[superswordfish]

While we're on the topic, please eliminate downvoting, or at least the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless.

Edit: Point proven. Two upvotes and seven downvotes in 12 minutes. Nothing short of a reply from `dang` will save it now! Bad commenter, toe the line if you seek discussion, lest you be banished to the graveyard of greydom. I'm baffled that nobody else sees how this is a problem.

[biot]

This was discussed before [0] and I'll reproduce a comment of mine. TL;DR: downvoting promotes social standards thus it's neither antisocial nor pointless:

If nobody downvoted, then the author of the comment would be unable to distinguish between "the community doesn't value my comment" and "my comment was ignored". A downvote sends a clear signal vs. a lack of signal which is important to establishing/maintaining community norms. If we didn't have that signal, there might be reddit-style pun chains on HN and new users who see that might think it's accepted by the community since those threads are indistinguishable from other comments due to the scores being hidden. Seeing comments downvoted to grey is an important signal.

Of course, replying is also a signal but it's not appropriate in every circumstance. It's redundant when sibling comments provide correct information vs. the downvoted comment's incorrect information and an in-context reading of the thread will make that apparent. Or when the downvoted comment is flamebait/trolling and you don't want feed the trolls. Or when the comment clearly doesn't fit the community norms. And, most importantly, I have neither the time nor the inclination to reply to every comment on HN offering constructive feedback so I pick and choose carefully when I do that... as I'm doing here.

Long story short, HN deemed it acceptable to allow users with a minimum karma level to downvote. It's a feature, not a bug, and as long as it's used with discretion it sends a valuable signal to the comment's author. That feedback mechanism also confers positive benefits to the entire community.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12070314

[dijit]

Downvoting serves a purpose. Off topic comments or populist statements come with some level of resentment.

I agree that it's abused, but the notion of not contributing to the conversation should have some penalties.

[jasode]

>the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless.

In my experience, the greying of comments for "computer/programming" topics is usually accurate and lets me save time by skipping them.

However, for non-technical topics discussed on HN such as economics, gender sociology, suburban housing, the grey text often is result of a larger group winning(downvoting) an ideological war. Ideally, the top 2 comments should be constructive comments representing opposite positions. However, the popular ideas are often at the top and the contrarian ideas are on the bottom and greyed out.

It's not a perfect situation but since I view HN as a resource for technical topics (Techcrunch, Ars Technica, programming, etc) instead of the "soft" topics (NYT, The Atlantic, etc), I'm willing to outsource the disapproval of bad technical comments to the crowd because it has shown to be pretty accurate. I have finite reading time so evaluating every comment on its merits is a step backwards in productivity. The ability for the anonymous crowd to create a quantity of unproductive comments exceeds my capacity to filter every comment that isn't greyed out.

For those who oppose grey text, please state your reading budget for discussion forums like HN. That would give me an idea of how you "manage" the signal-to-noise ratio.

[DonHopkins]

I'm ok with greying, but I think it goes too far when the contrast gets so low you can't actually read it easily. Even selecting highly grayed text doesn't make it readable.

I get that the point is to make it easier to skip over the downvoted text, but greying so far as to make it almost impossible to read is heavy handed, more like censoring then censuring.

Maybe a continuum of first greying (but not too low contrast), then shrinking (but not too small), and finally striking out (for truly terrible stuff) would be better.

[dang]

If you want to read a faded-out comment, you can do so by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page. It's an extra hop, but only one.

[dang]

Your original comment made a grandiose claim about a controversial topic that had no content other than borderline name-calling ("antisocial and pointless"). Far from proving your point, that seems like a good candidate for downvoting to me. You also broke the HN guidelines by going on about getting downvoted. When people do that as a rhetorical device, that's a marker of a low-quality comment.

[superswordfish]

I wrote a pretty decent reply to this, then realized that posting it here would be utterly self-defeating. The double standard you're pushing here is disgusting, and you know it. Time to find a less negative programming community, or one that's at least a touch self-aware.

[tomhoward]

Let's talk about self-awareness.

Your account has been active for 158 days. HackerNews has existed for nearly 10 years – at least 3000 days. On pretty much every single one of those days, pg, dang and others have worked to build this site into something that reflects the wishes of its community – a community that continues to grow in number and quality as a result of their tireless efforts.

The downvoting/greying feature has been developed, discussed, reviewed and refined steadily throughout the history of the site. That will continue as the community evolves, but right now, it reflects a status quo that the overwhelming majority of the community endorses, as evidenced by their continued engagement with the site and the particular feature.

Any user is always welcome to suggest an improvement to the site and provide a thoughtful and articulate justification for it.

You, on the other hand, have entered this discussion with just 158 days of history and 276 karma points, trashed a core feature of the site as "antisocial and pointless" and demanded its removal without suggesting an alternative, then broken the site guidelines by complaining about the community's response to your demand.

Then when the site's administrator – a person whom the longest-standing and most positive contributors to the community respect and value as the thoughtful, fair and hard-working bedrock of this site – takes the trouble to explain why you've been downvoted, you abuse him as "disgusting".

It's worth reflecting that dang often finds himself being attacked/abused by people on opposing sides of the one argument, with each of them complaining that he's favouring the other.

If there's a community that welcomes the kind of behaviour you've exhibited here, you should most certainly defect to it right away.

[PeterWhittaker]

I've long thought and occasionally argued that downvoting should be eliminated.

But perhaps the problem isn't downvoting itself (occasionally I see abusive comments downvoted and think yeah, this is what it's for)....

The problem is that downvoting has no cost.

Anyone can downvote anyone anytime, at no cost to themselves. Contrast this with commenting, which has a cost in time, in mental effort, etc. - and occasionally in karma, when one's comments are downvoted...!

IMHO the cost-free nature of downvoting encourages glib, quick, lazy downvoting. It encourages dislike and abuse.

Let's make downvoting have a cost - and let's make the cost increase as one downvotes more frequently (if one self-appoints as a guardian of HN, increased cost will police the "guardian's" behaviour).

For example, why not a Fibonacci sequence of downvote cost? The first downvote of a period T removes one karma point from the downvoter, the second removes one, the third removes 2, the fourth 3, etc.

One's position in the sequence would be reset by not downvoting for some period. People who rarely downvote would incur no practical cost, but people who over downvote would incur a large cost.

[mrleiter]

>eliminate downvoting

What you are asking here is to eliminate freedom of expression. By downvoting I voice my disagreement with your statement. Preferably there is a comment added, but that must not be necessary. Eliminating such a feature would give a distorted view of this community as a whole. One must live with the fact that not everybody has the same opinion.

>It's antisocial and pointless.

No, according to [0] antisocial is a behaviour that is contrary to the laws and customs of (a) society, in a way that causes annoyance and disapproval in others. In our society, or at least that is how I appreciate it, dissenting opinions are important and accepted. Yes, as mentioned above, a following argument would be nice, but isn't necessary. And also others must feel annoyed and be disapproving of it - not you. As to "pointless", see above.

[0]: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/antisoc...

[gkya]

Downvotes are not for disagreement. It's a tool against irrelevant, off-topic, apparently false comments. Disagreement is done via a refutation.

[dang]

That's never been the case on HN.

[gkya]

Neither my comment directly refers to HN in particular.

[chmaynard]

> By downvoting I voice my disagreement with your statement.

There seems to be a consensus here that disagreement is not a sufficient reason to downvote a comment. However, I don't see anything in the Guidelines about this.

[dalke]

There is no such consensus. Downvoting for disagreement has not only been common for years but even explicitly condoned by pg 8 years ago. It isn't in the guidelines because it isn't a guideline.

[chmaynard]

So you and Paul Graham both condone downvoting any opinion that you find disagreeable on HN. I respectfully disagree with that policy, and I hope we never cross paths again.

[dalke]

Ahh, the purity of seeing everything in black and white terms.

The topic was "is there a consensus that disagreement is not a sufficient reason to downvote a comment?" I pointed out that there is no evidence for a meaningful consensus even in this thread, with several people arguing in favor of downvote-for-disagreement. I pointed out that historically people have downvoted for disagreement, with links to examples, and I pointed to pg's early statement to that effect.

The evidence is that there is no consensus in HN readers, and that downvoting for disagreement, within limits, is allowed by the powers-that-be.

"Allowed" or "condoned" is different that your unjustified interpretation as "downvoting any opinion that you find disagreeable".

Just because we can send a man to the moon doesn't mean we should send all men to the moon.

[superswordfish]

I think it is fair to say that greying is contrary to the customs of HN. Think about it -- one user's disagreement/disgust/whatever immediately renders a comment suspicious. That doesn't seem to be in agreement with any "hacker spirit." I don't have a big problem with down-voting and ranking per se, but the greying stuff is lame. Your comment is grey right now and shouldn't be.

[mrkgnao]

Maybe make it so that a comment can't be downvoted until it has at least one reply?

[douche]

I don't believe that you can downvote a comment that you reply to - so you would have to downvote first, and then reply.

[detaro]

other direction: you can't downvote direct replies to you. You shouldn't see a downvote button on my comment, but on the comment above you.

[funkyy]

Just to leave it here - use downvoting when the comment is NOT SUITABLE for conversation, not when you disagree with the statement. As long as the statement is nonoffensive, not a lie and not a trolling - do not downvote it.

[forgetsusername]

>or at least the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless.

I think I agree. The culture has changed a bit here, which is fine (or at least unavoidable). But now there's much more down-voting of things with which the voter merely disagrees (case-in-point, your comment: down-voted with no replies at the time of my writing). It reenforces the hive-mind.

[dalke]

Changed? When was it otherwise? There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down-voted%20%20no%20replies&s... .

Here's an AskHN from 7 years ago titled "Ask HN: Downvote for disagreement in some cases?" The top answer is "This comes up all the time here. Most people use downvotes for disagreement. Gotta live with it." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612 . Others express other opinions.

Back in 2008 pg said "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." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

How do you know that the hivement changed in the last 8 years in this regard?

[forgetsusername]

>There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years

I don't recall saying that there were no downvotes-for-disagreement in earlier times. I said it feels like it has increased.

I think it's quite obvious how this affects the hive-mind; "un-popular" opinions become hard to read (greyed-out), which diminishes argument.

[rootlocus]

Not a personal attack, but from your profile page I see you've been a member for a little over a year. I don't know if that's enough time to observe a change in culture.

Personally, I've been lurking for a little over three years, and haven't seen much of a change.

[forgetsusername]

>but from your profile page I see you've been a member for a little over a year

I've been around much longer than that. As someone who doesn't really care about "karma", I reset my social media accounts on occasion.

[icebraining]

> The culture has changed a bit here

Did it, though? As the other commenter said, pg himself said 8 years ago that downvoting for disagreement was fine.

I don't think the culture really changed, it was just never a settled issue, sometimes it's just more visible.

[philbarr]

Completely agree. We should also be allowed to talk about downvoting (in the appropriate place, whatever that is) without fear of reprisal!

Downvoting should be for comments that don't add to the discussion, not for disagreement. I know pg said years ago that you could use downvotes for disagreement, but I propose that we revisit that...