I think the problem comes from the fact that we don't have a tool for expressing that we disagree with the tone of what someone is saying, but we agree with the position of the comment. This means that someone can write a mean spirited comment that happens to support a popular position in this community, and they won't get downvoted. Other people, seeing this, will take it as permission to be rude in their own posts.
I would suggest having a "tone" button that downvotes for tone. The level of fading applied to a comment will be bases on whichever of the two scores is the lowest, tone or voting - so a post with 10 upvotes but -4 tone will be invisible.
To avoid abuse of the "tone" feature, it should be possible to recover the user names of those that flag a post for tone.
I always downvote on harsh tone or meanness directed at others (but not directed at myself). I upvote for valuable and interesting information, and intelligently argued points. I try not to upvote for mere agreement (although sometimes it's hard not to), and I never downvote for disagreement. (There are some exceptions - questions that are phrased as surveys etc). Since my time here on HN, it seems to me that most people follow something like this, much more so than on most of reddit where upvote-if-funny/upvote-to-agree/downvote-to-disagree is the law of the land.
Agreed. there's a perrfect example of this in recent nosql debates - a few abusive comments are sitting at plus 17 because people agree with whats being said, but the tone is very, very nasty towards anyone being disagreed with (which includes myself amongst others).
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I think the problem comes from the fact that we don't have a tool for expressing that we disagree with the tone of what someone is saying, but we agree with the position of the comment. This means that someone can write a mean spirited comment that happens to support a popular position in this community, and they won't get downvoted. Other people, seeing this, will take it as permission to be rude in their own posts.
I would suggest having a "tone" button that downvotes for tone. The level of fading applied to a comment will be bases on whichever of the two scores is the lowest, tone or voting - so a post with 10 upvotes but -4 tone will be invisible. To avoid abuse of the "tone" feature, it should be possible to recover the user names of those that flag a post for tone.
Particularly for folks who are not malicious, a reply saying that the tone is not normative is often enough to correct them.
I always downvote on harsh tone or meanness directed at others (but not directed at myself). I upvote for valuable and interesting information, and intelligently argued points. I try not to upvote for mere agreement (although sometimes it's hard not to), and I never downvote for disagreement. (There are some exceptions - questions that are phrased as surveys etc). Since my time here on HN, it seems to me that most people follow something like this, much more so than on most of reddit where upvote-if-funny/upvote-to-agree/downvote-to-disagree is the law of the land.
Agreed. there's a perrfect example of this in recent nosql debates - a few abusive comments are sitting at plus 17 because people agree with whats being said, but the tone is very, very nasty towards anyone being disagreed with (which includes myself amongst others).