It was open-sourced at least two years ago[0]. I believe it hasn't been since to prevent gaming of the system, but I don't remember where I heard that.
I wonder whether being able to downvote makes you a more thoughtful commentor. Perhaps run an analysis on quality of comments (maybe as simple as avg. karma per comment) 400 to 500 vs. 500 to 600?
I have a couple of handles* on HN. One of them is this one, which has enough karma to downvote, and the other has too little karma to downvote. After being really thoroughly raked over the coals for a time, I began mostly logging in under my other handle in part because some people had been really horrible to me and I found myself going "YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE -- DOWNVOTE!" I didn't like interacting with the site that way and was also worried it would have negative consequences for me personally, especially since pg was not handling things in a transparent manner and there was no clear, easy way to get with a mod and sort anything out. I returned to active use of this handle at a point where I was less bitter and also the culture seemed less toxic and I no longer felt like I was just being consistently shit on, all the time. So that isn't an issue for me anymore.
And my main point is that moderating is a human thing. Karma and other technical tools are just that -- tools. There are no magic solutions. Algorithms and what not have their uses but we are all human and building community is more about how people treat each other and making judgment calls and all that then about any specific technical anything.
* This is not a secret and there is no reason to believe they cannot be readily connected to each other -- it was not done to fool anyone here, it was done for other reasons.
Downvoting is still abused IMO; people who simply disagree with you will downvote without explanation.
If they wanted to make an adjustment to the downvote karma threshold, I would suggest "require comment with down-vote" would be an interesting thing to test.
To me, the sets of "downvote-worthy" and "response-worthy" comments overlap very little. I downvote when a comment is not even wrong. When I comment in response to another comment, it's because I've seen some sign that the other person might be interesting, correct, amusing, curious, or any combination of those. A requirement to compose "justification" comments would just about end my downvoting.
Why? If it's so cut and dry, it should not be a problem to explain this.
I would of course assume that less people downvoting + more specific complaints would lead to more moderator action on the more obnoxious/distracting posters, if that wasn't the case I wouldn't recommend the change either.
I'm aware this is how the majority of HN members use the down-vote feature, but the first time I've seen it presented as working-as-intended.
The fact that you're saying this makes me think we need more formal guidelines on the proper use of this feature. More often than not I see it claimed that down-voting should be an expression of "adds value" vs. "does not add value".
Actually, that may not be a bad way of putting it. Comments that are blatantly false do not add value. Comments that get something wrong, but are otherwise high-quality, still add value. So this distinction may capture the nuance we want here. Let's think about it.
HN discussion is only sometimes technical, mostly it's opinion, so the norms should be different.
On a site like stackoverflow where the goal isn't discussion but answers to questions it makes sense to use a combination of mostly upvotes (for good material), lack of any votes (for mediocre material), and very occasional downvotes (for actively bad/outright incorrect answers). In that case it makes sense to engage with the poster and explain the problems, which can increase the potency of the downvote by providing context, while also helping to correct the original poster's misunderstanding.
On a site like HN that is mostly just opinion and commentary those patterns don't make sense. Most of the time comments that deserve downvoting are the sort that are either poisonous to productive conversation or just so monumentally wrong they need to go away. In that case engaging with the poster is precisely the wrong course, because doing so usually exacerbates the problem. Either by validating the behavior (if it's trolling) or by dumping a side-discussion into the larger conversation and polluting the SNR.
It would be a neat thing to test for DH1 and above comments. But do you really want to have to comment on "The author is a self-important dilettante" or "u r a fag!!!!!" However maybe I should be flagging these comments instead of downvoting them?
I've had comments downvoted that might have expressed an unpopular but not necessarily wrong opinion. Getting downvoted with no comments as to why is really frustrating. Especially if I'm making a good-faith effort to participate honestly rather than trolling or whatever.
I get that not all downvotes NEED a comment categorically but there's some meat on the "downvotes deserve comments" bones.
Yes, and it's especially frustrating when you are a newer user and trying to "learn the rules" and contribute constructively. Although I understand HN is cautious about welcoming new users in general, it probably ought to welcome more warmly new users who are trying to be constructive.
Also: A couple times I have accidentally hit the down arrow. There is no undo. How does this relate to comment quality? The only remedy is to add a "Sorry, I downvoted you accidentally" comment, which I've seen people do. Although it's good etiquette that's a relatively low-quality comment.
I think that downvotes without context or downvotes without comments would me more tolerable if downvotes didn't also automatically white out text - maybe there should be a margin of two or three before that happens to allow for the inevitable drive-bys and people who just don't like what you say but don't care enough to refute it.
Requiring justification is a super bad idea. Some people will just not get on well and being able to downvote anonymously and move on is probably about the least harmful way for two people with unresolvable personal friction to deal with each other. You are basically asking for shitshows here, which is very much the opposite of the goal of the culture and I think would drive off a lot of people.
Being on both sides of the table is always instructive. I'm sure voting has made me more thoughtful. Hours spent considering comments that combine a useful insight with snarkiness and deciding whether to up- or down-vote them has made me lastingly less snarky on the internet.
Possibly. But I think people shouldn't be able to up or down vote on threads they're in, it's a conflict of interest. (If they did vote, give it back to be fair.)
One of the things I noticed was that when I was just over the threshold I was more choosy about downvoting because each downvote reduced your karma by one (so over-zealous downvoting would result in you losing the ability to downvote).
