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Reading through l3m0ndr0p's comment history is quite a surreal experience. Almost every one of their posts is downvoted to grey, even the extremely uncontrovers
by spangry 10y ago
Reading through l3m0ndr0p's comment history is quite a surreal experience. Almost every one of their posts is downvoted to grey, even the extremely uncontroversial and mundane ones. I can get how, with a comment history like that, whatever algos HN has running might automatically drop them to the bottom of the page since it would just run blindly on whatever metrics it sees.
What I find harder to understand is how they ended up in that position in the first place. Their comments aren't exactly in lock-step with the general HN view of the world, but they're not that far out either. If anyone thinks I'm being OTT here, go and see for yourself. Diversity of opinion is a good thing. I'd hate to see HN turn into another mindless echo-chamber.
- shouldbworking 10y agoThe account is likely shadowdead or some variant of it. A lot of places have a "silent ban" to stop unwanted trolls from continuing to make accounts. The "silent" part means the user is cajoled into believing they're not banned. One of the ways to do this is to not kill their comments until a couple people reply to them. That way the system can tell them they have +3 votes or whatever when in reality nobody after the first 2 minutes even sees their post. If nobody ever replied to them it would look suspicious. Not totally sure that's whats happening but it looks like it
- spangry 10y agoFair enough. Sounds like, in all probability, it's just an 'overly twitchy' algorithm somewhere; no system is perfect I guess.