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

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

#321

Post by FalconSensei »

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…

> people with very different mindsets that downvote for essentially political reasons instead of encouraging good discourse

Hello Reddit. Unfortunately now I basically just use Reddit to browse and don't comment much, because of that behaviour

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

#322

Post by dang »

gwbas1c wrote: post #74

I don't know if these are popular opinions or not: 1: I really wish I could downvote Hacker News articles. 2: I really wish there was some friction to downvoting. Perhaps something like choosing among: disagree, factually wrong, mean, incoherent Regarding the downvoting of articles: For awhile I used to see a regular pattern of weird articles on the front page. The discussion would then predictably involve a mod defe…

That pattern still happens. At least I hope it does; we want HN to have weird articles.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#323

Post by 0x737368 »

downandout wrote: post #144
joering2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's hilarious how your comment got immediately downvoted for sharing a personal anecdote about the very same thing. Must really be rubbing the people who downvote for political difference reasons the wrong way.

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

#324

Post by dang »

krapp wrote: post #209
disgrunt wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us unaware, what is a hellban?

It's a ban designed to make it appear to the banned user that they aren't banned. The intent is to allow them to continue to post (so they don't make a new account and avoid the ban) unaware that their posts are unreadable by the rest of the community. It works, but it's extremely controversial. It used to be the case that talking about it (and making banned users aware of their status) could get you banned here, and…

For many years now, we tell users that we're banning them when they have an established history on the site: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Shadowbanning is mostly for spammers and serial trolls. There's lots of past explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

I think vouching dates from 2015.

If anyone sees a banned account that's posting good comments, they're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com. If the account has really corrected its ways, we're happy to unban it. Occasionally we notice one of these ourselves and unban it. It's on my list to look at the oldest banned accounts that are still posting; I just haven't gotten to it yet.

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

#325

Post by noizejoy »

LinuxBender wrote: post #204
rhizome wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a lot more people qualify to do metamoderation in the SO network than ever do it. This is essentially sabotage in the form of benign neglect.

Very true and it gets even more complicated when there are small circles of full time editors that invoke elitism around document writing styles as well as chiming in on highly subjective answers and invoking dogmatic principals. In Unix/Linux, there are millions of ways to solve a problem, but the solution must fit into their perceived right way . Before long, people not in those elite circles or who do not get the…

Fundamentalism and tribalism seems to exist in any subject. - I find incredibly annoying, disappointing, saddening and infuriating — yet can’t help but wonder if it’s the necessary evolutionary byproduct of our species to collaborate and overcome obstacles too large to tackle alone.

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

#326

Post by 8note »

jpindar wrote: post #244
ascar wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are static ips a common thing in the US? Here in Germany getting a fresh ip is as easy as restarting the router unless you explicitly pay for a static ip.

Static ips are not common, but ips that are technically dynamic but in fact rarely change are.

That's been helping out my valheim server. I was expecting it to hanger kinda frequently but my IP hasn't changed in more than a month in counting

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

#327

Post by a1369209993 »

type0 wrote: post #279
a1369209993 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be interesting to see if time-weighting the votes somehow could improve the signal. Perversely, downvotes aren't available on comments older than 24 hours, but upvotes are, so comments that attract a mixture of up- and down-votes get a strong upward bias on votes they attract after a day (since the upvotes happen and the downvotes don't). Not sure how relevant that effect is to more short-term issues, thou…

It does make the downvotes irrelevant in a way, it only signals strong disagreement which I think it's good to know. But it's not good to interpret the downvotes as correction method for yourself because it only leads to more echochamber.

> But it's not good to interpret the downvotes as correction method for yourself because it only leads to more echochamber.

Oh certainly, it's just that this seems eqally applicable to upvotes, hence why the asymmetry seems perverse.

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

#328

Post by confidantlake »

biasKillsHN wrote: post #293
rurp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't agree on the moderation. The bias in favor of Apple is extreme. I genuinely don't know if the mods are actively paid off, if Apple astroturfs, or whatever. But it seems those threads are disingenuous. It's impossible to form evidence because good criticism of Apple is often deleted. Meanwhile other threads are dumpster fires.

There was an article about bad service at apple stores. I commented that I had mostly positive experiences. Was downvoted.

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

#329

Post by amznthrwaway »

pessimizer wrote: post #202
amznthrwaway wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're going to get downvoted and flagged to hell, but I mostly agree with your comment - there was a precipitous quality drop that came with the heavy moderation that people now think of as the identifying characteristic of HN. That being said, I think that after a few egregious missteps (such as the test ban on "politics"), the heavy moderation has been open and kind. I also suspect that there has been some mod med…

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

#330

Post by BrandonM »

josephg wrote: post #313
BrandonM wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use downvotes to signal disagreement when, from my perspective, someone is giving bad advice, not accurately representing the truth, speculating in an unproductive way, distracting from the discussion with completely unfounded claims, etc. I personally think of "disagreement" as a continuum, where one end is pretty close to my own view, and the other is absolutely abhorrent or incoherent. Certainly part of that con…

> I personally think of "disagreement" as a continuum, where one end is pretty close to my own view, and the other is absolutely abhorrent or incoherent. Yeah, I like this perspective but I think there's two axes we can separate a little. One axis is disagreement. (I agree with you I disagree with you). the other axis is effort / coherence. (I'm going to invest significant effort to clearly articulate my point of vie…

I like those axes. I also enjoy conversations with someone where I disagree, and I wouldn't downvote purely based on disagreement, but generally due to some other factor.

Perhaps I'm only acknowledging that I'm less likely to downvote someone that I agree with? For example, if someone speculates wildly but it's consistent with my own experience, I'm not likely to downvote. If someone speculates wildly and it's inconsistent with my experience, I'm far more likely to downvote.

Probably where we disagree is whether it's OK to downvote a comment that someone put effort into. I've seen someone ask a question about a particular technology, and someone who clearly has very little experience with that technology posts a long screed where they're ~~talking out their ass~~ sharing their opinion in a way that sounds authoritative. Or maybe they're repeating business-level talking points instead of getting down to technical brass tacks.

I hope that gives an idea what I mean. I don't want to see comments like that on HN, regardless of how much effort or how well-meaning the comment is.

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