
Ask HN: Should you downvote based on disagreement alone? - reitzensteinm
This came out of a discussion in the comments of this post:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3760013<p>I'm getting more and more frustrated with the amount of downvoting on HN recently. Otherwise rational arguments that happen to contain unpopular opinions are the canonical example, but sometimes the reasons are just puzzling.<p>So I thought I'd make this post, so we could discuss it as a community - is it OK, or is it not?<p>In my opinion, in addition to being rude, it's ineffective; the person who got downvoted is never going to change their opinion based on what you say, and it's important to keep in mind that they're not always wrong; many times I've replied with a disagreement, and either learned something or changed my mind completely.<p>Obvious trolling or childish arguments are a different kettle of fish; we're actively trying to push those people off of HN, which is what we're doing by hitting the downvote arrow.<p>What does everyone else think? I'm happy to be proved wrong about this, but I think it's important to have the discussion, and I'm not sure we have recently.<p>As pointed out by avree, pg five years ago said it is OK, because people upvote based on agreement:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
======
pbreit
No. I really dislike that downvoting is used merely for disagreement. I think
it hurts the discussion by discouraging or even silencing unpopular views, the
worst thing that can happen to intelligent discussion. There's probably some
sort of solve by reserving downvoting privileges for thjose with karma or some
other proxy on "understands what makes for quality discussion".

------
pbhjpbhj
With comment scores visible we used to have a system where people voted in the
direction of the score they felt a comment should get. So a well placed but
highly dislike comment wouldn't be [very] negative but it wouldn't get a high
score either. A well liked opinion put poorly similarly wouldn't get a high
score as people would vote it down if it was getting too much credit, etc..

There's barely any comment that I find disagreeable enough or so poorly
presented that I think it deserves to be greyed out (censoring dissent) and so
whilst I barely ever vote now on comments I find mostly I vote up comments
that I disagree with but are well put or highlight a worthy antithesis or
what-have-you but have gone grey. Also I'm finding that I need to highlight
things to read them; further worsening the usability of the site.

Personally I think my ideal would have a Slashdot-style differentiation of
agreement, quality, humour, and what have you.

I've actually tried moving back to Slashdot but it seems the community there
isn't what it was.

------
lsiebert
I favor cogent and on topic comments over agreement with my views or
formatting to site convention. Even if I think you are wrong, I will upvote
what you say if you lay out your thoughts clearly. And I hope when I'm wrong
or ignorant but cogent, people will do the same.

------
papaf
I completely agree. I just saw a C++ thread where someone has posted decent
enough code and its greyed out without a response.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3757762>

How code can be greyed out on "Hacker" News while opinion gets high ratings is
beyond me.

~~~
SamReidHughes
I would have downvoted it. He posted a big honking main function and other
irrelevant parts of code.

~~~
reitzensteinm
But how much effort is it to reply and say "Please use pastebin for large code
segments"? Isn't that a much nicer and more effective way to make sure he
doesn't do it again?

------
twelvechairs
I completely agree. There is far much downvoting purely based on 'i disagree'
even if the post brings up some interesting and valid points.

It makes you think twice before providing constructive criticism.

Why not just remove the down vote altogether? Have a 'flag as unconstructive'
or something.

I'm not even so sure the upvote should only be for things you agree with. If
someone makes a good point, even if you disagree with their conclusions, I
think that is worthy also.

------
vacri
A simple solution is just to revert to showing vote numbers, but not affecting
the comment whether the vote is positive or negative. Then have a separate
system for flagging comments (like articles are), and comments that are
flagged get the grey treatment. It separates the 'I disagrees' from the 'this
is bad content'.

Flagging should still have some minor hurdle - like a click through page or
similar - otherwise it'll still be too trivial to silence folks with
dissimilar views, something that a site catering to self-appointed mavericks
should be concerned about.

As it stands, a single dissenter can discredit you with no accountability
whatsoever, and this causes much frustration.

------
DanBC
I wish people would save down-votes for "comments which should not appear on
HN".

I wish people would leave some kind of comment about down-votes.

Downvote based on disagreement causes unpleasant environment.

Perhaps a different mechanism for "agree", "disagree", "doesn't belong here"
and "obvious spam" could be found? Because at the moment there is confusion
over "disagree".

~~~
kinleyd
I tend to agree that using a down vote to express disagreement eventually
isn't constructive. I've seen a number of posts that didn't say anything
objectionable or controversial, nor were meaningless in the context of the
discussion, and yet were down modded.

My theory is that while the risk of being down modded on HN is a helpful
factor in keeping discussions more courteous than on an out-and-out anonymous
forum, the same cannot be said of down votes, which are in fact anonymous. As
a result, users tend to be more careless or perhaps even callous in the use of
down votes. I'm not sure what the solution is though: making down votes
transparent might help in creating a bit more discreetness in their use, but
might spill things over into flame wars into the comments themselves when
exercised. Still, I think it's the total anonymity that causes its over use.

@DanBC: I think your suggestion for agree, disagree, etc. provides better
granularity to the process. Strong up vote for you.

------
hef19898
While it's pretty clear when you are upvoted on agreement, you could at least
leave a short comment or reason why you down voted someone. Feed-back,
positive or negative, alsways helps a discussion and is, at least as far as I
am concerned a question of politeness.

------
VMG
The downvote button should be replaced with a "flag" link (the two arrows are
too close anyway)

~~~
ranit8
A flag link becomes available while you are writing a reply post.

------
CookWithMe
Isn't the whole point of reading comments to get more views on the matter?

If all (upvoted) comments say the same thing, I wouldn't bother to read them.

~~~
DanBC
Eh, are you saying that's why it's important not to downvote comments just for
disagreement? So they don't get grey (and eventually dead)?

~~~
CookWithMe
Yes. At least for me, the value proposition of reading comments is that I get
further (and propably different) insights from reading the comments on the
topic.

If there is just one opinion in the comments (because everything else is
greyed out) why would one bother to read them at all?

------
electrichead
I think that this could have been a poll. It seems that some people either
don't have the time, or don't take the time to write a comment. That's why the
arrows are so tempting. We should remember though that you don't get access to
the down vote until your karma is at a certain level. I don't know what that
is since I haven't hit it yet.

------
AznHisoka
I don't downvote anyone, but I occasionally upvote the occasional useless
comment everyone else downvotes.. just for kicks.

------
bdfh42
Disagreement is a key component of an interesting discussion (well sometimes).
Down-voting as a short cut to contributing to the discussion is pretty
childish - if people do not care enough to make their point in words then they
should totally refrain for participating.

I trust HNrs will reserve down-votes for off-topic, rude or spam comments.

~~~
snth
You trust? Unfortunately, unless something is put in place that makes it clear
this is intended (in the site guidelines, or by changing the down arrow to
something else), this won't change.

------
polyfractal
What saddens me is not that these discussions happen with alarming frequency,
it's that people always come up with relatively good solutions to the problems
discussed...which pg never implements.

Conversely, pg posts relatively frequent _"ho hum the quality of HN is
declining"_ posts, but I never see him address how he'd like to fix the site.

------
_rj
So after being a long time lurker on HN, wrote my first comment and got
downvoted, but don't know why I was downvoted, there were no comments. I
prefer replying during disagreement and downvoting when a comment/post doesn't
make sense or gets stretched in a different direction.

