
Hn Downvote notes - vezycash
I propose a &quot;reason for down vote&quot; feature to be added to hn.<p>It should be optional.<p>The reason won&#x27;t be part of the discussion thread. A small button close to the comment can link to the for the down vote.<p>Why add this?<p>People who get down voted (esp noobs to the community) have no idea why they were. As a result can&#x27;t figure out how to change our avoid such in the future.<p>Also trigger happy down voters might get to think carefully about WHY before they do.<p>Punishment without reason in real life is known as wickedness, cruelty, bullying...<p>This would be better for not just community but for the internet as a whole.
======
quesera
I disagree completely.

Any "feature" that encourages people to spend more energy thinking about the
reasons for being down voted is just promoting whinging and self-absorbed
discontent. (Which, a: no one wants to see, and b: is bad for the people going
through it!)

I do feel that down votes should not be used for disagreement, but the
practical matter of fact is that they are and will be, both because pg
endorses the idea, and because people are people. If they have a negative
response to reading something, and a down arrow is convenient, it will be
used.

Downvotes are not punishment. They just mean someone didn't like what you
wrote, but couldn't be arsed to respond. Maybe what you wrote didn't deserve a
response, maybe they were confused, maybe the topic is incredibly important to
you but not to them. Who cares? We're adults, ja?

As an alternative, I wouldn't be disappointed if the threshold for greying out
was reduced to -3 or so. And full death at -10?

And for new users who might not know why they're being downvoted, how about a
link to the rules next to any comment of yours that is score-negative? HN
already puts an orange star next to your comments, so the pages are dynamic at
least to that extent.

Personally, I use downvotes exclusively for hostility. I upvote any greyed
comment that is respectful, coherent, and relevant.

~~~
manidoraisamy
> Personally, I use downvotes exclusively for hostility

IMO, noobs might think HN community is hostile & leave. Not many noobs would
ask for reason, if they feel intimidated -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179609)

~~~
ddeck
_> IMO, noobs might think HN community is hostile & leave._

I believe the parent was referring to downvoting comments that are hostile in
tone, not using downvoting as an outlet for his own hostility.

~~~
spacemanmatt
Tone policing is a form of hostility, too.

~~~
quesera
Well, yes, then I am intolerant of aggressive behaviour and take action to
suppress it and its spread.

The simple logic is that hostility obscures the writer's meaning, invites
reactive hostility, and pollutes the conversation. I can see no reason to
promote it.

Slow down, try again without invective, be civil. It works better.

We are not the powerless disenfranchised citizens of a dictatorial state with
no other means of expression. Some of us might be, actually, but not in this
setting.

~~~
spacemanmatt
Tone policing disenfranchises minority views, period. Doesn't matter whether
the context is social justice or database performance; Unless the tone is
beyond well-known bounds (e.g. is abusive, flippant, way off-topic, etc.) I
don't think it is generally constructive.

Edit: I think we're talking past each other on where "tone policing" becomes
regular old moderation.

------
danieltillett
Rather than something complex like this can we get the down and up vote arrows
separated? Something simple like putting the arrows on opposite sides of the
user's name would be fine. This will stop fat fingered people like me from
accidentally down voting a post when I am reading on a mobile device.

~~~
lazzlazzlazz
This is only a problem because you can't modify your vote. On Reddit, you can
change your vote any time before the thread is archived.

~~~
danieltillett
It is a problem even if you could modify your vote as a lot of the time I am
not sure if I have up voted or down voted a post.

I love HN and its low fi design, but this is the one thing that I think takes
away from the community spirt here. Intent should always be clear.

~~~
jonsen
You could tell from which arrow got disabled by your vote.

~~~
Gracana
But both arrows disappear when you vote.

[edit] Or are you suggesting a way in which the site could be modified to
reflect your vote? In that case yeah, I think that would work.

------
onemask
The trick to avoiding downvotes is avoid to commenting on touchy unpopular
topics. What is touchy, well you will know that once you get a few downvotes.
Such topics brooke no argument.

Well it has the intended effect of people self-censoring and ensuring
homogeneous thinking within HN.

Many downvotes are just when people disagree with a view instead of the post
not advancing the discussion.

Anytime I see a downvoted post, I upvote it unless it is really beyond the
pale. I suggest those who don't like the irrational downvoting to do the same.

One solution to discourage downvoting for disagreeing is that that downvoting
to take effect only after say 3 downvotes have accrued. That means atleast 3
people thought a post didn't advance the discussion.

PS : this is a throwaway, learnt from past experiences

~~~
stesch
A few days ago I posted about some feature X a company was building for
product Y of another company.

One of the first comments was from someone who was excited that this feature
was available or at least will be usable in foreseeable time. He got downvoted
a gray fast. And one reply said in a very short form that there is no X for Y.

I said to him that the title of the post was "X for Y" and got downvoted to -3
points.

And why all this? Because 1 other person tricked people into thinking that the
project was abandoned. Nobody checked if he was right. I myself apologized to
the other readers.

When I checked the project's mailing list I was surprised. The project was
alive with the founder of the company helping users to download and install X.
It's still in early development and a bit complicated. You need the right
version of everything at this moment. And you need to have an account to
access some parts of Y needed to compile.

I asked the one who said the project is abandoned why he believes this despite
an active mailing list. He made something up that wasn't topic in April or May
on the mailing list. And said this was a sign of an abandoned project.

Until then the whole post vanished from the front page and nobody cared
anymore.

Why should anybody care for the reasons you get downvoted when you can't
change anything about if for most of the time?

------
sgentle
I think the more pertinent question is: why do we downvote?

If the answer is to signal to others that the comment is not worth reading (by
greying it out, dropping it down in the rankings and eventually preventing
people from reading it at all) then the reason is sort of immaterial.

On the other hand, if the goal is to adjust behaviour I feel like a downvote
(including a downvote-with-reason) is needlessly punitive. Consider the
dubious value of a bad-performance-review-with-pay-cut as a behaviour
adjustment tool.

While there might have been a time when you could politely correct someone's
behaviour in the comments, as HN grows it starts to feel less like a quiet
word and more like calling someone out on stage. For that reason I'm very
reluctant to do it.

It would be good if there was some way to privately reply to a comment.
(Essentially your proposal minus the necessity of downvoting). I'm not sure if
there's any way to do that without it being a vector for abuse or disrupting
public commentary, but if there is I would definitely use it.

Maybe you could let the recipient of a private comment make it public? And
it's not possible to reply to a private comment otherwise? That would be a way
of enforcing a certain don't-say-anything-you-wouldn't-want-repeated niceness
in private comments, and also prevent them from turning into a mechanism for
shadow discussion that takes away from the main comment thread.

Anyway, I definitely agree there is something missing in the HN toolkit for
this kind of problem and I hope we can find a way to improve it.

~~~
hollerith
>It would be good if there was some way to privately reply to a comment.
(Essentially your proposal minus the necessity of downvoting). I'm not sure if
there's any way to do that without it being a vector for abuse or disrupting
public commentary

I have my email address in my HN profile. I take it you wouldn't do that
because you believe it makes you too vulnerable to abuse?

Will you please help me understand what you mean by "disrupting public
commentary"? Maybe give an example.

~~~
sgentle
Ah. I meant more that if I was a troll and I had the ability to comment
privately, I could say nasty things to you in my private comment and nobody
else would be able to see them (except admins, I suppose, who would quickly
become overloaded).

It's a good point that I could email feedback privately. I think that would be
a difficult thing to establish in the general case because it's not expected
behaviour, which makes it seem more significant (oh my god, this guy disliked
my comment so much that he decided to email me about it?). It would also be
more effort, and some people (especially newbies, I would think), don't
include contact details in their profile.

By disrupting public commentary I mean that the established norm on HN is
that, mostly, if you have something to say you say it to the group. If it was
possible to comment privately perhaps it would detract from that group
discussion because people are shy or would rather their comment not be subject
to scrutiny. The end result could be a tragic migration of the interesting
conversations in HN comments from public to private. That's the "shadow
discussion" problem I mentioned later.

That's the particular reason I suggested making private comments impossible to
reply to, so they don't become an alternate competing venue for discussion. I
think the recipient being able to make the comment public would also help act
as a balance against shy commenters making perfectly good public comments
private.

~~~
hollerith
Thanks for your reply.

I was unable to figure out a way to send you a private message.

There's a link in your profile to a personal web site, but I could not find
any contact info on it.

There's a link to your account on Keybase, but 5 minutes of exploration of the
Keybase service did not reveal a way to use Keybase to send you a message.

So, I'm curious as to whether it is your intention that a random HN reader
such as myself cannot figure out how to send you a private message or whether
I'm missing something obvious, or something.

~~~
sgentle
Maybe not obvious - I must have just forgotten to add it!

You can email me at sam@samgentle.com

------
compbio
If you consistently have no idea why you got downvoted, then HN might not be
the place for you. Learn quickly to adapt, start lurking more, or find another
community without high standards for replies. If you don't read the community
guidelines [1] and then complain about negative karma you are to be avoided.

If I did not get downvoted for my very first flame-y, half-assed or dumb
replies, then I would have continued making them.

Wickedness and cruelty is forcing low standards upon a community and sucking
away all the fun.

With downvoting comes a little responsibility: to not only reward good posts,
but lower the visibility of posts that do not contribute to the quality or
enjoy-ability of HN. That is why you need 500 upvotes to get downvote
functionality.

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

~~~
tomjen3
That is great in theory, but in practice you get a lot of flack if you like
Javascript or think Universal Basic Income is a bad idea. You get this flack
regardless of the quality of your arguments.

Hn definitely has a hivemind.

~~~
techlibertarian
It's very similar to Reddit in a lot of ways. Say _one_ negative thing about
the government and you can expect a lot of downvotes.

~~~
DanBC
Wait what? Just to check: Are you saying that people on HN can't say anything
bad about the US government without risking a lot of downvotes?

~~~
techlibertarian
Yes. It's not the case every single time. I've been upvoted for negative
comments about the government but I have to be much more indirect about it. If
I'm blatant about it, I get downvoted to hell.

------
DanBC
Almost anyone with a logged in account can upvote comments. There is a karma
threshold to downvoting. Thus, an unfairly downvoted post is not a failure of
the downvote system but a failure of everyone else to provide corrective
upvotes.

~~~
stephenr
This is a band-aid solution to a widely acknowledged problem.

But the entire concept of startup culture actively embraces the hive-
mentality/cool-kids-know-best mindset so I doubt the actual problem will ever
be fixed.

But sure, keep posting the same stockholm-esque defensive comments.

~~~
DanBC
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007027)

> Strictly speaking a vote does affect someone's karma. But it doesn't cause
> their karma to be net decreased as a result of posting a comment unless you
> downvote the comment below 1, which most people don't do lightly. I think of
> the up and downvoting as a collaboration to determine how much additional
> karma someone should get for posting a new comment.

> This is a band-aid solution to a widely acknowledged problem.

It's an easy solution, and the only solution currently available. The fact it
doesn't work just proves me right: the problem isn't just with people
downvoting comments for disagreement; the problem involves other people not
upvoting unfairly downvoted comments.

~~~
stephenr
> The fact it doesn't work just proves me right

I didn't say your "solution" won't work, I said it's a bandaid.

Maybe it wasn't clear what I meant by "bandaid solution". Let me explain a
literal example:

I once cut my knuckle __very __badly with a cheap mandolin slicer. I didn 't
realise at the time, but there was basically a chunk of my finger - about the
size of a very large pea - missing, and because my knuckle was bent at the
time it was __deep __. Because the blade was so ridiculously sharp, it wasn 't
really very painful, and due to the blood I couldn't see how deep it actually
was, so I put a band-aid on it and didn't think about it.

Three days later a doctor had to use silver nitrate to cauterise the wound, as
it immediately started bleeding profusely whenever the pressure from the
bandaid was removed.

That is what I mean by "bandaid solution" \- you're not solving the problem,
merely covering up the issue and trying to ignore it.

Upvoting any and all non-offensive comments simply to counter any possible
errant down votes defeats the purpose of having votes at all - I then have to
choose between keeping the conversation open and honest, and "supporting"
comments I actively agree with.

As a side-note, I strongly suggest against using a cheap mandolin __OR
__having a wound cauterised with silver nitrate. I 've had entire toenails
removed, and part of the nailbed scraped away (it's as horrible as it sounds)
as a child, and that hurt less than the cauterisation.

------
rwmj
Slashdot was/is good in this regard. You don't upvote and downvote, you give a
reason, like "Interesting", "Troll", "Offtopic", "Funny".

~~~
lazyjones
Slashdot had (it's pretty dead now, I guess) meta-moderation, which worked
very well. I.e. you could vote on whether a particular rating and reason were
appropriate in your opinion or not (with my 4-figure user-ID I often got 15
meta-moderation points to "spend" this way).

~~~
danieltillett
You are showing your age when reminiscing about having a 4 digit slashdot ID
:)

~~~
msutherl
"Flashing" your age ;)

------
mavdi
I like downvoted comments. I always pick up a couple of them when reading the
comments to get a view of the people who think outside the norm. Sometimes
they are genuinely stupid, but sometimes you get very interesting remarks on
things which the "established norm" dislikes.

~~~
xkiwi
This is something very similar to the Seniority in government system.

The one who been there longer has more power, even they do not have brilliant
idea nor ability to perform.

------
Red_Tarsius
I don't have issues with the vote system. I always understand why users
up/downvote me and they usually describe at great length their point of view.

On the other hand, _Reddit_ has an awful downvote culture.

For example
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526798)
I stand by my point, but I can see why a few users thought of my comment as
inappropriate.

------
brudgers
I have never been baffled by a down vote. I've been surprised that something
was downvoted. When I am surprised, I try to figure out why and what
contributed to it that was in my control and what wasn't.

Usually, I get downvoted for xkcd 360 style wrestling the pig in mud.
Sometimes I'm just factually wrong. Sometimes I'm just being a mean or stupid
or just expressing a binary opinion...though those are less and less common, I
think.

The long term solution has been trying to improve my writing, so that it
better communicates my intent. The work of figuring out the reason for
Downvotes is a feature not a bug...the exercise [literally and metaphorically]
makes my writing stronger.

As for new users, I think The current system is useful for HN as a business
unit. HN is part of YC. It's helpful to its selection process. Karma is a bit
of a proxy for product market fit. Upvotes and Downvotes and novotes signal
the reaction to some offering, taking risk and analyzing rewards and adjusting
to feedback are all valuable habits, and if a down vote is going to wreck a
person's day, a VC not returning your calls regarding the previously mentioned
offer sheet as the startup burns through its last bag of ramen may not be the
right career move.

The long play requires persistence and pivoting and perspective.

------
givan
You want to censor yourself based on down vote reasons?

Even if sometimes it seems strange to receive a down vote there are many
people with different opinions and even if they told you the reason it won't
help you much, other than entering a time consuming debate I don't see what
else you can do.

[https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

Down votes increased because hn got bigger, and it only means someone
disagrees with you, why do you see it as a punishment?

~~~
currysausage
_> Down votes increased because hn got bigger, and it only means someone
disagrees with you, why do you see it as a punishment?_

And I thought disagreement was the worst reason for downvoting. I thought that
you should downvote comments for low quality, when they add nothing but flame
potential to the discussion.

Downvotes let a comment fade to grey until it is invisible. Is it so hard to
see why someone would see this as punishment?

Why would I want to make counter-arguments vanish? A discussion where all
visible comments promote the same opinion would be a boring, useless
discussion. Actually, I tend to upvote opinions that I reject if they are
outlined in a valuable manner. It is in my best interest to know the best
points for all sides.

And OP, as I understand it, wants to make this more visible to downvoters:
that disagreement isn't actually in the canonical list of downvote reasons.

~~~
Sandman
As a long-time HN user I completely agree with you, but it's worth mentioning
that pg specifically stated that it's perfectly fine to use downvotes for
disagreement (if I find the comment where he said that I'll edit my post and
put a link to it). So, while I don't think that downvotes should be used for
disagreement, if the person that created this site says that it's ok, then I
guess it's ok.

 _EDIT_ : Ah, here it is:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

------
mark_l_watson
I think probably not a good idea.

I don't particularly enjoy being down voted but it is interesting to try to
figure out why a comment was down voted.

In real life, our friends might not tell us if, for example, our little
political rant is boring. We do get that feedback on HN.

One thing that really irritates me however is when someone takes the time to
respond to one of my comments and gets down voted. For me a big motivation for
commenting is to see what responses I get. So, I like the current system, but
perhaps down voting is overly used.

------
justincormack
It doesn't matter. A downvote is not a personal affront, and you should
certainly not ask for an explanation every time. Most are just noise and tend
to even out after a while.

------
lazyjones
YMMV, but my impression is that downvotes are usually obvious and expected,
either bad style/inflammatory or unpopular opinions in the given context (i.e.
any criticism of e.g. Perl in a Perl-related discussion where many fans of the
language are present).

Requiring a comment is probably less effort than all the captchas I have to
solve because of Tor (many more than the number of downvotes I pass
around...), but it'll lead to unnecessary meta-discussions ("he downvoted me
because of foo but he's wrong because ...").

~~~
dang
> all the captchas I have to solve because of Tor

Do you see those when posting from your current account? If so, I'm not sure
we have this right. There are hurdles on new accounts to impede spammers and
trolls, but we don't mean to make things harder for established users.

If you wouldn't mind, sending details of what you're experiencing to
hn@ycombinator.com would be helpful. We'll look into it and maybe adjust how
this works.

~~~
lazyjones
> _Do you see those when posting from your current account?_

Yes, I do reload HN quite often (always logged in with this account) and
believe I have seen 5+ captchas or so today already.

Thanks for the offer to report details, I'll try to keep track of what exactly
happens tomorrow.

~~~
dang
Cool. A screenshot would be great, if that's convenient.

Sorry we've been inconveniencing you!

------
pavlov
I completely agree, but I feel it should be mandatory. (I've proposed this
same "explain why" mechanism for downvotes a few times in the past.)

Currently downvoting has unbalanced incentives. You need a fairly high level
of karma to use the feature, which suggests that it's considered a privilege.
Yet, once you have it, there's no responsibility attached to the privilege.

This can make downvoting kind of sophomoric: "I was unreasonably downvoted
when I was a newbie, now it's payback time!"

~~~
amirmc
You're assuming that HN isn't keeping track of how often you downvote (or any
patterns). Without knowing the set up, it's difficult to infer much. Of
course, revealing that info might lead to gaming the system.

------
smitherfield
Usually the reason why posts are being downvoted are pretty clear. But, those
aren't always good reasons, because we're dealing with a group of people who
have a very strong tendency to be know-it-alls (myself certainly not
excepted). The vast bulk of my downvotes so far came from a thread where I
pointed out a few obvious flaws (massive civil and potentially criminal
liability) with the prevailing conspiracy theory about how the leaked _Game of
Thrones_ episodes were leaked by HBO themselves, as part of their secret plan
to get people _not_ to use HBO Go. I'm not especially bitter about it, but I
do find myself self-censoring more often to avoid arguing with groupthink.

------
whybroke
While the idea of "downvote requires a posted reason" is no doubt the best
idea, if it proves too radical a change from a technical or behavioral reason,
at least radically raise the karma need to downvote. Say so that only the top
K number of accounts by age or karma can do so where K is _not_ a percentage.
Because honestly the number of down-voting-for-poorly-thought-out-postings is
now mightily outweighed by down-voting-becuse-I-dont-agree.

So much so that to be honest I now take downvotes as a badge of honor
ironically.

~~~
DanBC
I currently have 27800 karma. What makes you think I'm not an idiot with the
downvote button?

~~~
whybroke
Subjectively the problem seemed less bad in the past so I'm thinking that
limiting to the donwvote permissions to longer term users will reduce the
problem.

Very obviously requiring comments for downvotes is better.

------
oskarth
I was just thinking about this the other day. I think it'd be useful if you
could specify DH{0,1,2} as reasons for downvoting
([http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html)),
as these are essentially useless comments that add nothing to the discussion.

------
danmaz74
It could be nice to have a popup menu where you can choose from the main
reasons why a comment can be downvoted according to the rules, pointing to the
relative FAQ entry. "Ad hominem" "Off topic" "Spammy" \- this would help the
newcomers and would probably be used more than having to type a reason.

------
delinka
When I started participating on HN, the general consensus for downvoting was
for posts that were off-topic, poorly written, trollish, vile, etc. Never
downvote to disagree.

Disagree by writing a thoughtful, reasoned response. Dissect the points that
matter, ask for clarification, provide your own clarification.

~~~
DanBC
People were having this conversation before you joined HN under this account.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691)

------
amirmc
Why not leave the reason as a comment instead? I don't really see a need for a
new feature.

~~~
kephra
If someone upvotes your negative comment, the complete thread goes up a bit.
Thats the opposite, that your want with a downvote.

~~~
amirmc
What you're describing isn't clear. I assume you meant to say "If someone
_comments_ on your negative comment ..." otherwise it appears you're
describing how upvotes are generally expected to work.

I expect HNs algos could spot such a comment thread quite easily (thereby
avoiding what you've described). That doesn't require a new user feature.

------
ForFreedom
Isn't "not" upvoting same as "downvoting"?

I mean on HN the frequency of people who click on a link, if not at all worth
would be less than 50-60.

Not sure how the HN algorithm works but am pretty sure it does well.

------
stesch
No, you don't really want to know why you are getting downvoted. Every time I
got an explanation on Reddit it was annoying and more aggravating than just
some stupid downvotes.

------
threatofrain
I don't think the problem is with down votes per se, but in the total balance
of votes. It doesn't matter if you receive 100 negative votes if you received
1000 positive votes. It doesn't matter if you received 1000 positive votes if
you received 10000 negative votes.

The question is if there are special biases for voters, like if almost nobody
logs in to up vote, but people will log in to down vote. That will make some
people feel like the site is capriciously punishing.

------
Gracana
I find the often-preachy-and-self-absorbed explanations of why someone was
downvoted really obnoxious. People here aren't stupid, we usually have a
pretty good idea of when we're saying something controversial and/or why
someone might downvote it. And some of the explanations I've seen, just wow...
Explaining to someone that saying "thanks" is meaningless and adds nothing to
the discussion is just a slap in the face.

------
chris_wot
I'd love to know why a few of my comments have been few voted lately, for
example:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517067)
\- which wasn't wrong!

Or this one, on systemd:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951637)

------
tete
That would be really nice. It could prevent accidental downvotes, when
implemented in a certain way.

------
moron4hire
If you are a net positive contributor to HN, then the one or two negative
votes a week from negative people should not outweigh the positive votes from
everyone else. Don't be fixated on the raw value.

------
sidcool
I agree. Many a times the link is duplicate and people downvote, but the OP
gets no indication. In fact, when for a link I request people to add reason
for flagging a post, my comment is downvoted.

------
csomar
I think we need a flag link for comments.

\- You down-vote a wrong citation, false truth, someone who is flaming...

\- You flag spammy links and such.

On the other hand, maybe we should increase the threshold for

\- down-votes to 1,000 or 5,000

\- flagging to 100 or 500

~~~
dang
There is a flag link for comments. Click on a comment's timestamp to go to its
item page, and (assuming you have a small amount of karma, I think 30) you'll
see it.

~~~
csomar
Then I don't have it?

~~~
dang
You should. If you don't see it, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll help you
out.

One thing, though, is that you can't flag a direct reply to your own comment.
Same rule as for downvotes.

------
denzil_correa
Personally, I don't down vote - I only up vote articles/comments that are
worth reading.

------
sitkack
[https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

------
pvnick
This is a good idea, but I would go one step further - giving a reason should
be _required_ for downvoting, but not for upvoting. Praise is always more
effective communication than criticism. Especially as more members join this
community steps must be made to prevent the toxic downvote-to-express-
kneejerk-disagreement culture that pervades Reddit.

------
andy_ppp
Hackernews is a great community in spite of the horrible mess that is the HN
app. There is no reason that the HN codebase isn't open sourced and built by
and for the community.

~~~
DanBC
> There is no reason that the HN codebase isn't open sourced

I think mods mentioned some pretty aggressive voting rings (from surprising,
disappointing, places. _The Atlantic_ did this. I stopped posting any links
from them when I found out.) But there is a lot of vote ringing on HN.

Would being open source affect vote ring detection?

------
giarc
Is this really a problem that needs a solution?

------
jonsen
Years back down-votes were rare on HN. It was relatively easy to infer why a
comment was down-voted. Now you mostly can't tell, just wonder why.

~~~
DanBC
No they weren't.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057275)

Brushfire says, 1946 days ago:

> I agree - Thanks for acknowledging it.

> I've seen a lot more down voting of well-reasoned comments and arguments
> just because of disagreement, and I've seen a lot more snide, unhelpful,
> almost belligerent comments across the board.

> I cant speak for others, but its good to know you are working on it, as I
> dont want to find another place.

~~~
jonsen
I remember that. I've been here longer. It has been a long down-slope.

------
M8
hackernews.stackexchange.com

~~~
gus_massa
Be carefull, onliners are usually dowvoted here. ( _I_ usually donwvote dummy
oneliners, but _I_ didn't downvote this.) (Luckily your comment is black
again.)

I guess I agree with you, but I' difficult to know without a longer
explanation. I'll write _my_ longer explanation:

If HN does this, it will look like
[http://hackernews.stackexchange.com](http://hackernews.stackexchange.com)
.When I visit stackoverflow, I notice that there are many comments just to
explain upvotes and downvotes. I think that it adds too much noise and
moderation to the discussion. I prefer the HN style, were the meta discussion
is as small as possible, so it's easier to follow the main discussion.

------
benihana
> _Punishment without reason in real life is known as wickedness, cruelty,
> bullying..._

I had some issue with this point. Getting a downvote might sting a little bit,
but to equate it to getting bullied is taking it too far. I got bullied plenty
growing up (as I'm sure many other people here have) and to equate a
meaningless downvote - someone disagreeing with you - with something as
traumatizing as being bullied is insulting.

Someone disagreeing with your opinion is nowhere near the same as being
bullied, or being oppressed. I've experienced cruelty directed at me. It's
nothing like a semi anonymous person on the internet pressing a button.

~~~
xtrumanx
I don't think he was equating the two. Just comparing them.

Many of us have experienced cruelty. That doesn't mean anything less severe
than what we've experienced is not cruel (although I wouldn't describe getting
downvoted without reason to be cruel I understand where OP is coming from).

~~~
moron4hire
If he wasn't equating the two, he wouldn't have put them in the same post lie
that. No, technically he didn't say it out loud, but that was the intention of
the proximity.

------
zxcvcxz
My idea: charge karma for a downvote: 1 down vote = lose one karma point
UNLESS they reply to the person they downvoted.

------
stefantalpalaru
Notes won't change anything. There's a culture of comment suppression here
that goes all the way up. If you've been downvoted it means that you failed to
match somebody's expectation of what you should be writing. Now you're toxic
and you need to be punished for the common good. Be glad you weren't also
hellbanned. Yet.

