4 ms·

Most of your recent comments seem to have been been downvoted. Time for some self-reflection, maybe?

jacquesm 9y ago
In this case you're probably right but having most or even all of your recent comments downvoted doesn't mean much. For instance nickpsecurity could post anything at all and you can expect it to be downvoted.
- yorwba 9y ago
  I'm not seeing any gray here https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickpsecurity https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickpsecurity Maybe the hive mind is not that aggressive after all?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    It usually corrects itself after a while, HN is 'self repairing'.
ue_ 9y ago
The fact that other people don't like what you have to say means that you have to reflect on what you're saying? Maybe, but that only applies if you're seeking for approval. Many people are not, they want to communicate their thoughts, feelings and ideas regardless of whether some people with more than 500 points click the little downward-pointing triangle. And I think that's a better way to comment, rather than self-censure based on what a certain group of people like or don't like.
- vidarh 9y ago
  You're not communicating if people reflexively downvote you. I'm used to expressing unpopular sentiments in many circumstances, but at some point if you want to communicate rather than troll you need to try to at least adapt the style to the medium. Case in point, calling The Guardian "socialist" here will offend both a lot of Guardian readers and a lot of socialists (many of whom read the Guardian, but still don't find it remotely socialist), and yet it serves no purpose in the comment. It ends up drawing attention away from the point he tried to make (poorly).
  - ue_ 9y ago
    > You're not communicating if people reflexively downvote you. I don't really understand this; most likely I think that you are communicating, and people don't like what they're reading. Sure, posts that don't communicate are downvoted, but so are posts that do communicate. I haven't actually read the comment we're talking about, because I can't, but my point of contention is that receiving downvotes should be considered as some sacred message to re-think your life. It shouldn't, it just shows that an elite group of HN users have decided they don't like what you're saying. It might be for good reasons or bad reasons. In the past I have tried to reach out to HN's medium, writing posts I think are thought out, non-attackative, presenting an interesting viewpoint etc. only to have them downvoted 2 or 3 times, and I suspect it's because I espouse a particular political viewpoint, even when on topic. Some other of my comments have been upvoted, with much the same content. I have discovered that it's very hard to predict if your comment will be upvoted or downvoted, so I stopped caring so much. It's clear that the HN mods or perhaps PG himself want to manipulate people into espousing points that everyone else likes, even going so far as to gray out comments to make them harder to read, of course so that people won't want to read them. I found that I was being stopped from posting things I thought were interesting or perhaps controversial, and instead I was searching for things that would get me upvotes. This is in stark contrast to the old style imageboards, in which everyone's post is given an equal footing. Downvoting is a dirty little system, and it's one of the things keeping me from posting more on this site, which is filled with relatively intelligent discussion on all sorts of topics. And do not start me talking about how the HN moderators have decided that sometimes "You're submitting too fast, please slow down" when I want to post something in quick succession (about twice per hour even). It makes it impossible for me to have discussions here with this. I don't know if it affects other people (I suspect it does not), but it's so frustrating. Sometimes I have to collate two or three posts into one to avoid being prevented from posting. Reddit doesn't do that, the imageboards don't do that, in fact almost no other forum does this.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      For the occasional downvote, yes, I agree. If the downvoting gets systematic, it is a sign that people downvote without even bothering to pay attention, in which case continuing in the same vein defeats the purpose vs. learning to communicate in a vein more suitable to where you are communicating. I agree with not caring if every comment is upvoted, and not panic if you get some downvotes, but often it is a matter of learning to conform just a little bit to the style of the given forum. It does not have to mean moderating your opinions much, but much more often moderating their form. E.g. I'm politically far to the left of most HN'ers, yet I have written comments here quoting Marx that get upvoted. I similarly see plenty of right wing comments too that get upvoted. But HN will be brutal with "dumbed down" or inflammatory political comments.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > means that you have to reflect on what you're saying? No, it means you might want to reflect on how you're saying it.

In this case you're probably right but having most or even all of your recent comments downvoted doesn't mean much. For instance nickpsecurity could post anything at all and you can expect it to be downvoted.

yorwba 9y ago
I'm not seeing any gray here https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickpsecurity https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickpsecurity Maybe the hive mind is not that aggressive after all?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  It usually corrects itself after a while, HN is 'self repairing'.

ue_ 9y ago

The fact that other people don't like what you have to say means that you have to reflect on what you're saying? Maybe, but that only applies if you're seeking for approval. Many people are not, they want to communicate their thoughts, feelings and ideas regardless of whether some people with more than 500 points click the little downward-pointing triangle. And I think that's a better way to comment, rather than self-censure based on what a certain group of people like or don't like.

vidarh 9y ago
You're not communicating if people reflexively downvote you. I'm used to expressing unpopular sentiments in many circumstances, but at some point if you want to communicate rather than troll you need to try to at least adapt the style to the medium. Case in point, calling The Guardian "socialist" here will offend both a lot of Guardian readers and a lot of socialists (many of whom read the Guardian, but still don't find it remotely socialist), and yet it serves no purpose in the comment. It ends up drawing attention away from the point he tried to make (poorly).
- ue_ 9y ago
  > You're not communicating if people reflexively downvote you. I don't really understand this; most likely I think that you are communicating, and people don't like what they're reading. Sure, posts that don't communicate are downvoted, but so are posts that do communicate. I haven't actually read the comment we're talking about, because I can't, but my point of contention is that receiving downvotes should be considered as some sacred message to re-think your life. It shouldn't, it just shows that an elite group of HN users have decided they don't like what you're saying. It might be for good reasons or bad reasons. In the past I have tried to reach out to HN's medium, writing posts I think are thought out, non-attackative, presenting an interesting viewpoint etc. only to have them downvoted 2 or 3 times, and I suspect it's because I espouse a particular political viewpoint, even when on topic. Some other of my comments have been upvoted, with much the same content. I have discovered that it's very hard to predict if your comment will be upvoted or downvoted, so I stopped caring so much. It's clear that the HN mods or perhaps PG himself want to manipulate people into espousing points that everyone else likes, even going so far as to gray out comments to make them harder to read, of course so that people won't want to read them. I found that I was being stopped from posting things I thought were interesting or perhaps controversial, and instead I was searching for things that would get me upvotes. This is in stark contrast to the old style imageboards, in which everyone's post is given an equal footing. Downvoting is a dirty little system, and it's one of the things keeping me from posting more on this site, which is filled with relatively intelligent discussion on all sorts of topics. And do not start me talking about how the HN moderators have decided that sometimes "You're submitting too fast, please slow down" when I want to post something in quick succession (about twice per hour even). It makes it impossible for me to have discussions here with this. I don't know if it affects other people (I suspect it does not), but it's so frustrating. Sometimes I have to collate two or three posts into one to avoid being prevented from posting. Reddit doesn't do that, the imageboards don't do that, in fact almost no other forum does this.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    For the occasional downvote, yes, I agree. If the downvoting gets systematic, it is a sign that people downvote without even bothering to pay attention, in which case continuing in the same vein defeats the purpose vs. learning to communicate in a vein more suitable to where you are communicating. I agree with not caring if every comment is upvoted, and not panic if you get some downvotes, but often it is a matter of learning to conform just a little bit to the style of the given forum. It does not have to mean moderating your opinions much, but much more often moderating their form. E.g. I'm politically far to the left of most HN'ers, yet I have written comments here quoting Marx that get upvoted. I similarly see plenty of right wing comments too that get upvoted. But HN will be brutal with "dumbed down" or inflammatory political comments.
DanBC 9y ago
> means that you have to reflect on what you're saying? No, it means you might want to reflect on how you're saying it.