←back to thread

Hacker News Guidelines

(news.ycombinator.com)
446 points tonmoy | 1 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.216s | source
Show context
yjftsjthsd-h ◴[24 Aug 23 17:09 UTC] No.37251581[source]▶
The one thing I wish was added - either in the guidelines or as a change to the actual web UI - was replying to a comment that you're downvoting; it's frustrating both to have one's own comments downvoted without explanation, and to come across a comment that's grey without obvious reason (Was it factually incorrect? Endorsing an unpopular idea? It's not always obvious).

(I'm not saying HN should do exactly the same thing, but one example is Slashdot's system where a comment can get downvoted in a way that tags it specifically as trolling/offtopic/whatever - https://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml seems to describe it alright)

replies(9): >>37251672 #>>37251684 #>>37251692 #>>37252205 #>>37252423 #>>37252679 #>>37254129 #>>37254592 #>>37254827 #
jedberg ◴[24 Aug 23 17:14 UTC] No.37251672[source]▶
It's an interesting idea, but you'd end up with a situation where the worse the comment, the more discussion it generates due to the forced replies, which is sort of the opposite of what you want.
replies(3): >>37251715 #>>37251821 #>>37254836 #
arfafaerhgaq5[dead post] ◴[24 Aug 23 17:23 UTC] No.37251821[source]▶
[flagged]
1. almostnormal ◴[24 Aug 23 17:38 UTC] No.37252054[source]▶
> What is the downside of "more discussion"?

The only limited thing is time. I have never consciously thought of downvotes like that, but their only truely meaningful use would be to push down items I do not only not want to spend time discussing, but not even spend time reading, under the precondition of the assumption that most others likely feel the same.