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

(blog.stackoverflow.com)
61 points Anon84 | 3 comments | 09 Mar 09 05:11 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ralph ◴[09 Mar 09 13:04 UTC] No.508323[source]▶
What really annoys me is that pg took away the ability to downvote a comment after a day or two. Given I use RSS to visit news.yc every few days, that means I can't fully participate; I can upvote people's comments, but not downvote them.

And all because someone went around downvoting all the comments for a particular user they fell out with. It's a sledgehammer, pg! Come up with something better.

replies(1): >>508351 #
1. tptacek ◴[09 Mar 09 13:31 UTC] No.508351[source]▶
Comment votes are a tool for grooming the discussion. Discussion on most threads ends after a day or two. What's the value in downvoting a 3-day-old comment? Very few people are going to respond differently to the thread as a result.

If you want to participate, you should write comments, or, better yet, submissions of your own.

replies(1): >>508355 #
2. ralph ◴[09 Mar 09 13:36 UTC] No.508355[source]▶
By your reasoning, you think it shouldn't be possible to upvote comments after a couple of days either then?
replies(1): >>508390 #
3. tptacek ◴[09 Mar 09 14:01 UTC] No.508390[source]▶
I don't think it should, no. There's a big halo effect to karma, and disabling upvotes for stale comments might mitigate it.

But it's not a big problem.