Are HN downvotes appropriate for mere disagreements?

Question

I realized that the HN Guidelines page does not talk about downvotes. I want to solicit some community-wide consensus on when downvoting a comment is appropriate. I'd like to broadly categorize comments into several types, arranged in order of appropriateness to use downvotes:1. Anything that's not constructive or not in good faith. Trolls, personal attacks, etc.2. Anything that's interesting but off topic.3. Anything that's relevant and interesting, but the comment has factual errors.4. Anything that's relevant and interesting, but primarily opinion-based and you disagree with that opinion.I noticed that I sometimes perhaps downvote a little too much. Perhaps we should standardize on only downvoting 1,2,3 but not 4? Or perhaps we do want to downvote all four, or only the first two? Any thoughts?

grzm · Accepted Answer

From 'danghttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314> Things pg said about downvotes:> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691> It's how HN has always worked, and in my opinion needs to. A site that cares about discussion quality needs those white blood cells.And as for the guidelines talking about voting:> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

PaulHoule · Answer

Whatever. I wouldn&rsquo;t have as much karma as I have if I didn&rsquo;t care about votes but I think some people are too thin skinned about it.On other sites people get viciously dogpiled, do people somehow get to the point in life where getting downvoted on Hacker News is the first time that people failed to affirm them?For the most part the things I write that get downvoted are on the bottom of what I post though there was the time I wrote something that got downvoted, really really bad like -10, got really angry and wrote a detailed and revealing explanation of why exactly I said that and the downvoted post got something like +500 votes at the end of the day.

Zetice · Answer

I downvote anything I don't want seen more, and upvote anything I want seen more. Simple as that.Trying to do more seems like you're imposing your will onto others. Just let folks do what they want.

ilamont · Answer

This has come up before. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23997697 (which was flagged, unfortunately, despite generally quality comments and participation by @dang)Some people cited "low value" comments as being a good reason for downvoting them. Others said "comments I don't like/disagree with." A few said they never downvote other comments ("I never downvote anything anywhere ever. I don't understand how can downvoting make any constructive sense.")

carlosjobim · Answer

I will never down vote anything on HN, even if it's a crap comment. Let the good comments rise to the top. However, I noticed I've angered some kind of stalker who will down-vote anything I post, no matter how uncontroversial. What a way to spend your life...I also upvote comments that are wrong or that I disagree with, if there are interesting replies to that comment. People seem to forget that those will get swept away as well.

meristohm · Answer

Do what you like. What I like to do is not downvote, because that feels too negative; I generally assume people are earnestly contributing, even if it feels troll-y. There's also a technical side: I tend to read HN on mobile, and to vote I have to pinch-zoom unless there's only an upvote option, as with titles (I would like that option in settings for all posts).

paulcole · Answer

I downvote nearly everything I see by default. I think that makes the few upvotes I hand out that much more meaningful.