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What's misunderstood is your concept of the HN downvote. It is neither rational, nor fair, nor explained. It materializes from thin air, lands on anyone that a

What's misunderstood is your concept of the HN downvote. It is neither rational, nor fair, nor explained. It materializes from thin air, lands on anyone that awakens a even but pang of discomfort in another user, and smears all words irrevocably, and dispassionately. You might catch a downvote for being vague. You might catch a downvote for mispelling. You might catch a downvote for trying to be funny, and succeeding, but because you've offended the faceless humorless. Even an obsequeous comment will be downvoted for spinelessness. Few honest comments actually work on HN. Almost all HN comments need to be slippery, many require a fecetious concilliatory bent. You really can't win when commenting. Not anywhere. Someone out there will find a reason to slam you.

lefstathiou 10y ago
I am fascinated that you decided to make a new HN alias in order to articulate this point, which btw I think has a lot of merit. Making the huge assumption this is not your primary HN alias, out of curiosity, why did you decide to disassociate yourself from the thread?
- prodontilate 10y ago
  I could make up reasons that would seem to bolster my merit, but the reality is that my replies were throttled under another account, lol. Anyway, I've stopped karma-whoring. And even though I possess the capacity for downvoting under other accounts, I do not use that power. Admittedly, it means I no longer play into the ranking algorithms, and I can't feed into any persona reputation, but the power to freely disagree, and to add voice to other people's (otherwise silent) downvotes, or contradict downvotes when I feel they're wrong, is the more valuable feature any forum can offer. Maybe it fulfills other needs and my glandular, gutteral response to people who "are wrong on the internet" overrides the ego of being preened and revered by the community, but the way I see it someone needs to fill this niche. HN has a serious echo-chamber problem, and the prevailing wind needs some yelling into.
  - lefstathiou 10y ago
    I appreciate the response and your efforts. I've been on HN almost 10 years and i sense it is shifting further toward an echo-chamber. You can almost predict the reaction the community (by numbers) will have based on the title or topic of a post. I suspect more and more people are picking up on this judging by comments in threads (or maybe I'm just looking for it). What I wonder is if this is reversion to the mean or has the mean shifted (perhaps as a result of changes in times or demographics). Anyway it is enjoying to watch and I am curious to see how this plays out. My only fear is that people with conflicting ideas take them somewhere else. There is no better place than HN IMHO to see constructive arguments unfold across so many topics.
    - prodontilate 10y ago
      Two things feed into the echo-chamber pattern, and both are chilling effects. One can be easily augmented and the other cannot. The first is the voluntary tendency people have about providing their IRL identities. For some this is largely optional, for others, less so, for example when a celebrity is participating as themselves. Real identities means there's some skin in the game for at least some people, requiring a heavier hand in moderation. This part can only be augmented so much, and requires individual users to self censor, disengage, and conceal their own identities when posting an unpopular sentiment. Humans being what they are, this reality will never go away. The other is the karma system, and this can be changed. And karma really is an unnatural ranking value, since one can pick up on inconsistencies after enough lurking. Whether it should change (or be changed) is arguable. If it's as harsh as it seems, and the effects are that chilling, it may just be an expression of actual human behavior. In which case, it's an early warning alarm, and an analog for what goes down in face-to-face meetings, but remains unspoken. We may not like echo-chambers, but they take shape in the real world too, in which case every social circle carries a shelf life that can probably be quantified by the manner in which this feedback loop widens and deafens its participants by jamming all signal with a noise that drowns out everything else. I'd hope that last part isn't true (being slightly depressing as it is), and that tweaking the numeric validation could tune the ambient personality of the community's behavior, such that it doesn't drift into irrelevance. It sounds easy enough, but maybe poor execution would warp and deny certain aspects of reality, to produce yet another fiction with unintended consequences. Anyway, I'm just gonna keep doing whatever.
legodt 10y ago
The trend is way too strong. I have never seen somebody call out racism and not get downvoted to hell. I'd face facts, hackernews is home to a lot of racists
- dialectifier 10y ago
  Interesting quandary: How to respond to an opinion I disagree with, while still satisfying the criteria that I don't come across as "not anti-racist enough?" HN really doesn't need to politicize the way a 24 hour news organization might. HN is a tech resource, with tangential angles into political factoids. It isn't a journalistic news outlet with a tech blog. While there should be responsibility, focus is more important. With that in mind the tide here is overwhelmingly non-racist even if not precisely anti-racist. Racism is swiftly downvoted around here, and not readily preserved. Opening up racial discussions is downvoted, because unless an article and discussion is patently race oriented, it's probably going to politicize and steer discussion away from tech details and into a sociological premise. Meanwhile, the race politics that do get discussed are almost invariably the familiar territory of how bigoted America is. It's rarely any other sub-topic of racial discussion, and none of the discussion that occurs here solves a problem or highlights surprising facts. Turning this site into the frontlines in a war waged by either side, will destroy the site. Battlegrounds, after all, are not beautiful places. By choosing to foment strife, before doing so, ask yourself if your taking something away from more enemies or friends.
  - legodt 10y ago
    My primary objective is to never normalize racism, no matter the context. I see it all the time here, and the subtle stuff constantly slips by and is given a pass. I don't care the community or context, this is never okay. All spaces are politicized whether it is convenient to you or not. By aggressively downvoting anti-racism or simply ignoring the racists the members of the community send an implicit message that racism is acceptable here as long as you look respectable and follow the group conversation rules.
    - dialectifier 10y ago

lefstathiou 10y ago

I am fascinated that you decided to make a new HN alias in order to articulate this point, which btw I think has a lot of merit. Making the huge assumption this is not your primary HN alias, out of curiosity, why did you decide to disassociate yourself from the thread?

prodontilate 10y ago
I could make up reasons that would seem to bolster my merit, but the reality is that my replies were throttled under another account, lol. Anyway, I've stopped karma-whoring. And even though I possess the capacity for downvoting under other accounts, I do not use that power. Admittedly, it means I no longer play into the ranking algorithms, and I can't feed into any persona reputation, but the power to freely disagree, and to add voice to other people's (otherwise silent) downvotes, or contradict downvotes when I feel they're wrong, is the more valuable feature any forum can offer. Maybe it fulfills other needs and my glandular, gutteral response to people who "are wrong on the internet" overrides the ego of being preened and revered by the community, but the way I see it someone needs to fill this niche. HN has a serious echo-chamber problem, and the prevailing wind needs some yelling into.
- lefstathiou 10y ago
  I appreciate the response and your efforts. I've been on HN almost 10 years and i sense it is shifting further toward an echo-chamber. You can almost predict the reaction the community (by numbers) will have based on the title or topic of a post. I suspect more and more people are picking up on this judging by comments in threads (or maybe I'm just looking for it). What I wonder is if this is reversion to the mean or has the mean shifted (perhaps as a result of changes in times or demographics). Anyway it is enjoying to watch and I am curious to see how this plays out. My only fear is that people with conflicting ideas take them somewhere else. There is no better place than HN IMHO to see constructive arguments unfold across so many topics.
  - prodontilate 10y ago
    Two things feed into the echo-chamber pattern, and both are chilling effects. One can be easily augmented and the other cannot. The first is the voluntary tendency people have about providing their IRL identities. For some this is largely optional, for others, less so, for example when a celebrity is participating as themselves. Real identities means there's some skin in the game for at least some people, requiring a heavier hand in moderation. This part can only be augmented so much, and requires individual users to self censor, disengage, and conceal their own identities when posting an unpopular sentiment. Humans being what they are, this reality will never go away. The other is the karma system, and this can be changed. And karma really is an unnatural ranking value, since one can pick up on inconsistencies after enough lurking. Whether it should change (or be changed) is arguable. If it's as harsh as it seems, and the effects are that chilling, it may just be an expression of actual human behavior. In which case, it's an early warning alarm, and an analog for what goes down in face-to-face meetings, but remains unspoken. We may not like echo-chambers, but they take shape in the real world too, in which case every social circle carries a shelf life that can probably be quantified by the manner in which this feedback loop widens and deafens its participants by jamming all signal with a noise that drowns out everything else. I'd hope that last part isn't true (being slightly depressing as it is), and that tweaking the numeric validation could tune the ambient personality of the community's behavior, such that it doesn't drift into irrelevance. It sounds easy enough, but maybe poor execution would warp and deny certain aspects of reality, to produce yet another fiction with unintended consequences. Anyway, I'm just gonna keep doing whatever.

legodt 10y ago

The trend is way too strong. I have never seen somebody call out racism and not get downvoted to hell. I'd face facts, hackernews is home to a lot of racists

dialectifier 10y ago
Interesting quandary: How to respond to an opinion I disagree with, while still satisfying the criteria that I don't come across as "not anti-racist enough?" HN really doesn't need to politicize the way a 24 hour news organization might. HN is a tech resource, with tangential angles into political factoids. It isn't a journalistic news outlet with a tech blog. While there should be responsibility, focus is more important. With that in mind the tide here is overwhelmingly non-racist even if not precisely anti-racist. Racism is swiftly downvoted around here, and not readily preserved. Opening up racial discussions is downvoted, because unless an article and discussion is patently race oriented, it's probably going to politicize and steer discussion away from tech details and into a sociological premise. Meanwhile, the race politics that do get discussed are almost invariably the familiar territory of how bigoted America is. It's rarely any other sub-topic of racial discussion, and none of the discussion that occurs here solves a problem or highlights surprising facts. Turning this site into the frontlines in a war waged by either side, will destroy the site. Battlegrounds, after all, are not beautiful places. By choosing to foment strife, before doing so, ask yourself if your taking something away from more enemies or friends.
- legodt 10y ago
  My primary objective is to never normalize racism, no matter the context. I see it all the time here, and the subtle stuff constantly slips by and is given a pass. I don't care the community or context, this is never okay. All spaces are politicized whether it is convenient to you or not. By aggressively downvoting anti-racism or simply ignoring the racists the members of the community send an implicit message that racism is acceptable here as long as you look respectable and follow the group conversation rules.
  - dialectifier 10y ago