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I downvoted your post because I viewed it as insubstantial and somewhat bitter. The two reasons you provide are obviously (?) not serious reasons; they're just

I downvoted your post because I viewed it as insubstantial and somewhat bitter. The two reasons you provide are obviously (?) not serious reasons; they're just caricatures, so it provides a pretty poor platform for a sincere discussion about why people downvote things. I don't really see how you can characterize it as "discussing the problems with the downvote." I would characterize it instead as "taunting people who downvote things."

elblanco 17y ago
I appreciate the explanation, thereby you are not in violation of notional guideline V2. I am dead serious about both of those. I'm actually convinced that HN is absolutely and completely devoid of humor. I've actually never seen anything like it. Given that the topic of downvotes constitute the vast majority of this entire topic and most of the threads, and that the only place pg has bothered to respond was regarding the brokeness of downvoting, it's quite obviously not an insubstantial point I was trying to make.
- mquander 17y ago
  Sure, but it's different to say "people downvote humor" (which is mostly true) and "people have no sense of humor" (which is mostly an insult.) I think I have a sense of humor, but I downvote fluff jokey comments unless they're screamingly funny. A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't terrible, although it was only a little bit funny. I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually interested in. I believe the problem with throwaway jokes is that they're so easy. Among 1,000 average readers, perhaps 5 of them have an insightful comment about, i.e. a new feature in R6RS Scheme, but 500 of them could easily post a silly joke about parentheses. Result? If you try to talk about Scheme you get 495 jokes for every piece of expert commentary. Not cool. (Realistically, there are many other kinds of comments that are problematic in this way. For example, it's easy to religiously stick to one big general paradigm and zealously apply it to everything, so you wind up with some of that. It's easy to attack people instead of confronting complicated ideas, so you wind up with some of that. I think it's just a consequence of less-informed but social people trying to find an angle by which to contribute. Sometimes I'm guilty of this myself!) Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    > Sure, but it's different to say "people downvote humor" (which is mostly true) and "people have no sense of humor" (which is mostly an insult.) I think I have a sense of humor, but I downvote fluff jokey comments unless they're screamingly funny. Which is a general policy that ensures you'll never see a joke here (screamingly funny or not). I don't think I know anybody who can produce jokes that fit your requirements at any rate even close to 100%. So I would assume, rather than risk it, why would somebody bother if some dude is just going to come by and downmod it anyways? The downvote surpresses the desire of people to even want to try. I'm not saying that all jocularity is equal. Jokes about "your mom" probably deserve a downvote (and depending on the vulgarity maybe a flag). But somebody making a witty retort, while perhaps not deserving of praise should probably be left unmolested. I've heard more jokes at a convention of priests than I see regularly on HN. Put another way, a downvote for a harmless comment is the real life equivalent of somebody making conversation with you, inserts a subtle attempt at humor, and you then proceed to glare at them, turn around and walk away. It's not helpful. But I do understand not wanting to respond back in a humorous way either, otherwise we end up with 4chan and all the irrelevant absurdity that comes with going that direction. However, due to this kind of behavior we end up with a possible HN as it could be (which may be perfectly fine by you, I don't know), of stuffy pedantic and pretentious pseudo-conversationalists who'd rather police a message forum than actually contribute something useful or interesting (or gasp even marginally funny). Maybe that's the goal, I don't know. But it makes for boring reading and conversation. > A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't terrible, although it was only a little bit funny. You flagged that thread? Are you serious? I think that's outrageous! I've seen this same image before, and I was crying laughing at it. It also could have spawned a useful discussion on perception of platform choice when building software. Customers can be users of software too, and in my experience, what language you use can positively or negatively impact perception of your product and company. The opportunity to have some interesting discourse on that topic is now dead. > I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually interested in. But it wasn't a picture of LOLCATS or or a guy getting hit in the crotch with a frisbee or some such. It was at least marginally related, in theory, to the kinds of discussions we should be having on HN. I perfectly understand your desire to seek out interesting and relevant discussion to your particular areas of interest. If something doesn't fit your areas of interest, feel free to not participate, don't penalize us that do want to participate. For example, I don't think a thread on R6RS is particularly interesting or useful to a startup-oriented tech discussion forum -- marginally used language discussions should be left on the language maintainer's own forum. But if I saw a topic on the front page about it, I'd leave it absolutely unmolested because somebody thought it was interesting enough to deserve upvotes and it has about the same theoretical relevancy to HN as did the image matrix of language choice perception. > Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff. Yes, I absolutely agree with you. I can understand the continuous meta-discussion here about how to keep HN from sliding down the reddit->digg->4chan slope. But I think we have to be aware of, and meta-discuss how to keep HN from going the opposite direction, that of becoming so rarefied that any nonconforming comments are immediately stifled and the entire board dies except for a small group who enjoy spending their time in a self-selected echo chamber.

elblanco 17y ago

I appreciate the explanation, thereby you are not in violation of notional guideline V2. I am dead serious about both of those. I'm actually convinced that HN is absolutely and completely devoid of humor. I've actually never seen anything like it. Given that the topic of downvotes constitute the vast majority of this entire topic and most of the threads, and that the only place pg has bothered to respond was regarding the brokeness of downvoting, it's quite obviously not an insubstantial point I was trying to make.

mquander 17y ago
Sure, but it's different to say "people downvote humor" (which is mostly true) and "people have no sense of humor" (which is mostly an insult.) I think I have a sense of humor, but I downvote fluff jokey comments unless they're screamingly funny. A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't terrible, although it was only a little bit funny. I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually interested in. I believe the problem with throwaway jokes is that they're so easy. Among 1,000 average readers, perhaps 5 of them have an insightful comment about, i.e. a new feature in R6RS Scheme, but 500 of them could easily post a silly joke about parentheses. Result? If you try to talk about Scheme you get 495 jokes for every piece of expert commentary. Not cool. (Realistically, there are many other kinds of comments that are problematic in this way. For example, it's easy to religiously stick to one big general paradigm and zealously apply it to everything, so you wind up with some of that. It's easy to attack people instead of confronting complicated ideas, so you wind up with some of that. I think it's just a consequence of less-informed but social people trying to find an angle by which to contribute. Sometimes I'm guilty of this myself!) Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff.
- elblanco 17y ago
  > Sure, but it's different to say "people downvote humor" (which is mostly true) and "people have no sense of humor" (which is mostly an insult.) I think I have a sense of humor, but I downvote fluff jokey comments unless they're screamingly funny. Which is a general policy that ensures you'll never see a joke here (screamingly funny or not). I don't think I know anybody who can produce jokes that fit your requirements at any rate even close to 100%. So I would assume, rather than risk it, why would somebody bother if some dude is just going to come by and downmod it anyways? The downvote surpresses the desire of people to even want to try. I'm not saying that all jocularity is equal. Jokes about "your mom" probably deserve a downvote (and depending on the vulgarity maybe a flag). But somebody making a witty retort, while perhaps not deserving of praise should probably be left unmolested. I've heard more jokes at a convention of priests than I see regularly on HN. Put another way, a downvote for a harmless comment is the real life equivalent of somebody making conversation with you, inserts a subtle attempt at humor, and you then proceed to glare at them, turn around and walk away. It's not helpful. But I do understand not wanting to respond back in a humorous way either, otherwise we end up with 4chan and all the irrelevant absurdity that comes with going that direction. However, due to this kind of behavior we end up with a possible HN as it could be (which may be perfectly fine by you, I don't know), of stuffy pedantic and pretentious pseudo-conversationalists who'd rather police a message forum than actually contribute something useful or interesting (or gasp even marginally funny). Maybe that's the goal, I don't know. But it makes for boring reading and conversation. > A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't terrible, although it was only a little bit funny. You flagged that thread? Are you serious? I think that's outrageous! I've seen this same image before, and I was crying laughing at it. It also could have spawned a useful discussion on perception of platform choice when building software. Customers can be users of software too, and in my experience, what language you use can positively or negatively impact perception of your product and company. The opportunity to have some interesting discourse on that topic is now dead. > I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually interested in. But it wasn't a picture of LOLCATS or or a guy getting hit in the crotch with a frisbee or some such. It was at least marginally related, in theory, to the kinds of discussions we should be having on HN. I perfectly understand your desire to seek out interesting and relevant discussion to your particular areas of interest. If something doesn't fit your areas of interest, feel free to not participate, don't penalize us that do want to participate. For example, I don't think a thread on R6RS is particularly interesting or useful to a startup-oriented tech discussion forum -- marginally used language discussions should be left on the language maintainer's own forum. But if I saw a topic on the front page about it, I'd leave it absolutely unmolested because somebody thought it was interesting enough to deserve upvotes and it has about the same theoretical relevancy to HN as did the image matrix of language choice perception. > Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff. Yes, I absolutely agree with you. I can understand the continuous meta-discussion here about how to keep HN from sliding down the reddit->digg->4chan slope. But I think we have to be aware of, and meta-discuss how to keep HN from going the opposite direction, that of becoming so rarefied that any nonconforming comments are immediately stifled and the entire board dies except for a small group who enjoy spending their time in a self-selected echo chamber.