

The Problem of a Lack of Downvoting. - DarkShikari

Recently, I've noticed that a lot of the articles reaching the frontpage of HN, and often the top thereof, were flamebait/troll blog posts, off-topic (e.g. politics), or whatever.  But moreso, the majority of posters in the comments often agreed that the article was junk!  As such, one wonders, how in the world did the article rise to the top?<p>The problem is that when you don't allow downvoting, while it prevents the problem on sites like Reddit and Digg of "organized downvotes" and hivemind downvoting of disagreeing views, it also means that something's score depends solely on the number of upvotes.  So, if you post something extremely controversial that doesn't belong on HN, it can get more upvotes that most other posts.  Why is this?  Here's an example (let's say HN has 1000 readers, for simple math):<p>Let's say you post Article A, a politics piece railing against, say... Nancy Pelosi.  Lots of people are going to look at it, since its controversial, and everyone has an opinion.  Let's say 50% of HN readers look at it, and 20% of those upvote it, and 60% of those would have wanted to downvote it.  With downvotes, the article would have been buried quickly.  But this article gets 100 upvotes and quickly flies to the top.<p>Now, let's say you post a very interesting article on creative use of assembly, Article B.  Not nearly as many people will look at it--let's say 10% of readers.  And let's say 40% of those upvote it, and 10% of those would have downvoted it if they could.  The article only gets 40 upvotes, despite being much better and more on-topic HN content.<p>It seems to me to be much like the classic "color of the bikeshed" issue; if its something everyone has an opinion about, it gets voted up even if the majority of people think the link is junk or offtopic.<p>Now, my question is--how can this problem be resolved without reintroducing the problem of downvotes?
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pmjordan
If you're worried about the signal-to-noise ratio, then I suggest you don't
post things that have been posted and discussed about _a gazillion times_
before, as this too is cluttering up the main page.

You don't have to like every single article on the main page. Hacker News
wasn't made just for you. If people upvote, then clearly they disagree with
you on the article. Disagreement is ok, even necessary for a useful
discussion.

If you've read all the articles on the main page then I suggest you either
read old threads on the topic of downvoting or just spend your time more
productively by doing something creative rather than complain.

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chmike
I must disagree with the comment of pmjordan. My impression is that the math
argument didn't made through.

If the issue is raised over and over their might be a possibility that it has
not been optimally addressed yet.

I also understand the initial question as an invitation for suggesting for a
better solution. Why smashing this with a "don't ask" comment ? This is a
hacker topic and it has many potential applications if a better solution is
found.

Back to the initial topic. It looks like the problem comes from using a simple
scalar parameter for the ranking. There are other parameters in play that
could be combined to yield a more pertinent ranking: number of leads, number
of votes, kind of votes (good, bad, off topic, spam, ... ), number of
comments.

The ranking could also be multidimensional instead of a simple scalar value.
For instance, identify hot topics, popular topics and pertinence, etc.

10 up votes may mean 90% readers up voted the subject or only 1% up voted the
subject which is a very different information value.

The google story, as well as the reddit story, should remind us how important
the ranking can be. The more pertinent your information channel becomes the
more valuable it is.

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m_eiman
Change the links so they're redirects from the HN app, count the number of
clicks and factor that into the ordering. Instead of putting most votes on
top, put highest votes per click on top.

Sure, it's easy to game the system - but if someone wants to break something
they'll do it one way or the other anyway.

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greyman
I don't consider this a big problem yet, the quality of frontpage submissions
is still pretty good. Yes, there were a few political/financial entries
recently, but still they weren't completely off-topic IMHO, given the current
state of the world.

Sometimes, I like to read other HN readers opinions about the so-called
"nonhackers news". Overall, I consider current voting system functional.

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zain
Flag the post and move on with your life.

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haasted
Isn't flagging meant for spam-submissions? That has been my sole use of it
until now, at least.

~~~
ntoshev
From the guidelines:

 _Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can
flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users
will see this; there is a karma threshold.)_

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mattmaroon
Post a link to NonHackerNews.com at the top? j/k.

But seriously, it can't unless the number of participating people who think
it's off-topic outweighs the number of participating people who think
otherwise. Or some form of modertion (possibly automated) happens. And even
with downvotes, it might not change much. The off-topic crowd might just start
downvoting the on-topic crowd in retribution. Same with the flag link, if
there were trolls who really cared, they could just flag everything and make
it less useful.

~~~
froo
You know, riffing off this Matt - would it be possible for you to set up a
page with HN and NHN side by side in iframes?

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iuguy
I've written a post at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=320834> to see how
people would react to a plethora of vote up if. It'd be helpful if people here
could vote up to keep it on the front page.

I think it would illustrate the point quite well that as HN grows, a reddit
element starts to appear. How that's managed is something for pg and co to
work out.

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TrevorJ
If you think about it, lack of the down vote simply means that the oneness is
on you as a contributor of quality content to increase the signal-to-noise
ratio by submitting more good articles that will displace the junk. If the
crops are plentiful enough the weeds can't grow.

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jwesley
The problem with people whining about the content of social news sites...just
be thankful the spammers haven't overrun this site like Digg and Reddit.

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woodsier
I'm in complete agreement.

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knarf
Has anybody thought about talking to the people who post this stuff?

~~~
Novash
Yes, but have your tried reasoning to spammers before?

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DanielBMarkham
Categorizing instead of ranking.

Have 5-7 categories. Interesting, Informative, Troll, etc. (perhaps the
slashdot categories)

Instead of up/down, pick a category (or several)

I set the system to show me the most interesting, or most informative
articles. (or a combination) I also set a troll limit, perhaps 20%, to
represent the amount of troll categorization I'm willing to put up with.

Badda-boom, badda-bing. I see stuff that's interesting to me.

~~~
jcl
It's not a bad idea, but it strikes me as an over-engineered solution for a
site that doesn't yet have Slashdot's problems... There are significantly
fewer articles on the HN front page than there are comments in the typical
Slashdot thread, and a lower troll ratio, too.

