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Yes, but there have been an increasing trend in "reddit style" comments on news.ycombinator.com . Myself and other users have noticed, called people out, downvo

Yes, but there have been an increasing trend in "reddit style" comments on news.ycombinator.com . Myself and other users have noticed, called people out, downvoted etc for the lousy comments. But the realities of the threading style & upvote democracy is that lowest common denominator spreads easily. Related discussion in same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14699133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14699133

incompatible 9y ago
It always sucks to have your insightful (in your own eyes at least) comments downvoted, just because there's a group of people who disagree with it. It's a downvote democracy, but not a true democracy because it only takes a minority to vote that way. I don't even have access to this downvote feature, I guess I don't have enough karma.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  Right, downvoting gets enabled when you hit 500 points, or so I remember.
- hellbanner 9y ago
  Yeah, this too. I was more lamenting the lousy comments eg. puns, comments that add nothing etc. These are possible with 0second old accounts.
- DanBC 9y ago
  You do have access to the upvote button,so your vote can cancel out an unfair downvote. Comments that get downvotes also don't get upvotes, so it's not just the small group who can downvotes who are causing the comments to be gray, it's also the large group who could upvotes but who chose not to do so.
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  If something is unfairly downvoted, wait a while and someone else will usually upvote it again. But it's also worth remembering they're just internet points, there's no real value. Keep contributing good stuff & you'll eventually get past the 500 karma mark. After that it's just a vanity number.
CM30 9y ago
Out of curiosity, could you explain what you mean by more Reddit style comments? Because I don't think I've seen too many low effort comments here recently, or at least not much more than there were in the past. And while political threads get a bit out of control, my experience there is that the most volatile, disruptive posts tend to get downvoted to hell before they can cause too much of an issue. So even if a certain percentage of alt-right/SJW type content is a bit more common than it was before, it tends to get rightfully buried under hundreds more thoughtful ones.
- ConfucianNardin 9y ago
  Example of "Reddit style comments" would be low effort jokes. Some subreddits are addressing this by using a convention where you can mark submissions with a "[serious]" tag, forbidding such replies (if there are any, they will usually be removed by the subreddit's moderators). On HN, quite a few of them seem to get heavily downvoted (sometimes enough to mark them as dead, meaning you won't see them unless you explicitly opt in to see them).
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Different subs vary. But the effect, overall, is discouraging. Groupthink is another significant problem, particularly on topics which tend to gravitate toward ideology. Many economics subs operate this way.
- lmm 9y ago
  There's a lot more joke comments than there used to be even 2-3 years ago. I would date the shift to dang taking over and asking everyone to be nicer - before that HN was more caustic and the noise comments were shut down more quickly.
- hellbanner 9y ago
  Comments that are only jokes, with nested replies that are word-plays are continuations of jokes. Good for a quick laugh occasionally but I prefer not to see that on HN (puns + groupthink meme jokes are not what I come to HN for).

incompatible 9y ago

It always sucks to have your insightful (in your own eyes at least) comments downvoted, just because there's a group of people who disagree with it. It's a downvote democracy, but not a true democracy because it only takes a minority to vote that way. I don't even have access to this downvote feature, I guess I don't have enough karma.

greenyoda 9y ago
Right, downvoting gets enabled when you hit 500 points, or so I remember.
hellbanner 9y ago
Yeah, this too. I was more lamenting the lousy comments eg. puns, comments that add nothing etc. These are possible with 0second old accounts.
DanBC 9y ago
You do have access to the upvote button,so your vote can cancel out an unfair downvote. Comments that get downvotes also don't get upvotes, so it's not just the small group who can downvotes who are causing the comments to be gray, it's also the large group who could upvotes but who chose not to do so.
SyneRyder 9y ago
If something is unfairly downvoted, wait a while and someone else will usually upvote it again. But it's also worth remembering they're just internet points, there's no real value. Keep contributing good stuff & you'll eventually get past the 500 karma mark. After that it's just a vanity number.

CM30 9y ago

Out of curiosity, could you explain what you mean by more Reddit style comments? Because I don't think I've seen too many low effort comments here recently, or at least not much more than there were in the past. And while political threads get a bit out of control, my experience there is that the most volatile, disruptive posts tend to get downvoted to hell before they can cause too much of an issue. So even if a certain percentage of alt-right/SJW type content is a bit more common than it was before, it tends to get rightfully buried under hundreds more thoughtful ones.

ConfucianNardin 9y ago
Example of "Reddit style comments" would be low effort jokes. Some subreddits are addressing this by using a convention where you can mark submissions with a "[serious]" tag, forbidding such replies (if there are any, they will usually be removed by the subreddit's moderators). On HN, quite a few of them seem to get heavily downvoted (sometimes enough to mark them as dead, meaning you won't see them unless you explicitly opt in to see them).
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Different subs vary. But the effect, overall, is discouraging. Groupthink is another significant problem, particularly on topics which tend to gravitate toward ideology. Many economics subs operate this way.
lmm 9y ago
There's a lot more joke comments than there used to be even 2-3 years ago. I would date the shift to dang taking over and asking everyone to be nicer - before that HN was more caustic and the noise comments were shut down more quickly.
hellbanner 9y ago
Comments that are only jokes, with nested replies that are word-plays are continuations of jokes. Good for a quick laugh occasionally but I prefer not to see that on HN (puns + groupthink meme jokes are not what I come to HN for).