
Downvoting posts that prompt significant debate - SagelyGuru
Procedural question:
Is it fair and useful, that a comment or a question here can raise a debate of, say, seventeen or more individual contributions but attract only a negative score?
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brudgers
One of the decisions I made about downvotes on HN is to treat them as
editorial feedback. Maybe I was unclear, maybe my facts were wrong, or maybe
my comment just wasn't very good. In response, I often delete or edit or
rewrite my comments. The critical thing for me understanding why a comment was
downvoted.

It looks to me like the comment in question was flagged. Lacking elements such
as examples, rationales, analyses or an interesting story may have caused
people to find it uninteresting. By being only tenuously related to the issues
around laptop privacy, others may have found it low quality. It is plausible
that one or more people felt that a likely result would be sparking two sides
to talk past each other. The ;) does little to argue against such an
interpretation.

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Someone1234
Is it fair and useful that downvotes are used both as a moderation tool
(making posts disappear, drop down the list) and at the same time a "dislike"
button?

That's the core problem. Something can be unpopular but still inspire
conversation, or conversely popular and inspire none.

Sites like this and Reddit need three buttons "like" "dislike" (both of which
aren't tied to moderation, and don't add or subtract from a total score), and
a "unconstructive" button which is directly used to attack low
effect/trolling/unacceptable comments.

"Unconstructive" tags should be PUBLIC. Meaning if you abuse it as a "super-
downvote" it will be obvious from your profile.

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DrScump
The title refers to "posts" being downvoted (flagged is the only mechanism I
know of).

I think most posts that are flagged are flagged because they are _dupes_ (or
blogspam/derivatives of existing dupes).

~~~
brudgers
I think "posts" may refer to comments rather than submissions.

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kdamken
That's the problem with any social network that allows this. Upvoting and
downvoting has less to do with whether a comment is correct or true, and more
about whether the hivemind behind the community agrees with it.

A great example would be reddit - try posting something there praising a
conservative candidate and see how well you do. Then, try posting something
praising Bernie Sanders and watch as you ride the wave of upvotes to the front
page.

Nothing to do about the correctness of the content. Everything to do with
whether the hivemind agrees.

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JSeymourATL
The Score itself is ridiculous! It shouldn't matter-- but it often does,
completely human.

We should all work on cultivating an internal locus of control.

Tim Ferriss and Josh Waitzkin recently spoke about this issue (fwd to 50:00)
[http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/03/23/josh-waitzkin-the-
pro...](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/03/23/josh-waitzkin-the-prodigy-
returns/)

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GFK_of_xmaspast
I don't see why not.

