An Update on Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#161

Post by zanny » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:02 PM UTC

chrisblackwell wrote: post #129

I would love to see them lower the threshold for down-voting. I've only got 200+ karma, and it's hard for me to get more. I can't be on here all day commenting, and being the first to submit articles. If I have something important to say, I comment, otherwise, I mostly consume. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to download a comment I don't agree with or find offensive.

As someone who has had downvote powers for a year, you should not be downvoting comments you do not agree with. Downvote trolls or other violations.

If I ever make a site with community comment contributions, and include upvoting, I would just leave downvoting out of the picture entirely. Etiher you do not agree and do nothing, you like a post and upvote it, or you report a comment in violation of the site rules. Downvoting just means dissenting against those you do not agree with rather than having a conversation about it.

You should be replying to the comments you dislike and state why, rather than just think hitting a down arrow is going to right all the wrongs with their statement.

It is the most infuriating thing to make a statement, have it downvoted, but have nobody say or argue why or against your points. The whole point of forums is discussion, and downvoting (especially when it outright removes comments) defeats the purpose.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#162

Post by craigching » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:03 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #154

I hope that flagging is used to consider when a user is shadow-banned and that down-votes just remove points. > 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 r…

I always thought that downvoting was to be used for comments that were off-topic, not when you disagreed with someone, but I've learned otherwise I guess. I really wish I could read dissenting opinions or when someone says something wrong, instead of downvoting, I'd prefer someone explain why it's wrong. Downvoting because you disagree with someone always seems off-putting to me.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#163

Post by kolev » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:03 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #119

kolev wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, users with high karma are just populists? And since when hackers are populists? Not agreeing with somebody could be highly subjective.

Compared to Reddit, HN has a way, way smaller number of instances of "downvote to disagree". You can't prevent it entirely because sometimes it is the right behaviour (such as someone spouting crap on vaccines causing autism, for example...), and sometimes there's an opinion people feel too strongly not to downvote but not strongly enough to reply instead. But the amount of times I've seen controversial opinions rise…

I think HN should make voting more structured. I'm not sure why my karma should suffer if I don't have a popular opinion. Such example is low-carb diets. I always get downvoted, because most people are hooked up on carbs. Why should my karma reflect that? A niche like hackers penalizing niches is not very karmic!

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#164

Post by ars » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:03 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #80

Can you mark comments with the score of 1 in some way? I suspect that I'm not the only one who downvotes the comments he doesn't like or disagrees with, but who'd very rarely want to push a comment into gray. I mean, it's one thing to vote a comment down so that it won't float at the top and another is to punch its author in a face with a negative score.

So stop doing that. You are not supposed to downvote comments you don't like or disagree with.

You are only supposed to downvote comments that are useless.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#165

Post by selmnoo » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:04 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #147

throwit99 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you don't personally, maybe you don't as a group anymore. As I suggested in my original post though, I have more useful things to do than look back at comments I posted years ago and compile evidence. I've moved on. I'm sure it happens a lot more often than you realise, because in general when people get hellbanned, they come to the same realisations as me.

> anymore Not only did we never ban people for criticizing YC companies, the very first thing PG told me when I started moderating HN, and the thing that he emphasized most strongly after that, was never to do things that could be construed (or misconstrued) as censorship of anti-YC stories. (I've edited out some irritation that leaked through in my original version of this comment.)

dang, I think HN has improved for the better, especially since some effort has been made to make things more transparent.

But it would be despicably dishonest for you guys to deny that routinely you guys do things here to protect YC companies (including manipulating voting points on comments/ submissions).

One example (on the top of my mind) is the drchrono post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178004

Even though Skeletor made that comment like ... 20 days after the HN submission, it somehow found its way to the top. Obviously, this was through manual action. Obviously, a non-YC company is not afforded such a privilege.

Idling in #startups of freenode (unofficial HN channel), I've heard too many of these stories. The stories of rankban upon some critical comment on a YC-funded company, a slowban because of a critical comment on some YC personality, etc. etc. There are countless examples.

When these things happen one after the other, you lose trust, we cannot believe you anymore. Please stop doing this. I think the only way to win trust back at this point is if you again expose voting points at all times.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#166

Post by bayesianhorse » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:04 PM UTC

Voting is a dangerous thing. In German newspapers, an extreme right wing minority has taken over most comment forums. In some of these, even belonging to reputable newspapers, it has become extremely difficult to voice dissenting opinion (for example defending human rights for foreigners and homosexuals), mostly because "activists" have begun marking such opinions as spam or inappropriate.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#167

Post by MrJagil » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:05 PM UTC

delecti wrote: post #110

dang wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An earlier draft of this post that Sam sent me had "nearly everyone can help there". I'll ask him to put it back. But it's not like this is much of a barrier. Even this one comment moved you significantly (as of right now at least).

Just curious, but are you saying that because of the relative position of the parent's comment in this thread, or is there a threshold for karma that unlocks seeing the karma on comments other than your own?

Just click on his username.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#168

Post by alan_cx » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:05 PM UTC

Problem I have is that there is no way of knowing why posts are down-voted. Quality? Politics? Just wrong? No idea. Sometime I see posts which are factually correct, but clearly unpopular and voted down. And to be utterly fair, I'm not even sure why I've down-voted or flagged in the past. Cant even remember if I've flagged.

Now Im actually thinking about it, I think I'll only up-vote in the future, and I think that would be if I think I've learned something from a top notch post. Anything else feels like some sort of censorship, vanity or whatever.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#169

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:05 PM UTC

chrisblackwell wrote: post #129

I would love to see them lower the threshold for down-voting. I've only got 200+ karma, and it's hard for me to get more. I can't be on here all day commenting, and being the first to submit articles. If I have something important to say, I comment, otherwise, I mostly consume. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to download a comment I don't agree with or find offensive.

[deleted]

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#170

Post by zanny » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 9:05 PM UTC

jval wrote: post #151

dang wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As other users have pointed out, to flag a comment you have to click on 'link' to go to the comment's item page [1]. I don't know why PG designed it this way but have always assumed it was a speed bump to reduce impulsive flagging, since flags are more powerful than downvotes. We never remove flagging privileges because of just one flag. The concept of a mistake is all too familiar over here. 1. https://hn.algolia.co…

I feel like the UI should be consistent dang, because I've been flagging entire threads where there's an inappropriate comment (not knowing that there was a comment flag there). I think at the moment it's too easy to hit that flag button on the front page (as others have said, especially on mobile), so maybe it should be moved back too?

The consistency would be to remove the flag button from the front page, but clicking on a story and flagging it in the thread itself is equivalent to clicking on a comment to flag it in its page.