
Welcome to HN:  A refresher course on how to disagree... (2008) - iamelgringo
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html?
======
stcredzero
One phenomenon I've encountered here: There are times when I interject a
neutral, but relevant point in a debate. Often one side assumes I'm arguing
the other side and immediately tries to "counter" me. Then I have to explain
that I'm merely pointing out an interesting point, not taking the side
against.

I take this as a sign that some here are more intent on "winning" than on
having a discussion.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I've found that, many times over, and not just here.

Specifically, I've found it important to set expectations before setting out a
point or comment. People read things with their prejudices and viewpoints at
the fore. If you are to get a neutral reading, you must work to create a
neutral setting first. This then makes your comment long-winded and apparently
initially rambling, off-topic or irrelevant.

To counter _that_ problem one must write very, very succinctly, but clearly.

This is all hard work. However, if you think it's worth making your point,
it's the best way to give it a chance.

~~~
stcredzero
_If you are to get a neutral reading, you must work to create a neutral
setting first._

I find this is very much a function of the reader/listener. People who have a
high degree of curiosity, and what I call "intellectual integrity" are always
working out implications from multiple viewpoints. My archetype for this sort
of person is my old Automata professor. I find that it was _zero_ effort to
present something as neutral to him.

I also find: the less effort required to get a neutral reading, the more
productive the discussion.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I think, in general, you will find that to be a rare thing. Even if you start
with a small population that doesn't require "setting the scene," as soon as
the population grows, so does the requirement.

I would claim that even in the 400 days I've been here on HN I've seen this
happening. When I first arrived it was possible to have a short, to-the-point,
informative comment that required the reader to think hard before they got the
most out of it. Most of them did.

Now it's necessary to create longer, more detailed, more direct comments that
set the scene, make their point, put the point in context, and draw
conclusions. This is an inevitable consequence of a larger audience. It also
means that the subsequent discussion will be "diluted" because of the wider
range of experience and ability of the participants. As far as I can seem it
cannot be avoided.

Nor is it necessarily to be regarded as a criticism. If you want a broad range
of opinions so you can learn from all points of view then you need a large
population from which to draw them. You then must realise that it's _not_ the
same as it used to be, and one's style must change to match the new audience.

Finally, I do not think this is a question of "intellectual integrity," and
labelling it as such is unhelpful. People will always tend to have an opinion,
and setting it aside during a discussion in order to listen/read
dispassionately is highly unnatural. It is better to work with human nature
rather than demand that your audience set aside their natural tendencies,
perhaps especially in the West, where schools are starting to require that
their students have an opinion, even when they don't actually know anything.

~~~
stcredzero
_Finally, I do not think this is a question of "intellectual integrity," and
labelling it as such is unhelpful._

I think it's quite helpful. Having to hedge myself against prejudice and
sloppy thinking isn't helping me as much as spending time actually having
substantive discussion.

 _especially in the West, where schools are starting to require that their
students have an opinion, even when they don't actually know anything._

It seems we agree on some fundamental level. I think the ability and diligence
to direct skepticism at _oneself_ is basic and essential. If one does not know
how to do that, one doesn't really know how to _think_.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes

      RoG> ... I do not think this is a question of
      RoG> "intellectual integrity," and labelling it
      RoG> as such is unhelpful.
    
      StC0> I think it's quite helpful. Having to hedge
      StC0> myself against prejudice and sloppy thinking
      StC0> isn't helping me as much as spending time
      StC0> actually having substantive discussion.
    

I'm not debating or questioning the use of a labal to capture the concept. I'm
suggesting that the sepcific label you are using is itself a barrier to
communication. To speak of someone failing to exhibit "intellectual integrity"
feels like you are accusing them of dishonesty. I don't think, in truth, that
you are doing so, but that is how it might appear.

You could consider a better label for the near inhuman, almost Vulcan, ability
to put asides one's own opinions and beliefs in order to listen to the points
being made by someone else. Calling it ""intellectual integrity" is, I think,
conveying the wrong message, and caries too much baggage.

And yes, I suspect we are more in agreement than not. I, perhaps, am giving
more leeway to those who are not trained to set aside their natural
tendencies. It's something I've had to learn, at times painfully, upon
entering a business environment after doing research in pure math. It seems to
be a requirement, and simply one of those things one has to do in order to
communicate effectively with people from the "Real World."

Sad, but true. I've had to learn to live with it.

------
JoelSutherland
This community does a pretty good job of disagreeing. Even the occasional bit
of name-calling is usually buried in something thoughtful.

Irrelevance seems to be a greater danger to the comments here than the method
of disagreements.

The comments are a place for discussing the content of the submitted article.
They are not a place for complaining about the NYTimes registration, light
text on a dark background, etc...

~~~
chrischen
Irrelevance can simply be ignored, or if necessary, flagged. It can then sink
to the bottom of the page with little consequence.

But a down-vote has negative social consequences. It affects the _types_ of
comment that show up and shapes and refines the tone here so that eventually
only the _popular_ types show up.

~~~
akkartik
I see irrelevant but funny/praising/criticising comments upvoted to +4 or even
+14 _all the time_.[1]

The assumption that bad comments will get less votes is a canard. As the
community grows, the same people adding comments also add their votes. If
anything, they're more likely to vote since it's just a click, and so noob
votes will drown old users even more. It's not just downvotes but any votes
that have negative social consequences.

 _Update_

[1] Exhibit A: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021157>

~~~
elblanco
This is an important point.

>It's not just downvotes but any votes that have negative social consequences.

Upvotes also tend to select for popular modes of thinking. In the end, a
system of only upvotes makes people want to only post things that will be
perceived as popular by the community.

~~~
chrischen
Yes true, but it is at least positive reinforcement, whereas downvoting is
negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is conditioning through fear.
So ignoring the potential ethical problems of conditioning through fear, there
have been studies to show that positive reinforcement is better:
[https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/4924/1/V63N02_087.p...](https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/4924/1/V63N02_087.pdf)

~~~
elblanco
That's a bit alarmist, but I can't really think of a better way to put it I
guess.

Positive reinforcement does have the advantage of encouraging more
participation.

~~~
kburn
I can say, as a new guy, that I would participate more if that were the case.

------
chrischen
I would like to take this opportunity to bring up downvoting. Doesn't
downvoting have the same end effect as DH0 (or DH3)?

A downvote signals disapproval/discouragement, yet it requires no legitimate
counterargument or reasoning for it.

I haven't seen people calling each other "fags" here, but it seems the
downvote is simply the HN version of calling people "fags."

~~~
pg
There's a lot in what you say. In the next couple months I'm going to be
experimenting with solutions to this and related problems. The general plan
will be to de-emphasize points and to add more types of flags.

For comments, there will be at least flags for incivility, fluff, and spam.
Spammers, as now, will get banned instantly. People who accumulate a lot of
flags for incivility may also get banned for some set period.

~~~
revorad
I have a suggestion: Make it compulsory to leave a comment explaining a
downvote i.e. when a user clicks on the downvote button, he is asked to
comment. You can't downvote unless you provide a reason.

Flags can play the role of downvotes for controlling spam and totally rubbish
comments.

~~~
charliepark
It would be interesting, too, if the downvotes could, themselves, be downvoted
by others, rendering them valueless. That is, if my explanation for my initial
downvote doesn't pass muster, others could downvote-the-downvote, and the
initial comment (which I had downvoted) would be left with its full complement
of points, as though I hadn't downvoted it to begin with.

~~~
revorad
That would only be fair because the downvote to your downvote comment would
also have to provide a reason. So, it would encourage a real discussion.

~~~
revorad
Unlike this one where comments are apparently getting downvoted for no obvious
reason.

Another interesting experiment would be to display the top downvoters from
time to time. We'll at least be able to weed out some of these invisible
trolls.

~~~
elblanco
As this thread and numerous others are demonstrating, there is a group of
people that lurk and troll through the consequence-free mechanism of the
downvote. I don't really care who the top downvoters are (though the metrics
would be interesting, I'd like to see different mixes and matches of the
various statistics that HN could generate, upvoters, downvoters, karma, number
of posts, average comment scores etc), but I think there should be some limit
per unit time they can downvote. Like say 5/every 30 days or some such. Given
how many perfectly reasonable comments in this topic have been downvoted, I
would suspect it's the same lurker-trolls every time, they would have just
blown their quota for the month under this kind of system.

And if you notice, it's like pulling teeth from an angry lion to even get any
of these guys to bother posting a reason. The answers so far seem to amount to
either

1) My time is too important, _I'm_ too important.

2) The downvote is enough reason, it should be obvious to the recipient that
they weren't contributing anything.

I'm sorry, but I don't find either of those reasons even remotely satisfying.

~~~
kburn
I don't think you're right. The reasons seem to be that people are downmodding
as a social normalization function. It's like saying "don't post more like
that please".

I think you are taking downmods a bit too personally.

~~~
elblanco
Well, different people are having different takes on the semantics I guess.
How about a quota though? Nobody likes an overly negative person at a party.
IRL, we can't enforce good behavior that way, but here we can through the
power of software.

~~~
kburn
I don't think a quota makes sense. But a comment/vote does.

I don't want to limit the amount of times a person can disagree with me (at
risk of allowing for disagreeable persons).

------
gruseom
There are many comments claiming that it's somehow bad, rude, or inconsiderate
to downvote comments you disagree with. I totally disagree. There is nothing
uncivil about downvoting. It simply means that someone took issue with
something about your comment: its tone, its logic, whatever. There's no reason
to take offense at this; you could just as easily find it intriguing.

Voting up or down is a nice, efficient mechanism for participating in a
discussion when you do have a response, but it falls below the threshold of
having enough time, enough interest, and _enough worth saying_ to justify an
explicit post. There's nothing illegitimate about responses that happen to
fall below that threshold. In aggregate, they add great value to the site. To
try to force people to make explicit comments that aren't naturally above the
threshold would spread tedium, not civility.

People sometimes allege that opinions are being downvoted to oblivion on HN
merely because they're unpopular. In my observation, this is rare. There's
almost always some obvious reason (rudeness, irrelevance, etc.). But it's more
self-flattering to think that your brave independent thinking was run over by
a mob.

Egregious arbitrary downvoting does occur, of course, but it tends to get
corrected. When I run across a comment at 0 or -1 that I see nothing
objectionable about, I upvote it. Lots of other users do that too, so
controversial comments tend to stay roughly at par. Lightweight self-
correcting systems are hard to come by, so I think it's worth recognizing when
you have one. That doesn't mean that experimentation is a bad idea, of course,
but it will be hard IMO to come up with a better voting system. (The flagging
system is a different matter.)

~~~
elblanco
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021116> was immediately downvoted to
oblivion (it's hit -6 I believe at one point), not a single comment as to why.

While this one, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021119> while
practically of the same content (though a hair less snarky) generated screens
full of comments and is sitting at +10 as of this writing.

I think it has to do with the fact that people were scared off of the other
post because it went straight into the vote incinerator and thus they didn't
want to get downvoted themselves.

A downvote without a comment is just as rude online as a terse "no" is in real
life.

~~~
tokenadult
_(it's hit -6 I believe at one point)_

That can't be an actual observation, because the system-imposed limit on
negative karma scores for one comment has been -4 for a while. A comment with
that recent of an item number would have been posted with that limit in place.
I can remember the days when negative karma per comment was apparently
unlimited (although such comments would gray out to invisibility at about -25,
if I remember correctly) and a longer period when the limit was -8. That
hasn't been a problem for most of the most active participants here, even
those who actively disagree with some of the consensus opinions that do
trigger reflex downvotes here.

~~~
elblanco
Check it yourself. It's not the only post of mine in this thread that's seen a
< -4 karma.

~~~
tokenadult
I just searched your list of threads, through the first couple pages, and
didn't see any such posts. While I did that, I did see a very interesting
comment by btilly in a thread I hadn't visited previously, but I didn't see
any comments by anyone with karma scores below -4. Does someone have a current
link to anyone's recent comment with such a low score?

~~~
elblanco
This one is now back down to -4 <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021131>

It's been -5 at least twice since posting it.

------
timwiseman
It has been a long time since I have read this one and it is a very good
description of the forms of disagreement.

I do think that PG gives slightly too little weight to ad hominem attacks
though. It is true they may be no better than name calling, but they can be
highly informative and relevant too. I know he says they can carry some
weight, but even there I do not think he gives at least the right kind of ad
hominem attack its due.

For instance, in a technical field it can often be very difficult to
understand much less evaluate a fully reasoned argument. In this case, to a
laymen reader saying (truthfully of course) "The author of this piece has been
shown to commit scientific fraud" may be more effective than trying to go
through the entire argument in detail. Similarly with say financial advice
being able to truthfully say "The author has been involved in con games in the
past" can be more persuasive (when true!) than trying to analyze his latest
claims. Even pointing out something like "This man's PHD is in <nonrelevant
field>, not <relevant field>." can add value to a discussion. Of course it
does not invalidate the original argument from the original author, but it
does point out the readers that they should read it carefully and not give
limited weight to the author's authority.

This is especially true since it can be easier in some technical fields to
bring up evidence that sounds good superficially but that an expert knows is
false than it is justify the truth. This is because understanding the truth
often requires a detailed technical grounding already whereas the
pseudoscience does not.

~~~
elblanco
I once had a discussion about this topic with a colleague.

>For instance, in a technical field it can often be very difficult to
understand much less evaluate a fully reasoned argument.

I think at the time I had fluffed a response to the question this answers
which is "well how do I know that xyz guy really knows his stuff and isn't
just a so-called-expert in his field, why should I believe him?".

But this sums it up nicely, it can take decades to learn enough about a field
to understand the arguments properly.

------
jimmyjim
>This is the lowest form of disagreement, and probably also the most common.
We've all seen comments like this:

>u r a fag!!!!!!!!!!

>But it's important to realize that more articulate name-calling has just as
little weight. A comment like

>The author is a self-important dilettante.

>is really nothing more than a pretentious version of "u r a fag."

I completely disagree. One is a direct verbal attack, the other can very
possibly be a reasonable assertion. If it's followed by a fair explanation,
all the better.

~~~
chrischen
If it's followed by a fair explanation, then it's no longer the same argument.
I think his point is that if you just say "The author is a self-important
dilettante," then that by itself is no different from "u r a fag!!!!!!!!!!"

~~~
jimmyjim
I think still there is a fundamental difference between calling someone a
"fag" vs. a "dilettante". Calling someone a "dilettante" isn't _quite_ name-
calling. And if the subject at hand has a history of being a sham, then I
don't think it even warrants the effort to spend the time writing an
explanation.

~~~
chrischen
I can see where you're coming from, in that "dilettante" may be less
outlandish than calling someone a "fag." It's a more refined description, but
in the end both are still most likely unfounded claims.

In most cases you are probably calling the person a "dilettante" or "self-
important" without really knowing the person. And chances are such labels will
be emotionally, rather than rationally motivated. So it's true that in some
cases the claim can be legitimate, but given our setting in an almost
anonymous internet discussion place, it's unlikely that those claims are ever
founded on reason. I think that was Paul's point: that calling someone a "fag"
vs "self-important dilettante" are similar in their usually unfounded bases.
You're correct in that there is a fundamental difference because calling
someone a "fag" is not only unfounded, it's also derogatory as well as
irrelevant to _any_ rational argument (irrelevant, unless it is an argument
about their sexuality).

------
jordyhoyt
Very good, somehow hadn't seen this yet. Thanks!

If all comments on HN were disagreements, this could be an interesting
alternative to the simple karma score of a comment. Better yet, f we could
tease the concepts of each level away from the disagreement element, we could
have an interesting way of classifying comments. Maybe a Conversational
Hierarchy:

CH0 - Attack on a person

CH1 - Statement concerning a person

CH2 - Statement concerning a text

CH3 - Statement concerning a point made

CH4 - Reasoning/facts concerning a point made

CH5 - Reasoned response to a point made

CH6 - Reasoned response to the central point

5 and 6 could use a bit of beefing up, but you get the idea. They could each
have karma scores assigned to them (negative for 0-2, neutral for 3, positive
for 4-6) and the classification with the most votes wins. The "CH" appended to
the beginning of the number makes it so noobs would be likely to the time to
learn what they mean. The UI for this would have to be dead simple, maybe a
dropdown.

Thoughts?

~~~
chronomex
The only issue I see right now with this is that it doesn't promote
interesting but (strictly speaking) off-topic discussions.

------
gfodor
Communication can be used for emotional stimulus as much as intellectual
stimulus, so it is not necessarily ideal that all arguments fit into some
rigid ranking valuing objective refutations over emotionally driven spasms. "u
r a fag" says a lot with a little: it's efficient. I mean, if everyone always
strove towards perfectly clean refutations of central points, think about how
boring the internet would be! It's simply not the case that everyone should
just be looking to refute arguments with specifics. And besides, this way of
looking at it _reeks_ of elitism, like most Paul Graham articles. How can we
trust what he's saying anyway? It's just to get hits to his blog. What a self-
important dilettante.

:)

~~~
yters
u r a fag

~~~
gfodor
capstone

edit: for those who ask, why did I do it backwards, the answer is simple, and
a good life lesson: make sure you have a punchline.

------
RyanMcGreal
The very highest level of the Disagreement Hierarchy, of course, is DHH:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetargon/127984254/>

------
amichail
Ad hominem is used all the time by very smart people.

Try getting a theoretician to look at a proof of a famous conjecture written
by an unknown.

~~~
bmm6o
"He hasn't produced good work before, so there's a good chance it won't be
worth my time to read his proof" is an imperfect way of allocating limited
resources, not an ad hominem attack.

~~~
amichail
An ad hominem attack is a way of saving resources. Theoreticians use it to
save time and effort.

~~~
bmm6o
> An ad hominem attack is a way of saving resources

That they are both ways of saving resources does not mean they are the same in
any other way (e.g. both "wrong"). Choosing not to read your proof is not the
same as declaring that the proof must be flawed because you wrote it.

You seem to have a particular instance of this behavior in mind. Not being
familiar with it, I can only argue the general case. I'm sure your proof is
actually quite good!

------
meelash
I think it should be stressed that these ideas are necessarily flexible based
on the quality of the thing being disagreed with. Basically, Paul's assumed
that the post being argued against is ideal, and against that has built his
hierarchy. In real life, an effective argument, in fact sometimes the only
possible argument, against a poorly formed thesis is a poor response.

For example, the conclusion that, "a DH2 or lower response is always
unconvincing" is not true in the following case: Suppose someone posited that
there is a blue species of monkey living in the basement below the U.S. Senate
and the only reason he gave for us to believe him is that he is a trustworthy
U.S. Senator. In disagreeing with him, if we bring an ad hominem attack
against his trustworthiness it is entirely acceptable and relevant because his
trustworthiness is the only proof he's brought in the first place.

------
kburn
I'm new here, but I've always assumed (by how they are used) that downvotes
were for pure disagreement.

~~~
CodeMage
As far as I've always understood it, upvotes and downvotes relate to the value
the voter perceives in an item (article or comment). If you think that the
item adds value, you'll upvote it.

In most cases, agreeing with something is a prerequisite for seeing it as
adding value. As a consequence, since people mostly upvote what they agree
with, one tends to equate upvoting with agreement and downvoting with
disagreement.

However, according to my understanding, downvoting should be used when you
think that the item adds no value (or adds "negative value"). This is not the
same thing as disagreement. Some examples of items that either add no or too
little value are: name-calling, snarky one-liners with no useful content at
all and very badly edited text (maybe the content has value, but the form
negates it).

~~~
kburn
It seems though, that people are assigning an equivalence of "agree" to "has
value", and "disagree" to "doesn't have value". At least this is how I've been
registering the use of the vote.

Opinions appear to vary wildly as to how it should be used, but the ones that
appear to make sense to me are the ones that would make sense in an actual
conversation:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021371>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021634>

------
pbh
This article seems to me to conflate two things: how to have an exploratory
discussion between two opposing viewpoints and how to win an argument.

For example, in an exploratory discussion, using your opponent's terms can
lead to quicker definition of those terms, and less talking past one another.
On the other hand, when trying to win an argument, allowing your opponent to
frame the debate (either by using their terms or addressing/refuting their
central points) can be the worst possible strategy!

I suspect that exploratory discussions where both parties are genuinely
disinterested are rare in most contexts.

~~~
ellyagg
You shouldn't be trying to win arguments. That's the root of all argumentation
evil, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, that's one aspect of debate
competition I really despise, the fetishizing of winning arguments. (OTOH, the
way debate teams work you're forced to fully understand opposing viewpoints in
a way that few people ever do.)

~~~
pbh
This is a major point in legal philosophy (and presumably elsewhere).

I don't think I agree with you (for example) that an adversarial system
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system>) is inherently worse than
an inquisitorial one (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitorial_system>).

------
swolchok
Can you please add (2008) to this? I clicked, hoping for a new PG article.

------
forkandwait
The next step beyond refutation is synthesis; often intractable arguments are
sustained because both sides have a good point that should be acknowledged but
is all mixed up with not so valid assumptions.

I also think that "neutrality" or "objectivity" is an impossibility,
especially in arguments about social problems. We would all benefit by
admitting that we have interests at stake, and that EVERY argument usually has
outcomes in terms of who gets what, no matter how "objectively" the arguers
try to frame it.

------
resdirector
The back button is my method of disagreement

~~~
GrandMasterBirt
I use the backspace.

~~~
seabee
Unfortunately it doesn't delete the text you disagree with :)

------
vaksel
maybe just turn off downvoting all together?

if someone is breaking the rules, they can be flagged

if you disagree with someone don't vote them up.

This way the top comments will go to the top as usual, and interesting
discussions with 100s of upvotes won't have 3 points

~~~
elblanco
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1013330>

------
amichail
PageRank is the biggest ad hominem attack of all time.

~~~
elblanco
I do not understand why this witty, on-topic post has been downvoted so hard.
I believe it added loads to the conversation.

~~~
aristus
At first glance it is non-sequitur. On second glance it is specious. It's also
redundant: Amichail's other comment about theoreticians and conjecture proofs
added whatever it added to the conversation already.

~~~
elblanco
Outside of the side discussion about weather PageRank is an example of an ad
hominem fallacy, (which _is_ directly related to the OT btw as per DH1)

>It's also redundant: Amichail's other comment about theoreticians and
conjecture proofs added whatever it added to the conversation already

So, people can only post precisely one comment on a given topic in a thread or
risk downvotes? That's the most ridiculous thing I think I've ever read.
Redundancy is not a reason to downvote.

Amichail's post also received a plethora of downvotes if you notice.

~~~
CodeMage
_Outside of the side discussion about weather PageRank is an example of an ad
hominem fallacy, (which is directly related to the OT btw as per DH1)_

I haven't downvoted amichail's other comments, even though I disagree with
them, because they provoked a marginally interesting discussion on what does
and what does not constitute an argumentum ad hominem. I did, however,
downvote his comment on PageRank because, to me, it appeared to have been
posted as a one-liner intended to make the author look witty without any
regard to actual validity of the claim. To be brutally honest, I can go
elsewhere if I want to hear or read people who want to sound witty and cool. I
don't come to HN for posturing, I come for intelligent and insightful
discussion.

 _So, people can only post precisely one comment on a given topic in a thread
or risk downvotes? That's the most ridiculous thing I think I've ever read.
Redundancy is not a reason to downvote._

Limiting people to only one comment would be ridiculous, yes. But downvoting
excessive redundancy seems perfectly reasonable. If I state the same thing
over and over in several comments, without adding anything useful to support,
expand or modify my argument, then I'm just being loud and repetitive. That
doesn't add any value and that's why I tend to downvote that stuff. Beating a
dead horse falls into that same category, you know ;)

~~~
elblanco
First, apologies for using the wrong "whether" prior.

> I did, however, downvote his comment on PageRank because, to me, it appeared
> to have been posted as a one-liner intended to make the author look witty
> without any regard to actual validity of the claim.

Which is surprising to me since PageRank _is_ essentially an algorithm based
on argument ad hominem (pages with a good reputation are better) and we all
humbly accept that as being a reasonable thing to do. This questions the
validity of tossing a concept like argument ad hominem into the rubbish bin of
rhetorical devices. This is a both an interesting (at least to me) and unique
spin on the perceptions of the fallacy in common usage.

> But downvoting excessive redundancy seems perfectly reasonable.

It would be, except by your definition and actions, you appear to consider any
number of repetitions > 1 as redundant (please, correct me if I'm wrong and
that number is really >2 ). I'm sorry, but you aren't the HN police, watching
vigilantly for unnecessary redundancy, guideline violations and other such
perceived infractions and policing as appropriate.

> Beating a dead horse falls into that same category, you know

Yes, I get that this is a reference to me and my particular grinding axe
<bzzzzz!!!!!>. So long as people keep using the downvote unnecessarily and to
the detriment of the discourse here, I'll keep happily grinding away.

I've upvoted you for engagement. I don't mind that you used the downvote to
express some kind of disapproval of a comment, what I mind is that it's
provided with no commentary. Uncommented downvotes are not helpful or
instructive and imho are a bit on the rude side. I'm using my upvote here to
provide positive feedback that what you are doing right now, explaining your
vote, is useful, interesting and drives discussion. It's also good form
concerning arguing (as per the topic).

:)

------
elblanco
Too bad it doesn't have a section on when and how to vote up/down. For
example,

"V1:voting down because you have no sense of humor and the poster made a joke"

"V2:voting down because you nonspecifically disagree with the poster and don't
actually have anything useful to say in response, in other words you downvote
because you are angry at yourself."

~~~
jodrellblank
V3: voting down because the comment is not relevant to the thread, through
accidental posting in the wrong place or complete misunderstanding.

V4: downvoting proper - You have a reason in mind, e.g. post is very
aggressive, comment is incoherent, comment is trivial and could be answered
with a Google query, yet the only way to express your desire for "fewer
comments like this on HN" is funnelling through a single downvote, so that's
what you do, because explanations all the time would add a lot of noise, and
you accept that it's imperfect but will probably sort itself out if enough
people vote.

~~~
elblanco
It is a small, but special source of pride, to see comments like my post,
discussing the problems with the downvote, be downvoted into oblivion thus
entirely confirming my statement.

~~~
mquander
I downvoted your post because I viewed it as insubstantial and somewhat
bitter. The two reasons you provide are obviously (?) not serious reasons;
they're just caricatures, so it provides a pretty poor platform for a sincere
discussion about why people downvote things.

I don't really see how you can characterize it as "discussing the problems
with the downvote." I would characterize it instead as "taunting people who
downvote things."

~~~
elblanco
I appreciate the explanation, thereby you are not in violation of notional
guideline V2.

I am dead serious about both of those. I'm actually convinced that HN is
absolutely and completely devoid of humor. I've actually never seen anything
like it.

Given that the topic of downvotes constitute the vast majority of this entire
topic and most of the threads, and that the only place pg has bothered to
respond was regarding the brokeness of downvoting, it's quite obviously not an
insubstantial point I was trying to make.

~~~
mquander
Sure, but it's different to say "people downvote humor" (which is mostly true)
and "people have no sense of humor" (which is mostly an insult.) I think I
have a sense of humor, but I downvote fluff jokey comments unless they're
screamingly funny.

A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a _lot_ of upvotes
before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming
languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how
proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it
were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't
terrible, although it was only a little bit funny.

I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I
can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places
where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually
interested in. I believe the problem with throwaway jokes is that they're so
easy. Among 1,000 average readers, perhaps 5 of them have an insightful
comment about, i.e. a new feature in R6RS Scheme, but 500 of them could easily
post a silly joke about parentheses. Result? If you try to talk about Scheme
you get 495 jokes for every piece of expert commentary. Not cool.

(Realistically, there are many other kinds of comments that are problematic in
this way. For example, it's easy to religiously stick to one big general
paradigm and zealously apply it to everything, so you wind up with some of
that. It's easy to attack people instead of confronting complicated ideas, so
you wind up with some of that. I think it's just a consequence of less-
informed but social people trying to find an angle by which to contribute.
Sometimes I'm guilty of this myself!)

Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really,
really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff.

~~~
elblanco
> Sure, but it's different to say "people downvote humor" (which is mostly
> true) and "people have no sense of humor" (which is mostly an insult.) I
> think I have a sense of humor, but I downvote fluff jokey comments unless
> they're screamingly funny.

Which is a general policy that ensures you'll never see a joke here
(screamingly funny or not). I don't think I know anybody who can produce jokes
that fit your requirements at any rate even close to 100%. So I would assume,
rather than risk it, why would somebody bother if some dude is just going to
come by and downmod it anyways? The downvote surpresses the desire of people
to even want to try.

I'm not saying that all jocularity is equal. Jokes about "your mom" probably
deserve a downvote (and depending on the vulgarity maybe a flag). But somebody
making a witty retort, while perhaps not deserving of praise should probably
be left unmolested. I've heard more jokes at a convention of priests than I
see regularly on HN.

Put another way, a downvote for a harmless comment is the real life equivalent
of somebody making conversation with you, inserts a subtle attempt at humor,
and you then proceed to glare at them, turn around and walk away. It's not
helpful. But I _do_ understand not wanting to respond back in a humorous way
either, otherwise we end up with 4chan and all the irrelevant absurdity that
comes with going that direction.

However, due to this kind of behavior we end up with a possible HN as it could
be (which may be perfectly fine by you, I don't know), of stuffy pedantic and
pretentious pseudo-conversationalists who'd rather police a message forum than
actually contribute something useful or interesting (or _gasp_ even marginally
funny). Maybe that's the goal, I don't know. But it makes for boring reading
and conversation.

> A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes
> before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming
> languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how
> proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If
> it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't
> terrible, although it was only a little bit funny.

You _flagged_ that thread? Are you serious? I think that's outrageous!

I've seen this same image before, and I was crying laughing at it. It also
could have spawned a useful discussion on perception of platform choice when
building software. Customers can be users of software too, and in my
experience, what language you use can positively or negatively impact
perception of your product and company. The opportunity to have some
interesting discourse on that topic is now dead.

> I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where
> I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of
> places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually
> interested in.

But it wasn't a picture of LOLCATS or or a guy getting hit in the crotch with
a frisbee or some such. It was at least marginally related, in theory, to the
kinds of discussions we should be having on HN. I perfectly understand your
desire to seek out interesting and relevant discussion to your particular
areas of interest. If something doesn't fit your areas of interest, feel free
to not participate, don't penalize us that _do_ want to participate.

For example, I don't think a thread on R6RS is particularly interesting or
useful to a startup-oriented tech discussion forum -- marginally used language
discussions should be left on the language maintainer's own forum. But if I
saw a topic on the front page about it, I'd leave it absolutely unmolested
because _somebody_ thought it was interesting enough to deserve upvotes and it
has about the same theoretical relevancy to HN as did the image matrix of
language choice perception.

> Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really,
> really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all
> fluff.

Yes, I absolutely agree with you. I can understand the continuous meta-
discussion here about how to keep HN from sliding down the reddit->digg->4chan
slope. But I think we have to be aware of, and meta-discuss how to keep HN
from going the opposite direction, that of becoming so rarefied that any
nonconforming comments are immediately stifled and the entire board dies
except for a small group who enjoy spending their time in a self-selected echo
chamber.

~~~
mquander
I understand -- I think we are just here for very different reasons, which is
a consequence of coming to a website that now has one zillion readers. My
primary interest by far here happens to be serious (preferably very stuffy)
programming language and computer science discussion. (I'm interested in many
other things, but I have other communities with which I prefer to discuss
them; HN seems like kind of an echo chamber personality-wise.) My upvoted
submissions are a good list of the things I like to read here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=mquander>

I also personally have absolutely zero interest in startup and business
discussion, which puts me far outside the target audience for very many
articles here, although I leave them alone since that's the stated purpose of
the site. So I recognize that my tastes may not represent HN any better than
yours, if such a thing can be measured.

Is it ethical, then, for me to flag articles which I think are not worthwhile
posts? I'm not sure. Your comments make me reflect on whether that's an OK
thing to do or not. I do wish there were a downvote button on posts, that
means "I don't think this should be highly rated, but I don't think it should
be killed either." I would prefer to use that.

One thing, however. Your stated policy is: "If something doesn't fit your
areas of interest, feel free to not participate, don't penalize us that do
want to participate." That seems like a principled and friendly approach. But
I'm not sure it scales. The front page (and the comment threads) only have so
much bandwidth. Taking a "tolerant" approach without a big redesign to allow
some kind of filtering means that the result will be simple majority rule,
leading to a lot of very general interest posts about politics, current
events, business, and technology. I know that many posts which would interest
me greatly would then be buried on page N; judge for yourself whether this is
the case for you.

Now, it would be awfully judgmental to say that's a bad thing for a website;
after all, it's providing a whole lot of people with the sort of thing they
want to read. But there are so many websites that provide that kind of
discussion already that I wonder if a "rarefied" niche site isn't a more
valuable place in the greater ecosystem of the Internet.

I voted your comment up because it made me think hard about the consequences
of my actions.

~~~
elblanco
> I understand -- I think we are just here for very different reasons...

True, but there's an obvious intersection of the things we are interested in.
We just have to figure out how to play friendly concerning the other things in
our interest sets.

> Taking a "tolerant" approach without a big redesign to allow some kind of
> filtering means that the result will be simple majority rule, leading to a
> lot of very general interest posts about politics, current events, business,
> and technology.

Well, the good news is that HN has posting guidelines
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
> evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or
> disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's
> probably off-topic.

Despite what certain members of the HN community would have you think, these
aren't "rules", but they do serve a useful function in focusing the site on a
core set of topic areas. I don't think there is much danger of HN becoming
reddit in that sense. HN effectively acts like 2 or 3 narrowly focused
subreddits on reddit.com.

> Is it ethical, then, for me to flag articles which I think are not
> worthwhile posts? I'm not sure. Your comments make me reflect on whether
> that's an OK thing to do or not. I do wish there were a downvote button on
> posts, that means "I don't think this should be highly rated, but I don't
> think it should be killed either." I would prefer to use that.

Well, to my understanding, posts that are completely out of guidelines should
be flagged. If somebody submits a post with a link to his blog about his
Camaro, it's probably okay to flag it ;) A post to something like
<http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/> should probably just not be upvoted if
you don't care for it.

I could even see a downvote for something like the referenced post to the
programming language perception matrix. But like I said, it could be an
interesting driver of discussion.

> Now, it would be awfully judgmental to say that's a bad thing for a website;
> after all, it's providing a whole lot of people with the sort of thing they
> want to read. But there are so many websites that provide that kind of
> discussion already that I wonder if a "rarefied" niche site isn't a more
> valuable place in the greater ecosystem of the Internet.

Well, I think the reason most people come here is for the rather constrained
topic set and the emphasis on interesting discussion (not to mention being
populated with a very interesting mix of people). But it would also become
very uninteresting in the general sense if it become a forum for academic
discussions of programming esoterica.

> I voted your comment up because it made me think hard about the consequences
> of my actions.

That's really what all my pining away is on this thread, I appreciate you
taking the time to do so. I'm a bit shocked and amazed to see a population of
people here that are unwilling to do the same. I understand they are peeved at
being called out for bad etiquette, but I find the discourse on this site
amazing when the mechanisms for the discourse are working properly.

