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For that to be true you have to have one hell of a selective group of people you follow on Facebook and Twitter. Hacker News is without question the best "socia

For that to be true you have to have one hell of a selective group of people you follow on Facebook and Twitter. Hacker News is without question the best "social media" site I read and has mostly maintained its quality over the years I've been here. Reddit, however, is godawful.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Yea? Have a pro-gun discussion on HackerNews and tell me how it’s so much better than Reddit. HN has its own problems. For one, there is a growing discontent for different opinions (downvote happy), and two, there is one “channel”, so it’s mob rule for opinion.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Downvoting is simple disagreement (by policy) not some attempt to quash discussion. I know folks guard their karma jealously, which leads to resentment about downvoting. Add to that the 'greyed out' feature on downvoted comments which does look like censorship. But as an automatic mechanism for self-moderation it works ok, not perfect. Just look at the stuff at the bottom of a long discussion to see the quashed stuff, and tell me it doesn't belong there.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Except that downvotes do exactly that. A couple and you’re marked as downvoted by fading, a few more and your comment is collapsed. “By policy” or not. It’s treated as a “make the bad man who said the mean things go away so he won’t fool or sway other people”. Just like Reddit.
    - FiveSquared 8y ago
      Well, America has xtreme gun conrol laws, so the rest of the wolrd thinks you aree extreme, which elads to downvotes. BTW, mass shooting are EVERY WEEK IN THE USA. Swisterland has guns and yet they have feweer. Its the culture and lack of traiining.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - DanBC 8y ago
    ...and a downvoted post hasn't just been downvoted by the small group who can downvote, it also hasn't been upvoted by the much larger group who can upvote.
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    >Downvoting is simple disagreement (by policy) not some attempt to quash discussion. False. In fact, it quashes discussion by two methods: hiding the comment such that it must be specifically expanded, or literally graying out the comment so that it's harder to see. I do not care about my karma, but I very much care when a couple of people downvote for ideological reasons and don't offer any explanation. If this site is supposed to engender the hacker spirit, did nobody think for a second that it is directly opposed to that spirit to just say "I disagree, so nyeh"? To attempt to knowingly hide comments because you just disagree with them, thereby encouraging ideological conformity? There is only a small group of sites I know of which does not play to this script, and that's the imageboards which lack downvoting features (at worst a thread stays in place using 'sage') and upvoting features take the form of writing your own comment. You are forced to provide input if you feel like you disagree.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > Have a pro-gun discussion on HackerNews and tell me how it’s so much better than Reddit. You're not meeting resistance to reasonable opinions. You're breaking out of your US filter bubble and discovering that the rest of the world thinks US gun ownership rights are fucking weird.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    You just proved their point.
    - FiveSquared 8y ago
      You just proved their point.
- moorhosj 8y ago
  I don’t think that people disagreeing with you is a failure of social media. If you walk into a bar in an area where HN readers tend to live (San Fran, NYC, Seattle, Austin, Denver, Chicago) you would likely get a similar response.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    It has nothing to do with disagreement. It’s that downvotes are used to silence people. You can make an argument counter to someone else’s without mini-censorship, but that’s hard, you need knowledge and experience for that. Whats easy is just to try and hide anyone else from seeing a counter argument at all.
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      Maybe people downvote because they think it violates the HN commenting rule below? ==Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it.==
- FiveSquared 8y ago
  reddit is worse. I say i liek guns, boom, dowvotes

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

Yea? Have a pro-gun discussion on HackerNews and tell me how it’s so much better than Reddit. HN has its own problems. For one, there is a growing discontent for different opinions (downvote happy), and two, there is one “channel”, so it’s mob rule for opinion.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Downvoting is simple disagreement (by policy) not some attempt to quash discussion. I know folks guard their karma jealously, which leads to resentment about downvoting. Add to that the 'greyed out' feature on downvoted comments which does look like censorship. But as an automatic mechanism for self-moderation it works ok, not perfect. Just look at the stuff at the bottom of a long discussion to see the quashed stuff, and tell me it doesn't belong there.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Except that downvotes do exactly that. A couple and you’re marked as downvoted by fading, a few more and your comment is collapsed. “By policy” or not. It’s treated as a “make the bad man who said the mean things go away so he won’t fool or sway other people”. Just like Reddit.
  - FiveSquared 8y ago
    Well, America has xtreme gun conrol laws, so the rest of the wolrd thinks you aree extreme, which elads to downvotes. BTW, mass shooting are EVERY WEEK IN THE USA. Swisterland has guns and yet they have feweer. Its the culture and lack of traiining.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- DanBC 8y ago
  ...and a downvoted post hasn't just been downvoted by the small group who can downvote, it also hasn't been upvoted by the much larger group who can upvote.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  >Downvoting is simple disagreement (by policy) not some attempt to quash discussion. False. In fact, it quashes discussion by two methods: hiding the comment such that it must be specifically expanded, or literally graying out the comment so that it's harder to see. I do not care about my karma, but I very much care when a couple of people downvote for ideological reasons and don't offer any explanation. If this site is supposed to engender the hacker spirit, did nobody think for a second that it is directly opposed to that spirit to just say "I disagree, so nyeh"? To attempt to knowingly hide comments because you just disagree with them, thereby encouraging ideological conformity? There is only a small group of sites I know of which does not play to this script, and that's the imageboards which lack downvoting features (at worst a thread stays in place using 'sage') and upvoting features take the form of writing your own comment. You are forced to provide input if you feel like you disagree.
DanBC 8y ago
> Have a pro-gun discussion on HackerNews and tell me how it’s so much better than Reddit. You're not meeting resistance to reasonable opinions. You're breaking out of your US filter bubble and discovering that the rest of the world thinks US gun ownership rights are fucking weird.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  You just proved their point.
  - FiveSquared 8y ago
    You just proved their point.
moorhosj 8y ago
I don’t think that people disagreeing with you is a failure of social media. If you walk into a bar in an area where HN readers tend to live (San Fran, NYC, Seattle, Austin, Denver, Chicago) you would likely get a similar response.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  It has nothing to do with disagreement. It’s that downvotes are used to silence people. You can make an argument counter to someone else’s without mini-censorship, but that’s hard, you need knowledge and experience for that. Whats easy is just to try and hide anyone else from seeing a counter argument at all.
  - moorhosj 8y ago
    Maybe people downvote because they think it violates the HN commenting rule below? ==Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it.==
FiveSquared 8y ago
reddit is worse. I say i liek guns, boom, dowvotes