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

(blog.stackoverflow.com)
61 points Anon84 | 2 comments | 09 Mar 09 05:11 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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so_user ◴[09 Mar 09 06:48 UTC] No.508049{5}[source]▶
The Stack Overflow guidelines prohibit discussion topics, but they still find their way through every once in awhile because the community doesn't mind them if they're interesting enough. Same thing here.
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1. codinghorror ◴[09 Mar 09 07:01 UTC] No.508064{6}[source]▶
yes, that's true -- but we also allow people to vote against those off-topic articles, and move to close (or reopen) them. There's no way to vote down a link submission on HN.
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2. swivelmaster ◴[09 Mar 09 08:06 UTC] No.508118[source]▶
Right but if enough people find it interesting it finds its way to the front page. I think it makes sense in the context of saying that if X people like this, more than X other people will probably like it too. And that's the point - find stuff that the audience likes.

I think that's pretty healthy. It means that Paul Graham gets an article to the front page one day, and the next day a rebuttal to that article goes up right next to it. Doesn't matter if all the people who agree with one want to downvote the other - as long as it's good, we all get a chance to judge for ourselves.