

Ask HN: What does motivate you to down-vote a comment? - thepanister

Well,
I am very interested to know: What does motivate you to down-vote a specific comment?<p>What is your judgement criteria on a specific comment to say: Oh, this comment should be down-voted!
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menloparkbum
I down-vote boring comments, pointless comments, comments by people I don't
like, false comments, comments I disagree with, comments that are already
down-voted, meta comments about what constitutes proper voting behavior, and
accidentally hitting the down-vote arrow instead of the up-vote arrow.

I think I'm in the minority, but my position is that the arrows should be used
liberally and for whatever reason a person sees fit.

I like things like voting and scores because I have a kooky personal theory
that reading too much stuff online scrambles my thought processes and
sometimes even makes me feel physically kind of sick. I'd rather simply ignore
down-voted comments than read a well-intentioned but vacuous back-and-forth
discussion about why people disagree.

There's another common notion that high scores on funny quips are a bad thing.
I also disagree with this. Reading genuinely funny stuff makes me laugh and
boosts my serotonin levels, which is actually good for you. The issue with
this phenomena on Reddit was that funny quips that weren't actually funny
started getting high votes.

Next to YouTube style comments, the worst stuff you can read online is the
sort of middle range discussion between two people who sort of know what they
are talking about but not really. It's like listening to two dentists on
vacation talking about time-share apartments and tee times. It turns your
brain into mush.

I've been here since the beginning and have not noticed any significant abuse
of the voting system[1]. Most buried comments seem to deserve their scores. I
wonder why this topic keeps coming up. The stark reality is if your comments
consistently get down-voted, you're probably making stupid posts.

[1] aside from long ago when you could nuke someone's karma into oblivion by
repeatedly downvoting everything they had ever posted.

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Xichekolas
Things that are false, mean, or devoid of content (things like: "thanks!", "I
agree", or "haha"). Only exception is things already at -1 or below.

If a comment is none of those things and below one, I'll mod it up because I
don't believe in burying someone you disagree with.

As for things that are blatantly trollish (linkspam, racist, stream of curse
words, etc), I'll gladly pile on until they are too faint to read... and
usually flag them as well.

~~~
queensnake
I think meanness in service to a larger cause, ie a site's quality, as opposed
to just an arguing tactic, is a good thing. I used to hang out at K5 (when it
had traffic) where one finds that meanness to dummies is quite effective at
shutting them up. Shutting up dummies is the #1 thing to preserve a site's
quality. High quality comments is a fragile thing, imo too rare to ruin with
squeamishness about people's feelings. There's a threshold of tolerating bad
comments past which you can't do anything anymore (eg, Reddit).

~~~
Xichekolas
I'm not against meanness in defense of people's feelings, I'm against it
because the only outcome is starting a feud or feeding a troll. Being mean
directly _degrades_ a site's quality... in no way does it preserve it.

When you say something mean, even to a troll, you become part of the problem.

~~~
queensnake
In the short term. In the long term, a witty or angry putdown is quicker,
conveys more information and gets its point across more deeply than politeness
and downmodding. imo.

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michael_nielsen
I ask whether the comment detracts substantially from the HN community? If the
answer is yes, I downvote.

The nice thing about this question is that it implies many derived reasons for
a downvote: being mean or insulting; egregious stupidity; being irrelevant;
being "clever" without adding real value. And so on. I try to be careful to
NOT downvote someone just because I disagree with them.

~~~
timf
" _the nice thing about this question is that it implies many derived reasons
for a downvote_ "

I like this way of thinking about it, I think the same approach is good for
upvotes. Is this something that makes HN a better community? Is this part of
the debate thought out and valuable (even if it's ultimately not the stance I
end up agreeing with)? etc.

For example, I will always upvote the sincere "review my new
startup/application" submissions. They are a special thing going on here and
so often full of good observations (and good 'vibes') so I want to encourage
them.

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pg
Meanness, especially when combined with mistakenness (which is not unusual).

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spydez
I down-vote:

    
    
      * ad hominin attacks with no substance
      * unoriginal snowclone jokes with no substance
      * "+1" and "I agree", if that is the entirety of the post
      * if a post is vastly, enormously over-rated
    

I try to reserve downvote for the last resort. Well, second to last, now that
we have flag.

Generally, I ignore the arrows. They are only there for things that make me
say "I (dis)agree with this, and it is so good/well thought out/interesting I
think everyone on HN should take the time to read it."

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run4yourlives
I usually reserve my downvote for the most absurd of comments. Stupidity,
trolling, immaturity.

I DO NOT downvote things that are false, things I disagree with, or comments
that make outlandish claims. All of these are discussion instigators, and not
worthy of negative ratings.

I upvote comments that make smart and sound points, get me thinking in a new
way about something, or effectively counter an argument, even if it is mine.

I also upvote in lieu of a comment if what I would have said has already been
sufficiently covered.

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SwellJoe
I have to be pretty annoyed to downvote. I almost never vote up or down,
actually, and downvotes are extremely rare.

A personal pet peeve is when someone willfully misses the point of an article
or comment in order to go off on some pretty much unrelated tangent. It
happens on reddit more than around these parts (I suppose because politics are
free game over there and not welcome here, and politics bring out the worst in
people), but it happens around here occasionally, particularly on religious
topics (Apple, text editors, pg essays, programming languages, etc.).

Plain old stupidity will do it, too. Willful ignorance, spam, self-
righteousness due to ignorance of limitations (e.g. a "business/idea guy"
looking for an engineer and offering a pittance for the work being shocked and
angry that no one wants to work with him), that sort of thing.

I'm more forgiving of stupid posts if the poster recognizes their limitations
and can laugh about it. Humor goes a long way towards nullifying any annoyance
I might be feeling about flaws in a post.

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Bluem00
I'll consider a comment for a down-vote if it negatively affects the
conversation. Usually this means it's off-topic for the conversation that it
replies to (including insults and just plain meanness).

However, when I determine whether to down-vote, I first figure out what I
think the score should be, and only down-vote if it's above that value. I've
even up-voted comments that I thought were bad because I felt the author was
being punished too harshly for saying something they obviously didn't realize
would be bad.

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gaius
If it is obviously factually incorrect.

~~~
russell
Only if the down-modder is actually correct. Some of the more sarcastic ones
are usually wrong.

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scott_s
I asked a similar question a few months ago, and included my policy:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=361390>

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ryanmahoski
If a comment is logically invalid, intellectually lazy or cruel I sometimes
hit the down arrow.

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pavelludiq
redditness

p.s. I would totally downvote my comment since it is stupid, on the other hand
it is the most correct answer to your question.

