me too".

I disagree -- someone else could come along and upvote it again.

Since HN reports the final number, not +/-, information is lost.

Yes. I'd really like to have: "$upvotes - $downvotes = $score". I wonder if the past upvotes and downvotes count for each comment is stored in the database or just the final score figures?

I posted this on the suggestions page long ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107060 It has only 20 points, I don't know if it means almost nobody else wants that...

Few comments are plainly "factually wrong." For one, the facts are often a matter of debate. For two, many comments represent judgments, your own being a perfect example: is the statement "thoughtful comments that are factually wrong should be downvoted" itself evaluable as either "factually wrong" or "factually right?" Only if you believe that the "should" in this case exists independently in the world could you answer yes to that. Then it would be a fact to be discovered. Otherwise, (and most people take this position), we can agree on the facts and disagree on the "should."

So it goes with most prescriptive uses of the word "should," actually.

People are not compilers. The difference is that people are able write and explain their point of view. If you think that something is factually wrong, I'd be interested to hear what is right. How do you explain that by downvoting?

Voting is good for filtering large amounts of content. It's useless, even offensive, to make a point that way.

Sure, here's one that's popular, but factually incorrect (+5), with my request for correction at -1 at one point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=720644

I read that example. It's factually incorrect if you take the comment literally, but if you understand the underlying point that the author was trying to make, it is a legitimate addition to the conversation.

This goes to show pretty clearly that someone's facts are someone else's opinion. How much of a nitpicker do you want everyone to be here?

Good point. I'd also note, however, that as hackers, we should attempt to be as precise as possible in our discussions.

I upvote comments that are factually wrong, but where the phenomenon of someone on HN saying it interests me.

> If your code doesn't compile, the compiler doesn't care how much effort it took you to write it

Trying be a compiler for somebody's though ;)