Hacker News Guidelines

There's really one thing missing from the guidelines IMO - "don't downvote for disagreement, downvote for offtopic/flamebait/inappropriate comment".

Well, this should be obvious, but it sadly isn't...

according to others downvote for disagreement is appropriate.

offtopic/flamebait/inappropriate comments should probably be flagged.

I believe that is intentionally not in the guidelines. Regardless, even if it was, it's a losing battle.

Historically, it has been explicitly okay to downvote for disagreement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

I know, I just think it's not a good idea at all.

I think it really conflicts with the "optimise for curiosity" aspect of the site. Downvoting comments for disagreement does not help curiosity, as it just downranks insightful yet unpopular opinions, which obviously does not help encourage curiosity. The real offtopic/flamebait comments get flagged anyway, so downvotes aren't needed to keep the site functional and interesting.

(last sentence was slightly edited for clarity)

But 'disagreement' is a bit vague. If I use a dwonvote (which isn't for totally inappropriate stuff) it's not merely disagreement, but because the comment has demonstrably false content for instance. I'm not sure what else I'd use it for, just opinion-based disagreement doesn't quite cut it indeed.

I think there is a category past those that is a much more appropriate for flagging. Something like: abusive / hostile / grossly inappropriate. I think people on HN do a great job of flagging these, but it's weird that the same mechanism would be the best choice for something that is merely off-topic.

I'll try to clarify myself (I thought I was, but apparently not...) by "disagreement" I meant downvoting purely based on not agreeing with the poster's opinions and/or their other comments. (There are people who mass-downvote posters on HN which they want to "punish", sadly...)

If the comment is inflammatory, false or even just misleading, I wouldn't count it under this umbrella.

Yeah I'm in the boat of "people shouldn't use downvotes for differing opinions", but I do downvote things I disagree with when I think they are "in bad faith". This is definitely a vague and subjective metric, but includes things like the demonstrable falsehood you mentioned, as well as stuff like continuing to make the same point while seemingly failing to read or incorporate what their interlocutor is saying.

I guess what I'd say is that most disagreements are honest ones - people coming to different conclusions on subjective things - and that's the kind of disagreement I don't think downvotes should be used for.

A simple up/down vote isn't enough to convey on all the options. Most people take to be an agree/disagree button rather than good quality/bad quality button -- and I think that's a valid interpretation given the limited options.

Wonder if a good fix would be to explicitly separate the options?

So for a post you'd have 4 buttons:

- Good (which says 'this is a high quality post that adds to the conversation' when you hover over it) - Bad (which says 'this is a low quality post that detracts from the conversation' upon hover) - Agree (with the title being 'I agree with this post' on hover) - Disagree (with the title being 'I disagree with this post' on hover)

You'd then have only the 'Good' and 'Bad' options give or take away karma points (without the score being visible), and the number of people who 'Agree' and 'Disagree' would be displayed near the post separately in some way.

good point. i did feel a bit of unease making that suggestion myself, like how bad does a comment really have to be before it is ok to call it to the attention of moderators? i guess i was reading much more into those terms that i should have. there is a category of maybe boring offtopic/ potential flamebait/ mildly inappropriate where it is possible to just ignore it or talk it out.

Not only is it not in the guidelines, the opposite principle is part of HN jurisprudence: downvoting for disagreement is explicitly approved here, and has been since Graham. The idea is that those downvotes are more succinct and produce a better conversation than the rote disagreement comments would be otherwise.

I think you don't need all four. Just agree/disagree/bad. Agree is a positive. Disagree might be positive depending on various factors (# of replies, etc). Bad is the negative.

It depends on what you're optimizing for: the feelings of individual commenters, or the overall quality of the thread.

I was thinking about the perspective of the whole site's quality globally.

Then it's much less clear why the alternate policy would be better.

I've touched on this in another thread under this comment - basically, I think that it doesn't help with the "optimise for curiosity" aspect of the site. Downvoting comments solely based on disagreeing discourages people from posting insightful yet unpopular comments, which is a net negative for curiosity here.

Hmm that's fair. I personally like to have agree/disagree as neutral value judgements, but it could work pretty well with agree as a positive too.

Either way, I feel like the XenForo reactions/Slashdot ratings system probably works better if you want to avoid the upvote/downvote abuse that sites like Reddit have, since they make people think about why they like/dislike a post rather than treating it like a binary matter.

I understand what you're saying now. That's an indirect and tentative benefit, which needs to be stacked up against the immediate and obvious detriment of threads being littered with rote, obvious disagreements. Most especially important to be aware of: even good comments are routinely downvoted! But those downvotes are almost always rapidly swamped by upvotes. In the system you're implying, we'd be reading rote meta commentary for all those fluctuations.

I think the system we have now works well for the thing it's designed to improve.

Slashdot worked/works similar to this; with an additional "+1 Funny" that does not grant karma to the user.

But what if they're wrong?

I think the rationale for the policy is something like "if we didn't encourage this, we'd get a lot of low-quality comments that boil down to 'I disagree'". I think that's bad reasoning. Disagreeing without saying why should be banned, but disagreeing why explaining why be useful. If the point of upvoting/downvoting is make the more interesting and useful comments bubble up to the top, having comments sink to the bottom because people disagree is clearly counterproductive.

There was a time when downvoting someone was accompanied by an explanation of why the downvote had just happened, but I think that didn't live long.

Either way, after the divisive last few years I don't think that that many people care for downvotes anymore, i.e. for what "the other side" thinks.

Maybe you're talking about some other site, but I don't remember HN ever operating this way. Downvoting disagreement is one of the oldest norms on the site.

2010-2012, I’d say. Too lazy to search through the comments back then. I also remember when meta discussions/posts like this one were actively discouraged, I’d say that lasted for longer.

Slightly related to the topic of moderation and this forum, the people behind it should really do something about allowing users in here to delete their comments/past history. We’re only a doxxing event away from making the news (this forum was no better than Reddit when it came to the Boston bombing, as an example and talking about doxxing).

Meta discussions are still discouraged, but I think that Dan sort of lets one slip by to vent out the pressure every once in awhile.

Downvoting for disagreement was absolutely a norm here 2010-2012. You'd have been chided for giving a reason to your downvote then.

The deletion of comments and comment history is a perennial topic; you can search Dan's comment history to understand the rationale behind our policies on it.

Slashdot also did a few things that allowed this to work. They limited how many votes you had. It made you think of whether something was Insightful, flamebait, or funny, etc. If you give people unlimited votes, 1) Would the bother to categorize something as funny? 2) Would it still get boosted to the top, drowning other comments, and like reddit, eventually make the site useless?

I don't downvote all disagreement, and I'll occasionally upvote or vouch a comment I disagree with that I feel has been excessively downvoted.

But I frequently downvote disagreement where it seems to me that the comment also reduces the overall thread quality.

Also, the degree to which you are optimizing.