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The Value of Downvoting, or, How Hacker News Gets It Wrong

(blog.stackoverflow.com)
61 points Anon84 | 13 comments | 09 Mar 09 05:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source | bottom
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pg ◴[09 Mar 09 05:37 UTC] No.507970[source]▶
The reason HN doesn't need downvotes is that HN, unlike Reddit, kills lame articles. On Reddit, users need downvotes as a way of saying an article is lame. Downvoting is the only way you can get a (nonspam) submission off the frontpage. But on HN you can flag it and if it's bad the editors will kill it.

We can thus safely assume a nonlame set of articles, and we also (so far at least) assume nonlame voters. And if you only have nonlame voters voting on nonlame articles, upvotes should be enough to pick the winners.

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codinghorror ◴[09 Mar 09 05:59 UTC] No.507981[source]▶
> The reason HN doesn't need downvotes is that HN, unlike Reddit, kills lame articles.

Honest question, and I do not mean this as a flame, because generally I quite enjoy Hacker News.

How, exactly, is the current top-rated story on HN, "How to Stop the Drug Wars" ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507509 ) related to.. news of hacking?

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wfarr ◴[09 Mar 09 06:06 UTC] No.507989[source]▶
Hacker News isn't so much just about programming, but things that are interesting to programmers. It's entirely possible that the programmers that visit HN are interested in that topic.
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codinghorror ◴[09 Mar 09 06:09 UTC] No.507995[source]▶
Regardless, I think it's a terrible story for a site about programming topics, and I would absolutely vote it down.

But I can't.

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gruseom ◴[09 Mar 09 06:21 UTC] No.508006[source]▶
This isn't "a site about programming topics". Read the guidelines. Or even just the comment you were replying to.
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codinghorror ◴[09 Mar 09 06:34 UTC] No.508029[source]▶
Are you and I reading the same guidelines?

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports,

Isn't "How to stop the drug wars" about politics? I know it is exactly the kind of article I expect to find on Reddit. I was surprised to see it on the front page here. From the linked article:

> That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.

This is not an article about politics?

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rms ◴[09 Mar 09 06:43 UTC] No.508040[source]▶
"most"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507890

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1. codinghorror ◴[09 Mar 09 06:57 UTC] No.508061[source]▶
Isn't this exactly why downvoting should be a bit more prevalent than it is now? For marginally topical (and in my opinion completely off-topic) political stories like that?

Right now only the people who upvote it get to have a say.

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2. ◴[09 Mar 09 07:08 UTC] No.508071[source]▶
3. gruseom ◴[09 Mar 09 07:09 UTC] No.508072[source]▶
Right now only the people who upvote it get to have a say.

Not so. The people who flag it also get to have a say. And if you observed the site more closely you would notice that their say is quite effective.

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4. lacker ◴[09 Mar 09 07:24 UTC] No.508088[source]▶
The drug story is actually some really intelligent analysis by the Economist. It is not the sort of garbage you get on Reddit.
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5. codinghorror ◴[09 Mar 09 07:31 UTC] No.508095[source]▶
Fair enough.

I understand how voting works, but how does the flagging mechanism work? Once it's flagged by (n) people, what happens? I checked http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and I couldn't find anything.

I think flagging is a very different (and basically silent) axis of expression; you can't counter an upvote in the case of controversial, marginally on-topic questions like the drug war one.

I totally agree that some of the powers like voting down and flagging have to be earned through participation, by the way. We do the same thing on Stack Overflow.

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6. gruseom ◴[09 Mar 09 07:57 UTC] No.508113{3}[source]▶
flagging is a very different (and basically silent) axis of expression

I think the silence is a feature not a bug. The meta-noise reached its peak just before flagging was introduced, and it got way better after that. It still flares up intermittently, like now. An interesting observation is that it's mostly new(ish) users who post complaining meta-comments. Perhaps after they've been around for a while they notice that those discussions are always the same, as are the "sky is falling" threads.

Edit: uh-oh, the right margin is fast approaching. And damn it, I had managed to go at least 6 months without getting sucked in to this meta business!

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7. codinghorror ◴[09 Mar 09 08:15 UTC] No.508125{4}[source]▶
Good and worthy discussion, though, because this is the very heart and soul of designing software (or at least web apps with discussion) for human beings.
8. swombat ◴[09 Mar 09 09:14 UTC] No.508168{3}[source]▶
As I understanding, flagging brings articles to the attention of the secret cabal of editors (no one knows who they are, beyond the fact that pg is likely one of them). The more an article is flagged, I presume, the more it stands out to their attention. They then make a manual decision whether to kill the article - and can even bring it back if they change their mind (I've seen that happen a few times).

So flagging in and of itself does not trigger any automatic removal of the article. There has to be a human action to remove the offending article.

9. codinghorror ◴[09 Mar 09 11:11 UTC] No.508237[source]▶
I totally respect the Economist, but are they really saying something about the pointlessness of the drug war that I haven't heard a thousand times over already? Furthermore does it belong on a site devoted primarily to programming topics?

What next, some really intelligent analysis of Ron Paul?

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10. axod ◴[09 Mar 09 13:45 UTC] No.508372{3}[source]▶
"An analysis of the 10 most prevalent lolcat photos, and what makes them entertaining".
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11. lacker ◴[09 Mar 09 14:34 UTC] No.508431{3}[source]▶
Yes, it does belong here, because it's interesting, and it's not like Hacker News is flooded with drug stories. It's okay to have the occasional off-topic article if it's one of the best of its genre.

There have also been intelligent, interesting stories about Ron Paul on Hacker News. For example this one ;-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76469

12. trickjarrett ◴[09 Mar 09 14:53 UTC] No.508461{3}[source]▶
It seems it does based on the voting. We also had a post by Tim Ferriss on the top of the page for nearly two days last week, not programmer specific but it was enjoyed / hated and had a good discussion going on about it.

This site is vastly related to programming and startups, but other topics that are of interest and thought provoking tend to rise up as an interest.

We don't have kittens on the front page, so I consider it a victory.

13. unalone ◴[09 Mar 09 20:54 UTC] No.509039{4}[source]▶
Man, I know you were joking, but suddenly I feel that a psychological/humor-driven analysis of popular memes might be a fascinating article to read/write.