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I understand -- I think we are just here for very different reasons, which is a consequence of coming to a website that now has one zillion readers. My primary

I understand -- I think we are just here for very different reasons, which is a consequence of coming to a website that now has one zillion readers. My primary interest by far here happens to be serious (preferably very stuffy) programming language and computer science discussion. (I'm interested in many other things, but I have other communities with which I prefer to discuss them; HN seems like kind of an echo chamber personality-wise.) My upvoted submissions are a good list of the things I like to read here: http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=mquander http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=mquander I also personally have absolutely zero interest in startup and business discussion, which puts me far outside the target audience for very many articles here, although I leave them alone since that's the stated purpose of the site. So I recognize that my tastes may not represent HN any better than yours, if such a thing can be measured. Is it ethical, then, for me to flag articles which I think are not worthwhile posts? I'm not sure. Your comments make me reflect on whether that's an OK thing to do or not. I do wish there were a downvote button on posts, that means "I don't think this should be highly rated, but I don't think it should be killed either." I would prefer to use that. One thing, however. Your stated policy is: "If something doesn't fit your areas of interest, feel free to not participate, don't penalize us that do want to participate." That seems like a principled and friendly approach. But I'm not sure it scales. The front page (and the comment threads) only have so much bandwidth. Taking a "tolerant" approach without a big redesign to allow some kind of filtering means that the result will be simple majority rule, leading to a lot of very general interest posts about politics, current events, business, and technology. I know that many posts which would interest me greatly would then be buried on page N; judge for yourself whether this is the case for you. Now, it would be awfully judgmental to say that's a bad thing for a website; after all, it's providing a whole lot of people with the sort of thing they want to read. But there are so many websites that provide that kind of discussion already that I wonder if a "rarefied" niche site isn't a more valuable place in the greater ecosystem of the Internet. I voted your comment up because it made me think hard about the consequences of my actions.

elblanco 17y ago
> I understand -- I think we are just here for very different reasons... True, but there's an obvious intersection of the things we are interested in. We just have to figure out how to play friendly concerning the other things in our interest sets. > Taking a "tolerant" approach without a big redesign to allow some kind of filtering means that the result will be simple majority rule, leading to a lot of very general interest posts about politics, current events, business, and technology. Well, the good news is that HN has posting guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Despite what certain members of the HN community would have you think, these aren't "rules", but they do serve a useful function in focusing the site on a core set of topic areas. I don't think there is much danger of HN becoming reddit in that sense. HN effectively acts like 2 or 3 narrowly focused subreddits on reddit.com. > Is it ethical, then, for me to flag articles which I think are not worthwhile posts? I'm not sure. Your comments make me reflect on whether that's an OK thing to do or not. I do wish there were a downvote button on posts, that means "I don't think this should be highly rated, but I don't think it should be killed either." I would prefer to use that. Well, to my understanding, posts that are completely out of guidelines should be flagged. If somebody submits a post with a link to his blog about his Camaro, it's probably okay to flag it ;) A post to something like http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/ http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/ should probably just not be upvoted if you don't care for it. I could even see a downvote for something like the referenced post to the programming language perception matrix. But like I said, it could be an interesting driver of discussion. > Now, it would be awfully judgmental to say that's a bad thing for a website; after all, it's providing a whole lot of people with the sort of thing they want to read. But there are so many websites that provide that kind of discussion already that I wonder if a "rarefied" niche site isn't a more valuable place in the greater ecosystem of the Internet. Well, I think the reason most people come here is for the rather constrained topic set and the emphasis on interesting discussion (not to mention being populated with a very interesting mix of people). But it would also become very uninteresting in the general sense if it become a forum for academic discussions of programming esoterica. > I voted your comment up because it made me think hard about the consequences of my actions. That's really what all my pining away is on this thread, I appreciate you taking the time to do so. I'm a bit shocked and amazed to see a population of people here that are unwilling to do the same. I understand they are peeved at being called out for bad etiquette, but I find the discourse on this site amazing when the mechanisms for the discourse are working properly.

elblanco 17y ago

> I understand -- I think we are just here for very different reasons... True, but there's an obvious intersection of the things we are interested in. We just have to figure out how to play friendly concerning the other things in our interest sets. > Taking a "tolerant" approach without a big redesign to allow some kind of filtering means that the result will be simple majority rule, leading to a lot of very general interest posts about politics, current events, business, and technology. Well, the good news is that HN has posting guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Despite what certain members of the HN community would have you think, these aren't "rules", but they do serve a useful function in focusing the site on a core set of topic areas. I don't think there is much danger of HN becoming reddit in that sense. HN effectively acts like 2 or 3 narrowly focused subreddits on reddit.com. > Is it ethical, then, for me to flag articles which I think are not worthwhile posts? I'm not sure. Your comments make me reflect on whether that's an OK thing to do or not. I do wish there were a downvote button on posts, that means "I don't think this should be highly rated, but I don't think it should be killed either." I would prefer to use that. Well, to my understanding, posts that are completely out of guidelines should be flagged. If somebody submits a post with a link to his blog about his Camaro, it's probably okay to flag it ;) A post to something like http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/ http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/ should probably just not be upvoted if you don't care for it. I could even see a downvote for something like the referenced post to the programming language perception matrix. But like I said, it could be an interesting driver of discussion. > Now, it would be awfully judgmental to say that's a bad thing for a website; after all, it's providing a whole lot of people with the sort of thing they want to read. But there are so many websites that provide that kind of discussion already that I wonder if a "rarefied" niche site isn't a more valuable place in the greater ecosystem of the Internet. Well, I think the reason most people come here is for the rather constrained topic set and the emphasis on interesting discussion (not to mention being populated with a very interesting mix of people). But it would also become very uninteresting in the general sense if it become a forum for academic discussions of programming esoterica. > I voted your comment up because it made me think hard about the consequences of my actions. That's really what all my pining away is on this thread, I appreciate you taking the time to do so. I'm a bit shocked and amazed to see a population of people here that are unwilling to do the same. I understand they are peeved at being called out for bad etiquette, but I find the discourse on this site amazing when the mechanisms for the discourse are working properly.