> dang detaching off-topic subthreads is the opposite of mods opaquely fucking around with rankings. He explicitly detached the thread, and posted that he had done so. That's a judgement call which you're welcome to disagree with and I'm not going to affirm or second-guess because I don't care much.
Yeah, you don't care about it much, it wasn't you that it happened to. I don't care that much either. I do care about this easily abused behavior, though.
> As to the other: we don't know how HN sorts comments, but I would be surprised if it was as simple as the highest-valued comments floating to the top. It is far more likely given what we know about moderation goals, that controversial comments are penalized.
I know, as do anyone that has experienced it, that they are penalized. If you say sane but controversial things around here you get downvoted, hidden, silenced. This sounds melodramatic, but think about what you are saying - HN is looking for boring, safe, everyone agrees commentary.
> So maybe your comment got 50 upvotes and 20 downvotes? The mods don't want us making huge subthreads about stuff which people disagree about, for the most part: they want some of that, but anything which is drawing a lot of karma from both sides is that much more likely to draw low-quality replies.
> Again, this isn't a comment about your comment: pretend I didn't read it, I barely did in fact.
With all due respect, I know. I can tell.
> But it certainly doesn't prove that dang put his thumb on the scale. The mods here seem to be pretty transparent about how everything works, without leaking actual formulas which are subject to change and could provide ammunition with which to game the system.
Yeah that's how abuse works, that's how loopholes work. Rules for me and not for you. Rules that are arbitrarily applied.
That's what I've never gotten about HN. You guys are so smart, but it's like you skipped politics 101.