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Sounds like a great way to limit exposure to differing thoughts, experiences, and opinions.
If you’re only hearing from those in your friend circle, it’s just another glorified chat room... nothing new here
I guess you could always read both.
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If someone on the top of a user-invite tree gets "cancelled" will all the people he referred and their descendants be cancelled, too?
that’s some vampire shit there sir
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point here is that if someone starts spouting rubbish, the person who invited them loses "face" - it reflects badly on them. So invitations aren't hard to come by, provided you have a reasonable reputation for saying things that are sensible. This is a throwback to an early age when you would never talk to someone in social circles without first being introduced. If someone turned out to be a "bad sort" t…
Doesn't that just cause a massive filter bubble effect?
The down-vote feature (for those who didn't read the article: you have to provide feedback to down-vote) is something I've spent years saying HN badly needs. These days I just don't bother posting most of the time because while I shouldn't be bothered by abuse of negative rep; you can't help be pissed off when you've spent a short while including detail only for someone who doesn't understand the subject or has a per…
Downvoting isn't the problem - it's spam flagging. There's no better tool for suppressing ideas and viewpoints you disagree with than flagging it. Only on HN can a story occupy #1 on the front page due to overwhelming upvotes, and 30 seconds later be sunk to the depths of page 2 or 3 by a handful of flaggers who disagree with the content that's presented.
The down-vote feature (for those who didn't read the article: you have to provide feedback to down-vote) is something I've spent years saying HN badly needs. These days I just don't bother posting most of the time because while I shouldn't be bothered by abuse of negative rep; you can't help be pissed off when you've spent a short while including detail only for someone who doesn't understand the subject or has a per…
Not clear what the ideal number is; maybe 5 at 500 karma, and 5 more per 500, possibly up to some limit (25?).
Otherwise, 'you must provide a reason' is trivially gameable, it just means downvotes are two clicks instead of one.
I suspect that the recent trend to low-quality downvotes is because 500 is a relatively low threshold with as much traffic as HN gets these days, and we have a bunch of newbs who were champing at the bit to inflict some punishment and go nuts with it when they get the ability.
Limiting downvotes at first would train users to be more thoughtful in what they censure; eventually the limit becomes no practical barrier, but hopefully by then the habit is established.
What eventually happens is that the people that have been there the longest reminisce when the site was different and they actually preferred that kind of content. But, the site has gone into a new direction.
And HN is arguably better for not being invite-only. There are so many articles on HN where the top comment is by somebody with deep domain knowledge who provides some kind of original insight that fits into the low length and polish expectations of a comment, but would never have become a formal blog post. Invite-only communities intentionally give up on that kind of discourse for... what? Easier moderation?
This is now a myth. HN used to be like this but look for yourself, it's no longer like this. It's no longer worth my time to dig for worthwhile nuggets in the HN comments nor is it worth my time to post a high quality comment because I know the only responses will be nitpicks and a few worthless internet points.
PS: There's a vague rule about not criticizing HN that gets invoked fairly often. Be prepared for this thread to be gassed.
EDIT: Dropped off the internet due to a DOS? Snort is fun. Hi dang and friends!
And HN is arguably better for not being invite-only. There are so many articles on HN where the top comment is by somebody with deep domain knowledge who provides some kind of original insight that fits into the low length and polish expectations of a comment, but would never have become a formal blog post. Invite-only communities intentionally give up on that kind of discourse for... what? Easier moderation?
Invite only tech communities can actually be harmful if these open access communities don't also exist. Closed communities end up reinforce existing inequalities and in-group biases. If it were as large and influential as HN, inequality like this would be a real issue.
Is it better to limit access to limit access to only those you personally know? Sounds like a great way to limit exposure to differing thoughts, experiences, and opinions. If you’re only hearing from those in your friend circle, it’s just another glorified chat room... nothing new here