61–70 of 383 posts
Removing the vote count was a step back. You end up with highly positioned comments that are factually wrong and no way to weigh the corrections made in replies. If you saw that a comment had 20 votes, but a reply had 500, you'd have something to go by. If nothing else, they could show the relative score of a reply to its parent.
How about just reading and evaluating what the damn words say instead of relying on a "score"?
Coming from a certain frame, context and worldview given to someone by his/her parents, many comments are not ill-intendend but come off as unhelpful or negative. A problem with moderation on the web is that for willing people it is hard to grasp why you have been given the mdoeration you got. An idea I'm toying with is to allow meta-comment reactions to comments. They would extend horizontally (as opposed to vertica…
Unhelpful to whom? Pointing out bad examples as bad examples is helpful to the inexperienced; they may learn to avoid some pitfalls.
People who publicly push back against popular bad schools of thought provide encouragement to others in the minority who might give up the fight out of fatigue instead of conceding on the merits.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, that I simply don't have the necessary foundation. And what makes you think that the "majority vote" on them will be correct? Most often, it's the majority that doesn't have the necessary foundation.
Well, if we had the vote counts, we could test your conjecture.
Do they work that well there, or do they make the forums a competition for points and popular comments, in other words a popularity contest?
I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments that floods several discussion forums that I have come across. "Nice article", "Great write-up" and the next thing you know, you have created a place where people are only interested in submitting their articles and getting it upvoted rather than make meaningful contributions. People want to make good contributions here and that's something that differenti…
".. the measure of a healthy organization is probably the degree to which negative thoughts are allowed. In places where great work is being done, the attitude always seems to be critical and sarcastic, not "positive" and "supportive". The people I know who do great work think that they suck, but that everyone else sucks even more." -- Paul Graham
But it's very different when total strangers communicate by text over the internet: sarcastic comments breed aggressive replies, and threads degenerate into arguments very rapidly. I think good conversations online need more restraint and empathic effort than good conversations IRL.
HN comments are full of naive political opinion, groupthink, and a tendency to blind optimism on all things technology or new. Often older ways have merit too. It's also probably the only place left on the net where, from comments, I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic, and sometimes talk with the guy who…
>I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic If you stay off the default subreddits and only go on the intellectual/debate subreddits, then I honestly think reddit is better for this. The amount of expertise on reddit is astounding. It's very easy to find someone to rigorously challenge any view I have. I'd go…
It's not complicated, just hard to digest. Anti-white racism. It's identical to the antisemitism of the far right in the 30s and 40s, except it is with whites.
Another thing I've noticed about HN comments is that everything is hyped beyond what it deserves. For example, the recent DDoS attacks were just a bunch of skids with Mirai, but it was discussed as if it was the end of the internet. There's also the issue of self-censorship, where users will refrain from posting their opinion in case they get downvotes and negative karma. The things people post here are fascinating,…
Couldn't it be both? What's your proposal for stopping DDoS from skids with Mirai?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic If you stay off the default subreddits and only go on the intellectual/debate subreddits, then I honestly think reddit is better for this. The amount of expertise on reddit is astounding. It's very easy to find someone to rigorously challenge any view I have. I'd go…
You also find a whole lot of echo chambers, fanboys and wannabe-intellectualism. This because anyone can set up a sub-reddit, and thus also moderate them.