HN Upvote/Downvote Debate
This cluster centers on debates about the intended purpose of upvote and downvote buttons on Hacker News—agreement vs. contribution to discussion—and proposals for improvements like agree/disagree buttons, un-voting, or UI changes.
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the 'upvote as agreement' stance seems pervasive, as well as largely justified. i wonder if having a selection of up-'s and down-'s might worthwhile.
I would like to see agree/disagree buttons -- no other voting site has this but I think it would solve the disagree=downvote / agree=upvote problem that Hacker News and Reddit have. By separating out the two options, you might get people more to upvote good comments and downvote poor comments.
The upvote and downvotes buttons are intended to serve this function.
Better UI/UX around up/down voting would be a better solution
how about un-upvote or un-downvote? can we have that please?
I don't have a down vote button with the comments. If my upvotes are irrelevant that button should also be removed.
Let's be fair, people up-vote the stuff they like/agree with whether it contributes a lot or little. Symmetrical actions in UI should do symmetrical things, how hard is to grasp it? Something I like/agree—up-vote. Something I disagree—down-vote. If you want different behavior then remove down-vote button. There is "flag" if one thinks comment is inappropriate.
"We have upvotes for agreement" is not exclusive - it doesn't mean "only use upvote for agreement".
It would be interesting to see how well upvote/downvote would work.
There are upvote/downvote buttons -- I'm unsure why any other criteria is needed.