I wish there was a feature that doesn't grey out the comments for a couple of hours until everybody has gotten a chance to vote. As it stands currently, a single person downvoting a new comment from +1 to 0 leads to a slightly grey comment. People here usually see this and form an implicit bias. I've seen comments that are perfectly reasonable, has no opinion, it is on topic, and follows guidelines and yet it gets downvoted. I am conjecturing that it is because of this bandwagoning effect.
Look into this please. Greying out comments is fine. Just let some time pass, even 30 mins would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, allow minimum 2-3 people to vote before greying out comments.
As Jtsummers points out, people can and do give corrective upvotes in such cases. I do that all the time, and I hope people understand that it's part of being a good citizen here.
It's actually kinda useful as an indicator of something that could use a corrective upvote.
I could see putting a time delay on the second or third or later upvotes, but the slight graying seems like the perfect indicator for both "maybe skip it if you're not in that mood" and "maybe take a look if you're in a generous vein".
(Minus the accessibility issues, but they're fixable with CSS.)
At the same time, I try to make it a point to vouch/upvote reasonable posts. If I had no indication it'd been downvoted, I'd never upvote it to compensate. I'd read the comments now and if I came back tomorrow to see if there were more discussion I'd be very confused to see many comments grayed out (The great comment massacre?). Based on how other comments move to gray and back I suspect I'm not alone.
Does this outweigh the bandwagoning effect though?
What about HN run an A/B test. Half of all new posts have delayed greying for a few hours. See which category accrues the most downvotes (or most net votes).
I've mentioned this before, and this seems like as good a place as any to say it again: I think HN is a bit too profligate with downvotes, and I've seen it get incrementally worse over time.
My solution to this would be, at 501 karma, a user gets 5 downvotes per 24-hour period, use them or lose them. 1 more downvote per 100 points.
This would gently teach users to downvote a bit more sparingly. Karma isn't that hard to come by, and even when I'm in a really bad mood (or there's some awful thread) I'd be surprised if I hit 30 downvotes in a day. By the time a user had as much downvote ability as they're likely to use, a habit of being less thoughtless about it would be well-established.
Human psychology being what it is, there is a subset of high-karma accounts which never ever downvote, and another subset who basically just come on here and slam the dislike button until their spleen is vented. I don't consider these approaches to be equally beneficial.
It does get confusing when someone writes a potentially interesting comment that also includes something many people could vehemently disagree with. I see it a lot on cryptocurrency posts, for example. Is it grey because it’s totally and completely wrong or is it grey because people disagree? ‘Tis a mystery!
It seems down votes are far too easy to make. A down vote can be spent freely and carries no expense.
Expecting humans to be judicious is probably a little too optimistic ( otherwise we wouldn't need laws and governments ). Especially on the anonymous internet.
I am thankful for the upvote people who provide a helping hand when needed.
Since downvotes seem to collect quickly and possibly silence someone early in a conversation does anyone have design thoughts on ways to 'moderate' the down vote?
There was a massive conversation last week [0] about down votes (not for the first time) if you're interested. Personally I think HN largely gets moderating right in general; I don't think it's about moderating the down vote specifically, but firmly encouraging a culture of good faith debate in which the down vote plays the role of hiding bad faith/low quality content. Like GP (and anyone who uses this site at least somewhat frequently) I've seen down voted comments that seem innocuous or even thoughtful but I get the sense they're a vast exception compared to the weaponised down voting of e.g. Reddit.
One thing I've noticed is that when people are new one of the first things they complain about is the voting system. I've seen a lot of green names recently, so there probably needs to be some concerted effort to educate users on what they're voting for rather than redefining the system.
I would tend to agree. Learning to be part of a community should be the a goal of a new user. But the community should feel some obligation here too.
My initial experience here was I made a couple of comments which I thought were helpful and instantly had a -7 karma. Ten minutes into my experience and I was an outsider. That is a bit discouraging for a someone who has been coming to HN for years and finally decided to make an account.
Perhaps this is why people complain about the voting system. This does give the sense that you need to conform in order to be accepted.
I just had a look at your comment history. These are (of course) just my own opinions ...
You appear to have mostly commented on 'controversial' topics - you are more likely to be downvoted (and maybe also upvoted) in such discussions compared to more technical topics.
Also, you had multiple typos/errors - this always makes me think that you did not spend so much time and thought on your posts. Why are we spending time reading something that you did not spend time proof-reading?
When I consider posting, I usually ask myself - 'does my comment really add value to the discussion (or, in this case, sub-discussion)?' If not, then probably I ought to just keep reading. Heaven forbid that one writes comments just to get some points!
Yeah that's a known hurdle you will have to overcome. Observing this community and participating in it are two different ball games. There's a lot of unsaid rules to discussion here and they vary person to person, but they are within bounds consistent.
Look into this please. Greying out comments is fine. Just let some time pass, even 30 mins would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, allow minimum 2-3 people to vote before greying out comments.