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New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#71

Post by [deleted] »

mst wrote: post #69
xenophanes wrote: post #25

> We're trying to see whether by asking people to be civil we can avoid the kind of nastiness that anonymity breeds by default. Plus liberal use of disabling people's accounts without notifying them let alone asking them to change something.

I think it basically boils down to: Hacker News logins are a privilege, not a right. Coming from a background of things like talkers where you needed to be explicitly invited by another user before you could get in, I don't really have a problem with that.

[deleted]

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#72

Post by russell »

axod wrote: post #44

I've also noticed comments modded down to To the new users: If you disagree with a comment, please reply to it, stating why. Don't just blindly downmod it. Just my 2c

I have noticed a piling on of downmods in the past couple of weeks. TooMuchNick seems to have lost 30+ points for a couple of comments. They didn't add much to the conversation but they weren't so offensive that he deserved that. He got the point. Probably -1 would have accomplished it. HN is the most civil site that I have seen. All it takes is a gentle tap to remind a commenter the s/he didn't contribute to the discussion.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#74

Post by mcargian »

axod wrote: post #44

I've also noticed comments modded down to To the new users: If you disagree with a comment, please reply to it, stating why. Don't just blindly downmod it. Just my 2c

On the flip side, I don't understand why someone should get 40 karma points for a two word witty comment, no matter how funny it was. Why isn't karma per comment limited to -1 to 10? Seems like it would limit karma bashing and karma mega-boosting.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#75

Post by electromagnetic »

icey wrote: post #63
mikeyur wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be cool with allowing high karma users the ability to down vote stories (people on the top 100 list for example).

I used to really want downvoting. Flagging really works much better. The stories that I would have ended up downvoting either don't belong here and get [dead]-ed, or they spawn a lot of fascinating conversation. Fortunately, people haven't been doing a lot of gaming of the system yet. The biggest problem with upvoting only is that controversial posts garner the most votes (a thousand people love a subject and ten tho…

I agree, downvotes are dangerous. I know Reddit had (has? I don't know I left when I found HN) a problem where all new articles were getting downmodded by people who wanted their own links on the front page.

I repeatedly think that I would like downvotes, but I quite quickly remember that I absolutely hate downvotes. I don't completely agree with being able to downmod comments, however I think the side effects are dampened that you have to have good karma before you can downvote, which prevents trolls from abusing the system.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#77

Post by eande »

For some time I read hacker news nearly daily (one of the rare places) and mostly because of the comments. Some members here have good points, ideas and are right at the mark. Even with this valuable board discussion if many of these non sense comments increase it will turn away good members. With the anonymity of the internet there will be always some characters that need moderation and so far ycombinator did a good job. Keep it up.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#78

Post by electromagnetic »

While this is up on the front page, I'd like to say that I love HN and the people on it.

There's lots of things I like about HN, like that links can't be down voted and that downvoting comments is an exclusive right to people with good karma.

However, the main thing I like about HN is that I see lots of civil discussion and people giving useful comments and suggestions. When I have seen disagreements (I believe I've been in a few myself) I notice that people tend to do what they do in real life and simply 'walk away'. When I read something that really irks me I usually just close HN and will come back later or whenever when I've forgotten about it.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#79

Post by code_devil »

pg wrote: post #37
sh1mmer wrote: post #19

Curiously PG posting this gets 50 karma and counting, someone else posted a similar thing earlier in the week and got flagged dead. I don't want to see this topic regularly but maybe the guidelines could be made more prominent for new users?

Good idea. I should add some kind of welcome page.

I guess a link saying Rules in the top Orange Bar would be nice. I think that's the most visible part of the HN site.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#80

Post by kwamenum86 »

mcargian wrote: post #74
axod wrote: post #44

I've also noticed comments modded down to To the new users: If you disagree with a comment, please reply to it, stating why. Don't just blindly downmod it. Just my 2c

On the flip side, I don't understand why someone should get 40 karma points for a two word witty comment, no matter how funny it was. Why isn't karma per comment limited to -1 to 10? Seems like it would limit karma bashing and karma mega-boosting.

If you limit the karma to 10 then a particularly good comment will eventually sink below comments that are upmodded later because of the way the ordering algorithm works. Similarly, a particularly bad comment will stay visible.

I don't see anything wrong with karma mega-boosting. At the end of the day it is just a number on your profile.

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