<story><title>The Silence Is Deafening</title><url>https://devonzuegel.com/post/the-silence-is-deafening</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>I honestly feel it would be a good idea to remove them. Just let people upvote. There&amp;#x27;s something disproportionately mean about downvotes. They&amp;#x27;re not just a lack of upvotes, they&amp;#x27;re like beating someone up with a stick.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re almost never used for their actual purpose anyway, which is to rank down uninformative or just dumb posts, they always end up being utilized in heated discussions as a way to stick it to whoever someone is arguing with.</text></item><item><author>stevedewald</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d encourage you to consider NOT nuking a post&amp;#x2F;comment just because it gets downvotes.  We already have too many people afraid to speak for fear of judgement by the mob.  You&amp;#x27;re clearly a thoughtful person, and I believe the silent majority out there would appreciate more diversity of opinions.</text></item><item><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>I suspect that a lot of the nice behavior on HN is because, for the most part, people value the community, and consider this a &amp;quot;professional&amp;quot; environment, and it&amp;#x27;s not a bad idea to play nice in places where employers&amp;#x2F;ees can see us show our butts.&lt;p&gt;LinkedIn was like that (in fact, sickeningly saccharine), but it&amp;#x27;s starting to fray.&lt;p&gt;Slashdot was good for a while, then CNN and YouTube kicked off their trolls, and they all went to &amp;#x2F;. It&amp;#x27;s now the place to go, if you want swastika ASCII art.&lt;p&gt;StackOverflow manages to be a painful place to participate, even though they are sincerely trying to be decent. I think it&amp;#x27;s way too &amp;quot;gamified,&amp;quot; and competitive.&lt;p&gt;For myself, I&amp;#x27;m an old troll. I admit that I was a right bastard, back in the UseNet days.&lt;p&gt;I am trying to atone.&lt;p&gt;One of the ways that I do that, is make all my info connected with every place I participate. If I am a jerk, you know where to find me. Alternatively, if I make a good impression, you know where to find me.&lt;p&gt;I also pay attention to downvotes. If a post I make gets a couple of rapid downvotes, I nuke it. Sometimes, I understand why; sometimes, not. It&amp;#x27;s just not worth it to me.&lt;p&gt;I am also making an effort not to engage too much. I may have a one-or-two-post back and forth, just to see if we can come to an accommodation, then it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Have a great day!&amp;quot;. Totally OK to let someone else have the last word. I have better uses for my time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Reelin</author><text>It seems like having only (up &amp;#x2F; down) conflates at least two distinct messages that a reader might want to quickly express. The &amp;quot;official&amp;quot; one is dispassionately judging post quality for moderation purposes. The &amp;quot;wrong&amp;quot; one is expressing personal opinion of the content.&lt;p&gt;Many users clearly want to quickly express their personal opinion in a low effort manner and are more than willing to &amp;quot;misuse&amp;quot; the voting mechanism for that. There was a post on the front page of HN earlier today about railroad crossings and blaming end users for (arguably) systemic failures. It seems like the current incarnation of social media runs afoul of this quite badly in all cases I&amp;#x27;m aware of.&lt;p&gt;(I&amp;#x27;m reminded of an SO comment by Tim Post about comments being their version of a public trash can and the reputation requirement for them roughly equating to a municipality welding them shut. The result is pretty much what you would expect.)</text></comment>
<story><title>The Silence Is Deafening</title><url>https://devonzuegel.com/post/the-silence-is-deafening</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>I honestly feel it would be a good idea to remove them. Just let people upvote. There&amp;#x27;s something disproportionately mean about downvotes. They&amp;#x27;re not just a lack of upvotes, they&amp;#x27;re like beating someone up with a stick.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re almost never used for their actual purpose anyway, which is to rank down uninformative or just dumb posts, they always end up being utilized in heated discussions as a way to stick it to whoever someone is arguing with.</text></item><item><author>stevedewald</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d encourage you to consider NOT nuking a post&amp;#x2F;comment just because it gets downvotes.  We already have too many people afraid to speak for fear of judgement by the mob.  You&amp;#x27;re clearly a thoughtful person, and I believe the silent majority out there would appreciate more diversity of opinions.</text></item><item><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>I suspect that a lot of the nice behavior on HN is because, for the most part, people value the community, and consider this a &amp;quot;professional&amp;quot; environment, and it&amp;#x27;s not a bad idea to play nice in places where employers&amp;#x2F;ees can see us show our butts.&lt;p&gt;LinkedIn was like that (in fact, sickeningly saccharine), but it&amp;#x27;s starting to fray.&lt;p&gt;Slashdot was good for a while, then CNN and YouTube kicked off their trolls, and they all went to &amp;#x2F;. It&amp;#x27;s now the place to go, if you want swastika ASCII art.&lt;p&gt;StackOverflow manages to be a painful place to participate, even though they are sincerely trying to be decent. I think it&amp;#x27;s way too &amp;quot;gamified,&amp;quot; and competitive.&lt;p&gt;For myself, I&amp;#x27;m an old troll. I admit that I was a right bastard, back in the UseNet days.&lt;p&gt;I am trying to atone.&lt;p&gt;One of the ways that I do that, is make all my info connected with every place I participate. If I am a jerk, you know where to find me. Alternatively, if I make a good impression, you know where to find me.&lt;p&gt;I also pay attention to downvotes. If a post I make gets a couple of rapid downvotes, I nuke it. Sometimes, I understand why; sometimes, not. It&amp;#x27;s just not worth it to me.&lt;p&gt;I am also making an effort not to engage too much. I may have a one-or-two-post back and forth, just to see if we can come to an accommodation, then it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Have a great day!&amp;quot;. Totally OK to let someone else have the last word. I have better uses for my time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tartoran</author><text>I agree that upvotes only would make for a better dynamic with less mob abuse. And, if someone is mean or makes a dumb contribution, being completely ignored is a good lesson, much better than a shower of downvotes without any reason</text></comment>