
More downvoted comments over the past couple months? - AceJohnny2
I&#x27;ve been using HN for over 5 years. Over the past month or two, I&#x27;ve started noticing that many more valid comments are grayed out from having negative scores.<p>I notice this because these comments are valid and useful, and clearly show some interest and effort on the part of the commenter. They&#x27;re not rants or trolls, but contribute to the conversation. (Random example: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9423442)<p>Considering the recent post by Sam Altman about avoiding negativity on HN [1], I&#x27;m curious to understand what shift happened in the community. Has there been a memo that I missed about keeping things fiercely on-topic? Have more people been given downvote power and we&#x27;re seeing the random result?<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ycombinator.com&#x2F;new-hacker-news-guideline<p>Edit: I see this post is getting more comments than upvotes, which will lead to it being flagged as &quot;controversial&quot; [2] and penalized :(<p>[2] see the always awesome Ken Shirriff&#x27;s analysis: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.righto.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html
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minimaxir
Note that be average score for comments has been trending downward though
2014, up to Oct 2014: [http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-
comments/monthly_average_points....](http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-
comments/monthly_average_points.png) (via [http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-
comments-about-comments/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-
comments/) )

Unfortunately, I can't get more up-to-date data on comment scores because HN
closed the loophole I used to get comment scores immediately after that post,
which is disappointing.

~~~
thaumaturgy
As an aside, I'm disappointed too that comment scores are no longer available.
I stopped crawling HN comments altogether when that happened; they became
roughly as valuable as Reddit comments, since there was no longer an easy way
to separate valuable comments from not-valuable ones.

~~~
krapp
>since there was no longer an easy way to separate valuable comments from not-
valuable ones

You could read them, and if you don't like them, stop reading them. Granted,
it's harder to automate, but if the tradeoff is having to engage with more of
the narrative of a thread then I don't know that that's a bad trade. So many
variables can go into a comment score that the actual number becomes less
meaningful than the sort order of the threads themselves.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _You could read them, and if you don 't like them, stop reading them._

The snark isn't necessary. It's probably safe to assume I had set up a thing
which would inject into my news feed comments above a certain threshold for
certain users in threads I might not come across otherwise -- since that's
exactly what I was doing.

I don't read HN threads very often anymore. Something about too many people
trying to out-snark other people without breaking the rules of decorum here
made it feel too skeezy.

Damn, now I'm doing it too. That's the other thing -- my mood in general has
improved a lot ever since I stopped being a very active HN user a year and a
half or so ago.

~~~
krapp
Apologies for the snark, but to me, pulling popular comments from certain
posters out of context into a feed sort of undermines the point of the forum
altogether, which is the conversation as a whole.

I won't push the point though, but when people start treating a site like this
as a feed instead of a forum, _then_ I think the quality of the site is
diminished.

~~~
NhanH
It doesn't have to be out of context: not all comment threads are equal, and
it makes a lot of sense to pull to your feed certain threads based on the
aggregate upvote count of all comments in the thread (or just pull the whole
thread if it has any highly upvoted comment). That's easily a good way to de-
noise any popular thread (which could be a non-productive flame war)

------
DanBC
1) That post appears to be factually incorrect, so people downvote it.

2) Did you upvote it? Why not? You've said you think it was unfairly
downvoted. A few people have downvotes but everyone with an account can
upvote. One or two people downvoted that comment. How many people didn't
upvote it?

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ChuckMcM
Two potential effects, one is that as more people reach the cutoff level to
down vote they do, and two as people grow the community, opinions about what
should merit a down vote evolves.

Some services use up/down votes strictly for 'like it'/'didn't like it' others
are more nuanced. Might be nice to add an interstitial for 'new' downvoters to
check their understanding of the intent but I don't imagine it will change.

~~~
AceJohnny2
> Some services use up/down votes strictly for 'like it'/'didn't like it'

Yeah, this is what I really hope HN can avoid, which is why I brought the
topic up. Such a trend can only lead to an echo chamber effect and a community
that refuses to be challenged.

~~~
brudgers
There are healthy ways the HN community can be challenged. Given that it is a
community rather than an individual the domain of challenges are those
appropriate for communities in general and the unique aspects of HN in
particular. What is and isn't appropriate is a variation of HN's community
sentiment toward political topics.

Some opinions are meant to foster discussion. Others are meant to invite
disagreement or structured with a disregard for that potential. Cargo culting
is less if an issue than trolling behavior, in my opinion, and the diversity
of ideas I see on HN has increased from the days when mentioning Microsoft in
a positive light or Apple in a negative one invited downvotes to grey.

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adwf
I've taken to mostly using my upvote as a means of reverting other peoples bad
downvotes. I think they should just take downvoting away entirely.

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ojbyrne
My impression is there's a lot more moderation going on.

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DiabloD3
I've noticed a shift to where people downvote if they don't agree with a
comment instead of using at it was intended to downvote bad comments.

I wonder if comment downvoting needs further restrictions; I'm tired of having
to make "I don't know why parent is getting downvoted" type comments to get
people to reconsider downvoting.

~~~
DanBC
> I've noticed a shift to where people downvote if they don't agree with a
> comment instead of using at it was intended to downvote bad comments.

It's not a shift. It was accepted practice for a thousand days before you had
this account.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

~~~
yellowapple
And it's still a practice with rather disturbing implications, seeing as how
downvoting causes a comment to fade further and further; it implies that
dissenting comments (regardless of their validity) are worthy of being
silenced.

~~~
Torgo
I don't believe that "downvote to disagree" is compatible with "encouraging
intellectual diversity". I tend to only do it when disagrees particularly
poorly, eg bad evidence or reasoning, or is being a jerk. But I definitely
have noticed more downvoting in the last couple months, of myself and others
where it didn't feel like the downvoters were interested in suffering the
existence of disagreement.

~~~
brudgers
Yep. I down vote instead of "wrestling a pig in a mudpit." This thread is a
perfect example. I'm not going to convince anyone who is _complaining about
downvoting in disagreement_ that downvoting for disagreement is good because
they are _complaining about_ rather than _enquiring into_ the use of
downvotes.

Stick around long enough and you realize it all evens out over time, wrong
upvotes balance wrong downvotes...or in some sorts of threads overwhelm
them...and the way to avoid diwnvotes is to write better comments. Accusing
'other people' of bad behavior is a lazy injustice.

