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Hacker News Guidelines

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446 points tonmoy | 1 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Pannoniae ◴[24 Aug 23 17:30 UTC] No.37251926[source]▶
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...

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stinos ◴[24 Aug 23 18:06 UTC] No.37252462[source]▶
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.
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1. sanderjd ◴[24 Aug 23 18:12 UTC] No.37252543[source]▶
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.