Ask HN: comment downvote sniping

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3544015

by kls • 14 years ago

12 28 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Has anyone ever experienced their comments being down-voted in a systematic fashion. I just checked my threads link to look to see if anyone has responded to any of my comments and responses to comments, when I noticed that a bunch of my post's have been down-voted for no apparent reason. They are not controversial posts at all, and most of them are just friendly advice. Has anyone else had this happen to them? I am not really worried about the karma but it's a pretty uncool thing to do to someone who tries hard to contribute to the forum, if it is indeed someone sniping comments of people that they disagree with. Just thought I would see if it is happening to other people because this is the second time I have noticed the pattern on my comments.

lucisferre• 14 years ago

I've seen this is a problem on Reddit, though I've never really noticed it myself. Someone decides the dislike or disagree with you enough, or perhaps they were just pissed off with the way you responded to them and they go through your history down-voting everything they can.

I'm just curious can you even down/up-vote old comments. Seems like they should lock after a few days to prevent this sort of behaviour.

kls9• 14 years ago

To my knowledge comments do not lock, I know that I can go back several pages in my history and upvote responses to my comments. You cannot downvote responses to your comment's so I don't know if downvote get's disables at a certain point.

Edit: According to brudgers comment downvoting does lock after a few days. He has a comment below on it.

kls9• 14 years ago

For those seeing this thread for the first time, the above comment was down-voted shortly after I posted it, another HN member must have up-voted and I think that is testament to the great nature of HN. But I request that if anyone sees my comments down-voted either in this thread or in my history please do not up-vote them. I did not post this to rectify my karma, but rather I am genuinely interested in finding out if this is an issue or if I have somehow become trapped in some kind of automatic down-vote mechanism (Though that would not explain post from several days ago all of the sudden dropping to 0) but I am more interested in finding out if this is a real issue (comment sniping) than I am about a few points of Karma. In saying that I do appreciate the effort to help.

brudgers4• 14 years ago

Downvotes are locked out after several days.

I've noticed that replies appear to out lock after a longer time based on the chaos which sometimes appears on the "Ask" page when I've gone to a 1200 day old story.

Forrest7778• 14 years ago

That would be interesting and troublesome at some intersects - because there are posts that are brought back up after a long period of time - maybe there should be a limit on the number of posts you can downvote within a period of time if they belong to the same person?

brudgers4• 14 years ago

Though sometimes downvotes are used to express disagreement, downvotes should be considered editorial feedback - either you didn't make your point clearly, or your comment is considered likely to derail the discussion.

Use the "edit" and "delete" links, respectively if you are concerned about the karma score of a particular comment.

It is bad form on HN to complain about downvotes.

kls9• 14 years ago

I did not think I was complaining about them, I just noticed that several of them drooped to 0 all at once. This has happened to me twice so it seemed like their may have been a pattern which is why I asked if other people had experienced it. It does not usually happen to my comments so it was out of the norm, especially given that some conversations have seen no action in the past few days. It could very well be coincidental, which is why I asked. If it conveyed as me complaining about being down-voted then I apologize it was not my intent.

brudgers4• 14 years ago

Going to zero is always more likely with one point comments than with those deemed worthy of an upvote.

samstave3• 14 years ago

I think downvoting without commenting as to why is far more bad form than even complaining about downvotes.

vannevar2• 14 years ago

The problem is that the upvote/downvote functionality is overloaded. One usage is symmetrical, but the other is not. If a user downvotes a comment because it violates the HN guidelines, that usage is just as valuable as an upvote to reward an informative or well-written comment.

But if a user downvotes a comment simply because they disagree, the site is robbed of their reasoning, while a user who upvotes a comment because they agree helps the site avoid needless duplication.

People tend to confuse these separate uses, and the symmetrical presentation in the UI reinforces the impression that the function is also symmetrical when it really isn't.

anamax5• 14 years ago

> They are not controversial posts at all, and most of them are just friendly advice. Has anyone else had this happen to them?

If you think that this is dick behavior, why do you care?

kls9• 14 years ago

It is more of a curiosity as to whether this happens on HN. There is a cultural norm on HN that I believe goes against such behavior, so I was curious if it is actually happening, given that this is the second time I have seen this pattern. That being said, if it was truly happening and became widespread, I would consider leaving HN, which is why I am so concerned about it. One of the reasons I came to HN was the reduced amount of such activity. Please don't take that as a threat to take my ball and go home, it is not meant as that, rather I am just stating my values in a online community, and I would take that as a signal that much of that value has died. Given the value that HN has been I would hate to see such.

anamax5• 14 years ago

> That being said, if it was truly happening and became widespread, I would consider leaving HN, which is why I am so concerned about it.

Why? Karma points are meaningless.

Suppose that you thought that a lot of BMW drivers were jerks. Would that affect your decision to buy a BMW?

adrianwaj• 14 years ago

I wonder if data is kept to check who is downvoting what. Then pg could tell you.

Ask HN: comment downvote sniping

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