
Ask HN: Have you up-vote someone you disagreed with today? - jballanc
I feel like there's been an interesting shift in the comments recently: not in their quality, but in how the community is reacting to them. What I've noticed is that there seem to be a growing number of light-dark-light-dark-light threads. That is, a comment voted down, followed by a response voted up, followed by a riposte voted down, etc.<p>Perhaps it's not my place to say, but I've always been under the impression that comment votes are there to evaluate whether the comment adds to the discussion or not. Votes should not be a measure of whether you agree with the point. When I see long threads of alternating up-down voting in comments, I think one of two things is happening:<p>1. Individuals are voting based on alignment of views.<p>2. People are responding to comments that don't add to the conversation.<p>If there is a long chain of follow-up comments, it seems self-evident that the comment added to the discussion, and probably shouldn't be voted down. If you feel that a comment doesn't add to the discussion, vote it down and move along; no need to reply.<p>So the question: when was the last time you up-voted a comment you disagreed with, but which added to the conversation nonetheless?
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noodle
i do not up-vote comments i disagree with. however, i also do not down-vote
them.

i only down-vote the irrelevant/spammy/obnoxious responses. the responses that
don't add any value to a discussion.

this way, if someone says something unpopular or whatever, they're not
penalized (by me, at least). they're just not really rewarded so much, either.

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scott_s
Twenty minutes ago. I actually voted up someone who had responded to me. I
didn't agree with their point, but someone had voted them to 0. It was still a
valid part of the discussion, so I voted it back up to 1.

If I disagree with a comment, and it's at 1, I won't upvote it. But if it's
less than one, I'll correctively upvote it.

~~~
jballanc
I think replies to my own comments are actually easier to up-vote than
comments as I'm browsing them. Generally, my rule is that if you reply to me
and tell me something new (i.e. not just agreeing), you get an up-vote. If I'm
replying to you, you (and usually everyone above you) almost always get an up-
vote. After all, you got me to reply (something I don't do with very high
frequency).

~~~
jacquesm
that's a good strategy.

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TrevorJ
I always up vote anyone who responds to me with well-articulated points,
regardless of whether I agree with them or not. As long as they have taken the
time to explain a viewpoint in a manner that contributes to the conversation I
feel that it is worthy of consideration.

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DanielBMarkham
We've kicked this one around since the day HN went public.

Single-dimension voting is broken. It's a known bug. Given a single way to
respond, users are going to vote emotions over substance on a ratio of
something like 20:1.

Nobody has a solution that is easy to use.

Film at Eleven.

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po
Occasionally, there will be a patient person in a heated debate with a jerk.
That's when I expect zebra stripe commenting. I think people will naturally
up-vote a comment they agree with more than one they don't. If the tone of all
comments is civil, and the argument is well thought out, I wouldn't expect to
see light colored comments. Maybe scores of 1, 37, 2, 54 etc... but not
comments downmodded to being light colored. I haven't been seeing that too
much.

Perhaps we can see some examples of what you're talking about?

~~~
jballanc
I agree that it's easier to up-vote someone you agree with. That's part of the
reason I posted this question. To me, it's akin to the whole "do a good turn
daily" idea. It's not that holding the door open for someone is hard, but that
it's so easy to just walk through and not look back. (Though, I think
entertaining the thoughts of someone you're disinclined to agree with does
more good than holding open doors.)

As for examples, I must admit I didn't queue up links in preparation. A quick
browse of the front page turns up this one, though:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=739752>

Sure, the initial commenter was using crude language, but his comment spurred
a discussion that went at least 7 levels deep and expressed a strong yet
debatable position.

( _Edit_ From the same post, a bit further up, and illustrates the point a bit
better I think: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740067>)

~~~
po
I see what you're saying… but don't confuse depth of a thread for quality. I
think the first comment was down-modded for language and then typical troll-
baited discussion took over. The second one is definitely a better example
because the tone is better.

Actually, now that I think about it, I once got down-modded for a comment that
I felt was reasonable in tone and content. A little snarky maybe:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713004> It was political though and I
think political topics encourage this kind of behavior. Makes you feel like
giving up when you know that there are other users who just want to censor
other opinions. That is probably why people rail against the political topic
stories here on hacker news. It's less about not being interested in political
discussions as much as they don't like topics that encourage division.

It's really crazy what attaching some magic reputation "points" to an activity
can do to it. People go absolutely nuts over points. I would have to agree
with a point made earlier on this one that it is time to consider hiding the
scores, or at least de-emphasizing them. Mob behavior will be fueled by them.

~~~
jacquesm
The same happens with the 'momentum', if something is on the way down it seems
like everybody has to add their stone to the castigation, and if it is on the
way up and listed first then it will pick up more points than later but better
reasoned out replies at the same level. There is definitely some kind of
feedback going on there.

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anamax
I'm beginning to think that it's time to hide the points totals.

~~~
jballanc
Might not be the worst suggestion in the world. After all, the goal is to help
the cream rise to the top, yes? We don't really need to know how many votes
the top has for that to happen...

