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Even though your account is older than a year and you are a regular and great contributor, I suspect this might be an effect related to the "HN is turning into
by phreeza 16y ago
Even though your account is older than a year and you are a regular and great contributor, I suspect this might be an effect related to the "HN is turning into reddit" mentioned in the guidelines.
As your interaction and familiarity with the community changes, so does your perception of it, in particular of the flaws it has.
One thing that is great about HN compared to other social news sites is the high information content of the discussions, and I think this is maintained better by downvoting a comment you disagree with, especially if topic is one that has been discussed a million times here and elsewhere, like is the iPhone awesome or not. Maybe the downvoters just want to show they disagree without polluting the thread by rehashing all the same arguments again.
- scott_s 16y agoI am not saying HN is turning into reddit. But I can say confidently that this phenomenon did not happen when I joined. It's a symptom of having more users.
- silentbicycle 16y agoI've been here roughly as long as you have. It seems to happen in waves, and definitely depends on the subject matter. Knee-jerk voting and comments in threads about the iPhone? You betcha. About compiler implementation? Not so much. ("LL(1), fool!" "SSA all the way!") On HN, it's a given that every few months a new "Oh no! We're turning into Reddit!" thread cycle happens. Worrying about that is in HN's genes. After a couple years, though, I'd say the site's immune system has been reasonably successful.
- scott_s 16y agoI think we've succeeded in not turning into Reddit, but we certainly have changed. Not only do I see move downvotes, I see many more upvotes. And, again, that's a symptom of having more users.