[sfgweilr4f]

The "downvote due to disagree" thing really annoys me. That and making the text become washed out. I hate it. Especially when I've seen excellent unpopular comments disappear because they were simply unpopular due to politics. Its anti-intellectual. I want to see unpopular comments because they often reveal something interesting.

People should be downvoting because its not appropriate intellectually (adds nothing, eg provides no evidence to back up a claim that obviously needs it). Flagging should be because it is simply inappropriate for usually offensive reasons.

I rarely comment now. I often don't see the point.

I've also often considered a tool to only provide the RSS feed for interesting article discovery then mostly ignore the comments completely. Comments on the ask/show sections are usually more signal than noise. Sometimes even the noise is interesting.

Upvotes should exist to make interesting content rise. Uninteresting content then simply sinks to the bottom.

But votes are a difficult problem to solve. I'm sure there are too many corner cases I've no idea about.

[Nicksil]

>The "downvote due to disagree" thing really annoys me.

Absolutely. I agree with everything else you bring up as well.

I would love to see down-voting vanish completely and the flagged/dead threshold increased dramatically. It is too easy to drown out otherwise thoughtful, quality contributions to discussion. Instead we see two to three word witty quips float by unscathed. It is the antithesis of the type of discussion described in the guidelines and runs counter to the curation of substantive, meaningful discourse.

[pedalpete]

I think downvote could be more valuable if it required a comment explaining why it as downvoted. I sometimes find I read comments that have been downvoted, and I'm wondering why, potentially the downvoter had a good reason I wasn't understanding.

[stephenr]

I used to think this too.

/. had this back in the day (I guess still does?). Lobste.rs has this too.

The problem is people just substitute "downvote without a reason" with "downvote as 'trolling'" for any opinion they disagree with.

[zodiakzz]

StackOverflow solved this by charging karma for each downvote you make.

[stephenr]

Charging "internet points" doesn't really solve the problem. I am apparently in the top 2% of SO, largely based on four answers provided a decade ago.

[pedalpete]

I'd figure this is pretty easy to get around if you are potentially being downvoted for not providing good feedback as to why you are downvoting.

[busymom0]

Is there any details on what the current flagged/dead threshold is?

[Nicksil]

>Is there any details on what the current flagged/dead threshold is?

No idea. I suspect the details are kept so as to avoid abuse, but I've not read either-or from an authoritative source.

[VoodooJuJu]

I agree, and I think I have a potential solution, although it would require additional moderation efforts.

Every downvote must must be accompanied by a comment. That comment is bound to the downvote, and whether that downvote is counted is contingent on the quality of the accompanying comment.

The accompanying comment must give supporting reasons for the downvote. If the comment is something along the lines of: "I disagree", "NO U R DUMB", "asdfasfdasfd", or is blank, then that comment's downvote can be flagged for review, and ultimately discounted.

A good accompanying downvote-comment should do something like: (1) point out logical errors or fallacies in the parent comment (2) point out logical or methodical errors in the parent comment's sources. [1]

I'm sure we'll get some mental gymnasts who try to twist things, but with this system, the added friction with downvoting should reduce the number of "I disagree" downvotes by a meaningful amount.

[1] edit: even this can be a problem though, because these kinds of logical or methodical refutations can be insightful to some people, which they won't see if the downvoted comments fade into the abyss

[muzani]

I disagree to an extent. There's a Facebook bot that reposts things from HN to FB and you can see the significant drop in quality. When people can't downvote, they yell at each other. There's a similar effect on HN main page where you can't downvote submissions, only flag. So disagreements with the submission float to the top of the comment list, whereas the people who agree give it a silent upvote. One of mine in the past got about 70 upvotes and 20 disagreeing comments, but few people write comments in agreement because a comment like "Well said!" adds nothing to the conversation.

However, the fact that this comment was downvoted into negative numbers without any criticism is quite disappointing. It's a good demonstration of where the system doesn't work.

[sfgweilr4f]

Yeah, the downvote I got for this comment kind of proves my point. Which is why I rarely post or comment.

This is not stopping me from using HN as such but there are plenty of posts I'd otherwise comment on. But what is the point if they just vanish? If the goal is to only be seeing the approved groupthink, what is the point?

A possible solution is to force people to comment if they want to downvote.

I think I'll resurrect my old reader tool and ditch the HN web site as such. This little experience has reawakened an old gripe.

[abnercoimbre]

I think HN staff must be aware this is a point of contention in the community. It's brought up too regularly for them to not look into it?

It's worth staying optimistic; this is overall a great place.

[dang]

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[vanilla-almond]

I agree that the downvote option is problematic - it carries different meanings with subtle differences:

- A way to signal disagreement with a comment.

- A means to flag a comment as clearly misleading or incorrect.

- A way of signalling a 'low value' comment (obviously subjective).

- A way for the downvoter to simply express his or her displeasure at what has been posted regardless how reasonable the comment is. (This probably happens more often than people care to admit it. It's subtly different than just disagreement.)

One might argue all the above examples are types of 'disagreement'.

An idea: clicking downvote adds the following line to the end of a comment:

1 reader disagrees or 3 readers disagree

It doesn't capture the other examples, but maybe it will deter the other uses.

On the other hand, this might be a terrible idea. It's a difficult problem to solve!