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I've been on HN for 7-8 years and there is a difference in the last two years. I've seen a lot more one line comments with sarcastic, jokey, snarky, or flippant

I've been on HN for 7-8 years and there is a difference in the last two years. I've seen a lot more one line comments with sarcastic, jokey, snarky, or flippant content. Some were always made, but they were very consistently downvoted years ago. The solution I think is to implore those with downvote powers to do a lot more downvoting. In a way it is all custodial duty that cannot be automated. It can feel mean to downvoted a lot, but there are no shortage of sites where peanut gallery comments are the norm, and I think we should continue to discourage them here as much as possible. Note: I do not think political or contentious comments are a problem, only the glib. The guy that replied to you with: "Everything dies or turns to shit in the end." is a good example of what to downvote.

elorant 9y ago
It would be better just to add an ability to flag comments and moderators could take further action. Enhancing downvote ability while it could work in this context it could wreak havoc in heated arguments.
- infogulch 9y ago
  I don't think it's even a case of enhancing anything. It's more to encourage users that do have the feature to actually use it and guidance on when. That would be enough. I know I hesitate to downvote anything that isn't obviously a troll or blatantly destructive. But that's too low a standard if we want to keep the comment quality from slipping.
- GolfXrayTango 9y ago
  Could HN let comments be tagged, let users confirm tags and viewers filter (to either hide or deemphasize) comments by tags and personalized confirmation thresholds? That would enable users to remove the junk on their own and would be more scalable than a moderation team as well as making HN comments an interesting ML dataset.
- bllguo 9y ago
  You can flag comments. Click the timestamp of the comment and then you have the option to. Not sure why it's hidden away, though.
  - elorant 9y ago
    Seven years in here and I hadn't noticed that.
    - bllguo 9y ago
      Yeah, I can imagine that hiding it would prevent excessive flagging, but when veteran users aren't even aware of the option, something is wrong.
deleted 9y ago
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elorant 9y ago

It would be better just to add an ability to flag comments and moderators could take further action. Enhancing downvote ability while it could work in this context it could wreak havoc in heated arguments.

infogulch 9y ago
I don't think it's even a case of enhancing anything. It's more to encourage users that do have the feature to actually use it and guidance on when. That would be enough. I know I hesitate to downvote anything that isn't obviously a troll or blatantly destructive. But that's too low a standard if we want to keep the comment quality from slipping.
GolfXrayTango 9y ago
Could HN let comments be tagged, let users confirm tags and viewers filter (to either hide or deemphasize) comments by tags and personalized confirmation thresholds? That would enable users to remove the junk on their own and would be more scalable than a moderation team as well as making HN comments an interesting ML dataset.
bllguo 9y ago
You can flag comments. Click the timestamp of the comment and then you have the option to. Not sure why it's hidden away, though.
- elorant 9y ago
  Seven years in here and I hadn't noticed that.
  - bllguo 9y ago
    Yeah, I can imagine that hiding it would prevent excessive flagging, but when veteran users aren't even aware of the option, something is wrong.

deleted 9y ago

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