I haven't been here very long but I've thought that expressing disagreement isn't the purpose of a downvote at all. Instead, it's meant to indicate that a post detracts from the discussion and probably shouldn't have been posted to begin with. Using downvotes to express disagreement would only result in discussions becoming more intellectually homogeneous, which would make the site much less valuable.

I'm not sure how the site can encourage people to use downvotes more appropriately, but I think that there is a higher risk of having trolls pollute the site than of downvotes deterring legitimate discussion (has anyone felt like leaving the site or not posting a comment because you feared that your perspective would get you down-modded? I'm not aware of such an instance but if it has happened to someone than that is a big problem that should be talked about).

There was a post about the birthday of the user edw159. Some people thought that the post wasn't hacker "newsworthy" and others thought it was ok. I commented "I think edw159 is one of the more active members and recognizing his birthday is ok" and I was downvoted pretty far. I think my comment was appropriate and it added meaningfully to the conversation, but a lot of people downvoted it to (I assume) show their disagreement.

Now I'm worried before I post any comments, partly because I'm worried I'll lose my precious karma but mostly because it's embarrassing to have a negative number next to one of your comments.

I'd really like a downvote on articles, although it's a tricky decision I guess.

Up/down votes on comments should be, in my view, for whether you thought the comment was worth reading or not, irrespective of viewpoint. Likewise for upvotes on stories.

I'm kidding, but I've been dishing out karma lately, if I even so much as agree slightly with someone, or think that their viewpoint is slightly interesting/relevant.

edit: I suspect that the person that downmodded me has no sense of humour :)

I now appreciate down votes and see it as a way for the community to 'teach me' (not in a negative way par se but as a guiding/helping hand) in the simplest way possible.

:)

If users really shouldn't care about their karma, would the site be served better by not making karma visible at all, for users or for comments? You could keep upvotes and downvotes, and even let users know their own karma and how their own comments are rated (so they know when their contributions are being rewarded), but their would be no high-score table of top users, and users would only be able to guess at a post or a comments karma based on where it appears on the page.

This would take away the motivation some people have to contribute high-quality comments - I'm not sure whether the net result would be positive or negative.

Part of this discussion needs to include a serious discussion of what this site's core goals are. If this site were a web startup that needed to get high traffic, than a game-like system that gets posters addicted to writing comments to try and boost their karma makes sense. If the site is more about making sure it has the highest quality content possible for its original niche target audience, than that would make this approach less appropriate.

I have learned to stay away from political discussions. Ouch!

But, the mixing of the "quality" axis with an "agree/disagree" axis risks coarsening discussion. A disagree-downvote is mildly censorious: it lowers a comment's placement and docks the commenter's karma. It stings.

I don't want to downvote comments simply because I disagree, but if such comments are highly-placed because of some superficial popular appeal, and comments I more agree with are lowly-placed, I want to restore some balance of attention. I then tend to cast a few votes based on agreement/disagreement.

One possible answer is an idea I've plugged whenever this issue comes up: start a second orthogonal rating axis that is explicitly for agree/disagree [2][3]. It could be little left/right arrows, at the end of the comment. Then you might 'disvote' a comment you disagree with, but still 'upvote' it because it was well-stated... etc.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117196

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126917

I think in practice there are only three useful situations:

- you post a good comment, and I agree

- you post a good comment, but I disagree

- you post a bad comment

I think we all want a scheme where I can reward you in the first two situations and punish you in the last one. Unfortunately what we seem to be getting is one that encourages rewards in the first and punishment in the second and third.

Here are my suggestions:

For comments, an upvote or downvote without a followup comment should only add or remove some fraction of a point in order to diminish the effect of people who silently agree or disagree. If you really want your disagreement to count significantly you'll have to comment and also take the risk that people will downvote (or upvote) you.

For posts, remove the upvote arrow from the main list until after someone has clicked on the link. People should have to at least read the thing they are upvoting.

Finally, make it possible for me to change my mind within a short interval of upvoting or downvoting.

The idea of weighing ratings from commenters in the same thread more highly is interesting.

Discouraging votes-without-reading and allowing quick corrections, as with comment text, both make sense to me too.

News.YC as yet has no syntax for linking from text as in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Li... Wikipedia] or [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode]BBCode[/url] or [Markdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown).

News.YC also doesn't follow the recommendation of appendix C of RFC3986 <http://www.rfc.net/rfc3986.html>; with regard to angle-brackets as URL-delimiters -- and it even inserted that stray semicolon.

Hence the footnotes even in tiny comments... they look nicer, not breaking the flow of the writing so much.

For the most part, I can look at a comment and ask myself if it really adds anything to the conversation. If it doesn't pass that litmus test, then I delete it.

I think that a lot of the downmodding around here is coming from the fact that sometimes people post things in a way that's similar to talking just to hear the sound of your own voice... They aren't applying that filter to ask themselves if they're really adding anything to the conversation.

If you can't even handle losing a point in an imaginary karma system that doesn't even matter, how are you going to handle the risk of losing a job, a contract, a girlfriend, for believing in something and standing up for your belief?

As hackers and entrepreneurs we should embrace conflict and challenge. Losing a karma point for dissing the iPhone is I am sure a lot easier to handle than getting punched in the face for supporting gay marriage. If you perhaps do not have the courage to even consider the possibility that there is something you believe strongly enough to get punched in the face for, maybe facing the constant possibility of downmodding will toughen you up at least a bit. I see the potential of getting downmodded for your beliefs as a growth opportunity, one that should be embraced and not stifled.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=147098

These systems do not promote healthy, honest, respectful discussion. They promote lock-step agreement with wherever the majority is going. Most people vote their emotions, not their head. With that in mind, the karma system is a system to enforce that overall you're going to say things people mostly agree with -- not that they find interesting or new.

This leads to a "me too" board, where there are pre-decided opinions on everything and posters struggle to pat each other on the back in new and interesting ways.

I exaggerate, but only to a point. As you can see on other boards, this is a real and deleterious condition. (Please insert John Stuart Mill's argument for the utility of listening to minority opinions here)

I thought up-votes for something special, to be given out once in a while as a way of saying "your comment affected me in a deep way, thank you". If you give out up-vote willy-nilly then no one really cares about writing a thoughtful comment.

Here's an example of bad up-voting: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=213070 What the fuck's the point of the up-vote there? Does dangoldin really need to be up-voted 6 times to indicate that his comment was useful? Wouldn't 1 up-vote be enough?

Anyway, I need a coffee and it's just a number.

people are getting way too touchy with the downvoting.

Most of us make it a habit to abide by the news.YC "guidelines," such as not changing the text of submitted headlines unless it's needed for clarification, and not adding comment signatures. And it's an easy thing to police because there's accountability. Case in point, I've only seen a signature once, and another user had pointed to the users' misstep by the time I noticed it.

But there's no accountability for downmodding. There really can't be, else you injure the chance for honest opinions from people afraid of the kickback. But what if there was a single line of text you needed to include with a downmod? Something short, like 25-40 characters, that explained your reason. The community would recognize anonymous feedback like "Trolling" and "Unnecessary personal attack" as reasonable motives for downmodding, and "Bad point" or "Stupid idea" as unreasonable.

It wouldn't eliminate the problem -- I don't think anything anonymous could -- but it might create some mechanism for policing indiscriminate downmods and encouraging fair use.

Of course where you'd display that information is another issue entirely...

Most of my downvotes are on comments which don't fall into any of these categories -- they fall into the category of "not even wrong". In my view, a comment which isn't even logically coherent has no business being here.

It also seems clear that HN wants to tweak the system so that it's fair, doesn't allow for people who simply disagree without just reason to downvote an article, and holds the integrity of the community.

I have to add that any system implemented has to be simple but effective (two sets of downvotes is not simple, for example).

So my suggestions:

- Downvotes still exist to make sure articles and comments lacking quality, or are clearly karma-bombs designed to bring something to the front page. - You can't downvote until you've gotten to understand the community. That means a minimum Karma limit, say 50, that signifies that you've contributed to HN enough to know the general rules of the community and some of the nuances that make HN what it is. You could also make it so you can't upvote or downvote after say, 25 karma. The number's arbitrary, the point is that you need to time to understand the community before you start downvoting items.

- Karma count doesn't appear until there's -3 or +3. That eliminates initial biases and "peer pressure" voting for an article starting out. Not ideal, but could work.

- Most of all, we must remember that, if a person is submitting quality, any downvotes they get for any reason is going to be balanced out by a greater amount of upvotes.

No system is perfect, but you need downvotes for quality control. Let those who have more connection to the community do that work if necessary.

I only rarely see negative-karma comments that don't deserve it one way or another.

Furthermore, penis.

Is that funny to people, or something? I just don't get it.

You can say what he said about anything because there is always something more important than something else. It's a cheap way to dismiss someone without actually addressing their points.

I don't understand why we shouldn't be hacking the downvote system. This is supposed to be hacker news. Ironic downmods seem consistent with that thinking, as well as consistent with the tricksters hackers are supposed to be.

Long answer: it's just a changing user base. I won't elaborate in this comment though, just that's an article in and of itself.

i think the karma threshold for downvote ability should be raised to, say, 60. if you can stick around for that long, you're more likely to understand the community's values.

Obviously, the most interesting, useful comments are often going to be controversial. In cases where people downvote stuff they don't like (which is a proxy for, does not fit my worldview), these comments will not get the most points. This means you shouldn't care too much about points except that they tell you where the conventional wisdom lies.

Personally I downvote something if I think it's dumb. Since there is more stupidity here now, it seems, there are more downvotes. That's good.

The problem is that the indiscriminate downvote homogenizes discussion. The consensus opinion rises to the top. This is good when the group is good; bad when the group degrades.

I have an idea: limit the number of downvotes per user per day. If the want to downvote something else, something will have to fall off the stack. I think there's less of a danger if people only downvote what they disagree most with, as opposed to dismissal.

(ps: wow guys. real funny.)

I don't like when my posts are downvoted, so I refrain downvoting people too, unless it is necessary. If I don't agree, I'd rather just voice my opinion.