Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

[rokhayakebe]

What is the point of downvoting someone?

I apologize to anyone who may take offense to the following, but I find it very barbaric.

Most people, I believe, downvote because they do not agree with someone's opinion. I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them.

Maybe web communities are still primitive, or maybe there is a real flaw in current commenting/rating systems.

If there were some consequences to downvoting, i.e. we knew who downvoted whom, what do you think would be the result?

[shrughes]

I downvote the following kinds of comments:

- comments that have a high excitement to information ratio, such as brief comments that include profanity or attitude, and of course garbage one-liner humor comments. But not good one-line comments (such as the best comeback of all time), and usually not the kind that are nested two or more levels deep in the tree.

- most comments made in reply to an article that definitely should be flagged.

- comments that deliberately ignore standard English in a bad direction. For example, those with sentences that end with the word "lol". On the other hand, saying that you "... vote (up|down) to manipulate ..." is ignoring standard English in a non-bad direction.

- comments that show an inability to appreciate rational discussion or approach things with a sufficient level of detachment. This often results a chain of replies between persons A and B, with person B getting several downvotes (by people voting for similar reasons) on every post and person A getting upvotes. Sometimes both A and B both get downvoted. I think that when people complain about being downvoted, usually it's because they were downvoted for this reason and begin to feel persecuted.

- certain types of self-indulgent comments. I suppose everybody writes comments because they want to share their opinion, but some are indulging the poster's desire to tell others about his worldview without being written in a way that could influence other people's worldviews. There were a lot of these, if you want examples, in the justin.tv suicide thread.

- comments that blandly recite a reader's opinion or reaction about an article, that don't add information, especially when there's a long tail of them and they're all the same. These are the less exciting kind of self-indulgent comments.

Basically, with that formula, I vote with the intent of making this site boring and unwelcoming with a high signal:noise ratio.

[araneae]

And yet, my only comments that actually get upvoted are garbage one-liner humor comments.

EDIT: I believe this is what we call irony: http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss323/araneae/hn.png

[bendotc]

I always find opinions like these to be illuminating whenever people claim that people don't care about karma, as it's obviously just a silly number in some computer running this website. As it turns out, some people find losing just 1 point to be indistinguishable from throwing a rock at the person.

For what it's worth, the downvote is for the comment, not the poster. It influences a sorting algorithm that shapes the way people read as well as serves as a signal for how the community feels about a given post. The value of this signal is debatable, but that's the point.

When I personally down-vote your comment, it's because I think you're wrong or your post is of zero or negative value (spam, noise, etc), and it really has nothing to do with your worth as a person (or any desire to hurt you).

[chrischen]

Even if you do not care about karma, a down vote is still symbol of negativity, just as is someone who doesn't care about earthly possessions being robbed.

The sorting algorithm can probably work fine with just an upvote button.

I don't think you really help sort comments when you down-vote if you personally think the person is wrong. You should reply and correct them if they are wrong. Comments that aren't wrong and contribute > 0 should be upvoted.

[dfragnito]

There must be a better way to asses the "value" of content. I agree that the down vote is arguably a good gauge for how the community at large "feels" about the content but not a good indicator for "value". There are two metrics here that I do not believe can be extracted from a voting system.

I rarely comment, one of the few time I did I got down voted. I returned 3 days later and tried to defend my position, but it was too late and the community had move on. Oddly enough my comment did start a thread of discussion.

As I mentioned in my followup comment assessing the value of user contributed content is an area that we are trying to solve in a web application solution soon to be deployed.

Below is an excerpt from my comment.

"Using my initial comment as an example had I not posted that comment "value adding" content would never have been created. If my contributed content resulted in "value adding" content, is it not then "value adding" content? Is a good proxy of "value adding" content, content which produces or causes other content creation?"

So if a comment gets down voted but starts a wave of discussion surely it has value.

[quellhorst]

Your bank account is just a silly number in a computer! The money only has value because other people think it has value.

[abefortas]

Wouldn't it make more sense to downvote either to eliminate spam/noise or to signal disagreement? I'm all for stoning spammers, but I think it's more constructive to write a response if you disagree with someone.

[rokhayakebe]

It influences a sorting algorithm that shapes the way people read...

What gives you the right to decide how a thread should or shouldn't be displayed for others? Aren't you valuing your opinion too much?

When I personally down-vote, it's because I think you're wrong

You can simply make your point in a reply, or maybe make use of silence.

or negative value (spam, noise, etc)

There is a FLAG link for all comments.

it really has nothing to do with your worth as a person

Comments reflect the way the poster thinks. You will not find anything more personal to us than the way we think.

or any desire to hurt you

But you do.

[tokenadult]

I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them.

You don't think there is any difference between throwing a rock at someone and reducing their overall vote count by one vote in an electronic voting system? If someone downvotes me, I have a reason to look again at what I posted and whether or not it fit the discussion. If someone throws a rock at me, I have a reason to report a case of assault to the police.

[unalone]

Both, however, are instances of expressing disapproval without in turn adding something valuable. It was a ridiculous simile, but I understood his feeling because it's one I have also. When I take time and effort to argue something and get voted down, the message I'm given in liu of an actual counterpoint is that my effort in a community has not been appreciated. It's not as drastic as my being hit by a rock, but it's still something that engenders an emotional response on my part.

Of course, I then go on to contribute to the pool of negativity by downvoting people without responding to them, so it's not like I'm blaming everybody who's ever downvoted. But I do understand where he's coming from.

[chrischen]

Both can be threatening. So certain types of comments that may be not accepted, but may not necessarily be wrong, have the risk of being censored by the mob via this social means. And so this risk in censorship by social degradation can be powerful enough to sway certain viewpoints from gaining traction here.

It may not happen all the time, but it certainly does happen. And since the "ranking algorithm" that is the voting can be achieved with just an up vote (at least in theory), I do believe the risks associated with a down vote outweigh any possible efficiency increase to the sorting algorithm.

[auston]

I vote (up|down) to manipulate the way a thread is displayed.

[emmett]

More generally, downvotes exist to provide negative feedback into the system. It's a useful and well understood engineering principle that negative feedback is a useful tool for molding the output of a system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback

[robotrout]

"What if we knew who downvoted whom, what would be the result?"

I love that idea, but extend it also to upvoting, and use it to create a killer social network and/or dating site.

If you and I love the same ideas and hate the same ideas, than we should meet. We may not enrich each others worldview, but that's what HN is for. You and I, in such a scenario would probably get along really well and be great friends. A great way to find that out is a "similarity heuristic" in voting patterns on a site such as this one.

[pbhjpbhj]

Then we would care [a little?] more about the person commenting and less about the content of the comments. Perhaps content would still win but people would be influenced with decisions like "he downvoted me" or "she believes Y" (where Y is orthogonal to the issue) or dimiss salient point based on past arguments.

Which is fine if that's what you're after.

[crux]

I downvote because I have been personally offended by something that has been said. Most often I have been offended by the sin of bad taste. This is, granted, a pretty wide area, but when somebody writes something egregiously distasteful—whether it's a terrible sense of humor, or a misinformed righteousness, or craven pandering to the self-important 'social media' upper crust, or indeed the myopic, worthless blather of said upper crust—I am aesthetically offended by that sort of thing. It offends my sense of decency, my sense of wit and interestingness. I suffer in the same way as I do when I witness incredibly stupid people on television, or very bad music, or indeed when I find myself buttonholed into a painfully tedious conversation with someone who is similarly lacking in good taste, be it social, intellectual, aesthetic or otherwise. I suffer and therefore I downvote, in an attempt to exorcise my pain.

Maybe that would be the easiest rule of thumb, then. If you say something which would, if I were chatting with you at a cocktail party, make me fearfully look for some excuse to go refill my drink, I will downvote you.

[shiranaihito]

> I downvote because I have been personally offended by something that has been said. Most often I have been offended by the sin of bad taste.

> I suffer in the same way as I do when I witness incredibly stupid people on television, or very bad music, or indeed when I find myself buttonholed into a painfully tedious conversation with someone who is similarly lacking in good taste, be it social, intellectual, aesthetic or otherwise. I suffer and therefore I downvote, in an attempt to exorcise my pain.

Are you for real? I guess I should downvote you for deeply offending me by needing to get over yourself.

But I won't, because I agree with the OP.

[10ren]

I've noticed that sometimes interesting answers get downvoted, and irrelevant/badly thought-out answers get upvoted. So I don't take downvotes so seriously now. However, there's a backlash: if I get a bunch of upvotes, I'll now think that it's probably just a bunch of those idiot voters. Which in a way is a good thing, because it means I have to fall back on my own judgment, instead of being guided by karma. (I do listen to intelligent rebuttals and counter view-points, as they have actual content, unlike a downvote).

For a long time, I didn't down-vote anyone. Now I'll sometimes downvote, to put comments in the order of insightfulness; and very occasionally for irrelevance/childishness. For really obnoxious comments, I'll downvote to grey them, and also flag them. But my usual response is to reply "please elaborate" (for a content-free comment), which offers the human behind the comment an opportunity to grow into the community; or an impartial recital of the facts (for a mistaken, inappropriate or irrelevant comment).

[warp]

Most people, I believe, downvote because they do not agree with someone's opinion.

If they do, they're doing it wrong. Downvote someone for not contributing to the discussion.

[tokenadult]

From the keyboard of pg:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

[Semiapies]

People keep saying that, and people keep linking to pg saying that's part of the intended use. Shall we avoid the pointlessness of this argument?

[fnid]

One of the problems is that people don't down vote for the same reasons. Some down because they disagree, others to resort topics, others because they don't like the person's comment, tone, bias, etc...

Without a consistent use of the down vote, the effect is undesired by most.

[camccann]

There's an interesting argument in favor of downvoting here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/

For context, the author is someone who posts on HN and was (at the time) trying to launch a new community.

[jrockway]

Ask the submitter: Why don't you get a blog?

Edit: OK, I will answer the question. People downmod to get people to convince themselves to go away. Imagine I don't like your viewpoint, and you place value on imaginary points I can take from you. I take those points, you get upset, and you stop posting stuff I disagree with.

That's all there is to it; reinforcing groupthink.

Similarly upmods encourage people to keep submitting. Knowing that people like your work encourages you to make more.

[unalone]

This is a very HN-focused point. No reason he can't just post it directly, in this case.

[rokhayakebe]

So, pretty much you force people to make comments you will by taking away points.

"reinforcing groupthink"

Do you speak for one group when on HN or do you speak for yourself? If you speak for a group could you please detail which group that is and at which point you were assigned the right to take actions in its name?

[NathanKP]

Anyone who has read "The Wisdom of Crowds" or has studied the Bay of Pigs disaster knows that groupthink is a terrible idea. I can only hope that your apparent approval of reinforcing groupthink was intended as wry sarcasm.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

If someone posts something that is negative, detracts from the discussion, or is generally of negative value, the way to provide feedback is to downmod. If there is value to be had from doing so, a followup comment is indicated.

Many people downmod simply because they disagree, and I think that's wrong. But that's my opinion. Personally, if a comment is of positive value I'll upmod it, even if I don't agree with it.

[anigbrowl]

I don't think that most people downmod for just disagreement, but rather for stupidity, noise, trolling. Sure, some people vote a comment down to express disagreement, but their votes are often cancelled out. And it's not so unusual to see two HN'ers having an argument and both gaining karma from it if their arguments are well-formed, respectful, and informative.

On the other hand, comments such as 'more like CLOWNvote, amirite???' don't really improve the quality of the discussion, do they?

[DanielBMarkham]

I like to scan the newcomments page to see if there is anything worth commenting on.

Doing that, I noticed a long-time poster making the point that the community has changed and asking if anybody else has noticed it. So I said yes, it has changed, and quite a bit.

The reward for my comment was several downvotes. As it turns out, his comment was part of some Rand thread. My comment was viewed as supportive of his position, so I was punished. Everybody who took one position was getting upvoted, and everybody who took another was getting downvoted.

Now was that what really happened? Or was my comment simply empty and a pointless waste of bandwidth? I honestly don't know. All I have is up and down scores to go by. So for all of you who think the up-down arrows enforce community behavior, I have a simple question: how can the community push me to conform when I don't know if it's giving me a "we disagree" or a "poor quality" message?

I know I can (and have) made the same comment in other discussions and actually got voted up, so I don't think the quality of my comment had much to do with it. It looks a lot like context and opinion matter the most to me. Probably also the time of the week and time of day.

In short, the voting system is broken. A lot.

[10ren]

BTW on just the beginning of your comment: This might explain why I sometimes get "correct" replies that totally miss the point: they've seen it in the newcomments page.

It's really baked my noodle a few times, that a seemingly intelligent person could be so self-confidently blind. Now it seems likely that it simply was because they were blind.

[nkurz]

I didn't see your comment until now, but I'd guess it was downvoted for 'feeding the troll'. While the comment you responded was reasonable, the grandparent was a bad joke that was rightly being beaten down. I'm not sure how the page placement algorithm currently works, but I'd assume, and I think others assume, that downvotes on the children help to move something down the page. In other words, you were a victim of collateral damage.

[Semiapies]

Maybe responding to single comments out-of-context is a questionable methodology.

[bhousel]

I actually think that the newcomments page is part of the problem. My theory is that people reading newcomments tend to downvote something that seems even a little bit controversial, without seeing the context in which it was made.

I notice that after a few hours the scores seem to settle into something more fair. A lot of people will fix unfair 0s and -1s.

[ax0n]

I've never seen an option to downvote. It could be because I don't have enough "points" in this game (130 as of the time I'm posting this) or it may be because I haven't been around long enough. Once, I did try to downvote something by kludging the "dir" variable. I was told I couldn't make that vote. What parameters must be met for a person to get downvoting ability?

Enough with the goofy meta-talk, though. Since I don't have downvoting ability, I didn't even know it existed until I saw comments with zero or negative scores. Coming at it from my neophytic perspective, I am torn. At first blush, "not upvoting" and "downvoting" seem like they would serve similar functions: floating better content to the top. My only guess is that downvoting is a catalyst that makes it happen faster.

The only things I've wanted to downvote if I could were trolling, spam, and tangents. To that end, I think "not relevant or contributing to the discussion" is probably the most popular reason.

[jlees]

It's just behavioural reinforcement. Upvote the positive but on the few occasions someone acts out of line with the spirit of the community, there's got to be a way to deal with them. Imagine a troll running rampant on HN with no downvoting; it'd be hard to get them to stop, since there is no consequence for their actions.

As it is, behaviour that acts out of the norm - lame jokes, empty-but-offensive remarks and entirely pointless trivia - all tends to be rewarded negatively, reinforcing the community values nicely. If you get downvoted, it's usually simple enough to figure out why - and if it really is a disagreement of opinion then the downvoters are doing it wrong, or there's also something about the way you express your opinion that is repellant.

[aichcon]

I agree that it enforces the spirit of the community. One of my first comments was a joke and it was down-modded hard (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684509). This quickly taught me the community's expectations in terms of quality of comments.

[iamelgringo]

The possibility of downvotes creates an element of risk in posting a comment. Without that element of risk the only deterrent to trolling or violating community standards is deleting or banning by the moderators. Moderating a site like this is an awful lot of work. The down vote arrow allows the community to police itself.

It's certainly not perfect, people have been down voted to oblivion. Pg has put in safeguards so people can only get down voted 5-10 points. I think that it's helped keep the community on track.

People take their karma very seriously for some reason. Notice the amount of angry posts when someone gets downvoted. :)

[onoj]

I sort of agree with you, but I would only up vote to show that the topic / comment was interesting, even if I did not agree with it . Up/down voting because i agree or disagree is arrogant. If it makes people feel better, bully for them. The danger is that a group of people will upvote a perspective and alienate alternative points of view from a thread. This creates a narrow minded culture and prevents interesting discussions. Ideally there is no point posing to a thread you agree with if you have no content to add.

[jeremyw]

I'm impressed by the shifting voting trends when a new, dissenting (sub)opinion is attached to a comment. A string of upvotes now is halted/reversed. And the polarity change can happen several times. An articulated position unleashes the silent thinker or is this a characteristic of mob rule? (When it happens to me, it's mob rule. :)

I'm also terribly sad when someone is downvoted in an opinion-thread (e.g. what is your favorite X). I wish one could mark a post as opinion or even upvote-only.

[Semiapies]

Someone can be off-topic or troll in opinion threads. "What's your favorite X?" is not the place for "Stop using different types of Xs and start using Ys, noobs.", for example.

[Mathnerd314]

It might be interesting to keep every vote for each comment and use something like the Netflix prize algorithm to calculate whether you'd like the comment. Hiding comments would then be based on personal preferences, rather than the community at large. If nobody at all likes the comment, (i.e., it's spam or something), then it can get removed automatically. Of course, this takes a lot of work to implement, and it might require HN to have a longer privacy policy...