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Don't be a jerk

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Re: Don't be a jerk

#71

Post by wging »

bane wrote: post #40
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

It seems like this is an instance of a more general trend: The commenting ecosystem is in decline. It's better than Reddit, but it's a shadow of what it once was. I've noticed downvotes are trending now. The downvotes do correct themselves... most of the time. But there's a lot more frivolous downvoting due to the influx of people that have attained downvote privileges but haven't really shunned the mindset of other…

On certain topics, HN always had a downvote problem for certain contrarian opinions. For example, heaven forbid you didn't think everything Apple produced when Steve Jobs was alive was a gift from heaven. Anything questioning that was always downvoted, even if presented in a non-snarky way. It was so bad that pg even introduced a downvote floor (-5) to keep people from shedding hundreds of points of karma when the do…

In related news, reddit is now introducing a karma floor of sorts; they recently announced that though negative karma would still accrue without limit, negative karma below -100 would just be displayed as -100.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#72

Post by teekert »

Was it an "Ask HN:"? It Took em some tries until I figured out that was just it, add "Ask HN:" to the title. I have deleted 2 earlier tries. Didn't see any responses though, but perhaps I should have hit F5. It could have been that someone was just being naive.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#73

Post by pygy_ »

aerovistae wrote: post #29
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

It seems like this is an instance of a more general trend: The commenting ecosystem is in decline. It's better than Reddit, but it's a shadow of what it once was. I've noticed downvotes are trending now. The downvotes do correct themselves... most of the time. But there's a lot more frivolous downvoting due to the influx of people that have attained downvote privileges but haven't really shunned the mindset of other…

Give me a break. You sound exactly like the elderly folks you always hear saying "things used to be so much better, nobody saying "Sir" and "Ma'am" anymore...kids these days have no manners." The commenting ecosystem on the internet has always been a coarse and insensitive place, and it always will be. This is not a new thing.

HN used to have a pervasive gentleman culture, to the point of being mocked as uptight by proggit because of it.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#74

Post by atmosx »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

It seems like this is an instance of a more general trend: The commenting ecosystem is in decline. It's better than Reddit, but it's a shadow of what it once was. I've noticed downvotes are trending now. The downvotes do correct themselves... most of the time. But there's a lot more frivolous downvoting due to the influx of people that have attained downvote privileges but haven't really shunned the mindset of other…

I don't think the community has a problem. It's more that we're out of options.

Most people (as far as I understand) downvote for a huge variety of reasons. Some are not acceptable by others. I trust the everybody knows WHAT a downvote is, so they are using it as best as they can.

I've been downvoted for my answers, when they were either politically different from some people OR they contained some form of bad language (e.g. irony). So all in all from I've seen, the downvoting system works fine as far as I can tell. If we had more options then might be better.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#75

Post by bane »

krapp wrote: post #67
bane wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On certain topics, HN always had a downvote problem for certain contrarian opinions. For example, heaven forbid you didn't think everything Apple produced when Steve Jobs was alive was a gift from heaven. Anything questioning that was always downvoted, even if presented in a non-snarky way. It was so bad that pg even introduced a downvote floor (-5) to keep people from shedding hundreds of points of karma when the do…

I believe the fix is simple - don't start fading out downvoted comments until a certain threshold of negativity has been reached. I think the visual 'reward' of being able to silence a commenter without effort or reply contributes a great deal to the noisy and petty nature of initial downvotes.

I've long thought that downvotes should require a comment. Perhaps a better idea is that dowvotes past a certain threshold require a comment.

I know I've been downvoted in the past for various innocent comments and have no idea why the groupthink thought that comment in particular had to die.

As has been observed here before, downvotes are often a normative function of the groupthink. But unless corrective action is suggested with the downvote, nothing normative can come out of it other than to not participate at all.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#76

Post by jlees »

Also phrased as:

Remember the person behind the keyboard is a real person. You might not agree with them, but they're a living, breathing human being who took time out of their day to type what they typed.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#77

Post by Htsthbjig »

Take a shower,take you partner or children with you and get out for a walk, look at the birds, the threes or the sea, or better go to a place where you can look at the thousands of millions of trillions of stars.

Then you will realize that it doesn't matter. Seriously, it doesn't matter at all.

Sometimes it happens to me too and I need to focus again on what is important and what is not.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#78

Post by jonnathanson »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

It seems like this is an instance of a more general trend: The commenting ecosystem is in decline. It's better than Reddit, but it's a shadow of what it once was. I've noticed downvotes are trending now. The downvotes do correct themselves... most of the time. But there's a lot more frivolous downvoting due to the influx of people that have attained downvote privileges but haven't really shunned the mindset of other…

I think it still speaks volumes to HN's credit that a lot of wrongful downvotings are self-correcting. On almost any other site, message board, subreddit, or commenting section, you'd expect to see downvotes' becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy every time. The second something is 'in the grey,' it stays there, and gets worse. On HN, certain measures prevent that from happening -- but people also go to the trouble of upvoting things out of the grey, which is highly unusual by Intenet standards.

It's interesting to look at the group psychology of downvoting. The second something appears grey, a threshold has been crossed. A signal is raised. Everyone else who swings by sees a sort of implicit permission to downvote the comment, because it's already been downvoted, and hence, something about it must be worth downvoting. Before someone even reads the comment, they approach it with a downvote-ready mentality. You're conditioned to react negatively to a grey comment even before you read it, and that's a very powerful prompt.

HN self-corrects in a lot of cases, and that's interesting not only in the context of the Internet at large, but also in the context of human psychology. To read a greying comment with an open mind, and then go against the evident grain to re-upvote it, requires conscious and considered thought. It requires the activation of what Kahneman would call "System 2."[1] Most people don't vote in System 2; they vote in System 1.[2] HN seems to be different, and that's no small feat. It gives me hope, even if the trendline appears to be getting worse.

At the same time, I'm wondering if it's time for HN's admins to raise the karma threshold required for downvotes. Perhaps 500 (the commonly assumed number) is too low?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory

[2] I'd love to see a psychology study of internet commenting, whereby the study uses eye-tracking to determine if people actually read comments before casting a vote. My hypothesis is that upvotes usually follow the reading, while downvotes often precede the reading. Particularly if something is already grey.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#79

Post by gadders »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #56
bane wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On certain topics, HN always had a downvote problem for certain contrarian opinions. For example, heaven forbid you didn't think everything Apple produced when Steve Jobs was alive was a gift from heaven. Anything questioning that was always downvoted, even if presented in a non-snarky way. It was so bad that pg even introduced a downvote floor (-5) to keep people from shedding hundreds of points of karma when the do…

> On certain topics, HN always had a downvote problem for certain contrarian opinions. For example, heaven forbid you didn't think everything Apple produced when Steve Jobs was alive was a gift from heaven Also see: Snowden is not a hero, Piracy is not ok & The NSA snooping is not so bad.

I'd add anything negative about Aaron Schwartz to the list.

Re: Don't be a jerk

#80

Post by [deleted] »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #56
bane wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On certain topics, HN always had a downvote problem for certain contrarian opinions. For example, heaven forbid you didn't think everything Apple produced when Steve Jobs was alive was a gift from heaven. Anything questioning that was always downvoted, even if presented in a non-snarky way. It was so bad that pg even introduced a downvote floor (-5) to keep people from shedding hundreds of points of karma when the do…

> On certain topics, HN always had a downvote problem for certain contrarian opinions. For example, heaven forbid you didn't think everything Apple produced when Steve Jobs was alive was a gift from heaven Also see: Snowden is not a hero, Piracy is not ok & The NSA snooping is not so bad.

[deleted]
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