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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

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.

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.