
Ask HN: Two sets of upvoting/downvoting buttons? - kinkdr
Do you think it would make sense if forums like hackernews&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;etc.. would have two sets of upvote&#x2F;downvote buttons?<p>The first set would be used as a &quot;contributes to discussion - vs - does not contribute&#x2F;flame&quot; indicator, while the second set would be used for &quot;I agree&#x2F;support this view - vs - I disagree&#x2F;don&#x27;t support it&quot;.<p>The usage of the voting at the moment seems a bit unsymmetrical, the up button is usually used to show support of the argument, while the down button is used, correctly the most times, to indicate a comment that is inflammatory&#x2F;troll or doesn&#x27;t add anything to the discussion.
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wvenable
I've thought this as well but you probably only need 3 buttons: agree,
disagree, and inappropriate.

Basically pressing either agree or disagree is also saying that it contributes
to the discussion. Clicking inappropriate is the same as downvoting as it is
now. Finding the right terminology might be difficult.

I'd love to see this as an experiment to see how it changes the discussions
here.

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DanBC
Isn't this what HN has? Up, down, and flag?

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wvenable
No because "down" doesn't mean "disagree" \-- down votes cause comments to
sort lower and negative amounts will gray out the comment. "Flag" kills the
comment if deemed by moderators as inappropriate.

In this proposal, "disagree" and "agree" are both the same as "up".

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kahrkunne
I don't think there's any point to having agree/disagree buttons. What should
they do, push posts down that most people disagree with? Clearly that would be
a mistake and a sure way to create an echo chamber.

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clusmore
It's funny that I agree with you and my first instinct was to upvote (and I
did). But I can justify that as being because "it's an interesting point that
I think more people should read."

I think people will always want to be able to express whether they
agree/disagree with things, and if you provide good/bad content buttons but
not agree/disagree, a lot of people would just abuse the good/bad content
buttons which would largely defeat their purpose. I agree that the ratio of
agree/disagree should have no bearing on the order that threads are displayed.
So perhaps the purpose of agree/disagree could just be to give users a way to
express their opinions without compromising the good/bad voting, and maybe
even allow users to find old content they agree/disagreed with.

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skylark
I'd argue that the UX for up/downvoting is already correct. Vote up if you
agree, down if you disagree. It's intuitive and how most people use those
buttons.

You can attack this problem from a different angle: Factor the number of
reports/flags into the karma calculation and unweight downvoting itself. The
report button on Reddit is essentially a "this content is inappropriate"
button - why not use it as a part of the scoring system?

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relearn
It is important that in a system where you have an interaction between groups
with differing opinions that neither side has more influence over the rating
(score?,metric?) in question. If I agree with a post I can perform the single
action of upvoting; however, if I disagree I can downvote _and_ report. This
leaves more power in the hands of those who disagree, and would almost
certainly be abused.

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grzm
Five buttons total:

\- two sets of buttons: agree/disagree & good/bad argument

\- one flag button for inappropriate/abuse

Edit to add: karma calculations left as an exercise for the reader ;)

