The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009) • Hacker News Board

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#141

Post by krapp » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #73

benlivengood wrote: post #40

I've been through several forum deaths. The cause is usually large growth from people with very different mindsets that downvote for essentially political reasons instead of encouraging good discourse. This makes the best people leave in short order. In a sense there's no way to structure a forum to avoid this. Being outnumbered by people who don't value open communication is unpleasant with or without downvoting. Fo…

Would actually like to see a list of largest karma-wise HN members who left. By leaving I would say over 180 days inactive. Dang can you post the result please: SELECT hn_name, hn_karma, hn_last_active FROM comments WHERE TIMESTAMPDIFF(DAY, hn_last_active, NOW()) > 180 ORDER BY hn_karma DESC LIMIT 100

>SELECT hn_name, hn_karma, hn_last_active FROM comments WHERE TIMESTAMPDIFF(DAY, hn_last_active, NOW()) > 180 ORDER BY hn_karma DESC LIMIT 100

Ah, Hacker News is too cool to use something as pedestrian as a database ;)

But there is a Google BigQuery dataset[0,1]. I don't know how up to date it is.

[0]https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?p=bigquery-public-...

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10440502

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#142

Post by Oblouk » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

I think the content at HN is pretty good. Some other novel approaches I have seen includes upquest.com which has voting based on where you think the score is headed. I think (as others have mentioned) downvoting introduces issues like for example downvoting articles around the one article you want upvoted.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#143

Post by rurp » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

benlivengood wrote: post #40

I've been through several forum deaths. The cause is usually large growth from people with very different mindsets that downvote for essentially political reasons instead of encouraging good discourse. This makes the best people leave in short order. In a sense there's no way to structure a forum to avoid this. Being outnumbered by people who don't value open communication is unpleasant with or without downvoting. Fo…

This matches my experience as well.

HN having a reasonably high karma threshold for downvoting was a great decision that guards against a lot of common problems. I think that feature, along with the community as a whole being very mindful about protecting the forum quality, plus Dang being an excellent moderator, have greatly contributed to keeping it strong for many years.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#144

Post by downandout » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #73

benlivengood wrote: post #40

I've been through several forum deaths. The cause is usually large growth from people with very different mindsets that downvote for essentially political reasons instead of encouraging good discourse. This makes the best people leave in short order. In a sense there's no way to structure a forum to avoid this. Being outnumbered by people who don't value open communication is unpleasant with or without downvoting. Fo…

Would actually like to see a list of largest karma-wise HN members who left. By leaving I would say over 180 days inactive. Dang can you post the result please: SELECT hn_name, hn_karma, hn_last_active FROM comments WHERE TIMESTAMPDIFF(DAY, hn_last_active, NOW()) > 180 ORDER BY hn_karma DESC LIMIT 100

I used to be incredibly active on here, and then I started getting downvoted on virtually every comment, likely for political reasons. I have all but stopped commenting compared to my previous activity. It just stopped being fun. Even posts I make that have nothing to do with politics, that only point out provable, factual information, get downvoted. I have over 13K karma, even after losing a few thousand points over the last 18 months or so. So the things that I have to say weren't always unpopular. I didn't change - the community did. It became a hostile, vindictive place.

I still visit daily because HN does a good job of surfacing interesting articles, but I used to find the comments more interesting than the stories themselves. That has changed in the last few years, as identity politics have taken hold. I can now accurately predict the content of many of the comments on a given story by simply reading its title. It's sad to see.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#145

Post by wvenable » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #104

wvenable wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagging is necessary to keep the site on-topic in my opinion. People will happily upvote controversy that has little value or importance to this site.

I agree that flagging has value, but it is grossly misused to suppress discussions that are on topic but are outside of the overton window. Generally speaking I think HN is wonderful, and if staying wonderful means we have to tolerate censorship, I'll gladly make that trade, but I do wish people had thicker skin (that's a problem on all sides by the way).

Individual comments are rarely flagged for anything other than outright spam or harassment. I browse with "show dead" turned on.

I have seen entire heated topics killed but that kills both sides of the argument equally. What value is a 500-comment talk-over-each-other argument, fundamentally about politics even if on-topic, on this site? I doesn't seem like something we should waste time on.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#146

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #73

benlivengood wrote: post #40

I've been through several forum deaths. The cause is usually large growth from people with very different mindsets that downvote for essentially political reasons instead of encouraging good discourse. This makes the best people leave in short order. In a sense there's no way to structure a forum to avoid this. Being outnumbered by people who don't value open communication is unpleasant with or without downvoting. Fo…

Would actually like to see a list of largest karma-wise HN members who left. By leaving I would say over 180 days inactive. Dang can you post the result please: SELECT hn_name, hn_karma, hn_last_active FROM comments WHERE TIMESTAMPDIFF(DAY, hn_last_active, NOW()) > 180 ORDER BY hn_karma DESC LIMIT 100

[deleted]

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#147

Post by snowflake_ptr » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

amznthrwaway wrote: post #106

Tenoke wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flagging is for problematic stories. If you follow at all which stories are rejected flagging is used as downvoting on a daily basis unless your definition of 'problematic' is extremely broad.

The notion that HN is well-moderated is bizarre. HN is exceptionally hostile to those who hold beliefs contrary to HN-acceptable norms. If you want to get banned quickly, criticize pg portfolio companies (even politely, with valid criticism), point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite; point out that responses to hate speech are _not_ tolerated..... The community here u…

Given your claims of "white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed [...] extremely bigoted shit" being both completely inconsistent with my experience, and the specific things that you are claiming are present, it seems far more likely that you've been banned for the kinds of social authoritarianism (trying to control the speech and thoughts of others) that is particularly popular among a certain political faction lately than those things actually being prevalent and accepted.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#148

Post by hellbannedguy » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

To those of you addicted to Hacker News; I can offer this tip.

Get a Hellban. It's not hard after all. I'll probally get hellbanned over this post?

You will find you will still pruse HN, but very rarely will you feel the need to contribute. Your time here will decrease.

Hacker News does not need much improvement. It does seem like it's on the back end of it's business cycle though, like all current social sites? I used business cycle because I don't know the word for a social site's decline. Decline is too harsh a word. Maybe predictable conversations, and a bit of a echo chamber, is more appripro? Hacker News is still the best site for scientific conversation on the the internet though.

It seems like we have hashed out the important scientific stuff, and most issues computer related.

I'm so greatfull to the hard nosed scientists whom hang here, and take umbridge to unsupported claims. I really do appreciate you guys. You know who you are. You are usually the first one to comment on a study's flaw, or whether the Placebo Effect is rearing it's magical head.

Graham should add a few more moderators though. Never give too much power to one person, and an owner. This Plus--if Graham pays more Moderators, he could write off the added expence? It could be his gift to humanity? Oh yea, block a person, but do away with hellbanning. It's wimpy, passive aggressive, weak move. I understand moderation, but just block a person. Don't let them rattle on to open air.

I would like to see a few more political discussions though. Not a lot, but some. Maybe one every other week? Expose the political fakers, and hypocrites. Expose the political hacks on both sides. Track every dime both parties bring in by way of Lobbiests?

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#149

Post by oehpr » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #67

I just wish you could remove the number next to your name natively in HN. It can't seriously take more than 5 minutes to implement this. There's no excuse IMHO. I want to interact with the site without seeing the number change and wondering why it did.

I can sympathize. I used to have a filter for reddit to eliminate the tally because I didn't like the effect it had on me.

I think the thing is though, HN and reddit don't give you options to remove these numbers because they have an effect. It's the nudge they give to people to adjust their contributions to be something the community actually wants. No shock these services are not offering options to turn that nudge off.

It might be nice of them to give the tally as class to make it easy to filter with a userstyle, though.

Re: The value of downvoting, or, how Hacker News gets it wrong (2009)

#150

Post by jerrac » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

jointpdf wrote: post #121

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I really wish that HN required you to comment in order to downvote. Or even just required that a comment had replies before it could be downvoted; I don't care so much that every single person justifies their downvote as that the person getting downvoted gets an explanation.

I think this could backfire. Toxic/trolling comments do not need to be dignified with a response, and requiring one may increase the incentive to write inflammatory posts (assuming that at least some people do this—consciously or not—to instigate reactions). For well-intentioned posts that are factually incorrect, it seems that there are usually replies that explain the reason for the downvote. When a comment is wron…

Posts like that should be flagged for moderation, not voted on. A community site should have guidelines that everyone can reference, and if something is in violation, there should be a way to flag that post.