
Downvotes - cookiecaper
I've noticed quite a trend of downvotes on well-composed comments over the last two months or so. It's disappointing.<p>I'm concerned that as it gains users, HN is acquiring an attribute common to other social news sites where users simply downvote a comment because they don't agree with it, or because it criticizes something that they favor or like. I believe that downvotes should only be used on content that does not generate interesting discussion, is spammy, or patently and generally offensive.<p>I've noticed that there is not much language addressing general appropriate voting behavior in the Guidelines (at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). Is this something we want to address, or not?<p>I think a good way to help curb inappropriate downmodding is to invoke a small cost for each downvote. StackOverflow does this and it seems to work pretty well.<p>Has anyone else noticed this trend recently? If so, what are your feelings regarding it?
======
pvg
I think the simplest thing to do about it is to not give a hoot. The karma
point system is so obviously broken that hand-wringing about its deficiencies
is largely a waste of time. Case in point - the person who was lucky enough to
post the google announcement regarding China got 1000+ points. Let's say a
particularly insightful comment is worth 40 points. That means being first on
something everyone is likely to know about within half an hour is worth 25
(count em) very insightful comments. If you take the hit of posting an
unpopular opinion, you can make it up in spades by posting an old pg essay.

~~~
stingraycharles
While I agree that the per-user karma is worthless, comparing the rating of
comments with the rating of stories is a bit like apples and oranges: multiple
users can submit the same story, and when one submission "wins" over the
other, little harm is done to the whole of HN. But when a comment is downvoted
solely because people disagree with it, it hurts the discussion because the
well constructed comment is less likely to be seen. Furthermore, this works
both ways: snarky comments with little added value suddenly get a lot of
appearance.

It's a very difficult problem to solve, but to just "not give a hoot" is hard,
given the fact that the order of appearance for comments on HN depends so much
on karma.

~~~
pvg
Actually it's a surprisingly simple problem to solve. Split comment and
submission karma. Reddit, which HN was inspired by does that already.

 _but to just "not give a hoot" is hard_

try it! at 1k or so karma you have more or less nothing to lose.

~~~
stingraycharles
I don't think you understand my point: I agree that per-user karma records are
worthless. However, I am not convinced that there is little to lose with bad
comment ratings, since HN bases the appearance of comments on these ratings.

------
tokenadult
_I'm concerned that as it gains users, HN is acquiring an attribute common to
other social news sites where users simply downvote a comment because they
don't agree with it, or because it criticizes something that they favor or
like._

This is an often-discussed issue. I see your join date is not quite from long
enough ago that you may have seen this comment from pg

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171>

in which he said, "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express
agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it
seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

"It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot
of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum
karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against
that."

But I have a still more recent join date, and I have seen links back to that
comment on the MANY previous occasions when downvotes have been discussed, so
I have become aware of this point of view.

Of course, more recent discussions of the issue of voting behavior on HN

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507948>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1103339>

(this set of links is far from exhaustive) show that there is thought on the
part of site management about how to improve current incentives.

I try to learn from the downvotes I receive. I don't expect everyone to agree
with me, but I expect myself to analyze my own behavior to figure out what
really contributes to the community. The site management, of course, has to
figure out how to set up incentives for altruistic rather than mob behavior.

I always wonder, when I see a post about the evils of downvotes, why I don't
see more replies about what is good to upvote. I tried opening a separate
thread about that issue recently

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1065084>

but you can see for yourself it didn't get upvoted much at the time. I will
ask again here: what ought to be upvoted? I would like advice from the
community about how to use my upvotes to build up the community.

~~~
philwelch
There's a difference between downvoting a +10 comment down to +9 out of
disagreement and downvoting a +! comment down to 0 out of disagreement.

Also, "disagreement" isn't always the best characterization. If someone makes
factual errors in their post downvoting is a perfectly valid signal, for
instance.

~~~
anamax
> There's a difference between downvoting a +10 comment down to +9 out of
> disagreement and downvoting a +! comment down to 0 out of disagreement.

I suspect that most people read once or twice a day so the difference between
voting when something is +10 and +1 is when they see an article relative to
its posting time.

In other words, most folks aren't looking for "close" votes to affect.

Besides, who's to say that +10 to +9 is actually different from +1 to 0? The
score just tells you the difference between up and down votes. It doesn't tell
you that the +10 was 10-0 while the +1 was 100-99. Do you really want to argue
that a downvote is inappropriate in the latter case?

I think that public scores are arguably a mistake because folks read far too
much into them. Someone didn't like something - get over it.

That said, I think that scores should be hidden except when they get "close".
Or, maybe they should disappear if you vote "too much".

~~~
philwelch
Personally, I'm far more cavalier about downvoting +10 comments than I am
about downvoting +1 comments.

------
eplanit
An up-vote is a bit different from a down-vote. It's a way of saying "I agree.
Were I to post a comment, it would be similar to yours. In fact, you said it
better". See, there isn't much to add to an up-vote, because it is agreement.

However, a down-vote is rebuttal. However, when no actual rebuttal is given,
there is no meaningful conversation happening. It's just an anonymous
rejection. I think that to be meaningful, a down-vote should _require_ some
explanation as to why. And, the 'rule' should be that simply disagreeing is
insufficient rationale to down-vote. You must state why.

Absent this kind of 'rule', I worry that HN encourages group-think. It's
already a kind of psychological school yard, I fear. One gains "cred" by
earning points. Ideally, these are earned by meaningful contributions and
commentary. To avoid these anonymous down-votes, however, posters might very
well be adding comments that seem consistent with the rest of the group,
instead of what might be regarding as opposed to that of the majority.

The idea of charging would not be a good solution, at all. That would have a
worse kind of school yard effect -- a nursery school effect, in fact. That
would say "it's free to agree, but to if you disagree with somebody, you have
to pay to express your disagreement."

If this is to be a forum of ideas, then make it so. Anonymous/un-qualified
nay-saying does not contribute that.

~~~
Mz
_An up-vote is a bit different from a down-vote. It's a way of saying "I
agree. Were I to post a comment, it would be similar to yours. In fact, you
said it better". See, there isn't much to add to an up-vote, because it is
agreement.

However, a down-vote is rebuttal. However, when no actual rebuttal is given,
there is no meaningful conversation happening. It's just an anonymous
rejection. I think that to be meaningful, a down-vote should _require_ some
explanation as to why. And, the 'rule' should be that simply disagreeing is
insufficient rationale to down-vote. You must state why._

The problem with your suggestion is that it would actively encourage fighting
and discourage more agreeable discourse: Upvote all you like without comment
but you _must_ comment when downvoting.

Yes, a forum of ideas needs to have a certain tolerance for different points
of view and opinions and for the friction involved in expressing those
differences. But it's really quite a tricky thing to foster an environment
where sharing different points of view is constructive and additive rather
than merely socially destructive and a promotion of in-fighting, promotion of
polarized "camps" within the community, etc. I am someone who has, at times,
asked why I got downvoted because I wanted to understand what the problem was
with my remark. Sometimes, that turned out to be a constructive exercise. But
requiring people to state their criticism/reasons for nay-saying is highly
unlikely to be constructive or improve the atmosphere here. It will most
likely just promote hurt feelings, feuds and so on.

~~~
marshallp
The infighting you fear is more a problem when most users are teenagers or
just unthoughtful

~~~
Mz
My experience has been that the majority of human communication is about
pecking order, saving face, protecting one's ego and other types of "social"
motivations. (There is likely data out there which backs up my view, but I
wouldn't have a citation off the top of my head.) If that weren't true, I
doubt you would see so much discussion and criticism on HN about the voting
system, how things get on the front page, etc. So call me cynical if you want,
but if your observation is true, than the vast majority of people are simply
"unthoughtful" the vast majority of the time. (Which probably is true in some
sense, unfortunately.)

(Ironically, I accidentally upvoted your comment and can't undo it. Perhaps
bad form to mention it, but it seems funny somehow, given the context of the
discussion.)

------
jules
I sometimes click on the wrong arrow accidentally, and on HN there is no way
to repair the damage.

~~~
RK
Especially using a (touchscreen) phone.

------
Mz
My opinion/experience:

Karma and other systems may have their social uses, but the single most
effective means to improve a social setting is to set a better example. Resist
the temptation to snipe at people. Give the benefit of the doubt and first
assume misunderstanding rather than malice and, if possible, attempt to
clarify rather than attack or defend. Don't take things too personally. If I
am in a personal space (not feeling well, recently had something negative
happen to me, etc) where I am feeling particularly prickly and thin-skinned,
just walk away and come back another time when I am less likely to make a
mole-hill into a mountain. And so on.

My experience over the years is that if I engage in more socially effective
behavior and do so consistently, eventually, other people will begin to mimic
some of those behaviors. Not because they think highly of me, but just because
it works. If people don't know a better way, they fiddle around and do
whatever it is they do know and then vent about their frustrations. Show them
a better way and many people will eventually happily and voluntarily adopt
those methodologies because it makes their own lives better. If you want to
live in a better social "ecosystem", look to "the man in the mirror" (though,
technically, in my case it is "the woman in the mirror") and work on their
behavior. Then have a little patience. Sow the seeds. It will bear fruit (as
long as you don't then pull it up by the roots to check if it's growing :-D ).

~~~
wynand
I think that really hits the nail on the head.

I don't know if people will ever stumble upon a set of interaction constraints
that will make people civil if they're not already committed to civility. In
that regard HN has always been good (but not perfect, as evidenced by some of
the episodes mentioned in this comment section).

If someone lashes out and gets a calm response instead of being downvoted to
oblivion or without being baited, the whole atmosphere becomes much less toxic
(even if the original commenter insists on trolling).

~~~
Mz
_If someone lashes out and gets a calm response instead of being downvoted to
oblivion or without being baited, the whole atmosphere becomes much less toxic
(even if the original commenter insists on trolling)._

The other thing a calm (compassionate, tolerant) response does is it tends to
prevent "train wrecks". One of the biggest problems with many online forums is
the tendency for everyone to try to jump into the fray to "defend"
righteousness and goodness and what not, thus keeping the fighting alive. Many
of them are attempting to put a stop to the fighting but they miss the fact
that fighting against the fighting is still fighting. Many people seem to just
not know how to effectively defuse a negative situation and put a stop to it,
which is a very different skill set than "arguing"/fighting. Fighting against
it is the typical knee-jerk response of the vast majority of people, even for
most very well educated and intelligent people. "Train wrecks" are best
diverted by redirecting the flow of conversation in a constructive fashion
rather than attacking the person who has said something that sounds asinine
(but maybe wasn't really intended to be, they could be having a bad day or
it's a pet peeve they aren't wholly rational about, etc).

------
gojomo
I would like to see two-axis voting. Up/down would mean, "valuable/non-
valuable". Right/left would mean "agree/disagree" -- the easiest possible way
to register opinion without the effort of composing a reply.

Up/down would show a net score, like now. Right/left would show both totals --
perhaps even a little inline sparkline bargraph (perhaps initially hidden).

It's reasonable that people want a lazy, one-click way to show disagreement.
It's problematic that impulse gets channeled into the same downvote-gesture-
tally that also means "this is spam; this is rude; this should be sunk and
faded out of existence". Those meanings are scolding; the effect of a downvote
is censorius (by the ranking/fading). It's coarsening for conversation to
cross the signals for "I respectfully disagree" and "your comment should be
penalized".

~~~
vog
I don't think that an "agree/disagree"-axis would be very useful. If you
disagree, just reply and explain your disagreement. That adds more value to
the discussion.

I'm not interested at all in the number of agreements or disagreements to my
statements. I'm only interested in those who agree/disagree _and_ care to
elaborate on their point.

~~~
gojomo
If it were as simple as asking people to only disagree with a thoughtful
response comment, it would have already been solved.

The participants we actually have often can't be bothered to do more than a
grunt's worth of disagreement. This gets channeled into downvotes, which carry
a slight 'sting' of moral judgment, and spawn big threads like this one every
so often.

An outlet for one-click-disagreement separate from one-click-censure could
help remedy the actual problem without requiring an unlikely change in the
behavior of the mostly-anonymous, distracted downvoting hordes.

------
alttab
I've seen perfectly intelligent responses downmodded for an opposing view.
This wouldn't sadden me as much if some of the threads were not echo-chambered
group think. I know I just thew out two very over used buzz words, but in this
case there are some pockets of conversation that lend itself to this on HN
(and anywhere else on the internet). There have been times I've decided
against posting my two cents because its obvious other views (that aren't
necessarily opposing) aren't welcomed.

~~~
samd
The voting system encourages groupthink. The Mahalo/Calacanis issue is a
perfect example. No matter what Calacanis says in the comments he gets
massively downvoted, that certainly sends a message to anyone who might dare
to agree with him.

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
Well, when I comment on anything to do with Mahalo the group of SEOs who are
leading this campaign against me just attack en masse and overpower the native
HN group.

I'm a polarizing guy who shoots from the hip, so I expect detractors or people
who disagree with me to vote me down.

In fact, I think it's kind of funny that sometimes within 30 seconds of
posting I'll have a ton of down votes.

It would be great if HN SHOWED the down votes and who votes each person down
the most. If there was a leaderboard of who is voting me down it would be VERY
telling. You would see ten folks voting me down all at the same time.

That's the thing about social news systems... they are easy to game. If
control as not put in place the dialogue simply goes to shit.... which is
starting to happen.

What normally happens is that intelligent folks leave the discussion and go
somewhere else. I'm sure many folks here are refugees from digg or reddit or
/. in fact.

At this point I don't bother commenting on threads about me or Mahalo... and
I'm skipping the comment section on HN and going to the links themselves for
dialogue.

The only way to correct the issue is really to expose the down votes.... folks
need to take ownership of their voting.

we did this on Mahalo Answers and we don't have the problem of folks using
voting down as a way to attack someone. we did have this problem in the early
days and when we exposed it it was VERY telling. you had really good users who
would have it in for just one person and they would follow them around the
site voting everything they did down.

so, we did amnesty for past votes and turned on down votes from X day forward.
That is what i would do here.... you should turn on link for every post from
April 1st on that shows a list of who voted and how--as well as a leaderboard.

anyway.... hack on.

------
jacquesm
This used to upset me, I have simply stopped caring and feel much better for
it.

That said, I've had some fairly drastic changes in my private situation so I'm
not nearly as active on HN as I have been in the past.

The best way to deal with an unjustly downvoted comment is to simply vote it
up if you come across it (this you can do pretty much forever), and to ignore
the issue if it happens to you on the assumption that on balance HN contains
more nice people that griefers.

------
alecco
IMHE, there's a paradox similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect on up-down
voting. The loud strongly opinionated newbies (or even plain idiots) downvote
anything that challenges their point of view or their latest fad, while many
of the more educated, experienced, or rational users become apathetic.

~~~
hexis
My HN account is 521 days old and I can't downvote. Granted, I don't comment
or submit very much, but I would assume that getting to 200? karma is
something of a brake on opinionated newbies downvoting anything. Of course,
this is less of a brake on idiots.

~~~
cmelbye
Getting to 201 karma is the threshold for downvoting I believe. It may have
been moved to 251.

~~~
epochwolf
As of this post I have 228 karma. I got the privilege to downvote at 201
(which I got to about a week ago).

------
ErrantX
I have noticed some more downvoting than is usual - and, yes, sometimes on
well worded and apparently good comments. I've never seen much problem with
downvoting for disagreement myself - but I do dislike this idea of downvoting
instead of commenting your disagreement/counter view etc. (I personally don't
think a downvote is worth much if you can't support it)

I think it would be nice to see a social pressure to add a reply if one
doesn't already exist explaining disagreement etc.

Both for the benefit of the commenter _and_ other readers.

------
char
I haven't really noticed this trend. But keep in mind, I'm just one data
point. To give a rough estimate, I'd say that for every 20 or so down-voted
comments I come across, there is one whose lack of points is actually
confusing to me.

I find that most of the down-voted comments tend to contain at least one (or a
combination of) a number of things, including being off topic, using immature
language, presenting opinions as facts without anything to back them up, being
hostile, etc.

It is because of these observations that I haven't gotten the impression that
there is a trend towards down-voting solely due to disagreement. I believe it
does happen, but not as much as some say.

------
brandon272
My feelings regarding downvoting are that downvotes are virtually
inconsequential, aside from the rise they get from some as a result of bruised
egos.

I also think that it's kind of silly to try and establish upvote or downvote
"guidelines" because there's no way to ultimately control or accurately
measure what upvotes or downvotes are being used for. You could put big, red
text in the HN Guidelines that instructed people to upvote or downvote in a
certain way, and users would continue to upvote or downvote however they
wished.

~~~
marshallp
Once downvoted to below 1, insightful comments tend to get ignored and this a
real loss beyond bruised egos

~~~
brandon272
I tend to read all of the comments, regardless of their comment score. The
score just ends up affecting what order the comments get read in, which is
fine with me. I often see downvoted comments still receiving replies, so I'm
not sure it's fully accurate to say that they are being ignored. Also, quality
and insightfulness are still subjective. You may feel that a post is of high-
quality and very insightful, but someone else may feel that the post is junk
for their own reasons.

------
arnorhs
I'm a bit confused. Who can vote something down? I don't have a down vote
button and thought only moderators had one or something like that. How does
that work?

~~~
chacha102
I believe if you have over a certain number of points you can downvote items

From the FAQ:

 _Why don't I see down arrows?

There are no down arrows on submissions. They only appear on comments after
users reach a certain karma threshold._

~~~
dirtbox
The threshold being 200.

~~~
allenbrunson
that may be the threshold now, but it almost certainly won't stay there. pg
regularly increases the thresholds, to account for 'karma inflation.' so it's
a good idea to quantify numbers, if you give them, so that people don't google
them up in the future and come to mistaken conclusions.

~~~
sammyo
Yep, I had downvote access for a while and then it passed me by... story of my
life.

------
algorias
Downvoting needs to cost a karma point, or perhaps a fraction of one.

~~~
cmelbye
That's actually a great idea. Maybe the karma point could be given back if the
post is voted down to -4 (showing that it actually should be voted down).

~~~
algorias
I like this idea. Could be gamed by a group of 'bullies', but it would be very
obvious and easy to pick up by an automated filter similar to those already in
place.

------
DanBlake
This might sound silly, but what about just listing those who have upvoted and
listing those who have downvoted somewhere. I think there would be alot less
downvotes if it wasnt anonymous.

------
cema
At the moment I am reading this, several most recent (and, it seems, perfectly
legitimate) comments have been downvoted to zero: one by Mz
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1189009>), jacquesm
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1189007>), algorias
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1189004>), coryl
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1188999>), as well as arnorhs
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1188988>) and pbhjpbhj
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1188906>). And a few minutes later, they
are now back in the positive.

Could it have been a case of vandalism?

------
dpcan
I agree with it "costing" something to down-vote, I actually thought it
already did.... hmm.

However, when you click the down-arrow, what if it prompted you with options
like Digg does (minus an "other" option) as to why you are down voting, and
you have to choose one.

If the reason why you are down voting is not listed, you learn pretty quickly
what reasons are valid for down voting.

~~~
tokenadult
_what if it prompted you with options like Digg does (minus an "other" option)
as to why you are down voting_

pg opened a thread a while ago asking options for flagging posts.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589>

~~~
dpcan
Didn't see that one.

------
xtho
What's so bad about downvoting comments you disagree with? IMHO the problem
rather is "kharma whoring", which is incited by the possibility of
accumulating kharma. IMHO2 those points should be only relevant for sorting
articles and comments but there should be now way to hoard "points" on a user
level.

------
almost
This has been discussed to death many times. The system isn't perfect and
various meanings get assigned to downvotes. I believe pg was considering a
separate voting axis for uncivil messages, maybe he'll do that but I don't
think there's any use us discussing this yet again.

------
coryl
This is one of the flaws of the upvote/downvote system, it can give people a
bit of a mob mentality where making a comment or opinion disappear is as easy
as a click (and anonymously too).

Maybe downvotes could cost the voter karma, or have a higher bar for who can
downvote.

------
slater
pg should just start charging a nominal fee for new user accounts. Cuts down
on trolls AND spammers.

~~~
wynand
This is a cool idea. I'm just wondering how people without credit cards would
be able to join (I know quite a few people who don't have credit cards).
Perhaps via a premium SMS (very few people have neither a mobile nor a credit
card).

------
andrewcooke
what bothers me most about downvotes is their _passive aggressive_ nature -
when you get a downvote but no explanation. that, more than anything, has made
me consciously try to ignore karma.

------
RevRal
I don't like drive-by downvotes, is basically how I feel about it.

~~~
tokenadult
What do you mean by "drive-by downvotes"? Some comments are more apt to elicit
written responses than others. Sometimes a downvote is a user's efficient use
of time to improve the quality of the forum, saving time for posting written
responses in other subthreads.

~~~
RevRal
:)

I mostly mean downvotes without an explanation, which you discerned.
Technically, a drive-by downvote would be a subset of "downvoting without an
explanation," since you're not always drive-by downvoting if you're not giving
an explanation. Some comments just don't belong, and those comments are
normally obvious.

I often get the impression that the downvoters did not read a comment too
carefully, quickly passed judgment without thinking about it too much,
downvoted, then moved on. Hence, the other reason I call them drive-by
downvotes.

It is annoying to see a reasonable comment downvoted to 0, or less. I feel
like I'm missing something and what I'm missing is an explanation. Why was the
comment voted down? Then the comment gets voted up. I'll never know why the
comment was downvoted, and it feels like a small loss. What's happening here
can play out in different scenarios. So, that's it. I wish there was more
explaining going on, and perhaps people would be less disposed to pass
thoughtless judgment.

It is what it is. The submitter asked for our thoughts about the downvote
system, so if there's one thing that I'm going to complain about -- and I
don't mean to say that this is a horrible, horrible phenomenon -- it's drive-
by downvotes.

------
lucifer
The problem is that we are given a single qualifier that is then conflated to
represent a variety of reactions.

Even just one additional qualifier would go a long way to disambiguate the
community opinion.

