Comment by gruseom
12 years ago
Sorry for being unclear. What I mean is that downvoting something because you disagree with it has always been legitimate on HN. I'm too lazy to dig up the many links where this was discussed, but the point is that if upvoting is a legit way to agree, then downvoting is a legit way to disagree. This is a good thing, because it provides a silent way to disagree when you don't have anything substantive to add to the discussion.
The idea that downvoting for disagreement is not legitimate is a classic instance of the canonical invasive species on HN, the Redditism.
There is very little value in knowing that some people disagree with a comment, but there is tremendous value in learning other ideas. This is a bad policy.
That's a good point. But let me ask you: do you think HN actually has this problem, i.e. of ideas being suppressed because people disagree? If so, I'd be curious to see examples. Most of the downvoted stuff I see has some other readily available explanation; usually some form of rudeness.
I see it a lot. What's worse is up and down votes are a corrective mechanism.
If you get downvoted, that kinda feels bad, if you get upvoted, that kinda feels good. It shapes your discussion and teaches you the rules of what the community finds acceptable/unacceptable.
What is the honest to god pragmatic result of this policy?
You're training people not to say something others disagree with.
Even if you don't agree with that, downvote to disagree causes pragmatic problems outside of training! Consider a discussion where someone starts off with an unpopular view, and then an interesting discussion happens back and forth between two parties discussing that position. Downvote to disagree hides that discussion.
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It's not about being suppressed in an active way. For the problem I'm talking about, it's completely sufficient for the disagreed-with posts to simply not rise to the top of the discussion.
Remember, HN doesn't even show the vote counts on posts, so you can't extract hardly any agreement-disagreement info from a post (other than it's not so bad as to be downvoted to oblivion). The true and important function of the votes is to control visibility.
Try expressing a conservative or religious opinion. I've gotten downvotes for both even though I haven't been the slightest bit rude. I enjoy hacker news, but at times it can really feel like a hivemind.
I think you're wrong and are just trying up make some claim about Reddit. I don't think it is as simple as "upvoting in agreement is legitimate therefore the converse is true." Down voting as the effect of removing the comment from discussion and is even used to indicate there is something unfair, mean, or what have you. I think what you're talking is more for a site that shows the scores of comments but does not obscure them.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
Yeah I know you can find pg quotes about this. Does that make it true? If that's the case then you win.
However, if you want to use reason, it is clearly the case that under this view then the voting and karma is a misnomer and little more than a way to stifle dissent. It's good thing, I think, that most don't hold this view.
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>downvoting something because you disagree with it has always been legitimate on HN //
Um, no. You downvote when a comment doesn't contribute. If you disagree then you can state it and if that contributes it can get upvoted too.
I'm talking about what the HN policy has always been. This is a factual question, and it's not as you describe it.
What's interesting is how the opposite gets repeated far more often, usually in an authoritative tone, as if the speaker had just consulted a rulebook.
TBH that's the only use of votes I've seen agreed on as valid here.
Despite your relative long-standing I'll bow to your claim of factuality and request citation of that fact?
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