

Is negative reputation abused on HN? - laumars
http://pastebin.com/u9aUqtxH

======
kevinskii
As a fairly frequent downvoter, I should probably explain my rationale so that
others may retaliate accordingly. These are the main types of comments I tend
to downvote:

1\. _" This."_ Unless you're adding something substantive, please don't say
it.

2\. _Piling on._ If you're saying exactly the same thing that your only
sibling comment said 2 hours ago in a single sentence, please don't say it.

3\. _This website 's design sucks._ Not everyone on HN is a web developer. If
you don't like the font choice on a blog about Galois theory, kindly inform
the author directly.

4\. _Useless side-tracking from the main point._ Some side-tracking is
interesting. If you teach me something about 14th century linguistics while
commenting on an article about peanuts, I'll probably upvote you. But if you
want make a snarky aside about Americans buying too much bottled water when
the article is about life in Egypt, please consider not saying it.

5\. _Unnecessarily rude or dismissive._ "Your design fails on so many levels."

Even though this describes a lot of comments, I'd estimate my upvote/downvote
ratio at about 5:1. Finally, I don't view a downvote as necessarily a negative
thing. It simply means, "This particular comment does not contribute to this
particular discussion." I've been downvoted before, usually rightly so. I
still manage to feel warm and fuzzy inside and you should too.

~~~
krapp
I don't really see 4 as a problem, at least not on a threaded forum.
Subthreads are supposed to go on tangents, that's what they're for - the
deeper you go, the further away you get from the abstract subject involving
everyone to more and more context-specific conversations between fewer and
fewer people. It is a discussion forum after all, you can't expect everyone to
play for the crowd.

Although - this fact doesn't really work to Hacker News' benefit at the
moment, since it doesn't support folding threads by default (though apparently
that's coming) so side-tracking can be more of a bother than it probably
should.

------
cheald
The purpose of downvotes is ill-defined; some people use it as a spam-control
button, some people use it as a "this post doesn't contribute to the
discussion" (which is itself subjective, and is a subset of:), some people use
it as a "your opinion is wrong" button. All are valid use cases, IMO.

The third case is the most controversial one, but...we use the upvote arrow to
say "your opinion is right", and nobody complains about it. In a scenario
where it's invalid to say "your opinion is wrong", it's also invalid to say
"your opinion is right", at which point we might as well just remove the
up/downvotes and replace them with a single "flag" button, which will still
get abused to minimize opinions people disagree with.

Really, what I think you're experiencing is just the growth of the readership,
your own aging and the perspective that comes with it, and the natural
tendency of online communities to trend towards middle-of-the-road, safe
discussion. That can't really be fixed democratically, IMO, because it is the
democratic nature of the system which enables those problems in the first
place.

Unless you can figure out how to make the _upvote_ button always mean "this
post empirically contributes new thoughts or ideas to the discussion", and
nothing else, then attempts to fix the downvote button will be half-measures
at best.

Out of idle curiosity: Is anyone aware of a zero-sum karma system, where the
total sum of karma in the system is roughly a function of the active userbase,
and granting reputation to someone else costs you some of your own? That might
make for a fun little economy-in-a-bubble.

------
anonbanker
I'm starting to experience this personally [1] [2]. in the past two weeks, my
posts are getting systematically buried by people that disagree with me. In
response, I've been trying to make more controversial posts. I have a decent
amount of karma to burn (lost 10 points in 2 days), but I'm definitely seeing
a trend. Politically unpopular opinions have been downvoted to all hell, but I
am unable to be sure if this isn't just the people in the conversation with me
downvoting my posts.

I have, however, been scraping the bottom of the comment barrel, and have
found quite a few gems that were clearly buried due to disagreements with the
premise of the post, rather than the HN guidelines.

my basic rule of thumb is: upvote everything I reply to, whether or not I
disagree. if I see grey text, and it isn't an obvious troll (or meets the
criteria kevinskii talks about), I upvote.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8434094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8434094)

2\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8417226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8417226)

~~~
DanBC
I would guess that in [2] you were downvoted for incomprehensibility and then,
in the reply posts in that sub-thread, for tone.

It does seem a bit odd to say that you have been experimenting with bad postig
style and to then complain that people have downvoted you because of it.

> rather than the HN guidelines.

Please could you link to the bit of guidelines that you're talking about?

~~~
anonbanker
> you were downvoted for incomprehensibility

see, that's the funny part. it was a thread about the right to remain silent,
and I was explaining that Silence = consent/agreement. when I brought the
other poster's silence up as agreement, I was buried to -3.

Did you have a problem comprehending my post, with the point of the discussion
in mind? do you believe the moderation was fair (main post was at 0)?

I fully accept that I am attempting to be controversial. I usually don't state
my actual opinions for fear of being downvoted. But now that I have sufficient
karma to avoid hellbanning (for at least a while), I figured I could give
experimenting with moderation habits a try by speaking thing I believe.

> Please could you link to the bit of guidelines that you're talking about?

see my other reply to you. You were absolutely correct about there being no
regulation for when/when not to downvote.

EDIT: tried to explain controversial opinions a little

~~~
anonbanker
also, seeing as you're paying attention, here's[1] another one I'm watching
get downvoted due to disagreement. Do you think the moderation is appropriate?

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8434094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8434094)

~~~
kevinskii
In this comment you offered the same theory about "pump and dump" that many
others had over an hour earlier. It wasn't anything new. And the idea that
Apple's demise would lead to the rise of Ubuntu is, well, let's just again say
that I didn't (and won't) downvote you.

~~~
anonbanker
that's a very polite way to disagree. :)

I'm not very concerned about non-interested parties (such as yourself)
downvoting. mainly, I'm interested in how much sockpuppetry is actually going
on. it's relatively trivial to make a bunch of posts using a myriad of
nicknames (I have 5+ abandoned accounts with more than 500 karma each - lost
the password to all of them), so I'm fairly certain that if a random sociopath
had enough time, he could easily game the comments of a thread.

------
cpncrunch
IMO this is one of the major problems with HN these days. Any mildly
controversial or unpopular viewpoint get downvoted, even if factually correct.

I think that you should be forced to leave a comment if you downvote,
explaining why you downvoted and giving the OP a chance to respond.

~~~
DanBC
Forced comments on downvotes is a suboptimal idea. I would far rather someone
drops an "I disagree downvote" and ignores a post than have pointless "I
downvoted you because I disagree with you" threads.

~~~
cpncrunch
I looked through your comments, and you don't seem to have many downvotes. In
fact I didn't see a single one in two pages of your comment history. Perhaps
we all just need to do whatever you're doing :)

------
minimaxir
I've actually done an analysis on all Hacker News comments:
[http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-
comments/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/)

The arguments in this submission are mostly anecdotal, and the plural of
anecdote is not data. What the data shows is that the average comment karma is
decreasing in 2014, but that could be from a combination of downvotes and
people making new comments which aren't engaging enough to score an upvote,
and therefore it would bring the average down.

In retrospect, I should have made a chart of "How has the proportion of
downvoted comments changed over the years?"

------
suyash
Couldn't have agreed more. I was burnt couple of times either by moderators or
other HN'rs last few posts which were totally legitimate but received bunch of
down votes. The commenting system seems to be broken in this case. If there
was another website like HN, I wouldn't mind switching over in a minute :)

------
metaphorm
I think the real problem being highlighted here is that of aggressively
enforced cultural conformity. there are some things that the HN community does
not permit to be said. its censorship. that's how the system was designed of
course. it does create an echo chamber and its supposed to.

------
DanBC
If you downvote too frequently the software detects it and stops your
downvoting from having any effect. (I think?)

Downvotes for poor reasons are often corrected.

Some topics attract a disproportionate amount of downvoting. This is a good
thing because those topics are intensely but shallowly interesting and the
downvotes should be training people to avoid those threads. (Except people
seem to say "the downvotes prove me right")

I can't think of an example where I received a "bad" downvote. I'm kind of
surprised I haven't got more.

~~~
krapp
> This is a good thing because those topics are intensely but shallowly
> interesting and the downvotes should be training people to avoid those
> threads.

This is not an objective fact, though. This is just your personal taste (and
obviously, that of downvoters who would agree with you.)

It's entirely possible (and I would argue, preferable) to avoid threads you
don't find interesting without having to 'train' others to agree with you.
Just don't read them.

~~~
DanBC
But then /new has more of those submissions, and the site attracts more people
who enjoy reading shallowly but intensely interesting articles and people who
enjoy heat not light in threads.

Communities need to be careful about what they accept otherwise they get
destroyed.

------
nkurz
Could the author of this post offer some specific examples that they would
consider abuse? My feeling is that while what he describes happens, on
average, good comments survive and bad/unhelpful ones are buried.

The hard problem is keeping the benefits of the current system while also
improving it. Perhaps a 'worstcomments' list that could be periodically
reviewed for abuse, alongside 'bestcomments':
[https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments)

~~~
minimaxir
There is no "worstcomments": all comments which hit -5 are autokilled.

The -4 comments are pretty terrible, though.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfbSDYVBXiHZCuMdHXgp...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfbSDYVBXiHZCuMdHXgprhmeCVc4XDtOGizF9CSGyUo/edit?usp=sharing)

~~~
dang
> all comments which hit -5 are autokilled

That's not true. What made you think that?

~~~
kevinskii
I remember one of my comments that was downvoted to oblivion. I think I lost
about 11 points on it, and yet the lowest it ever showed was -4. Is that by
design?

~~~
dang
No; it's an accidental consequence of a change we made earlier this year, and
is temporary, i.e. we intend to change it back.

