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Comment by argonaut

10 years ago

I have the top comment on the runoff thread, and I was against Pinboard (due to doubts about whether Pinboard would do YCF in good faith - similar to what dang is saying here). So while I did notice a lot of people were in favor, it can hardly be called overwhelming.

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argonaut

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hkmurakami  10 years ago

I voted for Pinboard but did not downvote your post (it would be wrong for me to have done so).

While the upvotes are an indication of support for your position, it wouldn't have accurately captured the number of people who disagreed with you (and thus supported Pinboard), since disagreement is not grounds for downvoting.

  • argonaut  10 years ago

    According to Paul Graham, it's acceptable to downvote for disagreement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

    • nickpsecurity  10 years ago

      It's true but I'm in same boat as parent: I only downvote on spam, hate comments, etc. Downvoting can make comments disappear and sort of censor aspects of a discussion. Even bad claims are often misconceptions worth addressing with comments and evidence instead of downvoting for other readers' benefit. So, I almost never downvote.

      I'm sure there's others given I know specific people's position on comments I made that they could've downvoted. So, parent's claim stands but we can't know how much. Maybe worth considering modifying downvote concept to deal with this somehow in another forum as an experiment.

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