Is it lame to want to know why you got modded down?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=271247

by sh1mmer • 18 years ago

22 46 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Sometimes my comments get modded down, which is cool. However sometimes I wish I know why they did.

Should down modding be a comment function. E.g. should users with enough karma to down mod comments explain why they did?

Mostly I just want to write better comments. Sometimes it's frustrating to see a comment drop to 0 thinking it was a valid point and not knowing why someone with great karma didn't agree.

iamdave2• 18 years ago

should users with enough karma to down mod comments explain why they did?

Personally I think everyone should be required if they're going to downmod to at least give a reason why. Press the down button, a small, unobtrusive text area comes up and (perhaps a bare minimum of 140 chars just to keep it simple) the user explains why they think the comment doesn't hold it's worth.

It feels almost like something personal when someone just votes you down and doesn't help you understand their viewpoint, or share what they think about the matter. Almost

Great submission. +1

byrneseyeview3• 18 years ago

One category where this doesn't work: I modded down dozens of basically identical "Congratulations!" comments in a popular thread a few months ago -- telling everyone that being the nth identical comment doesn't sound fun.

ph0rque2• 18 years ago

Labeling such comments as dupes should be fine...

Hexstream2• 18 years ago

I don't know what to think of this... there's two potential problems:

First, how do you distinguish the first "Congratulations" from the redundant 14th one? If you downmod everyone then you're penalizing some innocents.

Second, if so many people do the same thing consistently and you're about the only one who seems annoyed by that behavior maybe you should reconsider your reaction? Maybe it was a more "light-earthed" thread so people were less strict about redundance.

kyro• 18 years ago

You know, more than a place to exchange interesting information, we are a community, and having that community congratulate a team for their success has value.

tstegart• 18 years ago

I thought everyone could downmod comments?

aneesh• 18 years ago

No, I believe you need some small amount of karma. You needed 25 karma to downvote when I joined, maybe it's gone up.

Neoryder• 18 years ago

Telling someone why he was down modded may help improve an already civil place.

byrneseyeview3• 18 years ago

I don't know. In normal interactions, I get the impression that the reasons for positive responses are a lot more honest than the reasons for negative ones -- e.g. "I already have plans," rather than "You smell like bark. All the time."

It would be helpful to know why people mod us down, but it might just make people bitter.

zasz• 18 years ago

Well, explaining why you thought a point was wrong is a little different than trying to hide dislike or indifference towards a person. The former isn't personal.

xenoterracide• 18 years ago

I've been modded down for explaining why I've modded someone down... so I've mixed feelings

sh1mmer• 18 years ago

Well I wonder if a response even has to be public.

I guess I feel like I only comment if I have something constructive to say. So that little bit of feedback about why it wasn't useful would be nice for me. I don't mind if no-one else has to see it.

MaysonL• 18 years ago

I've been modded down for wondering wtf I was modded up, so don't feel too bad. see thread at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249009

silentbicycle• 18 years ago

Comments about moderation rationale can clutter discussion, so maybe they wanted to discourage them. (A form for reasons when moderating would probably do well to keep them out of the way unless requested.)

javert• 18 years ago

Seems like it would be worth at least trying out this idea; it's hard to know a priori if it would be liked or disliked by most people.

CaptainMorgan• 18 years ago

I'm another vote for this feature.. please implement if possible.

Cheers

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

Would love to see this on HN.

I already explain (usually) but then again, I rarely down-mod. I quite honestly don't see the point in down-modding if you're not going to take the time to organize your thoughts to write a sentence or two. It's just the decent thing to do.

dfranke• 18 years ago

I think the right way to handle this is an anonymous messaging system. Click a button under one of your comments that has been downmodded, and the people who downmodded it will be notified. They can then reply anonymously with an explanation.

zacharye• 18 years ago

I'd also bet that if people were required to leave an explanation tied too their handle, there would be a lot less downmodding.

bullseye• 18 years ago

I think feedback would help newer users, but any explanations could/should be anonymous.

Some people can't handle criticism, and there's no need to allow them to turn comments into their own personal griefing grounds.

maxwell• 18 years ago

I don't usually downmod for it, but I generally find meta-discussion distracting. Saying something like "This might be controversial, but..." in place of "I'm going to get downmodded to hell for this, but..." just sounds more natural. Could anyone imagine saying the latter in person?

Also, reflecting on ones' comment usually leads to irrelevant commentary (like comments I come across with 10 points and an edit asking why they were getting downmodded). I mean... anybody could be voting on your comments.

I'd almost (but not quite) prefer it there was no visible point count and votes just factored into the sorting of comments on the server.

noonespecial• 18 years ago

I'd almost (but not quite) prefer it there was no visible point count and votes just factored into the sorting of comments on the server.

I actually thing that this is a fantastic idea because it would reduce the amount of "bandwagon voting" that sometimes seems to go on. When you see a comment with 40+ points, there's this strange compulsion to just chip in another. I guess its "back the winner syndrome" or something.

staticshock2• 18 years ago

Explanation's not needed because, in general, it's simple. You got modded down because what you said was interpreted as contributing nothing. How can you say something and contribute nothing? There's many ways:

- Trolling (examples: "you're clearly a mac fanboy", "you want fries with that?")

- Be trite or redundant (examples: "lol", "i agree", "+1 interesting", "upmod parent")

- Personal attacks (examples: "I bet if you were him you'd say 'go away customer, I only write my software in Rails/LISP/Haskell'")

- Poor attitude (examples: "shut the f*ck up", "that's dumb")

- Being incoherent, in jest or in seriousness (examples: "mahler called, he wants his symphony back")

- Rambling on without saying anything (examples: "then i went to see my dentist, but that's a whole another story...")

- And, last but not least, disagreement. Theoretically, you will not be downmodded for saying something disagreeable. In practice, however, downmodding on disagreement does happen. Some misuse is to be expected, and all we can do is live with that.

IsaacSchlueter• 18 years ago

If there was justification for such a feature, I think this comment here just satisfied the use case.

That is to say, +1, lol, I agree, and upmod parent ;)

jrockway2• 18 years ago

You got modded down because what you said was interpreted as contributing nothing.

Not necessarily. Sometimes downmods are because while the post is good, it's not 100-points-good. And of course, I'm sure everyone has downmodded a comment because you disagreed, not because the comment was bad. (The lack of a downmod button on replies is a great idea. I am always in the habit of dowmodding disagreeing responses on reddit. Just because I can.)

qw2• 18 years ago

I don't know if you are trying to be funny, but downmod'ing a comment because you disagree with it is not acceptable.

Modding should only be used to improve a discussion, and in a discussion it is very common that people have different ideas. So when you downmod a comment, you are actually trying to remove it from the discussion and therefore damaging the discussion.

Only downmod comments that hurts the discussion

ashu• 18 years ago

I love your specific examples. This should go in the HN FAQ.

avinashv• 18 years ago

> - Being incoherent, in jest or in seriousness (examples: "mahler called, he wants his symphony back")

Brilliant, sir.

I think a lot of people go beyond that--I haven't paid much attention here, but I know on reddit people will downmod anything they don't agree with like crazy.

[edit] just saw that someone else wrote the exact same thing; my bad.

staticshock2• 18 years ago

That's the reason downvoting didn't exist here at first. PG is aware of the problem of using downmodding to convey disagreement (and he's all too familiar with reddit.) But, eventually, he wound up adding it in anyway, to control overall post quality. You can't downmod unless your karma meets a certain threshold, which means you've been in the community long enough to learn not to downmod on disagreement.

As the community grows, however, reaching that low threshold may become easier and easier, so people less involved in the community suddenly get the same power before they know how to properly use it.

To fix this, the threshold should grow with the size of the community. For instance, instead of a static "50-100" points threshold, maybe it should be a dynamic question, such as, "is his karma in the top 70% of the population?"

mariorz• 18 years ago

I really think it would be better if we just got rid of karma per user or at least get rid of the leader board. It just encourages karma whoring and ends being counterproductive. Slashdot figured this out a long time ago.

stcredzero• 18 years ago

For moderation, Slashdot uses a menu that not only indicates the up/down vote but a one-word description for why. The author can then see a breakdown of their comment's score. That's quick and easy for the moderator, yet it gives good feedback to the author.

It would look far less minimalist than the up/down arrows, which for many would be a downside.

hugh• 18 years ago

I think this is a bad idea, for the following reasons:

1. Threads about moderation tend to be really boring. People discussing things on a forum can be interesting, whereas people discussing the forum on which they're discussing the forum tends to get pretty old pretty quick. If every downmod is followed by a thread about why it got downmodded, including the occasional "oh come now it wasn't that bad" type comment, signal-to-noise will drop considerably, and signal-to-noise is the exact thing which the whole moderation system supposedly exists to increase.

2. Usually when I see a downmodded comment it's pretty obvious why it's been downmodded. Occasionally a worthwhile comment will reach 0 due to the action of one person (in which case, life's tough, suck it up) but severely-downmodded comments always seem to be either belligerent or content-free.

3. Doing so would, as someone else said, discourage downmodding. But rampant downmodding isn't a severe problem at present, and a lack of downmodding potentially could be.

jrockway2• 18 years ago

I like this idea a lot. I would even like a reason to be mandatory.

Over on reddit, I downmod people pretty arbitrarily. Sometimes I like to push a post at 0 to -1 and watch it get sucked down to -20 by the groupthink. Other times, I disagree and don't feel like typing a response. Sometimes I just don't like the guy's username. Basically, I downmod just because I can, which doesn't make for a very good community. (I don't bother doing that here because it's not as amusing. Usually downmodded posts that are good get upmodded, unlike on reddit.)

Anyway, making it harder to downmod someone would be a good idea. It would make a punishing action "harder" on the downmodder, so people would only bother to downmod if they had a good reason. It would reserve downmods for spamming, not disagreeing.

I think.

gruseom• 18 years ago

If I have something thoughtful to say about why I up/downmodded a comment, well, that's what "Reply" is for. When I up/downmod without replying, it's either because I don't have time to put my thoughts into words or don't have much to say beyond "I disagree" or "This seems trollish or mean". Forcing me to enter a reason won't suddenly make my thoughts more interesting or take less time.

bayareaguy• 18 years ago

Seeing people's reasons for up/down modding on a page other than the main item?id=xxx page might be ok but I don't think such comments belong on that page for the same reason pg gives - they simply don't make for interesting reading.

qw2• 18 years ago

The comments could appear on the users homepage. It is only useful for the user who got down modded

danw• 18 years ago

should users with enough karma to down mod comments explain why they did?

No, it would make the transaction too time consuming.

radu_floricica• 18 years ago

Why just downmodes? Upmodes too, and with a unique post robot on the top.

cosmo7• 18 years ago

If there was a cost for downmodding - a downmod costs the moderator half a point, for example - there would probably be a different experience.

I'd be interested in the modeling of alternative karma economies like this.

Is it lame to want to know why you got modded down?

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