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An Update on Hacker News

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Re: An Update on Hacker News

#81

Post by Donzo »

yoha wrote: post #40
rspeer wrote: post #37

> 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…

I am in a similar situation. I do remember having mis-clicked on a "flag" link once.

I did this too. I unflagged them in the past, but it's happened repeatedly. It's because the UI on mobile is terrible.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#82

Post by lotharbot »

natch wrote: post #31

It seems like early comments on any article generally have a huge advantage in garnering votes. 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 comment's location is affected both by its points and by its age. New comments tend to appear at or near the top in the first few minutes after they're posted, and then will drop down the page if they don't receive many upvotes.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#83

Post by couchand »

cs702 wrote: post #58
rspeer wrote: post #37

> 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…

More than once, I've unintentionally downvoted comments I meant to upvote, upvoted comments I meant to downvote, and/or clicked on a button I didn't mean to click (that includes clicking on 'reply' after writing something that doesn't really add any value and almost instantly regretting it). So I agree, it would be great to have more/better undo options!

I've done this, too. If you e-mail the mods they'll reverse it pretty quickly. On the same hand, if you e-mail the mods all the time they might have more of an incentive to implement a self-undo.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#84

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

readerrrr wrote: post #14

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…

As far as I can tell, there are no guidelines or FAQs about what downvoting should be "used for" on HN.

On Reddit, the Reddiquette [1] standard is that you should only downvote if a comment doesn't contribute to the conversation. I think is is an excellent standard. It's been suggested in the past that a similar standard should be present on HN. [2]

Considering that flagging is a privilege that can be lost if someone decides that you're abusing it, ideally it should be reserved for the egregious cases that are unquestionably bad. Downvoting on HN should be for comments that truly don't contribute to the conversation, though the comments in question may not rise to the level of flagging.

As an example: Say you have a comment expressing an opinion with no support, no references, and factual errors. Is it "inappropriate"? Arguable. Does it contribute to the conversation? Not in any positive way. I would suggest downvoting that comment would be the right answer, even if you agree with the sentiment, because it doesn't positively contribute to the conversation. But flagging wouldn't be appropriate considering the comment is on topic and not spam (which are given as criteria in the HN Guidelines).

If you encourage downvoting because you disagree with an opinion, then minority opinions get buried. And sometimes it's useful to see that an opinion isn't unanimous, and that there's another side to an argument, even if you disagree.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=721314

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#85

Post by Udo »

readerrrr wrote: post #14

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…

I think disagreeing with a comment is not enough to merit a downvote. I'd rather see downvoting as a signal to the author about the quality of their post - while flagging is a signal to the system itself in cases where the post is unacceptable and should be removed from the site.

When I disagree with a comment, I'd rather write a dissenting one or a reply stating my counter points. Another method of dealing with disagreements is to simply upvote other comments you agree with.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#86

Post by tzs »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #22

I'm wondering if there's any official policy on linking to articles that are behind pay/register walls. I've flagged two such submissions, and only one got flagkilled.

There are a few reasons such articles usually do not get flag killed.

1. Most of the paywall news sites allow free viewing of a few articles per month and so many here do not hit the paywall.

2. It is often very easy to get around the paywall if you are over the monthly limit. Sometimes it is as simple as searching for the article by title in Google and clicking Google's link.

3. If you cannot get around the paywall, it is often the case that you can find coverage of the same event at another site that is not paywalled, which will give you enough information to meaningfully enjoy and participate in the HN discussion.

4. Even if you cannot find free coverage of the thing under discussion, it is often the case that the HN discussion is entertaining and enlightening. HN discussion often goes off on tangents inspired by the article, and those tangents can be appreciated without having read the article.

5. Many people here don't see the paywalls because they subscribe to the paywalled sites.

6. Most here do not have such big egos or senses of entitlement that they are bothered by others reading and discussing something that they have not been able to read.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#87

Post by vacri »

hackuser wrote: post #46
readerrrr wrote: post #14

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…

> downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment I hope downvoting has nothing to do with agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated). I want to see many more comments that are valuable and challenge the community (and challenge my thinking too). The groupthink is already well known and if not, will certa…

Downvoting for mere disagreement has been blessed by the top level; it's an HN 'thing'. It would be less of a problem if it didn't also fade your comment.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#88

Post by dang »

sciurus wrote: post #62

"To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately." When I first joined HN, I aggressively flagged stories and comments that didn't meet the guidelines. I thought that's what I was supposed to do. However, one day my comment flagging privileges disappeared with no explanation. If someone had contacted me and explained how I was misusin…

> comment flagging privileges disappeared

Comment flagging privileges don't disappear (edit: alone). Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585939.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#89

Post by nilkn »

readerrrr wrote: post #14

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…

Using a downvote to express disagreement with somebody here is going to come off as highly inflammatory towards them because downvotes actually cause their comment to fade out, as you mentioned. In fact, there have been instances where I've upvoted comments that I didn't agree with because they were so well articulated.

I believe that pg himself disagrees with me on this, but I honestly don't think the site is designed correctly with his view of voting in mind. The punishment for downvoting shouldn't be so harsh (both moving the comment down and fading it out) if it's just to express disagreement. That just encourages extreme group-think.

By far the best way to express disagreement IMHO is to neither vote nor flag, but to post a response.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#90

Post by Someone1234 »

film42 wrote: post #51
Someone1234 wrote: post #36

Any chance we'll get some better text formatting options? Here's what is currently offered: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc Basically italics and code blocks only. No lists or no bolding.

It would be cool to see markdown support, but I totally understand that any addition to the formatting spec is risky, because any new change means older posts could be awkwardly rendered. On that historical HN note, it would be great if someone made an app that dug up really awesome older stories from the HN archives. I'd use that a ton!

They could do something like a BOM. Any comment without the wchar in position [0] is rendered historically. Anything with it is rendered using markdown (or another renderer).

It adds no new columns, and better still if you pick a symbol which is nuked by TRIM() e.g. \x0B [U+000B] (vertical tab) then it might be ignored by existing infrastructure/trimmed.

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