
Ask HN: Why has the downvoting timelimit been reduced? - aaron695
I feel like it makes people have to reply in a negative manner rather than just being able to lower the comment
======
Udo
Barring different categories for downvotes, I strongly believe that a downvote
should be reserved for cases where you think the comment does not contribute
to the discussion. Disagreement should not be enough. If the issue is amenable
to discussion, I'd much rather see someone type out a reply containing actual
counterpoints than people simply downvoting (or worse: flagging) the parent.
And if you find a well-written comment you disagree with, you might even
upvote it and disagree in text form. I realize though that disagreement
sometimes needs an outlet that can't be provided if a large number of replies
already exist, but in that case you might just upvote the best existing reply
that you feel captures your feelings.

I would advocate that downvotes be reserved for instances where the post was a
net negative to the discussion, and flags should be reserved for egregious
violations of conduct that call the originating user accounts itself into
question.

Based on that, I think a score of -2 (is that the current limit?) and a few
hours time limit is sufficient for the purpose of filtering the discussion. It
should be ample time to weed out the low quality comments that _should_ be
sinking to the bottom. Once that basic weeding is done, upvoting is a much
better signal to concentrate on.

~~~
rahimnathwani
I wish I could upvote this 100 times. Especially:

"if you find a well-written comment you disagree with, you might even upvote
it and disagree in text form."

"disagreement sometimes needs an outlet ... you might just upvote the best
existing reply that you feel captures your feelings.

But AFAIK the HN guidelines (or pg?) say that disagreement is an acceptable
reason for downvoting. It's really poor UX to have a single input that
indicates wildly different things.

dang - is there any chance this rule will change? Or any particular reason why
we don't want to change it?

~~~
gkya
Guidelines are clear on what downwotes are: a tool for pushing down and
marking irrelevant comments, not a "disagree" button. But the fact is it's
hard for someone unskilled in discussion to distinguish disagreeable comment
from an irrelevant one. Also, usually it's hard for most people to accept the
falsety of their own thought against a counterargument. These skills, that are
objective open mindedness and the incentive to accept criticism and
counterarguments require a sort of literacy that's different from tech
literacy, which's what I guess the HN crowd does indeed have in abundance.
Discussion skills and discussion culture are not things that come with birth
or tech knowledge though, they are a separate group of skills that you achieve
on its own. Being able to take those actions that you quote require a certain
maturity of such skills. HN being publicly accessible and popular to a certain
extent, it's impossible to expect everyone to have them. And even a handful of
this sort of commenters are enough to spoil the harmony of a discussion group.
Further, if there are points earnable on internet, people will want to earn
them. This sort of incentive pushes commenters to adopt a more populist style
that can gain upvotes with punchy lines and populist comments instead of
complete and coherent arguments or well-founded criticisms. Ultimately this is
an illness of voting in itself, not specific to HN. See Brexit, Trump, etc.
for up-to-date examples.

edits: grammar.

~~~
jrs235
Are the guidelines clear on downvotes?

I think there's a misconception that they are, especially pertaining to up and
down voting. I just reread the guidelines[1] and see little mention of up and
down voting. The only mentioning is don't complain about or bait for down
votes.

In the past pg has said it's okay to use votes for agreement/disagreement[2].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

Edits: formatting

~~~
veddox
Sorry, this is off-topic, but PG on graffiti is simply brilliant:

"In this respect trolling is a lot like graffiti. Graffiti happens at the
intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on
the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the
world."

~~~
gkya
You didn't have to call me incompetent. Nor was I trolling. I'm really
offended by this.

~~~
veddox
I'm very sorry, gkya, I did not in the least mean to offend you - actually, I
wasn't even referring to you! I simply read PG's essay that was linked above
and came across this quote that I found really good and wanted to share. It
had nothing whatsoever to do with your previous comments (which is why I
clearly labeled it as off-topic).

In fact, if you scroll to my comments further up in the discussion, you will
see that we have a very similar opinion as far as downvoting is concerned.

Again, my apologies if I have inadvertently caused offense, I certainly did
not mean to.

~~~
gkya
I appreciate your apology, thank you, and I'm sorry for my confusion, just
that in the context I interpreted your comment as if you were referring to me.
I've read your comment on the topic too, clearly put. Again, thanks for your
kind apology.

------
Alexey_Nigin
From my experience, the votes are rarely a sign of a constructive comment.

For example, my top comment is the one in which I basically said that learning
natural languages is hard. Pretty original remark, huh? In my second most
popular comment, I posted a link to a funny image that didn't have much to do
with the conversation. And my most downvoted comment is a detailed explanation
of why I'm not impressed with Twitter's plans to use advanced machine
learning.

I am not arguing that we should abolish votes, since I don't see an
alternative. But tweaking the existing system to see if it becomes better is a
sensible idea.

Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread
aren't always off-topic and boring.

~~~
funkyy
But mostly are. Lets assume 90th percentile rule - 90% of comments below half
of the page are worse than comments on upper half of page.

While some comments might be quite good below, if you have limited time and
want to be more successful at cutting "crap" you will hover only around top
comments. Not a perfect thing, but this is what makes this place different
from Reddit - you can be almost sure top comments will be valuable, cleverly
funny, starting some interesting thought and not funny image, joke or
offensive.

------
larsiusprime
I have always felt that regardless of high minded intention, saying "don't
downvote based on disagreement" is the equivalent of leaving out a bowl marked
"please take only one candy" on Halloween.

------
dang
I can't recall why we shortened the limit. We can probably put it back the way
it was. Email hn@ycombinator.com if you want to remind me.

------
mrleiter
I also feel that moot a.k.a. Christopher Poole made a point for anonymity
online. [0] In his talk he states that by eliminating voting mechanisms he
ensures that every opinion has the same weight in a discussion, as simply
chronology matters. The problem here is that power is shifted from the
community to the moderators. But advantages are a)unpopular opinions aren't
voted down into "inexistence" and b)the discussion starts out more unbiased as
every opinion appears chronologically.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1UEAGCo30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1UEAGCo30)

~~~
ekianjo
How is that a valid approach? Without voting you end up with low quality
commenters gaming the system for visibility.

~~~
krapp
_with_ voting you also end up with low quality commenters gaming the system,
because voting itself is an attempt to gamify culture. One only has to look at
Reddit to see how "high visibility" and "high quality" don't often correlate.
Sometimes they do, but not always.

Also, with voting, you have meta-debates about voting, people complaining
about voting, voting rings and brigading, etc. Voting also presents the
problem of earlier posts persisting at the top regardless of their quality.

Of course it's possible to gamify imageboard threads as well since they sort
by the last comment, but a purely chronologically sorted thread wouldn't have
any such issues.

------
k__
I think voting should be removed and hiding shown mor prominently.

The news-page should by sorted by a KPI that is a mix of
clicks/shares/comments/hides.

Voting just distorts everything to "I vote down everyone who disagrees with
me"

Also, forced anon. ;)

------
hga
It looks like it's set to 8 hours or so, which for those of use who regularly
sleep 8 hours, plus avoid HN while getting ready for it or don't immediately
go to it on waking up, means we don't get a chance to downvote a lot of
postings that otherwise might make sense for us to be able to do so.

At the very least it was a jarring change.

~~~
DonHopkins
That's a good point. It also means there are windows when it's easier to make
unhelpful comments without being downvoted as much.

------
superswordfish
While we're on the topic, please eliminate downvoting, or at least the greying
of text. It's antisocial and pointless.

Edit: Point proven. Two upvotes and seven downvotes in 12 minutes. Nothing
short of a reply from `dang` will save it now! Bad commenter, toe the line if
you seek discussion, lest you be banished to the graveyard of greydom. I'm
baffled that nobody else sees how this is a problem.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _or at least the greying of text. It 's antisocial and pointless._

I think I agree. The culture has changed a bit here, which is fine (or at
least unavoidable). But now there's much more down-voting of things with which
the voter merely disagrees (case-in-point, your comment: down-voted with no
replies at the time of my writing). It reenforces the hive-mind.

~~~
dalke
Changed? When was it otherwise? There have been comments about downvotes-
without-comments for years [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down-
voted%20%20no%20replies&s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down-
voted%20%20no%20replies&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)
.

Here's an AskHN from 7 years ago titled "Ask HN: Downvote for disagreement in
some cases?" The top answer is "This comes up all the time here. Most people
use downvotes for disagreement. Gotta live with it."
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612)
. Others express other opinions.

Back in 2008 pg said "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express
agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it
seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." \-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

How do you know that the hivement changed in the last 8 years in this regard?

~~~
forgetsusername
> _There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years_

I don't recall saying that there were no downvotes-for-disagreement in earlier
times. I said it feels like it has increased.

I think it's quite obvious how this affects the hive-mind; "un-popular"
opinions become hard to read (greyed-out), which diminishes argument.

