I ask because following that incident I will no longer be presenting dissenting views here, irrespective of perceived value.
What does HN think about removing downvoting?
I don't know of any definitive cases where someone made a comment that was appropriate, got vast numbers of down-votes, and then got banned because of it. I know of many people who have complained about being banned, only to discover that it wasn't the case.
I do know of many people who present dissenting views, but present them carefully and constructively, and who do not attract down-votes because of their comments. They work hard to get people to think first, and not to react with a jerk of the knee (so to speak). It is possible. I've seen it. It's not easy, and I suspect not everyone can do it.
In short, it's unclear that your beliefs about the situation are accurate - there are many ways to get these things wrong. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just saying that your view about down-votes may not be accurate.
And no, I don't think down-votes should be removed, although I frequently don't understand how they are being used.
I then made a personal statement saying "I guess I won't be upgrading". I felt that it may help those who didn't scan the page and may miss the quote. And the specific comment I made was one about me, that affects only me reflecting the statement I quoted off the python site. I started getting downvotes for no apparent reason (at least none that I could see reasonably). To avoid it, I just deleted the comment.
If others felt like they didn't care, they were more than welcome to download 2.7.2. I never said anything about why people shouldn't have downloaded it. All I wrote was literally what I just said above.
For the record, it now looks like the site has been updated to reflect that it is a full production release.
Did you say anything unobvious? You quoted from the site that they declared it not to be a production release, and you said "OK - not for me." (I paraphrase)
We can easily deduce that, as it's not a production release, then not everyone will want it. Fine. What did your comment really add? It was a personal, conversational, largely content-free, throw-away observation.
This isn't a criticism, I'm merely trying to present a way of thinking that makes it less unreasonable for people to have down-voted a comment.
HN was always intended to be unlike other sites, strongly encouraging meaty content, strongly discouraging light and fluffy comments and submissions. It's been drifting away from that, so people are starting to feel that there's more space for conversational-like comments. There is something of a back-lash from some of the older hands who remember what it was like. Or what they think they remember it was like. More content, less conversation. Discussion, not throw-away remarks.
I won't be repeating the mistake of thinking I can discuss a matter openly here and believe downvoting adds nothing to a discussion (in contrast to upvoting which can be very useful for sorting comments).
Being downvoted has a much higher emotional impact than being upvoted, but it does help with sorting comments, obviously.
I simply stated that climate change prediction was
uncertain due to the number of factors involved.
I didn't down-vote it, but I can see why others did.
If there's a mechanism to indicate a comment is inappropriate, people will use it to indicate disapproval.
If there's no mechanism to indicate a comment is inappropriate, inappropriate and off-topic will abound.
Removing down-votes might help, but I doubt it.
The idea is to reward correct behavior, whereas your suggestion punishes it.
All of these tweaks to the reputation system are to encourage a certain kind of behaviour, but I'm not sure it's the right kind of behaviour. Does it make sense to stop someone from providing answers when they are clearly good at it?
I find that, for myself, when I cast a downvote on Stack Overflow, I see an opportunity for 9 more free downvotes. (I'm a little OCD about having a score that's divisible by 10.)
That being said, I'd like to see the downvoting be removed.
Go ahead and downvote my comment.
In Comments
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Please don't bait other users by inviting them
to downmod you.Is this what you had in mind?
I would rather have downvoting removed completely as well.
Personally, I see this as a bad sign that people in general are very immature and do not have an adult grasp on reality. People who care about getting 'down-voted' frighten me.
Comment trolled perhaps? It's hard to say. ColinWright: are you really this bored with life?
I like to contribute, but really.. I don't care what people thing of my comments, they are just comments on a random website.
Presenting a dissenting opinion is an art form. It takes practice. I do a lot of it. I never really fit in anywhere I go. An awful lot of my views do not fit into whatever the 'typical' assumptions are on a topic and this means that no matter what I say, both sides often wind up kicking the crap out of me.
Some tips, should you decide you would like to try again:
Don't be argumentative about it. Present your views as a standing-on-your-own-two-feet position, not a shooting-down-the-opposition thing.
Show some respect -- agree to disagree, make no attempt to "win people over", much less "win".
Stick to the issues. When you dissent, inevitably there will be enormous social pressure swirling around your lack of going along to get along. Anyone who speaks to you will likely try to put all kinds of crap on you about what they think you are saying. Politely clarify, as many times as it takes.
Judge the timing and context carefully. There is a time and place to offer an alternate point of view. There are other times and places where it's so not worth it.
Word your dissent very carefully. If your goal is to get people to really think and not just punch buttons, like it or not, the burden is on the minority voice to make an effort to communicate effectively. If you are going along with the majority opinion, you can express yourself sloppily and people won't care. But when stating a minority opinion, you must be extra careful to work at communicating effectively and intentionally avoid punching people's buttons so as to have some hope of actually being heard.
Having a positive points value is more important to you than interesting debate? Boy do you have your priorities backwards. Don't let a downvote stop you from posting your ideas, that's ridiculous.