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But not it made me wonder, how a positive enforcing behavior is only allowing down vote until you reach a threshold. It makes you engage and understand the comm
by postit 9y ago
But not it made me wonder, how a positive enforcing behavior is only allowing down vote until you reach a threshold. It makes you engage and understand the community better before making your judgment.
- 2close4comfort 9y agoIt is also a way to manipulate HN to allow those with similar views to prosper and reinforce those same ideas. Those who don't agree have less power...
- rubidium 9y agoIt's not hard to get to 500 thru purely technical commentary. If you're here for politicizing or snide remarks, then yes I hope it's hard to to get to 500.
- plopilop 9y agoI don't find it easy personally, my most upvoted comment has 14 points, most are under 4 points. But then, I don't comment often and I don't care about being able to downvote, so I think I'll survive.
- the_watcher 9y agoComments are worth a point, so as long as you're not posting comments that are regularly downvoted, just participating will get you there.
- icebraining 9y agoNo, the default point doesn't count towards your karma.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 9y agoIt's still true that just participating will get you there. I'm pretty sure my median comment has 2 points.
- kbenson 9y agoIt takes a while in the beginning, then you learn what works and what doesn't, which thankfully aligns fairly well with the community values as I see them. Here's a distillation of how I see them: * Comment when you have something to contribute. The contribution can be small, even just adding your own experience. A "me too" comment will likely get downvoted. A "Me too. I often experience/feel this when..." will likely be left neutral or upvoted, depending on topic and content. * Assume the other party in a discussion or argument is acting in good faith. Try to look for alternate interpretations for offensive or upsetting comments, and ask, if at all ambiguous. Even if it's clear the opinion is at odds with your own, don't condemn someone outright, ask why (and try to do so in a way that doesn't sound like you're setting them up). * Tangents are okay. Responding to a particular comment but addressing the conversation is okay. Try to make it obvious when you are not addressing the person you replied to specifically. Context matters, especially for those that see the reply, and it's easy for them to assume it's supposed to be meant as a rebuttal to them when they've been seeing lots of rebuttals.
- plopilop 9y agoSure, but most of the time I don't feel like I have things relevant to add to the discussion, I'm more of the lurker type. I just wanted to point out that in my case, getting points was not that easy. But I actually don't care about it, so everything is fine for me. :)
- galfarragem 9y agoI believe the top comment in an high voted thread can get 100+ points but winning the thread is extremely difficult. In almost 6y I only was able to make it 3 or 4 times. The quality is really high and it's amazing how there is always somebody in a better position to comment it.
- plopilop 9y agoAaaaaaaand now this comment is my most upvoted comment. Obviously.
- BartBoch 9y ago...or by submitting some awesome content once in a while.
- wenc 9y agoI find that true technical commentary is often less appreciated than superficial technical statements. Using only myself as an example: * I write a comment about databases and data science that comprises hard-won insights borne out of years of experience and mistakes -> {0, 1, 2} upvotes. * I write a throwaway comment about IBM PC-DOS -> many more upvotes (>10). I'm not complaining. I think HN merely conforms to the broader pattern of the world. It does have one downside: very often, soundbite comments that are naive or wrong get upvoted a lot. [0] [0] http://danluu.com/hn-comments/ http://danluu.com/hn-comments/
- c22 9y agoAnecdotally I find the largest factors affecting number of upvotes are time of day and how recently the thread has been on the front page.
- BatFastard 9y agodat true!
- bjelkeman-again 9y agoComments higher up on the page also get more upvotes. Not everyone reads all of the comments and you get this effect.
- sevensor 9y agoFor all the complaints about the hivemind, I see a broader range of opinions here than anywhere else. Perhaps the reason for complaints is that the visibly broad range of opinions creates an expectation that any reasonable opinion will be tolerated, when in fact some reasonable opinions will be suppressed by the community. In such a generally open context, this suppression seems particularly unjust.
- ryandrake 9y agoIn general true, but there are a certain few “lightning rod” topics for which there is only a limited set of HNCorrect opinions. No matter how well written/sourced/argued your comment is, if it goes against the group belief it will be buried. I just avoid these topics altogether now—it’s not worth the time spent writing. On the other hand, in general I don’t care about the occasional wave of downvotes. They’re fake internet points—-no reason to tie your HN karma to any measure of self worth. Literally anything can and will get down-votes here. Hell, just yesterday I wrote a long-ish story about some ethical issues I encountered as an engineer. No arguments or judgment passing or controversial stands—just a “here’s a little snippet of my career” and it got a couple downvotes. No need to sweat them. The advice to not complain in-thread about downvotes and not attack/question your downvoters is good advice. It’s pointless because everything, including uncontroversial comments, high quality comments, correct, incorrect—-they all get a few downs.
- sevensor 9y ago> In general true, but there are a certain few “lightning rod” topics for which there is only a limited set of HNCorrect opinions. No matter how well written/sourced/argued your comment is, if it goes against the group belief it will be buried. I just avoid these topics altogether now—it’s not worth the time spent writing. Sound advice. It's easy to collect some downvotes by posting about anything people feel passionate about -- there's always going to be somebody who downvotes out of dislike for your opinion. Also, I believe criticizing certain national governments attracts an outsized share of downvotes / flags.
- 9y ago
- clairity 9y agoit's interesting to note that that's exactly the kind of position you might have if your opinions are just not that great. the whole system is rigged and it's just not appreciating your awesomeness. maybe you're seeing a pattern that's not there? might it be your opinions that are flawed? or maybe your communication skills or style are left wanting? i don't know but those things are certainly possibilities too. you didn't actually make an argument about what you think the "similar views" are, how the mechanism works, who's involved, or anything worthy of consideration and discussion. might that be representative of the problem right there?
- crankylinuxuser 9y agoIt's called groupthink. And I've heard many people outside the SV scene complain precisely about SV groupthink issues. They can be good ideas, bad ideas, horrendous ideas... Regardless, if SV thinks its good, then it passes muster here. I've said quite a few things that have either scored low or negative, even if they sane and cogent and direct. They just challenge the precepts that are held holy in the 'Valley.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> I've said quite a few things that have either scored low or negative, even if they sane and cogent and direct You may not be the most unbiased judge of that.
- dang 9y agoThe HN community is overwhelmingly not in SV. Less than 10% by many measures.
- boulos 9y agoDo you folks have any anonymized demographics data? I’d love to see it over time in particular, since I’m guessing early on it was much more SV. When I travel and am in a vastly different time zone (like say to Europe or Asia), I notice the active participants on HN are fairly different. Is 10% by viewership, accounts, activity, all of the above?
- ptero 9y agoSure, it does act as a stabilizer, but IMO it affects discussion style much more than opinions expressed. Which is, to me, is a good thing. Rudeness and pointless ramblings get downvoted quickly, which is likely a model learned quickly by newcomers. Arguing an unpopular view is unlikely to get beaten hard -- I do not recall ever getting more than -3 or so on a comment (but maybe I am just a conformist).
- closeparen 9y agoYes, preservation of the “house style” is an explicit goal of HN’s design and moderation. Preventing newcomers from “democratically” hijacking the forum and turning it into something else is something it’s explicitly built to thwart.
- dang 9y agoThat argument seems wrong to me; the subset of the community with karma > 500 is as fractious and divided as the community as a whole.
- BossHogg 9y agoIn my opinion, it creates an echo chamber where in order to be a "full member" of the community you have to already espouse views the community supports. It is a big reason why I don't participate much.
- apendleton 9y agoI certainly think it's possible to clear 500 karma by playing to the echo chamber, but I don't remember having had much difficulty doing getting 500 and most of my comments have either been technical or about niche policy-ish stuff like urban planning or energy. I think my personal views on particularly echo-chamber-y things are probably at least somewhat different from any normative HN values that may exist, and that hasn't really been a barrier. (That said, I almost never downvote.)
- DoreenMichele 9y agoI espouse a lot of views that the community does not support. I am also the first woman to make the leaderboard (under a different handle -- my retired handle has 25k karma). I don't think it works exactly the way you think it does.
- ryanx435 9y agoHow do you know you were the first woman to do so? This is a psuedo anonymous internet forum where people aren't required to state their gender or even their real names.
- DoreenMichele 9y agohttp://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/06/how-do-i-know-im-number-one.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/06/how-do-i-kno... I will add that being the first woman on the leaderboard is not essential to the point that you can get a lot of karma and not be part of the echo chamber. But inevitably that is the detail that gets focused on, as if proving that I am not the first woman (or questioning my assertion, because no proof to the contrary has ever been offered when I get asked this) somehow invalidates my actual point. My other handle has 25k karma. This one has over 3k. I don't in any way whatsoever participate in an echo chamber.