

Thank goodness we don't have downmods on HN - raganwald

From time to time I have wanted a downmod button. Today there was some linkbait on the front page--something about real programmers not using abstractions or what-not--and my first thought was that the best thing to do is to ignore these posts.<p>And then it hit me: downmodding is not ignoring. Neither is upmodding everything else. Sure, there's some imaginary value of pushing it off the front page quickly, but if people naturally upmod the things they like, it will drop off the front page in due time.<p>Trying to accelerate that process for things I don't like is getting emotionally invested in them. Why give them the time of day? The very best use of our time is working on the things that matter. Downmodding stuff is not working on things that matter.<p>Thinking about good posts isn't either, but it's a lot closer to things that matter.<p>I'll stop now. My thesis is this: not having a downmod button is a good thing if you believe that you should be channeling your time and energy into things that matter.
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stcredzero
Also, this eliminates the gaming of downmods. A few downmods early in the life
of a headline are very significant, so it's easy to game this with just a few
cohorts. A few upmods are also significant, but this is often dwarfed by the
deluge of upmods on a genuinely popular link. The action of the crowd doesn't
have as strong a self-correcting effect on downmod conspiracy, because the
crowd's exposure to the downmodded links is lessened.

There is a parallel in behavioral psychology: punishment can be a powerful
tool, but can often backfire. So positive reinforcement is seen by many as the
preferred tool.

~~~
Hexstream
If you're so worried about downmods early in the life of a submission, how
about this:

Between P and P + H, where P is when the submission was Posted and H is some
(constant?) number of hours, any downmods on the submission increment the
downmod count but this has no effect whatsoever on the ranking. When we hit P
+ H, the downmods are made effective. An upmod on a story cancels a downmod.

Then if a story has lots of inappropriate early downmods but is actually
interesting, it will get high on the front page and the mass of legitimate
upmods will cancel the illegitimate downmods.

Showing the number of effective downmods (abs (- downmods upmods)) on a story
might or might not be appropriate.

~~~
stcredzero
The simplest thing that culd possibly work: just leave the feature out. Less
code that way.

~~~
Hexstream
Implementing that feature would likely take less characters than it took me to
explain it. It's more a matter of is it a good idea at all, so unless you can
come up with a scenario where we end up worse with this feature than
without...

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TimothyFitz
I wouldn't mind a placebo downmod. Just to get those feelings out.

~~~
qqq
That's not ignoring. So you are disagreeing with Raganwald, but haven't said
which of his points you believe is mistaken.

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thaumaturgy
This strikes me very strongly as looking for justification for something
beyond our control. "I can't change this, so I'll convince myself that I like
it."

Let's look at the ability to upmod a submission. Upmodding a submission
expresses approval of the submission, and signals to other users that it might
be something that they would find interesting. Ultimately, the goal of
upmodding is to increase the perceived quality of the site.

Downmodding expresses disapproval of a submission, and, again, its ultimate
goal is to increase the perceived quality of the site.

While downmodding is vulnerable to a certain amount of gaming, that is a
problem with its mechanics, not its principle, and upmodding is vulnerable to
the exact same form of gaming.

If poorer quality items tend to get upmodded, and if there's no way to counter
that, then the site's quality falls and eventually the site itself becomes the
sort of waste of time that you're talking about.

Regardless, downmods aren't likely to be implemented at any point in the near
future, and this entire discussion is a waste of time. I'm a little annoyed at
myself for participating, but ... y'know ... someone on the internet was
wrong. [<http://xkcd.com/386/>]

[Edit] P.S.: You miss your blog, don't you? :-)

~~~
raganwald
_[Edit] P.S.: You miss your blog, don't you? :-)_

No. Exchanging ideas like this is not the same thing as blogging, no matter
how much Web 2.0 people call the Internet a "conversation."

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I miss your blog though... :(

------
13ren
_[downmodding things I don't like] is getting emotionally invested in them._

I have this experience too, even for comments. On reddit, where downmodding a
comment makes its down-arrow blue, it increases my attachment to it (partly
because it makes them more visible - unlike HN's greying out).

Every so often on reddit, I'll downmod to express my frustration, but then
later put it back to neutral, because I don't want to be attached to it. I
rarely downmod - and it even more rarely stays. I think this approach is not
common.

Is the issue of downmodding front-page because of the quality of recent HM
articles? I'm finding HN less interesting over the past week or so (one
symptom is the many recent meta-comments - including this one, unfortunately).
I was thinking it's due to the US holidays...

 _[thesis]: not having a downmod button is a good thing if you believe that
you should be channeling your time and energy into things that matter._

I agree. It's a bit like positive thinking, in that by attending to things
that can help you, when you need something you have at your fingertips useful
things - as opposed to filling your mind with things you don't like, when you
reach for something, all you have is rubbish (or worse, arguments for why
something isn't worthwhile).

But then there's the problem: what if HN starts suggesting many articles that
don't help you?

~~~
queensnake
Yes, by downmodding you help discourage people who post less HN-like stuff. I
guess we're relying on PG to bring his methods up to date.

~~~
13ren
I think pg's solution is to ignore what you don't like:

 _Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site._ <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

He's talking about "inappropriate for the site" submissions, not "poor
quality" submissions - but I think the same reasoning applies.

Perhaps the solution isn't a downmod button, but for the community to change
its response? To ignore bad submissions instead of commenting on how bad they
are. Commenting just draws attention to the submission and contributes to the
problem.

I think there's a deeper philosophy here, that it would be worth hearing more
about...

------
tjic
I'd like to have a button that says "hide from my view".

~~~
josefresco
I don't think that would serve the audience/community of Hacker News well at
all. If you're hiding stories that are popular, the _bad_ content is still
existing in the community and shaping the brand and therefore it's current and
new audience.

The benefit of Hackers News is the /users/, one only has to look at Digg to
see where that goes once you open the flood gates beyond the social geek core.

~~~
queensnake
.. as opposed to what? I'm not sure I get you. You sound like you're arguing
for a true downmod, to help hide it from /everyone/'s view.

~~~
briansmith
Upmod the good stories and ignore the bad ones. Eventually the bad ones will
get filtered out of view as the good stories rise.

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ericb
I propose: The first rule of Hacker News is you don't talk about Hacker News.

Maybe I'm alone in not finding a lot of value in meta-discussion unless pg
initiates it, though, because I see the parent post has quite a few points.

~~~
raganwald
I suggest that for every user of HN, there is at least one post that makes it
to #1 that the user feels should not be part of HN.

I know it is true for me, there are lots of popular posts that suprise me.
That being said, I have no problem whatsoever with adding your suggested rule
to the HN rules.

It would be much easier to understand than the curent "piques your
intellectual curiosity and is not limited to hacking and startups."

~~~
gaius
A 1-week delay between creating an account and being able to submit a story
would go a long way to cutting out spam, and not penalize those who haven't
had time to build karma yet but still want to contribute.

------
ambition
PG has remarkably good instincts about feature choices.

~~~
abstractbill
Funnily enough, when I wrote my own reddit clone (back when every Lisper was
doing it), I also reduced the choices from two to one. But I did the opposite
- I removed the up-arrow and only had the down-arrow. Maybe I have remarkably
_bad_ instincts ;-)

~~~
raganwald
Upmodded for candour, not because I think you were wrong. In fact, I think you
simulated most corporate environments: peopel are silent when they agree but
argue when they disagree :-)

------
ced
It all depends on the algorithm used behind the scene. Why would 1 downmod + 1
upmod = 0? Calling them up/down might be part of the framing issue that we're
stuck with since the reddit days.

Fun property of a system with upmod and downmod: If every user mentally
assigns a target score to a post (eg.: that comment should be worth 7 points)
and votes always in the direction to reach the target, then the resulting
score will be the median of all the targets. Statistically. That seems like a
desirable goal, so maybe one should encourage people to vote that way.

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hhm
I don't agree... I think it's better to have good content in the sites I
visit, than to get less than a few seconds a day back for downmodding links. I
prefer going to a good library, with many good chosen titles, than to a
terrible library, where I have to do the full filtering myself, wasting more
of my time by reading tons of useless book titles only to get one or two good
ones.

~~~
raganwald
It's not obvious to me that if everyone has a downmod button the library will
be better. Somebody is upmodding books you don't like. How do you know they
aren't downmodding the books you like?

I suggest that if the library has a few titles you don't like, going without a
downmod button is a good thing, just ignore them and move along.

But if the library is overrun with bad titles, giving everyone a downmod
button won't solve the problem, because the problem is caused by the
librarians.

~~~
hhm
Now, that's a good argument for not having a downmod button. But not having a
downmod button for avoiding wasting the people energy? That's what I don't
agree with.

~~~
raganwald
Well, the two motivations are orthogonal and neither is really right or wrong.
So I can appreciate your point of view.

~~~
hhm
My point of view is that I only care about the quality of articles on the
front page. If a downmod button would increase it, I would agree with such
proposal, but I'm not sure (as you said) that such would be the case, and
anyway I think the flag button does already work in a way like a big down
button.

What I do believe is that content can get better if people actively submit
more articles (so spending a little more energy in the site), not only by
voting the articles in the new queue.

Anyway I have the feeling that the quality of articles in the site isn't
always getting worse... these days I'm quite happy about it.

------
iamah
I've been noticing this log time since I join Reddit. In no time I was
confronted with the "injustices" of downmodding. You summarized very well, it
saves lots of energy, and creates a much more friendly community. I still
laugh when I read all the mod dramas on reddit comments... It's just savage...

------
1gor
Why to have downmods on comments then?

~~~
silentbicycle
Good question. Perhaps trolling and hostile (or at least "uncivil") comments
are better dealt with by different methods than spamming and irrelevant
submissions?

Their motivations are probably different, at least, and comments are moderated
by other people interested enough to read a particular thread's comments,
while front page posts affect everyone equally.

------
amoeba
I use Reddit a lot and I never use the downmod button but for spam (which I
should be using the `report` feature for). I think HN's decision to just have
the up-mod button is a incredibly intelligent one.

(But spam does still get to the front page of HN)

------
sh1mmer
I actually think that in some ways having a sucky post on the homepage can be
a good thing. For a newer developer reading the comments of their peers and
heroes smack down a turd like the "real programmers" post is a good thing.

If a terrible idea/post/rant makes it on to the frontpage there are obviously
some people that need the wisdom of this crowd to set them straight.

I love that HN is about positive energy. We don't downmod we explain why
something shouldn't be upmodded any more.

------
rams
Not having downmods lets new stories have a better chance of survival. Reddit
started going downhill when they failed to control downvoting. Stories posted
from outside the American time zones are especially vulnerable, since a couple
of downmods can push them into oblivion. I think PG made a very wise choice in
not having downmods. More importantly it poisons the atmosphere. Reddit in the
first few months was just plain incredible, much better than even the current
hacker news.

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azharcs
I think downmod button is necessary but in the right hands, People who care
about the good content. I would say, people with more karma points can have
have the downmod rights. This is not democracy per se since some users have
more rights than other users but it is a free market. People who have worked
more harder and earned more karma points tend to have more rights than early
users on HN.

~~~
greyman
I agree. I for one don't insist on having democracy here. If some other system
provides better overall quality, it's fine for me.

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invisible
PG should add rel="nofollow" to the link anchor for each comment... Then
google search would hypothetically just work.

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whiskeyjack
I agree. I think dzone is an example of downmod gone bad as well. There's so
many people who prefer technology X as opposed to Y that they downmod Y into
oblivion all the time. It's made the index pretty much useless to me.

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cmars232
I'd rather have a Bayesian filter than a downmod. Heck, it might even pick up
on self-referential forum language.

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hs
or ignoring upmod altogether, it's faster

i rarely use point because it's an easily gamed metric

nowaday i filter news based on #comments (and title)

and only follow comments with <= 3 levels deep (5 if interesting)

and start searching /pg /paul /nickb if it's a >50+ comments

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kirubakaran
Solution: a 'hide' button

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ChaitanyaSai
You just can't stop "blogging" can you? :)

~~~
raganwald
See my comment above, chatting with people that have similar interests is not
blogging. And had I put this in my blog, it would have been off-topic.

I probably would have written it up as a draft, left it for a few hours, then
deleted it as not being a net positive for what I was trying to accomplish.

~~~
ChaitanyaSai
I guess we have differing definitions of blogging; I consider a blog as
achieving the same goal of information transmission. From that perspective,
your posting could be considered a blog post that has eliminated one click in
route, but I can appreciate people having different perspectives of things,
blogging being one among them.

And about up and down buttons, current social news system are still
inefficient and primitive. Consider this scenario: HN has two non-overlapping
audiences, one English-speaking and the other Japanese. Now consider every
front-page being equal parts Japanese and equal parts English, with the same
articles but in both language. Can you provide a good reason for having
up/down buttons or not having any? Any group of a considerable size will find
itself coalescing into mini pools of interest, no matter how narrowly you
define the group interest (Hackerese, in this group's case). The most
desirable scenario is probably one that has the right balance of topic
diversity, excluding irrelevant (unless you are interested in learning
Japanese) ones. In that case, we are talking about some form of personalized
news...so yeah, up and down vote buttons in their current state are like the
reply button when browsing using an email client.

~~~
raganwald
_I consider a blog as achieving the same goal of information transmission.
From that perspective, your posting could be considered a blog post that has
eliminated one click in route, but I can appreciate people having different
perspectives of things, blogging being one among them._

Well, I have never stopped "transmitting information," there is just a change
in my strategy.

------
ahold
(+ Sometimes there are simply not enough parenthesis :)

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shiranaihito
I think you deserve an upmod!

