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> HN has both up/down votes This separates the good from the bad > and actual moderators This stops the trolling and spammy pump and dump comments/posts It

by corobo 9y ago

> HN has both up/down votes This separates the good from the bad > and actual moderators This stops the trolling and spammy pump and dump comments/posts It works pretty well. I've never felt unwelcome on HN, even when something I've posted gets downvoted. I come away with a more "ehhh, yeah I get it" feel rather than anything resembling the bitterness I feel whenever StackOverflow is the only option in search results. Give people powers based on how much they use a site and they'll just start pushing people out of the site. It happened a lot back in the day in IRC, happens all over Wikipedia, happens all over StackOverflow. There's a pattern.

zaarn 9y ago
As you have correctly observed, people will start pushing out other people from the site. But who is doing the pushing? On HN, there is a very heavy liberal and left-leaning bias in this pushing (not accusing, this is imply observational data), Reddit is more of a mixed bag for example with some places having a much more strong push from the right and conservatives. People on HN would likely not feel welcome there. If you give power to the people you ultimately end up having a site that reflects how the majority of it's users think. If that is good or bad is another discussion. The mechanisms of a downvote play heavily into this too. Downvotes on HN are rare and only enabled for the elite (+500 karma elite to be specific, this is the exact 'give people power based on how much they use the site'), IIRC SO has a similar policy for some actions, not sure on downvotes. I don't think that is inherently bad, people who are long-time contributors to a community should usually have a better idea on how to improve it than a newcomer. The crucial point might be that on HN there is a limit of power you can achieve. After you get your downvotes, that's it. It only filters out young and inactive (or controversial) accounts but not people who engage in the community. SO might benefit from implementing a similar power ceiling to HN, so that users can't abuse their amount of reputation over others.

by corobo 9y ago

zaarn 9y ago

As you have correctly observed, people will start pushing out other people from the site. But who is doing the pushing? On HN, there is a very heavy liberal and left-leaning bias in this pushing (not accusing, this is imply observational data), Reddit is more of a mixed bag for example with some places having a much more strong push from the right and conservatives. People on HN would likely not feel welcome there. If you give power to the people you ultimately end up having a site that reflects how the majority of it's users think. If that is good or bad is another discussion. The mechanisms of a downvote play heavily into this too. Downvotes on HN are rare and only enabled for the elite (+500 karma elite to be specific, this is the exact 'give people power based on how much they use the site'), IIRC SO has a similar policy for some actions, not sure on downvotes. I don't think that is inherently bad, people who are long-time contributors to a community should usually have a better idea on how to improve it than a newcomer. The crucial point might be that on HN there is a limit of power you can achieve. After you get your downvotes, that's it. It only filters out young and inactive (or controversial) accounts but not people who engage in the community. SO might benefit from implementing a similar power ceiling to HN, so that users can't abuse their amount of reputation over others.