31–40 of 371 posts
This appropriately rewards engagement, but also pushes down other worthy comments that come slightly later, often to effective near invisibility when replies to the top comment dominate the discussion.
I wonder if there is any mechanism that could help counter this.
A third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change. Good to hear they decided to roll that back. PG opened a pandora's box when he said that d…
> In the meantime, we will simply have to stop assuming that downvoted comments are actually, you know, bad. I don't think this is true. Given that downvoted comments become faded, I have a strong reason to believe that the intent is to hide them because they are actually bad
If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment? My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't a…
Moving comments down completely can break the threading - e.g. you could have a highly upvoted parent comment with a single child comment that was heavily downvoted. You can't move the child any further down the tree. You CAN indicative that the comment has been downvoted - the fading accomplishes that objective.
Applying fading to all the comments just because a downvoted comment has a parent that happens to be at the top, seems wrong.
> The threshold for flagging is low (only 30 karma), so everyone can help there. So I guess I am not able to help.
I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.) I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm too old for that shit and I don't really care. St…
(dang has commented about marking his own comments off topic, so the support for that is in there, but I'm speculating about how it might be used.)
Here's what is currently offered:
https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
Basically italics and code blocks only. No lists or no bolding.
This seems like one of the cases where HN's moderation is both draconian and completely opaque. I can't flag comments, and I have no idea why. I certainly don't think of myself as an abusive user.
Maybe I accidentally clicked the "flag" link once. If that gets flagging privileges removed, HN should at least consider creating a way to undo an action!
Can anyone comment on the reasoning behind the lack of a mobile style sheet?
I have been using a mobile-friendly version of Hacker News called HackerWeb on my phone and tablet: http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/
A handful of browser add-ons exist that will update the visual design and generally make the site more pleasurable to use. Here's one for Chrome: http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/
> To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately. This seems like one of the cases where HN's moderation is both draconian and completely opaque. I can't flag comments, and I have no idea why. I certainly don't think of myself as an abusive user. Maybe I accidentally clicked the "flag" link once. If that gets flagging privileges remo…