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I have occasionally been bothered by the scores of my own comments and the comments of others as they relate to mine. I would feel attacked or spited or somehow

I have occasionally been bothered by the scores of my own comments and the comments of others as they relate to mine. I would feel attacked or spited or somehow otherwise wronged if I saw my own witty scribbling voted down while someone else's similarly witty (and, might I add, less-awesome-because-I-didn't-write-it) comment voted up or untainted by a down vote. This bothered me and sometimes I'd get disappointed in the community's apparent unwillingness to appreciate my obvious total superiority in all matters of opinion. Sometimes I'd stop commenting for awhile - after all, they don't deserve my great and valuable insights! Eventually, probably in the shower, I began to realize that I was an idiot. It's stupid to get bent out of shape when people don't agree with your every word or understand your every joke. After reading over some of my lower rated comments, it also became clear that most of the time they actually sucked. :) I decided to make a conscious effort to watch myself for that kind of thinking and to curb it before it dominated my mood the rest of the day. It has influenced me deeply in ways that extend far beyond this site. I'm now a chang(ed/ing) man. I'd be lying if the occasional down vote didn't still irritate me now and then, but I've successfully trained myself to use the comment scores as a reminder that we're not all the same and that it is a valuable and important thing to internalize. I try to learn from it. If you want to hide the scores - more power to you. It's no skin off my back and it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the site in the least. You don't have to feel guilty about doing it. I would just ask that you consider putting some real time into trying to figure out why the scores bother you and decide, once a reason is identified, if it's something worth changing your mind over or not. Perhaps it isn't. No big deal. We all see the world slightly differently.

tokenadult 17y ago
I'd be lying if the occasional down vote didn't still irritate me now and then, but I've successfully trained myself to use the comment scores as a reminder that we're not all the same and that it is a valuable and important thing to internalize. I try to learn from it. Upvoted to show agreement with this idea that comment scores can teach each commenter about how the commenter fits into a diverse community. Not necessarily every true comment will be upvoted for helpfulness, and not necessarily every funny comment will amuse other participants, but every comment obtains a score, and the person posting comments can learn in the aggregate from each and every score. Ups and downs come in life, and so upvotes and downvotes are attached to comments. But every human being has opportunity to learn every day.
- chanux 17y ago
  I too had a time that I thought twice before commenting because of some down modes that I honestly didn't understood. But with the time I realized that it's my opinion that becomes a comment and what matters is whether I believe in my opinion. However karma controlled me from posting everything coming in to my mind (I think it's a good thing to have a clean meaningful conversation). And the occasional comments that express my sense of humor were affected so I hesitate to share those. Anyway HN is not what it used to be and there are many kinds of people here. So obviously they think different and there's a great chance there can be many people who disagree with you and actually go forward and downmod. But you should post your comment if you think your opinion is still right, after you think twice.
jrockway 17y ago
After reading over some of my lower rated comments, it also became clear that most of the time they actually sucked. You can learn a lot more than this from low-rated comments. Like highly-scored comments, they allow you to get a feel for what the community as a whole thinks. (If your comment is at -4, it's only there because it can't be downmodded any further.) Here's an example. One thing that bugs me is when people spend an hour writing a rant about some simple bug in an open-source project. I reply, "comment out the line in question and send them a patch". This is nearly always downmodded to -4. What I've learned from this is that people here don't really want to write good software, they just want to talk. It is a discussion site, after all. But I think it's funny that the idea of, gasp!, contributing to an open-source project they use is so offensive that 5 or more people would click the downmod button on a post suggesting it. (And in case you think I'm saying "every time I get downmodded, it's because I'm so much smarter than everyone else, and they just don't get it," that's not true. Most of the time, I'm intentionally being a dick because that amuses me, and the most karma I can lose is 5 points.) I would just ask that you consider putting some real time into trying to figure out why the scores bother you and decide, once a reason is identified, if it's something worth changing your mind over or not. Perhaps it isn't. No big deal. We all see the world slightly differently. I mentioned in another comment that karma is a good way to encourage people to contribute in the beginning, since it's a way to make the contributers easily identifiable. Later on, though, the effect is the opposite. You are a smart person, but suddenly you have to compete with the people that have been around longer. They have 20,000 karma, and you have 700. Naturally, you are going to hate karma, because people tend to say "well, if you had been here longer..." instead of actually engaging you in real conversation. I had this problem on Perlmonks. I remember hearing, "I don't know who this jrockway is, but he only has 4 XP, so you should probably ignore him." Of course, I wrote the book that was being discussed in the thread. What would I know about that? So because of this bitter taste in my mouth, I never bothered reading Perlmonks (except for some of the classics, like btilly's rant on "functional programming".) StackOverflow came along, everyone started at 0, I answered a few Perl questions, and now I am near the top there. But it's not all good. Just the other day, I got 100+ karma for answering "How do I write a program to print 'hello world' reversed" with "print "dlrow olleh". Why do I deserve a better reputation for that? (Why did I post it in the first place? Dunno, maybe I was bored? Or tired of dumb homework questions?) It sounds dumb if you think about it, but here we are. People trust the karma number, but it's really not worth trusting. Except when it is.

tokenadult 17y ago

I'd be lying if the occasional down vote didn't still irritate me now and then, but I've successfully trained myself to use the comment scores as a reminder that we're not all the same and that it is a valuable and important thing to internalize. I try to learn from it. Upvoted to show agreement with this idea that comment scores can teach each commenter about how the commenter fits into a diverse community. Not necessarily every true comment will be upvoted for helpfulness, and not necessarily every funny comment will amuse other participants, but every comment obtains a score, and the person posting comments can learn in the aggregate from each and every score. Ups and downs come in life, and so upvotes and downvotes are attached to comments. But every human being has opportunity to learn every day.

chanux 17y ago
I too had a time that I thought twice before commenting because of some down modes that I honestly didn't understood. But with the time I realized that it's my opinion that becomes a comment and what matters is whether I believe in my opinion. However karma controlled me from posting everything coming in to my mind (I think it's a good thing to have a clean meaningful conversation). And the occasional comments that express my sense of humor were affected so I hesitate to share those. Anyway HN is not what it used to be and there are many kinds of people here. So obviously they think different and there's a great chance there can be many people who disagree with you and actually go forward and downmod. But you should post your comment if you think your opinion is still right, after you think twice.

jrockway 17y ago

After reading over some of my lower rated comments, it also became clear that most of the time they actually sucked. You can learn a lot more than this from low-rated comments. Like highly-scored comments, they allow you to get a feel for what the community as a whole thinks. (If your comment is at -4, it's only there because it can't be downmodded any further.) Here's an example. One thing that bugs me is when people spend an hour writing a rant about some simple bug in an open-source project. I reply, "comment out the line in question and send them a patch". This is nearly always downmodded to -4. What I've learned from this is that people here don't really want to write good software, they just want to talk. It is a discussion site, after all. But I think it's funny that the idea of, gasp!, contributing to an open-source project they use is so offensive that 5 or more people would click the downmod button on a post suggesting it. (And in case you think I'm saying "every time I get downmodded, it's because I'm so much smarter than everyone else, and they just don't get it," that's not true. Most of the time, I'm intentionally being a dick because that amuses me, and the most karma I can lose is 5 points.) I would just ask that you consider putting some real time into trying to figure out why the scores bother you and decide, once a reason is identified, if it's something worth changing your mind over or not. Perhaps it isn't. No big deal. We all see the world slightly differently. I mentioned in another comment that karma is a good way to encourage people to contribute in the beginning, since it's a way to make the contributers easily identifiable. Later on, though, the effect is the opposite. You are a smart person, but suddenly you have to compete with the people that have been around longer. They have 20,000 karma, and you have 700. Naturally, you are going to hate karma, because people tend to say "well, if you had been here longer..." instead of actually engaging you in real conversation. I had this problem on Perlmonks. I remember hearing, "I don't know who this jrockway is, but he only has 4 XP, so you should probably ignore him." Of course, I wrote the book that was being discussed in the thread. What would I know about that? So because of this bitter taste in my mouth, I never bothered reading Perlmonks (except for some of the classics, like btilly's rant on "functional programming".) StackOverflow came along, everyone started at 0, I answered a few Perl questions, and now I am near the top there. But it's not all good. Just the other day, I got 100+ karma for answering "How do I write a program to print 'hello world' reversed" with "print "dlrow olleh". Why do I deserve a better reputation for that? (Why did I post it in the first place? Dunno, maybe I was bored? Or tired of dumb homework questions?) It sounds dumb if you think about it, but here we are. People trust the karma number, but it's really not worth trusting. Except when it is.