I believe the core characteristics of HN audience is to treat: - Your Karma - The Upvotes - The Downvotes etc as a means to an end and not an end in itself.

Most of us here are for getting balanced perspectives, sharing knowledge on diverse topics and growing smarter/wiser as a community, not just an individual. So no, I do not see any value in finding out who upvoted/downvoted me. Anonymous is the right choice!

The best part about HN is that you do NOT know who upvoted or downvoted you! I think the makers of this forum are wise also to prevent you from voting on posts that reply to you! That's next level "Grandpa" wisdom (and I am 46 but I still appreciate this architecturally embedded wisdom).

What I'd love however are these two features:

1) The ability to be notified that a user you are interested in "following" has recently commented or posted.

2) The ability to see which comments/posts of yours have been upvoted or downvoted in chronological order. (Sometimes I will sit with a static karma number for months and then I'll see a surprising +1 but fail to decipher which of my historical posts suddenly got upvoted. It's a good feeling but I'd want to know which post was responsible.)

I'm not on social media for a reason, that kind of features is part of the reasons I stay away from them.

So no. If someone really wants to engage with me, they can leave a comment... that I will see or not.

But HN is social media, i.e. a website that would be/do nothing without other people on it also. (I hadn't really thought about that before seeing the books/talks of Clay Shirky, all excellent.)

I see your point.

Let's say that my consumption of HN is not social media-y - I don't care about the people that post, it took me 3 days to see your answer because I was checking for answers on another thread, and my focus on HN is content, not people.

I do understand what you mean. IMO, HN is closer to crowd sourced information than personal branding and personality cults that I see in 'social media' sites.

But there I am, answering to your comment. I am dooooooomed.

The only downside is troll posts intended to harangue people of a certain mindset.

Say I wrote an article that was controversial but was everything you wanted to hear. So you upvote it. Then, the trap sprung, I name-and-shame you for going against the grain.

Pretty much a corner case, though.

I'd like to see an experiment: Downvotes bifurcated into "I disagree but this moves the discussion forward" and "this post has no value whatsoever", then the uprating system, instead of giving posts with the largest net upvotes the top billing, giving posts with the highest product of upvotes and positive downvotes the top mention.

A healthy mix of disagreement is so much more valuable than every lurker clicking "hear hear" on a popular but old news topic.

No. I’d stop voting if it wasn’t anonymous

>Would it be nice to know who upvoted you?

No. I have better things to do. Sometimes I wish I knew who donwvoted me, so I could hunt them down. Probably not knowing is for the best. :-)

No, it will turn into endless meta about who voted for watching why.

No. I would however like to see downvotes come with a justification. I don't care who votes but it would be good to know what the reasoning for a downvote was. Up and down are not opposites in this context,

I would agree. But think of the logistics for this feature: in order for you to downvote, you have to provide a reason. Should we show the userId for the comment? If so, we defeat the anonymous voting feature. If not, comments can become fertile ground for trolling. (Of course admin can identify the anonymous comment writer but we do not want to create a mods-heavy forum a la Reddit).

I think a standard choice list for downvoting may not be a bad idea. The choice list can begin with all the regular logical fallacies (ad homimen, non-sequiter, false equivalance, appeal to authority etc). That way, I'd guess, the community improves its ability to argue thoughtfully and logically.

I love HN. It's the one forum I will never consider a total waste of time.

> Would it be nice to know who upvoted you?

No. Bad idea IMHO.

> So, would you be okay if I saw that you upvoted a comment of mine?

Please note this is a entirely different question. But still: no, it wouldn't be OK.

I fail to see how what you suggest could improve in any way the quality of the discussions.

It seems it would be an invitation to a "us-vs-them" attitude and other ad-hominem pseudo-reasonning.

One of the best parts of HN is that discussions are focused on ideas, and not on the people expressing these ideas.

I think it is unnecessary. (However, I would not complain even if it was implemented; I don't care either way.) (I don't use upvotes and downvotes anyways, and if such a new feature is implemented I probably would ignore that new feature. I don't use flag either, except to flag duplicates posted in quick succession to each other or posts that are entirely empty and are therefore not worth anything.)

Nope. I deal with enough social crap as is. This would be another element of social crap making my life harder.

well you could use to make a fake account and then post only statements inline with a particular political/ideological opinion and use that over time to compute who supports those particular positions. When it comes to controversial issues this might not be a good thing.

No. That would truly ruin HN for me personally (as seems to be the case with just about everyone else)

It's amusing that people act like HN isn't social media. If anything I wish they'd just allow you to not be able to see your score when you're logged in.

I think the current system makes people reluctant to giving honest opinions, but changing it wouldn't have much effect, as people are already used to social media.

i'm not here to get karma.

if you agree upvote this!

And then share it with 3 friends?

give me your email, i have some spam for you

No...I feel like it works well as is...mostly... Even if the feature existed I wouldn't use it.

No. It won't be fun.

Yes agreed. would be nice to understand if downvotes are legitimate or a troll strategy :)