How the “Down-Vote” Leads to a Vicious Circle of Negative Feedback

Re:How the “Down-Vote” Leads to a Vicious Circle of Negative... by RunningWild on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @05:51PM (#8847653)

Just remove voting altogether and let the strength of the argument/statement prevail rather than allow a mechanism that rewards groupthink.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How the “Down-Vote” Leads to a Vicious Circle of Negative... by stormbrew on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @05:54PM (#8847663)

Unfortunately, that just leads to 5 pages of "FIRST!!!" before you get real content.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How the “Down-Vote” Leads to a Vicious Circle of Negative... by TillE on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @06:33PM (#8847887)

Forums with good moderation solve those problems. A nice example is rpg.net.

Traditional linear forums are still the best format for in-depth discussion, IMO. Threads actually stick around for more than a day or two. Just compare gamedev.net to /r/gamedev.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How the “Down-Vote” Leads to a Vicious Circle of Negative... by mwfunk on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @09:41PM (#8848575)

It felt like there was an inflection point around '96 or '97 when Usenet really dried up and web-based forums became the most common way to discuss things on the Internet. I blamed it on Slashdot at the time but I think it was inevitable as more and more people got on the Internet.

I really feel like we lost something though. Newsreaders provided a much better way to engage in the kinds of conversations that people have on place like HN or even Reddit. To this day I don't know of any web forums that offer the conveniences of newsreaders like tin or slrn. I miss killfiles (and plonking!) and really, really, really well-maintained FAQs on just about anything.

I'm not sure how much of my Usenet nostalgia is just remembering the good stuff. It may not have been as great as I remember, but it sure seemed like it at the time. I learned so much from it, from so many people in so many different newsgroups. Maybe that's what places like HN are to larval hackers today.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How the “Down-Vote” Leads to a Vicious Circle of Negative... by stormbrew on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @12:39PM (#8851880)

Well, discussion forums incite somewhat different types of posts than news sites (which are the primary case for peer-vote moderation for whatever reason). And top-down moderation is also quite different. So yeah, I agree those don't have that specific problem.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How the “Down-Vote” Leads to a Vicious Circle of Negative... by autokad on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @06:03PM (#8847716)

i agree with both you and stormbrew, if only there were another way. i personally dont like HN's system much either, one that ensures submitter can downvote those who disagree with them while the majority of readers cant down-vote back. also on HN, you commonly get down voted simply because they disagree with your opinion.

maybe the best way is to simply ditch the whole karma/popularity system all together. you can up a comments contribution to an article, but it ends there.

The person who got downvoted isnt stuck with a scarlet letter and put on probation to repair their 'karma' simply because they had a different way of looking at things.

[ Parent | on HN ]