since the downvotes are painful to me. Why?
[deleted]
Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
31–40 of 50 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it's just the general loss aversion people experience - at least that's it for me.
Also I think getting downvoted for something when you honestly can't see that you did anything wrong is kinda hurtful, which happens mostly when downvoting is used as shorthand for disagreement. I've seen a single comment of mine go up-down-up-down with every refresh which still ended up at +4 or so. Which makes me curious if separate up- and down-counters might offer some additional insight over a single counter.
Yeah, when you talk and track people's facial expressions in real time, you can see which particular things they disagree with, so you have useful feedback. A down vote is sort of like someone running up behind you and king hitting you, for something you said in some other group earlier, and maybe you don't know why. It's not always so non-specific...but not being able to respond to a downvote...makes it an incredibly potent tool to control discourse.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also I think getting downvoted for something when you honestly can't see that you did anything wrong is kinda hurtful, which happens mostly when downvoting is used as shorthand for disagreement. I've seen a single comment of mine go up-down-up-down with every refresh which still ended up at +4 or so. Which makes me curious if separate up- and down-counters might offer some additional insight over a single counter.
Yeah, when you talk and track people's facial expressions in real time, you can see which particular things they disagree with, so you have useful feedback. A down vote is sort of like someone running up behind you and king hitting you, for something you said in some other group earlier, and maybe you don't know why. It's not always so non-specific...but not being able to respond to a downvote...makes it an incredibl…
Yeah, I think being denied the opportunity to find out _why_ you are being downvoted, and maybe argue the point, makes you feel exposed and powerless.
Maybe one could even argue that at least a short reply should be a mandatory precodition for downvoting.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#34I would throw a vote in for Joshua Stein, person who started https://lobste.rs . > I was a frequent reader and contributor to Hacker News since 2007, > but got hellbanned[1] in 2012 for complaining about the mystery- > moderators constantly changing submission titles for the worse. [1] - https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...
Oh, I didn't know that practice has been going on for that long. It's sort of become my pet-peeve as well, seeing as how the "war on clickbait" has resulted in moderators frequently changing perfectly good titles into bland three-word summaries that often do a worse job of representing the articles. I think they're operating from a definition of "clickbait" that includes anything that makes a headline appealing, incl…
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, when you talk and track people's facial expressions in real time, you can see which particular things they disagree with, so you have useful feedback. A down vote is sort of like someone running up behind you and king hitting you, for something you said in some other group earlier, and maybe you don't know why. It's not always so non-specific...but not being able to respond to a downvote...makes it an incredibl…
Yeah, I think being denied the opportunity to find out _why_ you are being downvoted, and maybe argue the point, makes you feel exposed and powerless. Maybe one could even argue that at least a short reply should be a mandatory precodition for downvoting.
Definitely. And I can't downvote back...so I don't like that asymmetry.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#36Maybe TerryADavis, he gets a lot of praise and admiration on HN for creating TempleOS, but his comments are often downvoted, and with good reason.
Bloody hell, he's definitely fallen out of the tree, hard. I just looked at his site http://www.templeos.org - he sure does like to use the N-word.
Beeing shizoid, the ultimate minority, feels less outside of society, if you have someone to look down upon. If it was a normal person, i would call it racism- this way, i would call it desperat socializing, with a willingness to consier even racists as company.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I think being denied the opportunity to find out _why_ you are being downvoted, and maybe argue the point, makes you feel exposed and powerless. Maybe one could even argue that at least a short reply should be a mandatory precodition for downvoting.
Definitely. And I can't downvote back...so I don't like that asymmetry.
I think there might be a potential problem there in that retaliatory downvoting might be used as a weapon to disincetivise criticism, especially when (unavoidably) defensive retaliatory downvote cliques form.
So I think I would be okay with a mandatory anonymous reply as a precondition for downvoting.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#38Maybe TerryADavis, he gets a lot of praise and admiration on HN for creating TempleOS, but his comments are often downvoted, and with good reason.
What's exciting about TempleOS?
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#39> I'm interested in diversity of opinions, not echo chambers, and people who can combine having their own unique point of view that doesn't follow the crowd, as well as still pleasing the crowd a lot of the time are very interesting to me right now. I disagree. It's an overused defence: voicing idiotic opinions is "having a unique point of view"; being rude and domineering is "having an outspoken and blunt demeanour"…
It's a nice community-supporting sentiment but I think the idea that such a powerful tool as a down vote is only used for noble purposes, rather than to condemn and silence dissent or as an "easy out" substitute instead of a comment for something one disagrees with, is a fiction. Am I saying all downvotes are tools of censorship and punishment of diversity? No. But I feel down votes are powerful tools, and to me the…
> as an "easy out" substitute instead of a comment for something one disagrees with,
That's a good thing. I don't want to read the same tiresome spats everyday. I would far rather some people just downvoted comments and moved on.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the most controversial (yet still popular) HNers?
#40Funny — I scrolled to the bottom and saw two comments citing two names that popped in my mind after reading the title: 'yummyfajitas, and 'michaelochurch.
There are other people who are "topically controversial", e.g. people who have a background in HFT getting downvoted on every HFT thread, and so on.