6 ms·
Ask HN: Are HN comments automatically downvoted by algorithms?
I'm starting to wonder if comments posted on HN are examined by algorithms and automatically downvoted. Like an attempt to mute stupidity and block malice.
Has anyone noticed this with comments they've posted?
- mschuster91 11y agoIt's rather the upvoting of threads as well as their subthreads. Active threads move to the top.
- lgieron 11y agoThere seems to be an algorithm which demotes some posters (at least one) voicing opinions unfavorable to YC. EDIT: just got downvoted without any comment. I wonder if I am on the kill list as well.
- DanBC 11y agoHN mods repeatedly say that they do not penalise people who post negative stuff about YC or YC companies. But negative comments tend to get downvotes, (avoid gratuitous negativity) so people posting negative stuff should try to support it.
- lgieron 11y agoMy own post was taken down before, so I'm pretty sure some form of censorship exists. I don't know if it's enforced by mods or implemented otherwise, but that's a minor point.
- mod 11y agoPosts can be flagged by users. If you were overtly offensive, I wouldn't be surprised.
- DrScump 11y agothere was a decidedly sexist article overnight (1AM-ish PST) which I (apparently among many others) flagged... and it was gone within a couple of minutes!
- lgieron 11y agoI wasn't offensive at all.
- dragonwriter 11y agoWhether you think your post was offensive and whether it actually was seen as offensive by other readers are, well, very different questions.
- DanBC 11y agoDon't say mods censor anti-YC stories if it's users who are doing it.
- lgieron 11y agoMy post wasn't downvoted, but was visible only to me (no other user could see it). It looked like a scheme to kill my post without me realising it.
- DanBC 11y agoWas it a comment or a submission? Some domains are auto-killed. If you think it's worth posting you could email mods to ask them about it.
- dang 11y agoWe go out of our way not to kill stories and comments that are critical of YC or YC-funded startups. When such posts break the HN guidelines, we may penalize them, but always less than we would if the story were about something else. That's a pretty big deal around here—it's literally the first rule of HN moderation. Beyond that, we'd need to know what post you're talking about. If you'd like to provide a link, we can look into it.
- 001sky 11y agoHN not only shadow bans commenters, they will also poison placement of comments (algorythmically) in a sub thread based on who writes the comment.
- dang 11y agoWe nearly always inform people when we ban their accounts: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20banned https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=.... Lots of software affects both story and comment rankings. "Poison" is a rather tendentious way to describe that. HN's goal is high quality in all things, to the extent it's possible. That doesn't just happen by default; systems are necessary, and it gets harder as numbers grow.
- 001sky 11y ago"Poison" is a rather tendentious way to describe that NB...The words in my signature didn't come from a random sampling of the dictionary...they were from a screen grab of HN moderation tools... On the topic of changing subjects, no not really. Those words are outrageously inflamatory.
- dang 11y agoNobody found them inflammatory when they sat in the public HN source code for years, but once they appeared in an accidental screenshot, they became outrageous! We're happy to answer good-faith questions about HN moderation, but this seems like trying to stir up drama.
- brudgers 11y agoPersonally, I downvote destructive comments and flag harmful ones. My impression is that others do the same. I've never seen anything to suggest that there is algorithm beyond those that affect community members under shadow bans. My understanding is that people wind up in that state by hand, but I have no direct knowledge.
- gull 11y agoThank you for this. I hadn't realized there is a difference between downvoting and flagging comments until I read your post. I hope other HN users know of this difference.
- rnovak 11y agoThere are a lot of people on HN, and a lot of people with downvote privilege, and there are a lot of people who just generally downvote because they disagree with something. Even if your opinion is completely positive, if people disagree, and a lot of people see it, you will get downvoted just because they disagree (and no one will reply to your comment to disagree, it's a drive-by-downvote). There's also verification of this by HN mods: Several comment threads exist where they keep increasing the downvote threshold (from 300, to 400, to 500, and beyond). But it still doesn't solve the problem.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- veddox 11y agoI find that really annoying when people downvote a comment because they don't agree with it. IMO, the downvoting privilege should be used only to indicate a flawed argumentation or negative content.
- runawaybottle 11y agoPerhaps some random percentage of down-votes should require a response (every third, or something).