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What's happening in Hnews then? Is it bad?
HN is a rare exception to this effect due to its more focused niche (though the bubble effect is definitely there to some degree). I'm more referencing larger platforms, particularly reddit.
I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…
It's especially bad on a site like HN - an account only gets a downvote capability if they've received what is it, 400 upvotes? - so you're assured that every downvote you receive is someone who says lots of things other people like to upvote (or are a serial link poster getting link karma upvotes). There is an echo chamber here based on how the downvote rules work, and I've watched people's comments get brigade down…
If you post/comment in a certain manner you get upvoted and break into the potential downvoters. Otherwise, you stay in purgatory of the middlings.
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Every forum, every social media site, every community participation vehicle rewards one thing above all: time. Do I have time to make 4 or 5 burner accounts to enforce my votes? No. I have things to do. Do I have time to post ad nauseum about any given topic to make my point? No. I have things to do. And I'm sure you have things to do as well, so do a lot of people. But those that don't, have the thing we lack: time.…
I've been thinking how to counter this effect. How to give power to the silent majority. I've been slowly writing a version of Reddit with an added level of moderation via direct democracy but made efficient by using proxy votes and statistical sampling. People with time and interest provide most is the content but moderation incentivizes behavior beneficial to the majority. It's a fools errand as it's a double-sided…
Moderation itself is an attempt at a solution. And it is a solution on a small enough scale. But when you're literally dealing with moderating the entire world 24/7, there just aren't the resources to deal with that.
You're attempting to automate that or kick that can back to the users. But just like here, just like reddit, just like StackOverflow, just like every single site that relies on community moderation that gets big, time beats all.
It'll be fine for a while and you'll think you've solved the issue, but then you'll tip and become larger than you can socially manage. And those with the most time will skew your samples and votes.
I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…
Agree completely. While in theory I completely agree downvotes should be around, in practice I have seen they are an ideological voting machine used to suppress opinions. It is kind of unusual how fast the downvotes appear, as if there are downvote bots running on the HN & Reddit. I've posted a comment and had what appeared to be 3 downvotes within a minute. Of course, I am an evidence driven technologist that is not…
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Yeah, my experience has been that any downvote system will turn an audience that's divided 51-49 to one that's partitioned 51-0 in very short order. If anything, I've come to the conclusion that downvoting should be completely removed from most online platforms.
What's happening in Hnews then? Is it bad?
1. Comments cannot fall below -4 points
2. Downvoted comments only get greyed out, not hidden entirely
3. Most topics on HN are not political (though there are certainly exceptions)
4. The community here is (usually) a bit more mature than on other sites like Reddit
I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…
> I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. Tangential but whenever I read something like this, and people do post them a lot, I tend to assume they're actually normal, sensitive people who have learned that not showing any sign of harm means…
I simply mean that I'm old enough, have experienced enough that there are very few people in the world that can say something which I haven't already been told or I haven't imagined myself. Some rando on the net can't possibly hurt.
But yeah, I don't mean to suggest suppressing your feelings.
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Negative feedback from your peer group is normal, and provides conformity pressures, which is important when forming and maintaining a community bound together by a common culture.
It's also a way to apply peer pressure.
Extreme peer pressure can be bad, just as any social extreme is bad. But it isn't universally bad if used sparingly and for a reason.
I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…
Agree completely. While in theory I completely agree downvotes should be around, in practice I have seen they are an ideological voting machine used to suppress opinions. It is kind of unusual how fast the downvotes appear, as if there are downvote bots running on the HN & Reddit. I've posted a comment and had what appeared to be 3 downvotes within a minute. Of course, I am an evidence driven technologist that is not…
People just aren't there to think and they have this "weapon" that they can use to shoo away anything they don't immediately understand.
It's even more ridiculous that simple one sentence or better yet, one meme comments get drives of upvotes.
You can easily automate that. Just copy and paste comments in the same thread, mix with some meme comments, and you're halfway to an account with high karma.
Begs the question, why bother participating in this bottom of the barrel mindwankery? Nothing but an addiction these days.
I say Reddit, but that platform is really a lot of smaller forums with useful information, even if you have to wade through some shit.
Imgur on the other hand, I finally couldn't stand the sheer idiocy and quit. It's amazing, and I wish I could quit this site and Reddit, too.
I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…
I have been unfairly downvoted before, but it’s just not a common occurrence. The most common way things go down are that a positive comment gets a few upvotes, once in a while gets dozens or hundreds of upvotes, and once every blue moon gets as many as 3 downvotes. On balance, positive comments have been an extremely high ratio of ups to downs.
> Why would I participate in that?
This is a good question, but you’ve constructed a straw man version of HN where everyone is against you. I think if you come at it with less fear and more curiosity, you will have a much better experience. Maybe spend more time reading without commenting and go out of your way to take special note of the positive interactions. The reasons I participate here are for the technical articles, for the wide variety of good advice on how to start and run a business, for the threads where world experts and relatively famous people participate and comment, for threads about things I love like GPUs and computer graphics, for retro computer history, and sometimes for adding comments where I hope to help people see the glass half full side of things. Good luck friend!
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HN has a certain discussion parameters and moderation system on purpose. The goal on HN isn’t to allow open ended discussions on all topics. I for one appreciate that we can talk computers and technology here and that the moderators keep the average level of the discussion high. If I want politics and other garbage I’ll go somewhere else. I have never experienced any issues here. Been here a looong time. Don’t be edg…
There are many threads here about the politics of technology (big tech, open source vs closed source software, cryptocurrency and finance, the fabrication industry and China, etc) and there are also plenty of threads about politics unrelated or tangentially related to computers (off the top of my head, housing and homelessness, the schooling system, and climate change get discussed here not infrequently). HN isn't fo…