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It seems to me that there’s some middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture but they’re not being rude or hot headed, and yet their genuin
by TaylorAlexander 8y ago
It seems to me that there’s some middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture but they’re not being rude or hot headed, and yet their genuine questions get downvoted.
I do think there’s some kind of “you can’t discuss that” attitudes on here about certain topics. Diversity stuff is an area I can imagine reasonable and even good comments getting downvoted. Sadly I don’t have any sources, but this is my intuition after reading HN regularly.
- pvg 8y agoDownvotes aren't 'censorship'.
- JackCh 8y agoIn and of themselves, no. However, I think an argument could be made for the visual suppression of posts, which occurs after too many downvotes have been given, being a form of soft censorship. The information is still broadcast but it's made impossible to read unless I copy/paste it or tilt my screen to an extreme angle.
- pvg 8y agoOr you can just click on the comment timestamp. If downvotes are 'censorship', so are upvotes.
- trustno1 8y agoGet enough downvotes and all of a sudden the poster is throttled and can only post once every hour. They are censorship.
- JackCh 8y agoUpvotes do not suppress the readability of comments. That workarounds exist is beyond the point.
- pvg 8y agoSure they do. They move other comments off the page entirely.
- JackCh 8y agoMaybe it's indicative of which sort of conversations I choose to participate in, but I rarely see comment sections go beyond the page fold. Supposing we take your argument seriously though, comments past the page fold which also have their contrast lowered to the point of illegibility are certainly censored even moreso.
- pvg 8y agoIt only takes a dozen short comments or so even on a giant screen. And yes, almost everything is censorship if you redefine censorship to mean any random irksome thing. Incidentally, I do think the way the comment fading works is pointedly user-hating and dumb (it's traditionally dumb, though!), but it's not really censorship. More generally, since we're talking about taking things seriously, framing forum irritants as some sort of oppression is a solid way to ensure few people take you seriously.
- JackCh 8y agoI don't think that describing a system which deliberately suppresses the legibility of posts you've already scrolled to see as 'soft censorship' is an unreasonable "redefinition" of censorship. If you disagree, I suppose I consider you unreasonable.
- pvg 8y agoVery well. I have added 'soft unreasonable' to my profile.
- jrs95 8y agoNo, because you can still read things that have been heavily downvoted. Flagging on the other hand can actually make things unreadable.
- pvg 8y agoFlagging doesn't make things unreadable.
- jrs95 8y agoInteresting. Thanks for correcting me on that. I thought I had seen that before; but perhaps that always requires moderator intervention.
- pvg 8y agoThere's a 'showdead' flag you can turn on in the prefs, that will show you stuff that has been flagged to death. When in the very rare cases something gets moderated in a comment (like removing someone's private info), there's a moderator comment saying so.
- jrs95 8y agoI thought I had turned that on but I probably forgot to click “update” afterwards. Thanks!
- pmarreck 8y agoIs it that surprising? http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
- creep 8y agoI recently wrote a comment in response to a post here with the title, "Why Women Don't Code?". The post itself was, I think, on the front page and received 104 upvotes. My comment was along the lines of, "we don't know why women don't code (preference vs culture) but [anecdote] and I personally lean towards the preference angle." My comment was down voted twice but afterwards appeared to gain traction with more than a dozen upvotes. That topic in particular (gender in STEM, feminist topics, etc.) I find is usually a no-go zone anywhere else on the net unless you have a specific opinion abut it, but on HN it wasn't censored and I felt comfortable expressing an opinion. It's sometimes hit and miss. I think sometimes posts on certain hot-topic political issues are downvoted because many people come here for tech related stuff and don't want to see anything else-- especially that which leads to an unwinable argument.
- adbachman 8y ago> middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture... > genuine questions get downvoted The problem is these "genuine questions," for other people, are received as: bad faith questions, "sea lioning", poorly researched questions (e.g., simple query would find the answer), microagressions, dog whistles, sock puppet arguments, or other incendiary social media argument techniques. Whether every instance of "hi, I'm new here, why is affirmative action a good thing?" is actually bad faith, etc. is irrelevant. Diversity as a topic gets downvoted, flagged, and removed because the heat keeps happening on those threads. Regardless of which side you occupy or support or even if you claim to support no side at all, it consistently produces uncharitable and unproductive discussion.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoThere are a good amount of people who are "asking" those questions in bad faith. And, after a while, it gets exhausting to those who get bombarded with those questions. And those doing that in bad faith know it. It's kinda like a DDOS attack on them.
- rhapsodic 8y ago> Diversity as a topic gets downvoted, flagged, and removed because the heat keeps happening on those threads. Regardless of which side you occupy or support or even if you claim to support no side at all, it consistently produces uncharitable and unproductive discussion. I disagree completely. My view is that the facts and data do not support the leftists' position, so when free discussion of the women or diversity in STEM issue(s) takes place, their arguments do not fare well. And leftists generally seek to suppress any expression of ideas that run counter to their own, so they kill the discussion altogether through flagging or downvoting. And then they engage in all sorts of sophistry to justify their suppression of free discussion. [Downvoters: QED! ;-)]
- dang 8y agoPlease (re-)read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Comments like this rightly get downvoted and flagged for being unsubstantive, flamebait, ideological battle, and going on about downvotes. Then of course people complain that it's their politics which are being censored.
- dang 8y ago> the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture It's a common misconception, but HN users are overwhelmingly not in the Bay Area. When I looked at this a few months ago, the number was about 10%. (Actually between 5% and 14% depending on how you count.)
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoWhat about if you weight by activity? Does that significantly affect the percentage?
- dang 8y agoIt does somewhat, hence the range I mentioned. For posting submissions and comments it was 10.9%.