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The anti-dissent phenomenon is amplified by the greying of comments, which continues to be a bad idea all these years later. The literal message and incentive t

The anti-dissent phenomenon is amplified by the greying of comments, which continues to be a bad idea all these years later. The literal message and incentive there is: leave a comment that gets upvotes or it will get progressively harder to read until nobody can actually read it. So now you have to care about what you say, because it will be completely removed from the site by natural voting if you don't toe a certain line, meaning folks cannot objectively review your comment on its merits alone unless they go out of their way to highlight it. The absence of a showgrey even though showdead exists is an interesting thing that somewhat describes intent behind the feature, too. Greying is one of the key factors in the anti-dissent, party-line mode here, which I've noticed as well. It was weird to pull scores and then implicitly put them back with greying, so you can at least tell if a comment is <= 0. One difference from Reddit is that Reddit explicitly suggests[0] that you not downvote to register disagreement, whereas HN does not take a stand and pg clarified that he's fine with it a long time ago[1]. So that ties together voting and agreement, which then ties together greying and agreement, which helps gives rise to the anti-dissent environment you're observing. I'd love to see some analysis on whether a grey comment is more likely to be downvoted, as well, because I'm almost positive it is. Once someone hits me with a 0, which is discernible as slightly greyer by itself, that comment is almost guaranteed to end up very negative. My opinions often diverge from HN and I am rewarded with barely-visible commentary very often, so I've been trained over time to resent voting rather than wish to contribute here, which I don't think is the spirit nor the intent of the greying feature. I don't think HN wants to be an echo chamber, to be clear, it's just that the quirks of the system create incentives that give rise to it. The last thing on planet Earth that I care about is my karma score, but I do care that what I say matters, and I cannot really talk about it because it sounds like complaining about downvoting. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette#wiki_in_regard_to_voting https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette#wiki_in_regard_to_vo... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

minimaxir 10y ago
> I'd love to see some analysis on whether a grey comment is more likely to be downvoted Two years ago I did an analysis of HN comment scores (back when they were publicly accessible). There are far fewer comments with -1 score than with 0 score: http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_points.png http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_po...
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  You could really use a log scale there, but I'm glad you did the work. Thanks!
illumin8 10y ago
HN could remove this disagreement moderation bias by implementing a meta-moderation feature similar to Slashdot. Slashdot used to be a great place (like HN was a few years ago), and many of the best moderation systems originated there. Meta-moderation kept everything fair because you could moderate the moderators. The way it worked was that people with high karma would get asked at the top of their page to please take time and meta-moderate 10 comments a day. You get presented with 10 random comments and the moderation +/-, and simply check a radio button indicating whether the moderation was fair or unfair. The way it was enforced, I assume, is that people who were meta-moderated as unfair too often would lose their ability to moderate completely.
- supernovae 10y ago
  Slashdot is the worst example of a fair and balanced community. The meta moderation tends to lend itself to confirmation bias.
kbenson 10y ago
I agree the greying out of comments is problematic, but I think it also serves an important purpose, and that's to incentivize care in the crafting of your comment. It is the punishment of community norms as much as the negative points are. Unfortunately, community norms have a way of adopting views as well as actions, and we have what you refer to as anti-dissent mode. Ultimately, the question is whether negatives of people who down vote on disagreement (as opposed to more objective items, such as lack of evidence for assertions or overly personal and/or aggressive comments) outweighs the benefit of a very effective way for the community to self moderate, given there is occasional pushback against subjective down voting when it happens. The problem will of course seem larger if some of the common community views conflict with your own, and you've been subjected to the consequences of this. This is countered by the human tendency (IMO) to view unexplained negativity as unwarranted. Were you downvoted because your comment was lacking in some regard, or because you stepped into a pet issue of the community. It's easier to believe the second, and while it is the case sometimes, it's hard to tell what is perception and what is reality.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  > I agree the greying out of comments is problematic, but I think it also serves an important purpose, and that's to incentivize care in the crafting of your comment. Sure, I'd grant that as intent, but where this falls down is that it instead incentivizes me to just not be a part of the community. Why would I put care and work into a comment if I'm going to be rewarded by the time invested becoming essentially worthless? Arguably, silencing someone because they diverged from "community norms" is slightly hostile; I have a hard time believing your position that a community is served well by being built atop hostile moderation. You might build a community, but it might be a much smaller, much less desirable community. (I don't know.) It's also a weird incentive to throw down, as you allude to, because "acceptable opinion" and "acceptable comment" are extremely conflated. So now one finds oneself writing comments that contain acceptable opinions, which is the care in crafting that you're describing. Look, the opinion of HN from outside and the opinion of HN from inside are wildly different. I think this community tells itself things about civility, moderation, and so on; your comment sounds good, for example! It's just slightly off-base and overlooks some consequences, and it's not obviously wrong because we're within HN discussing it. > Were you downvoted because your comment was lacking in some regard, or because you stepped into a pet issue of the community. It's easier to believe the second, and while it is the case sometimes, it's hard to tell what is perception and what is reality. Careful; this is lightly making the case that I'm unable to discern the difference and therefore off-base for criticizing a real issue. I can't prove this to you, but trust me when I say that I can tell when I've "earned" the downvotes. And I do, occasionally. (And, were I less civil, I'd use colorful four-letter words to describe community "norms," as I'd hope any hacker would. I didn't become a hacker because I cared about normality.)
pessimizer 10y ago
As somebody who generally posts in a contrarian manner (to a right-libertarian): there's a lot less grey here in general than there used to be. I also think that in recent years greying algorithms are protecting controversial comments to some extent (comments with lots of upvotes and downvotes.) I've had negatively rated comments that were not grey. Also, as mentioned below, greying seems to attract attention to comments, getting them upvoted until they ungrey. Downvotes are limited; I don't think anything gets lower than -3 or -4, so greying doesn't have the ability to reinforce itself very much. You have to keep posting to allow people to keep downvoting you. Just offering my perspective.
yodsanklai 10y ago
> So now you have to care about what you say Exactly, you have to care about what you say, and that's exactly why I love HN comments so much. Also, you make it sounds like there are such great comments that disappear because of the downvotes, but it's not the case. The only disappearing comments are stupid jokes or trolls. I don't remember any well-argued position that I was unable to read because of the downvote.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  > The only disappearing comments are stupid jokes or trolls. This is not only completely false, it's rapidly provable as completely false. You are, quite literally, lying to yourself. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, discussion on controversial issues is Exhibit A.

minimaxir 10y ago

> I'd love to see some analysis on whether a grey comment is more likely to be downvoted Two years ago I did an analysis of HN comment scores (back when they were publicly accessible). There are far fewer comments with -1 score than with 0 score: http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_points.png http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_po...

jsmthrowaway 10y ago
You could really use a log scale there, but I'm glad you did the work. Thanks!

illumin8 10y ago

HN could remove this disagreement moderation bias by implementing a meta-moderation feature similar to Slashdot. Slashdot used to be a great place (like HN was a few years ago), and many of the best moderation systems originated there. Meta-moderation kept everything fair because you could moderate the moderators. The way it worked was that people with high karma would get asked at the top of their page to please take time and meta-moderate 10 comments a day. You get presented with 10 random comments and the moderation +/-, and simply check a radio button indicating whether the moderation was fair or unfair. The way it was enforced, I assume, is that people who were meta-moderated as unfair too often would lose their ability to moderate completely.

supernovae 10y ago
Slashdot is the worst example of a fair and balanced community. The meta moderation tends to lend itself to confirmation bias.

kbenson 10y ago

I agree the greying out of comments is problematic, but I think it also serves an important purpose, and that's to incentivize care in the crafting of your comment. It is the punishment of community norms as much as the negative points are. Unfortunately, community norms have a way of adopting views as well as actions, and we have what you refer to as anti-dissent mode. Ultimately, the question is whether negatives of people who down vote on disagreement (as opposed to more objective items, such as lack of evidence for assertions or overly personal and/or aggressive comments) outweighs the benefit of a very effective way for the community to self moderate, given there is occasional pushback against subjective down voting when it happens. The problem will of course seem larger if some of the common community views conflict with your own, and you've been subjected to the consequences of this. This is countered by the human tendency (IMO) to view unexplained negativity as unwarranted. Were you downvoted because your comment was lacking in some regard, or because you stepped into a pet issue of the community. It's easier to believe the second, and while it is the case sometimes, it's hard to tell what is perception and what is reality.

jsmthrowaway 10y ago
> I agree the greying out of comments is problematic, but I think it also serves an important purpose, and that's to incentivize care in the crafting of your comment. Sure, I'd grant that as intent, but where this falls down is that it instead incentivizes me to just not be a part of the community. Why would I put care and work into a comment if I'm going to be rewarded by the time invested becoming essentially worthless? Arguably, silencing someone because they diverged from "community norms" is slightly hostile; I have a hard time believing your position that a community is served well by being built atop hostile moderation. You might build a community, but it might be a much smaller, much less desirable community. (I don't know.) It's also a weird incentive to throw down, as you allude to, because "acceptable opinion" and "acceptable comment" are extremely conflated. So now one finds oneself writing comments that contain acceptable opinions, which is the care in crafting that you're describing. Look, the opinion of HN from outside and the opinion of HN from inside are wildly different. I think this community tells itself things about civility, moderation, and so on; your comment sounds good, for example! It's just slightly off-base and overlooks some consequences, and it's not obviously wrong because we're within HN discussing it. > Were you downvoted because your comment was lacking in some regard, or because you stepped into a pet issue of the community. It's easier to believe the second, and while it is the case sometimes, it's hard to tell what is perception and what is reality. Careful; this is lightly making the case that I'm unable to discern the difference and therefore off-base for criticizing a real issue. I can't prove this to you, but trust me when I say that I can tell when I've "earned" the downvotes. And I do, occasionally. (And, were I less civil, I'd use colorful four-letter words to describe community "norms," as I'd hope any hacker would. I didn't become a hacker because I cared about normality.)

pessimizer 10y ago

As somebody who generally posts in a contrarian manner (to a right-libertarian): there's a lot less grey here in general than there used to be. I also think that in recent years greying algorithms are protecting controversial comments to some extent (comments with lots of upvotes and downvotes.) I've had negatively rated comments that were not grey. Also, as mentioned below, greying seems to attract attention to comments, getting them upvoted until they ungrey. Downvotes are limited; I don't think anything gets lower than -3 or -4, so greying doesn't have the ability to reinforce itself very much. You have to keep posting to allow people to keep downvoting you. Just offering my perspective.

yodsanklai 10y ago

> So now you have to care about what you say Exactly, you have to care about what you say, and that's exactly why I love HN comments so much. Also, you make it sounds like there are such great comments that disappear because of the downvotes, but it's not the case. The only disappearing comments are stupid jokes or trolls. I don't remember any well-argued position that I was unable to read because of the downvote.

jsmthrowaway 10y ago
> The only disappearing comments are stupid jokes or trolls. This is not only completely false, it's rapidly provable as completely false. You are, quite literally, lying to yourself. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, discussion on controversial issues is Exhibit A.