[andykx]

I'm curious, do others perceive undeserved upvotes as an issue? As far as communities like this go, I think HN is pretty fair about what kind of content is valuable.

Sure, maybe some high-quality niche articles don't get a ton of attention, but that's the nature of writing about niche topics.

[brianyu8]

For me, the problem was more that the highly upvoted posts were obviously good, so my time and attention were spent scrolling through HN looking for posts with more than ~50 upvotes or more than 10 comments.

After hiding upvote and comment counts, I've found myself reading more of those high-quality niche articles that I wouldn't have clicked on previously. I've also found myself reading post titles more thoroughly and reading articles first instead of immediately jumping into the comment section to get summary/judgement.

Perhaps this extension is unnecessary if you have more self control that I do ;).

[polote]

> After hiding upvote and comment counts, I've found myself reading more of those high-quality niche articles that I wouldn't have clicked on previously.

That's also the reason I create a newsletter to list all the creative content of the day which didn't get visibility https://hnblogs.substack.com/

[ratsmack]

I have a problem with people down voting things that they disagree with and up voting things they agree with. I had always assumed that voting was for "quality of post" and not for agreement.

I see this same scenario played out in many forums where a very good, high quality comment is made which quotes what "someone" said and subsequently heavily down voted because of the person that said it. In other words, the message is quashed because of the person that said it, and not because of the message itself... this is a sad testament to online dialogue.

[dvtrn]

Apparently that’s their intended function according to mods[0] I just prefer downvoted comments don’t turn grey just because some may disagree with it, it’s an annoying UX personally, as I’ve actually found some interesting information I hadn’t previously been exposed to from comments a few people decided they disagreed with.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996858

[ratsmack]

I have a problem with the greyed out posts because they are difficult to read with my poor eyesight. I usually select them with the mouse so they are highlighted, which makes them easier to read.

[contravariant]

I always assumed that's what you were supposed to do anyway. If it's just slightly downvoted it is still somewhat readable but after that it gets hard to read quick. I don't think this has much to do with eyesight, it's by design. I guess poor eyesight might make it hard to distinguish between normal and slightly downvoted comments, but that's not too important a distinction anyway.

[dvtrn]

Yup. This is my precise annoyance with the styling. I understand not everyone will bother to read greyed out comments because they trust the wisdom of the crowd here. I do not. As a result, reading the comments adds one extra step now just to interact and engage.

Thankfully someone below our published some userstyles below.

[chrisco255]

That's interesting never thought about the accessibility problem with greyed out posts.

[sfgweilr4f]

Especially when the downvotes are blatantly because someone disagreed and the grayed out comment is actually interesting, or the comment is actually a question that shouldn't have been downvoted at all.

[doc_gunthrop]

> I had always assumed that voting was for "quality of post" and not for agreement.

That's how it's supposed to be used. This also applies to other platforms that have some social media or online discourse component (e.g. reddit, twitter, etc.).

But since there is no barrier to entry to these platforms, any "slob in a smelly t-shirt" can post comments and upvote/downvote at will, regardles of how unqualified their opinion may be.

I've noticed the more egregious forms of this on HN recently, where a commenter will cherry-pick a snippet of comment made by another user in an unrelated post from weeks prior in an attempt to discredit them in a current post.

[unclebucknasty]

I believe downvoting is a far bigger problem.

The term "undeserved downvote" can't even exist, as the guidelines state that downvoting for mere disagreement is acceptable. But, what is that if not censorship and promoting groupthink?

If one disagrees, then why not encourage them to engage and explain vs submarining the comment with which they disagree? And, if content is unacceptable for some other reason, then flagging is still available.

[minerjoe]

"If your taking flak, your over the target."

I'm new here and just getting the feel. I definitely immediatly turned on viewing of dead comments. How else to get an understanding of the dynamics of this place?

I've been downvoted for comments that I feel were honest and accurate of the way I think and feel, but are definitely outside the HN overton window. I find this a valuable signal, and potentially what I can bring to HN.

I've also been downvoted for comments that I feel were a bit too pointed or flame bate style. That is a valuable signal also.

So I'm trying to maximize the number of the first type of downvote while minimizing the second. Score goes up and down, someday I'll get that pony.

I use a modified version of the links browser on the linux framebuffer, which works very nicely for HN, and incidentally does not allow for text color changes so I never see anything grayed out. No Javascript, so no need to vote.

[unclebucknasty]

>Score goes up and down, someday I'll get that pony.

After some time, and upon realizing that the downvotimg scheme here encourages groupthink, I decided that as long as I'm offering my honest ideas in good faith, then it's probably a good indicator if my karma stays roughly where it is. Let some agree and others disagree. In fact, maybe a slight decrease over time is preferable. This means people are at least challenged and encouraged to consider their position.

Frankly, if this were a community wherein disagreement never occured, then it would be extraordinarily boring: just a bunch of people sitting around head-nodding and upvoting each other. You need a variety of opinions to keep things stimulating.

So, I find it interesting that the very thing that keeps a community engaging is actively discouraged.

And, that the word "hacker" appears in the community's name is whatever comes after ironic.

[Dylan16807]

It's really easy to get upvotes, so if someone is posting in an honest and unbiased way I'd expect an upward trend, regardless of whether some challenging posts get downvoted. If someone's total is stable or dropping over time, I bet it's significantly more likely to be caused by bad behavior.

[reificator]

> No Javascript, so no need to vote.

I just double checked, voting works regardless of whether Javascript is enabled. Vote away.

[minerjoe]

Ahhh! I see. Nope for me. I also have no CSS and HN is using a div with a style. Why not just use a small image?

How can I alert the big wigs that they have an accessibility issue, as I assume anyone visiting with a text browser also has the same issue?

[reificator]

That makes sense.

I'd say either talk to dang about it or use the support link in the footer: [e-mail]

[twblalock]

People will downvote for disagreement whether or not the guidelines say it is ok. The guidelines are simply recognizing reality.

[unclebucknasty]

There's an easy fix for that: abolish downvotes.

[asjw]

That's actually a great idea! I would also abolish votes in general and only sort comments chronologically. users could vote and see the posts/comments ordered by their votes that would not be public

The "first" kind of comments are easy to detect, so I think they wouldn't be a big problem

The chances that a post written later in the game will become one of the most voted because it's really a good comment are close to none anyway

Another interesting feature would be highlight and prioritize content written by users you follow, based on some simple rule like how many votes you gave them before or how many interactions you already had in the past

But downvotes are a prize and a status, you have to reach a certain amount of karma points to be able to downvote something so I guess unfortunately they are here to stay

[GreedCtrl]

After hearing about pol.is[0] on HN, I've wondered about a system that allows or even encourages downvotes (with all vote counts hidden), but doesn't penalize content for being downvoted. Then downvoting to disagree becomes okay.

With this kind of system, you could even boost downvoted comments as long as they also receive upvotes, encouraging more diverse discourse. If we want an online space that doesn't become an echo chamber, we need to make it okay to respectfully disagree.

[0]: https://pol.is/home - pol.is uses votes to find common ground between divisive groups

[unclebucknasty]

Interesting idea. But, then, I think why not abolish downvotes and just encourage people to reply? Then, you could sort by engagement (i.e. replies and upvotes). The replies could stand in for implied divergence, as there's usually not much reason to continue a long (especially deeper) thread to simply agree.

An exception to that assumption might be if people have unique additional insights that could enrichen a topic, so they're commenting a lot while not necessarily disagreeing. But, such enrichment has notable value in its own right, so is probably worth surfacing as well. Engagement should breed engagement.

>If we want an online space that doesn't become an echo chamber, we need to make it okay to respectfully disagree.

And, that's what it all boils down to. So, the central point is to encourage people to engage and reply with their respectful disagreement vs issue downvotes into a blackbox. The only way to get diverse discourse is to encourage actual discourse. Downvotes are an explicit discouragement of it.

[encom]

>I would also abolish votes in general and only sort comments chronologically.

Congratulations, you invented Usenet. :)

Back in the day we didn't have voting, we had kill filters. If you didn't like another user, you'd have your reader filter out their messages. There were far fewer kids on my lawn in those days as well.

[asjw]

Back in the days I was there :)

In late 80s I was actively involved in some of the BBS of my city, that also gave access to Usenet, engaging mainly in cyberpunk, science fiction and C programming

Eternal September is still going on

[ardy42]

> I'm curious, do others perceive undeserved upvotes as an issue? As far as communities like this go, I think HN is pretty fair about what kind of content is valuable.

I've used a similar extension on another forum, and the issue it addressed for me was that 1) upvotes aren't worth reacting to (for several different reasons) 2) it's hard to not react to them in some way if you see them. If you believe the first point, hiding them completely is simply the best solution.

As for why they're not worth reacting to. People have already mentioned they cause people to focus on what's already popular. They can also create feelings of inclusion/exclusion that lead to hive-minds, and mildly addictive slot-machine-like reinforcement (which people have extensively discussed in relation to Facebook likes).

[Zenst]

Maybe, but perhaps the same could be said for downvotes.

What would be interesting is if up/down votes had a weighting based upon engagement upon that post/thread. For example if somebody comments on that post/thread then their vote up or down would hold more value than somebody who had not commented.

Unsure how that would play out, but certainly be interesting. Sadly their maybe a downside I can think of and that would be that it may encourage more fluff comments, just to garner that extra clout.

[egypturnash]

I immediately think of the comment pattern where one person says something patently wrong; when people start replying with corrections/denials/expert explanations drawing from 20y of that specific problem/etc, they dig in and start insisting they're right. High engagement can show the opposite of worth.

Active moderation somewhat suppresses this pattern but it still happens.

[johnchristopher]

I believe HN is sometimes lacking profile/metadata information about posters (eg: occupation, age, location) that would prevent re-explaining the same things over and over again or see where the person is coming from. But then it introduces some biases so... shrug