4 ms·

The voting system encourages groupthink. The Mahalo/Calacanis issue is a perfect example. No matter what Calacanis says in the comments he gets massively downvo

by samd 17y ago

The voting system encourages groupthink. The Mahalo/Calacanis issue is a perfect example. No matter what Calacanis says in the comments he gets massively downvoted, that certainly sends a message to anyone who might dare to agree with him.

KC8ZKF 17y ago
Jason Calacanis does not get "massively downvoted" no matter what he says. He has a reputation of 247, 32 points coming from four submissions.
jasonmcalacanis 17y ago
Well, when I comment on anything to do with Mahalo the group of SEOs who are leading this campaign against me just attack en masse and overpower the native HN group. I'm a polarizing guy who shoots from the hip, so I expect detractors or people who disagree with me to vote me down. In fact, I think it's kind of funny that sometimes within 30 seconds of posting I'll have a ton of down votes. It would be great if HN SHOWED the down votes and who votes each person down the most. If there was a leaderboard of who is voting me down it would be VERY telling. You would see ten folks voting me down all at the same time. That's the thing about social news systems... they are easy to game. If control as not put in place the dialogue simply goes to shit.... which is starting to happen. What normally happens is that intelligent folks leave the discussion and go somewhere else. I'm sure many folks here are refugees from digg or reddit or /. in fact. At this point I don't bother commenting on threads about me or Mahalo... and I'm skipping the comment section on HN and going to the links themselves for dialogue. The only way to correct the issue is really to expose the down votes.... folks need to take ownership of their voting. we did this on Mahalo Answers and we don't have the problem of folks using voting down as a way to attack someone. we did have this problem in the early days and when we exposed it it was VERY telling. you had really good users who would have it in for just one person and they would follow them around the site voting everything they did down. so, we did amnesty for past votes and turned on down votes from X day forward. That is what i would do here.... you should turn on link for every post from April 1st on that shows a list of who voted and how--as well as a leaderboard. anyway.... hack on.

by samd 17y ago

KC8ZKF 17y ago

Jason Calacanis does not get "massively downvoted" no matter what he says. He has a reputation of 247, 32 points coming from four submissions.

jasonmcalacanis 17y ago

Well, when I comment on anything to do with Mahalo the group of SEOs who are leading this campaign against me just attack en masse and overpower the native HN group. I'm a polarizing guy who shoots from the hip, so I expect detractors or people who disagree with me to vote me down. In fact, I think it's kind of funny that sometimes within 30 seconds of posting I'll have a ton of down votes. It would be great if HN SHOWED the down votes and who votes each person down the most. If there was a leaderboard of who is voting me down it would be VERY telling. You would see ten folks voting me down all at the same time. That's the thing about social news systems... they are easy to game. If control as not put in place the dialogue simply goes to shit.... which is starting to happen. What normally happens is that intelligent folks leave the discussion and go somewhere else. I'm sure many folks here are refugees from digg or reddit or /. in fact. At this point I don't bother commenting on threads about me or Mahalo... and I'm skipping the comment section on HN and going to the links themselves for dialogue. The only way to correct the issue is really to expose the down votes.... folks need to take ownership of their voting. we did this on Mahalo Answers and we don't have the problem of folks using voting down as a way to attack someone. we did have this problem in the early days and when we exposed it it was VERY telling. you had really good users who would have it in for just one person and they would follow them around the site voting everything they did down. so, we did amnesty for past votes and turned on down votes from X day forward. That is what i would do here.... you should turn on link for every post from April 1st on that shows a list of who voted and how--as well as a leaderboard. anyway.... hack on.