I like the measures HN has in place to combat trolling. Karma, up/down votes, the downvote threshold, dead links, etc. are all really good and seem to work. The biggest thing though is just making sure everyone understands the kind of unspoken spirit of the site. I'd also argue that we want to keep this place kind of hushed as not to attract too broad of an audience.
What I don't like that I have seen a lot of, is what I like to call "karma police". People who abuse the downvote button to silence perfectly valid comments that they just happen to disagree with. That's a problem. I think we need to be more judicious about the up and down votes. It's easy to just up vote something with a title we agree with but does it really call for it? I liken it to how easy it is to press the Facebook like button everywhere. As for downvotes, that button should be reserved for off-topic, vulgar, or otherwise obvious trolling cases and not just because "I didn't like what he said, he's stupid, or whatever".
The downvote button means, literally, "this comment should appear less prominently, and its author should get a very small penalty for having written it". Similarly, upvote means, literally, "this comment should appear more prominently, and its author should get a very small reward for having written it".
With that in mind, "perfectly valid" takes on a different light. While sometimes downvoting does get used to reinforce groupthink, sometimes it just thwacks a comment with incorrect but authoritative-sounding information, or an off-topic comment, or a rehash of an well-known unresolvable debate (valid or otherwise), or in general a comment which will produce more heat than light.
In this case, I disagree with your comment, but I've upvoted it because I think it deserves more prominence and more discussion.
Can you give an example of the kind of comment which you think received unwarranted downvotes?
Sure, the examples I remember usually come up whenever there's a discussion over copyright and piracy. What I'll see is a discussion about whether piracy really hurts anyone with people arguing that it's free marketing and people who pirate wouldn't buy anyway. Then someone comes along and the subject moves on to open source vs free software. Someone says piracy is good because all software should be free. Then a bunch of people pile on and agree. Then one guy comes along saying that software companies aren't evil and developers should be able to charge for their work and piracy is bad. He is then downvoted to hell not because he said something off topic but because he held an unpopular opinion.
I actually totally agree with you and the other responder to my comment. Now that you guys have said something I feel like I should rhrase and simply say that sometimes I feel like the up and down vote buttons are sometimes abused. I hate to see group think win the day. I really think the downvote button is a great way to show people that what they're saying isn't okay around here. Downvoted comments get frayed out and are almost unreadable. That's a signal that the comment isn't worth reading at all more so than "it deserves less prominence". So instead if we just up vote the good stuff, ignore mediocre stuff, and downvote bad stuff, then I think we'd be helping to show participants what kind of community this is in a better way. The real trolls get punished. The guys who are boring won't be offended and will be more apt to contribute better stuff next time if you just give them no points at all.
Your example, to me, falls more in the category of "downvoted for retreading an old and tired discussion" than "downvoted for going against groupthink". Or, quite frequently, "downvoted for using HN as a soapbox rather than trying to contribute to the discussion". I find that the best comments in a discussion typically have at least some connection to the posted article, beyond simply discussing the same topic. The old and tired comments would work equally well in any number of other threads on different articles.
I don't tend to see groupthink as a problem in a community like HN. Sure, we tend to think about many things in the same ways (the ways we'd consider obviously right beyond any need for discussion, of course), but those tend to represent the boring topics anyway.
I do tend to follow the model you mention, ignoring mediocre stuff, rather than voting on everything. When I downvote things, I do indeed intend to suggest that people shouldn't bother reading it.
Fair enough. I'm not exactly an old hat myself. My account's less than a year old so maybe I'm totally off on this and it's me who should keep my mouth shut and learn a bit more. That said, I still think there's enough people who are karma police in that they hoard points and use the up/down vote system in not-so-honorable ways to merit some discussion about that. I also think there's enough group-think going on to merit mentioning too. I'll admit my example wasn't really solid but, hey, now that I said it maybe you'll be able to spot it next time and be able to come back and say I was right. Or wrong. But I'm decently confident it's prevalent enough to spot easily and quickly.
As for downvotes, that button should be reserved for off-topic, vulgar, or otherwise obvious trolling cases and not just because "I didn't like what he said, he's stupid, or whatever."
I disagree. Why do you think that? I think that "I didn't like what he said, he's stupid, or whatever" (e.g. I think this comment is foolish, I think this comment is unreasonably rude, I think this comment is uninteresting) is a very good reason to downvote. The purpose of the up- and down-voting is to allow readers to decide which comments are good and which are not very good. Why would you accept that readers have the power to move up comments that they like, but not to move down the ones that they don't like?
I don't think I was very clear. My main concern is that people will move something down because they disagree. There can be a comment I disagree with very much but if it's well reasoned and on topic I can't really punish the author only on the basis of me not sharing the same opinion. And that's what I feel is happening quite often.
It's okay in the cases of foolish and unreasonably rude comments, there's no question about it. But in cases where you simply disagree its uncalled for. In the case of uninteresting comments that don't qualify as rude or foolish I don't think there's a reason to downvote. Instead you up vote the good ones around it and let it just stagnate.
Downvoting is a way you can kind of give others hints of the kind of things that are expected around here. If you downvote on the basis of it not being interesting the person may come to believe they've said something offensive or foolish when really it was just boring. If they see they're getting no up votes then they can kind of tell that what they said was boring without giving them the wrong impression. People who get severely downvoted definitely get the hint if they're being off topic or foolish but when they're downvoted for being boring I don't think they get it and may think something else is up.
What I don't like that I have seen a lot of, is what I like to call "karma police". People who abuse the downvote button to silence perfectly valid comments that they just happen to disagree with. That's a problem. I think we need to be more judicious about the up and down votes. It's easy to just up vote something with a title we agree with but does it really call for it? I liken it to how easy it is to press the Facebook like button everywhere. As for downvotes, that button should be reserved for off-topic, vulgar, or otherwise obvious trolling cases and not just because "I didn't like what he said, he's stupid, or whatever".