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Hacker News Guidelines

(news.ycombinator.com)
446 points tonmoy | 2 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.009s | 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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wvenable ◴[24 Aug 23 18:24 UTC] No.37252692[source]▶
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.
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CM30 ◴[24 Aug 23 19:12 UTC] No.37253271[source]▶
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.

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1. wvenable ◴[24 Aug 23 19:37 UTC] No.37253582[source]▶
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.
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2. CM30 ◴[24 Aug 23 20:41 UTC] No.37254262[source]▶
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.