8 ms·

Show HN: Automatically delete your negative point HN comments

27 points by ransom1538 8y ago

jacknews 8y ago
Fitter, Happier. I'm guessing this is tongue-in-cheek, or cleverly highlighting an actually important issue. And if you're considering replying to the thread at all, you're likely experiencing it to some extent - is one part of your mind considering the potential 'HN points' implications of your post? I'm all for a late-night grace period where you can delete possibly drunk posts from the night before, or heat-of-the-moment angry posts, the following morning. But the danger is that 'reputation points' act as a self-censorship and muting mechanism, and sometimes the truth is simply going to be unpopular. Perhaps even the source shouldn't be able to unsay something just because it proves unpopular.
ransom1538 8y ago
This script will automatically remove comments you made that go under 1 point. * This was just to keep me typing ruby for a few hours. However, this post made it to the top 3 posts, then was removed from the top page by the moderators. It is demoralizing to have it 'hidden' for no specified reason silently.
- NicoJuicy 8y ago
  I had some "bad comments", but they shouldn't be deleted. Everyone had their opinion, you don't have to follow the group if you have a different one. Ps. You should have the dignity to not do it while your drunk though :p
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    I think it's fair if you say something that you now find embarrassing to remove it. Lesson learned and all that. If you need a script to find all the embarrassing posts, then... you might want to consider that the script is not really helping you solve the real problem ;-) It might be better to start again.
  - nikk1 8y ago
    We all have bad opinions sometimes. I look back at my Reddit comment history (an account that I've had for about 10 years) and I cringe at some of the stuff that I've said before. Keeping the cringey stuff around reminds me how I've changed over time. Although if it wasn't anonymous, I would probably clean it up. But since nobody knows who I am, it doesn't matter :P
    - simonh 8y ago
      I've always used an online identifier that's recognizably me. I find it keeps me grounded, but in the current environment with companies checking social media before hiring I understand people wanting to use anonymous IDs. Anyone can have a lapse.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    > Everyone had their opinion, you don't have to follow the group if you have a different one. I feel like discussions on this site started going downhill when PG decided "votes == agreement" was acceptable. Expressing a well-structured and well-researched opinion should not engender downvotes, while empty sound bites should. Sadly, what actually happens now depends on which side of the mob the post falls.
    - resters 8y ago
      Very true. An upvote should mean “this is well put” or “this is interesting” not “go team”.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      Transparency is the big thing here. And yet, HN is one big opaque pile of SV. Scores? Nah we keep them secret from others. Who downvoted/silenced someone? We don't discuss that. Unpopular opinion, but intellectually interesting? Someone (mods or others) silence and rate limit you. Your opinion does not matter. Mods threaten you for "ideological rants"... Its because it was not in the interests of SV/HN. How dare you discuss 'unapproved topics'. We have better solutions right now. But at this moment, we have no clue what these scores actually are- its information assymetry at its worst. Reversing public scores would be a start. Publishing who up/downvoted would be another. Showing flagged and killed would be a further step in the right direction of transparency. And so would also getting rid of hellbanning. But, we end up with mob justice, overseen by a trite dictatorship.
      - pjc50 8y ago
        Publishing voters is a move towards, not away from, "mob justice".
      - NicoJuicy 8y ago
        I don't agree and didn't downvoted. But it's simply not a good argument though. Eg. Who downvoted me? Let's check out there previous post and downvote all of the comments. Put a HN alert on it, so I can make his life hell... The mods do a good work though, eg. I would like to talk politics, but there is a reason that it's ignored ( correctly so, for quality of the comments) And please, don't let anyone discuss 10 threads why he's downvoted to go off-topic. I would appreciate better replies if it happens, but that's hard to crack.
- lettergram 8y ago
  I clearly see this comment heavily grayed out... So, I'm guessing it'll disappear soon? Also, for the record I still index all comments on HN in near, real-time: https://hnprofile.com/ https://hnprofile.com/ I'd argue some of the most negative comments are not actually down voted. I've had very pleasant comments get down voted as well, and even comments swing from negative votes to positive. I don't think this helps with any of those, or the poor comments you made. It's just karma management.
- kentbrew 8y ago
  How many Hacker News points equals one GitHub star, anyway? Is there a Coinbase-like thing for Internet Points?
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    What if you are not interested in github stars?
- dang 8y ago
  Moderators didn't touch the post or even see it until a little while ago. Whatever happened was determined by user flags and software.
  - ransom1538 8y ago
    Thanks dang. You are correct. I apologize for that incorrect statement. Another moderator (scott) mentioned this to me. Either way it was a good test of a possible (terrible) feature. BUT :) Ironically, I can't edit that comment. PS! Thanks for your hard work!!!
    - dang 8y ago
      No worries! Ah yes, I didn't see that email thread before I posted the above.
lubos 8y ago
Please don't delete your down-voted comments. It is what it is. Own it. For one, it's really annoying when seeing insightful reply but unable to see the full picture because OP has deleted their comment. Not to mention, when you go down that path by curating your posting history, what does it tell about you? Being self-absorbed and depending on validation of others are not exactly healthy attributes. You think you are helping yourself in long run but in reality, you are hurting yourself more.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Agreed. Own your mistakes. And don't judge others by thwir mistakes. Mistakes are a part of life and nothing to be ashamed of. A good idea may be to not show negative points to others but only to the author. That way you know what got downvoted but it's not public.
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    Negative comments != Mistakes. I've been downvoted plenty of times because people disagreed, and I'm sure I was right at least some of those times
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      The downvote button can be many things. One of them is an outlet for people who disagree with a comment but can't (or don't want to) articulate why.
interfixus 8y ago
There's something unseemly about comment deletion as a function of downvotes. Zeitgeist, meet Hacker News.
starbeast 8y ago
There's a bot on reddit that does this. At least I assume it was a bot after looking at its history, as one of the messages it hadn't deleted was it trying to strike up conversation with the politics moderator bot. Either way, the behaviour of deleting anything that goes negative was in itself as annoying as the single line affirmations that seemed to be the limit of its programmed output.
lettergram 8y ago
Having built: https://hnprofile.com https://hnprofile.com Where it indexes and process all comments on HN in real-time, I've done a lot of analysis. I'd argue some of the most negative comments are not actually down voted. I've had very pleasant comments get down voted as well, and even comments swing from negative votes to positive. I don't think this helps with any of those, or the poor comments you made. It's just karma management.
- CPLX 8y ago
  I typed in the word Brooklyn and my name didn't come up so I think your machine doesn't work very well.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Interesting point. Can somebody make a map of how a given search engine hides/shadows topics? What would that look like? What blind spots are we creating for ourselves by this social dependency on search?
  - lettergram 8y ago
    Depends on how much you discuss it. HN is just an example, places it works best are organizations with emails and slack. Basically tens or hundreds of emails a week. The top results for Brooklyn still contains people living or have lived there. Mostly it’s an expectation thing... you expect yourself to be there, that doesn’t mean the system hasn’t identified better people to contact about Brooklyn. perhaps the system identified that other people had greater “expertise” simply because there was a larger data set (or someone displayed more knowledge)
- Balgair 8y ago
  Aside: What does 'mood' mean on your site?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I'd argue some of the most negative comments are not actually down voted. Downvoting isn't intended to mark negative sentiment in the comment. It's intended to mark lack of value.
tablethnuser 8y ago
Use this browser plugin which hides things like comment karma on HN and stop letting these numbers affect your well-being in the first place https://github.com/a13o/disengaged https://github.com/a13o/disengaged
- callesgg 8y ago
  Do one for reddit.
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  MetaFilter has a built-in user preference for this, so that you simply see “has favorites”. It’s really nice.
rectang 8y ago
No one should feel that they need to conform to the HN zeitgeist. No matter what your perspective, the prevailing wisdom here will frequently be objectionable -- and posts which represent a minority opinion, well expressed and truly held, should be a source of pride regardless of how well they play. At the same time, negative reactions may represent an opportunity to hone your rhetoric and consider new angles to better reach your interlocutors.
- resters 8y ago
  Yes. Exactly. I love to refine an approach to the same argument over time, using the points as a guide. This helps the persuasive quality of the argument but also helps refine my own thinking.
- choko 8y ago
  I agree with you in theory, but there are privileges tied to overall karma. Since many people downvote because they disagree, those with less popular opinions have fewer privileges.
3pt14159 8y ago
Sometimes I post something that gets downvoted and I'm wrong. I try to learn from it. And hopefully others who think similarly learn from it too. Sometimes I post something that gets downvoted, but I'm certain I'm still right. I try to learn why I was an ineffectual communicator. Sometimes I try again and it gets downvoted anyway. Sometimes there are things people just don't agree with and that is ok.[0] Trying to whitewash your comment history is like what children do with instagram filters. It's a fake portrayal of what you believe or believed. The only time I delete a comment is when a thread is still active and I had some foundational misunderstanding or a momentary loss of empathy[1] for others. [0] The NSA has this program where they try to predict what will happen in the future. When they first turned on the program they tried to take the consensus view of what experts thought. The program met initial failure. What they came to realize after analyzing the data is that parroting consensus opinions is a low-risk, low-effort mental activity. There's no extra signal. What ended up making the program much more successful was focusing on the opinions that experts had that were outside the consensus view of their field. They weren't more likely to happen, but they were much more likely to happen than they were talked about. Further, because few saw these less-likely events / realities materializing there were less downside mitigating plans and processes. I think of being downvoted online—but still believing what you believe—kinda like that. You know that a good chunk of these comments are wrong, you just don't know which ones. But it is worth it to think through these things for yourself because you're adding real signal to the world. [1] Empathy online isn't something that's come automatically to me. But once I understood how actions cascade outward I came to appreciate how damaging curt or bullying comments are.
typetehcodez 8y ago
No. Don't do this. I don't want the comments here to have a chilling filter like this. We need diversity of opinions even if some of them aren't liked. That is part and parcel of healthy debate. There should be fringe opinions on the sidelines getting attention - that's how we innovate. Tools like this are chilling, sensor ideas that may be controversial but innovative, and stifle healthy dialog.
- jbob2000 8y ago
  Would you share the same thought if you had read my comment history? People post dumb, uninteresting things all the time. I don't want a collection of my dumb thoughts to follow me around.
  - typetehcodez 8y ago
    After reading through some of your older, down-voted comments, I noticed a trend of rebuttals. Both your comments and their replies are valuable points of conversation in the topics. While you may think some are > dumb, uninteresting That is a subjective opinion, and that's okay. If I was searching Hacker News on a topic, I expect to see both sides, or multiple sides, of a topic so I can try and make an informed opinion myself. Are those old posts, "dumb" and "uninteresting" and merely because they are down-voted? I would argue that while some may share this view, I do not, and I find great value in the debate and multiple opinions, and I suspect I'm not alone in this regard. If the down-voted comments are removed, the conversation becomes heavily one-sided and it is confusing to the reader what is being argued. Just because an opinion is down-voted or unpopular, doesn't mean it is wrong. As Max Planck said, "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." The discussion as a whole has more value than the individual contributions, and we loose that discussion with this kind of censorship, and with it a path to new ideas.
    - jbob2000 8y ago
      I really appreciate your reply, thank you. I agree that the posts are valuable when framed with the context of discussion, but when you collect them as "the thoughts of jbob2000", the context changes and they become dangerous to me individually. I think the problem is that my post history is public, actually. If I could pick and choose which of my comments to add to my profile, I would be less inclined to delete my old comments.
Kiro 8y ago
I always get downvoted because I have some opinions that are completely taboo on HN (being pro Google/Facebook - just watch this comment get downvoted). My tactic is to post my opinion and then delete it when I start to get downvotes so this will come in handy. I want to get my message out there but I don't want hurt my karma too much.
- yodon 8y ago
  If your other posts are like this one, it's more likely they are being downvoted for the arrogance and conspiracy-theory presumptions baked into them. There are plenty of pro-google and pro-Facebook posts that get upvoted here, but there are very few arrogant conspiratorial-bias posts that get upvoted, for good reason.
- bassman9000 8y ago
  This is some good 4chan-level trolling.
xvnl 8y ago
The negative comments are often the interesting ones. I would like a script that displays them in the normal black color.
jeletonskelly 8y ago
"When people go through my HN posts I want them to know I only get upvotes. My opinions are so good that everyone always agrees with me. The truth is I delete my negative posts so I can always claim to be cooler than Gilfoyle." -Dinesh from Silicon Valley (he didn't actually say this, deleting your negative posts and comments is such a Dinesh thing to do)
danso 8y ago
Fun little script, though pragmatically, if you are posting so many highly down-voted comments that you need to automate the process of tracking their status, you should probably take a break from HN/Internet discussions :)
pjc50 8y ago
You've reminded me that I wanted to build a tool for finding my highest-voted ever comments and collating them.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  If you build it, please put in on "Show HN" or something. I'd like to run that on my comments.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
AndrewOMartin 8y ago
Part of the fun of HN are the downvoted comments. Karma shouldn't be seen as a score, but rather as a currency you've earned, to be spent on intentionally provocative shitposts.
paulie_a 8y ago
Honestly who cares about votes on comments? It's fake internet points. They don't matter, post what you think is appropriate, don't be a jerk. Go on with your life.
yodon 8y ago
If you have enough negative point comments on HN that you're even considering needing a bot to delete them, you're probably doing HN wrong. I wouldn't say that about other sites, but HN karma drives good conversations way more effectively than most places.
krapp 8y ago
I don't mind deleting comments without replies but as far as I'm concerned, "deleting" a comment that's been replied to is an act of vandalism. I don't know why HN allows that, but given that they do, it should be a bannable offense.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I don't know why HN allows that It doesn't seem to intend to, the delete link goes away when there are replies. > but given that they do, it should be a bannable offense. If an action should never be allowed, then it should be systematically prevented (since it can be with no other harm), not punished after the fact.
  - krapp 8y ago
    In this case I mean "editing by clearing all of the content out of a comment" as deletion, or replacing it with a period, or something similar. I don't know if you can literally delete after being replied to but I have seen destructive edits happening more frequently here.

27 points by ransom1538 8y ago

Fitter, Happier. I'm guessing this is tongue-in-cheek, or cleverly highlighting an actually important issue. And if you're considering replying to the thread at all, you're likely experiencing it to some extent - is one part of your mind considering the potential 'HN points' implications of your post? I'm all for a late-night grace period where you can delete possibly drunk posts from the night before, or heat-of-the-moment angry posts, the following morning. But the danger is that 'reputation points' act as a self-censorship and muting mechanism, and sometimes the truth is simply going to be unpopular. Perhaps even the source shouldn't be able to unsay something just because it proves unpopular.

ransom1538 8y ago

This script will automatically remove comments you made that go under 1 point. * This was just to keep me typing ruby for a few hours. However, this post made it to the top 3 posts, then was removed from the top page by the moderators. It is demoralizing to have it 'hidden' for no specified reason silently.

NicoJuicy 8y ago
I had some "bad comments", but they shouldn't be deleted. Everyone had their opinion, you don't have to follow the group if you have a different one. Ps. You should have the dignity to not do it while your drunk though :p
- mikekchar 8y ago
  I think it's fair if you say something that you now find embarrassing to remove it. Lesson learned and all that. If you need a script to find all the embarrassing posts, then... you might want to consider that the script is not really helping you solve the real problem ;-) It might be better to start again.
- nikk1 8y ago
  We all have bad opinions sometimes. I look back at my Reddit comment history (an account that I've had for about 10 years) and I cringe at some of the stuff that I've said before. Keeping the cringey stuff around reminds me how I've changed over time. Although if it wasn't anonymous, I would probably clean it up. But since nobody knows who I am, it doesn't matter :P
  - simonh 8y ago
    I've always used an online identifier that's recognizably me. I find it keeps me grounded, but in the current environment with companies checking social media before hiring I understand people wanting to use anonymous IDs. Anyone can have a lapse.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  > Everyone had their opinion, you don't have to follow the group if you have a different one. I feel like discussions on this site started going downhill when PG decided "votes == agreement" was acceptable. Expressing a well-structured and well-researched opinion should not engender downvotes, while empty sound bites should. Sadly, what actually happens now depends on which side of the mob the post falls.
  - resters 8y ago
    Very true. An upvote should mean “this is well put” or “this is interesting” not “go team”.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Transparency is the big thing here. And yet, HN is one big opaque pile of SV. Scores? Nah we keep them secret from others. Who downvoted/silenced someone? We don't discuss that. Unpopular opinion, but intellectually interesting? Someone (mods or others) silence and rate limit you. Your opinion does not matter. Mods threaten you for "ideological rants"... Its because it was not in the interests of SV/HN. How dare you discuss 'unapproved topics'. We have better solutions right now. But at this moment, we have no clue what these scores actually are- its information assymetry at its worst. Reversing public scores would be a start. Publishing who up/downvoted would be another. Showing flagged and killed would be a further step in the right direction of transparency. And so would also getting rid of hellbanning. But, we end up with mob justice, overseen by a trite dictatorship.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      Publishing voters is a move towards, not away from, "mob justice".
    - NicoJuicy 8y ago
      I don't agree and didn't downvoted. But it's simply not a good argument though. Eg. Who downvoted me? Let's check out there previous post and downvote all of the comments. Put a HN alert on it, so I can make his life hell... The mods do a good work though, eg. I would like to talk politics, but there is a reason that it's ignored ( correctly so, for quality of the comments) And please, don't let anyone discuss 10 threads why he's downvoted to go off-topic. I would appreciate better replies if it happens, but that's hard to crack.
lettergram 8y ago
I clearly see this comment heavily grayed out... So, I'm guessing it'll disappear soon? Also, for the record I still index all comments on HN in near, real-time: https://hnprofile.com/ https://hnprofile.com/ I'd argue some of the most negative comments are not actually down voted. I've had very pleasant comments get down voted as well, and even comments swing from negative votes to positive. I don't think this helps with any of those, or the poor comments you made. It's just karma management.
kentbrew 8y ago
How many Hacker News points equals one GitHub star, anyway? Is there a Coinbase-like thing for Internet Points?
- paulie_a 8y ago
  What if you are not interested in github stars?
dang 8y ago
Moderators didn't touch the post or even see it until a little while ago. Whatever happened was determined by user flags and software.
- ransom1538 8y ago
  Thanks dang. You are correct. I apologize for that incorrect statement. Another moderator (scott) mentioned this to me. Either way it was a good test of a possible (terrible) feature. BUT :) Ironically, I can't edit that comment. PS! Thanks for your hard work!!!
  - dang 8y ago
    No worries! Ah yes, I didn't see that email thread before I posted the above.

lubos 8y ago

Please don't delete your down-voted comments. It is what it is. Own it. For one, it's really annoying when seeing insightful reply but unable to see the full picture because OP has deleted their comment. Not to mention, when you go down that path by curating your posting history, what does it tell about you? Being self-absorbed and depending on validation of others are not exactly healthy attributes. You think you are helping yourself in long run but in reality, you are hurting yourself more.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
maxxxxx 8y ago
Agreed. Own your mistakes. And don't judge others by thwir mistakes. Mistakes are a part of life and nothing to be ashamed of. A good idea may be to not show negative points to others but only to the author. That way you know what got downvoted but it's not public.
- ikeboy 8y ago
  Negative comments != Mistakes. I've been downvoted plenty of times because people disagreed, and I'm sure I was right at least some of those times
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    The downvote button can be many things. One of them is an outlet for people who disagree with a comment but can't (or don't want to) articulate why.

interfixus 8y ago

There's something unseemly about comment deletion as a function of downvotes. Zeitgeist, meet Hacker News.

starbeast 8y ago

There's a bot on reddit that does this. At least I assume it was a bot after looking at its history, as one of the messages it hadn't deleted was it trying to strike up conversation with the politics moderator bot. Either way, the behaviour of deleting anything that goes negative was in itself as annoying as the single line affirmations that seemed to be the limit of its programmed output.

lettergram 8y ago

Having built: https://hnprofile.com https://hnprofile.com Where it indexes and process all comments on HN in real-time, I've done a lot of analysis. I'd argue some of the most negative comments are not actually down voted. I've had very pleasant comments get down voted as well, and even comments swing from negative votes to positive. I don't think this helps with any of those, or the poor comments you made. It's just karma management.

CPLX 8y ago
I typed in the word Brooklyn and my name didn't come up so I think your machine doesn't work very well.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Interesting point. Can somebody make a map of how a given search engine hides/shadows topics? What would that look like? What blind spots are we creating for ourselves by this social dependency on search?
- lettergram 8y ago
  Depends on how much you discuss it. HN is just an example, places it works best are organizations with emails and slack. Basically tens or hundreds of emails a week. The top results for Brooklyn still contains people living or have lived there. Mostly it’s an expectation thing... you expect yourself to be there, that doesn’t mean the system hasn’t identified better people to contact about Brooklyn. perhaps the system identified that other people had greater “expertise” simply because there was a larger data set (or someone displayed more knowledge)
Balgair 8y ago
Aside: What does 'mood' mean on your site?
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I'd argue some of the most negative comments are not actually down voted. Downvoting isn't intended to mark negative sentiment in the comment. It's intended to mark lack of value.

tablethnuser 8y ago

Use this browser plugin which hides things like comment karma on HN and stop letting these numbers affect your well-being in the first place https://github.com/a13o/disengaged https://github.com/a13o/disengaged

callesgg 8y ago
Do one for reddit.
floatingatoll 8y ago
MetaFilter has a built-in user preference for this, so that you simply see “has favorites”. It’s really nice.

rectang 8y ago

No one should feel that they need to conform to the HN zeitgeist. No matter what your perspective, the prevailing wisdom here will frequently be objectionable -- and posts which represent a minority opinion, well expressed and truly held, should be a source of pride regardless of how well they play. At the same time, negative reactions may represent an opportunity to hone your rhetoric and consider new angles to better reach your interlocutors.

resters 8y ago
Yes. Exactly. I love to refine an approach to the same argument over time, using the points as a guide. This helps the persuasive quality of the argument but also helps refine my own thinking.
choko 8y ago
I agree with you in theory, but there are privileges tied to overall karma. Since many people downvote because they disagree, those with less popular opinions have fewer privileges.

3pt14159 8y ago

Sometimes I post something that gets downvoted and I'm wrong. I try to learn from it. And hopefully others who think similarly learn from it too. Sometimes I post something that gets downvoted, but I'm certain I'm still right. I try to learn why I was an ineffectual communicator. Sometimes I try again and it gets downvoted anyway. Sometimes there are things people just don't agree with and that is ok.[0] Trying to whitewash your comment history is like what children do with instagram filters. It's a fake portrayal of what you believe or believed. The only time I delete a comment is when a thread is still active and I had some foundational misunderstanding or a momentary loss of empathy[1] for others. [0] The NSA has this program where they try to predict what will happen in the future. When they first turned on the program they tried to take the consensus view of what experts thought. The program met initial failure. What they came to realize after analyzing the data is that parroting consensus opinions is a low-risk, low-effort mental activity. There's no extra signal. What ended up making the program much more successful was focusing on the opinions that experts had that were outside the consensus view of their field. They weren't more likely to happen, but they were much more likely to happen than they were talked about. Further, because few saw these less-likely events / realities materializing there were less downside mitigating plans and processes. I think of being downvoted online—but still believing what you believe—kinda like that. You know that a good chunk of these comments are wrong, you just don't know which ones. But it is worth it to think through these things for yourself because you're adding real signal to the world. [1] Empathy online isn't something that's come automatically to me. But once I understood how actions cascade outward I came to appreciate how damaging curt or bullying comments are.

typetehcodez 8y ago

No. Don't do this. I don't want the comments here to have a chilling filter like this. We need diversity of opinions even if some of them aren't liked. That is part and parcel of healthy debate. There should be fringe opinions on the sidelines getting attention - that's how we innovate. Tools like this are chilling, sensor ideas that may be controversial but innovative, and stifle healthy dialog.

jbob2000 8y ago
Would you share the same thought if you had read my comment history? People post dumb, uninteresting things all the time. I don't want a collection of my dumb thoughts to follow me around.
- typetehcodez 8y ago
  After reading through some of your older, down-voted comments, I noticed a trend of rebuttals. Both your comments and their replies are valuable points of conversation in the topics. While you may think some are > dumb, uninteresting That is a subjective opinion, and that's okay. If I was searching Hacker News on a topic, I expect to see both sides, or multiple sides, of a topic so I can try and make an informed opinion myself. Are those old posts, "dumb" and "uninteresting" and merely because they are down-voted? I would argue that while some may share this view, I do not, and I find great value in the debate and multiple opinions, and I suspect I'm not alone in this regard. If the down-voted comments are removed, the conversation becomes heavily one-sided and it is confusing to the reader what is being argued. Just because an opinion is down-voted or unpopular, doesn't mean it is wrong. As Max Planck said, "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." The discussion as a whole has more value than the individual contributions, and we loose that discussion with this kind of censorship, and with it a path to new ideas.
  - jbob2000 8y ago
    I really appreciate your reply, thank you. I agree that the posts are valuable when framed with the context of discussion, but when you collect them as "the thoughts of jbob2000", the context changes and they become dangerous to me individually. I think the problem is that my post history is public, actually. If I could pick and choose which of my comments to add to my profile, I would be less inclined to delete my old comments.

Kiro 8y ago

I always get downvoted because I have some opinions that are completely taboo on HN (being pro Google/Facebook - just watch this comment get downvoted). My tactic is to post my opinion and then delete it when I start to get downvotes so this will come in handy. I want to get my message out there but I don't want hurt my karma too much.

yodon 8y ago
If your other posts are like this one, it's more likely they are being downvoted for the arrogance and conspiracy-theory presumptions baked into them. There are plenty of pro-google and pro-Facebook posts that get upvoted here, but there are very few arrogant conspiratorial-bias posts that get upvoted, for good reason.
bassman9000 8y ago
This is some good 4chan-level trolling.

xvnl 8y ago

The negative comments are often the interesting ones. I would like a script that displays them in the normal black color.

jeletonskelly 8y ago

"When people go through my HN posts I want them to know I only get upvotes. My opinions are so good that everyone always agrees with me. The truth is I delete my negative posts so I can always claim to be cooler than Gilfoyle." -Dinesh from Silicon Valley (he didn't actually say this, deleting your negative posts and comments is such a Dinesh thing to do)

danso 8y ago

Fun little script, though pragmatically, if you are posting so many highly down-voted comments that you need to automate the process of tracking their status, you should probably take a break from HN/Internet discussions :)

pjc50 8y ago

You've reminded me that I wanted to build a tool for finding my highest-voted ever comments and collating them.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
If you build it, please put in on "Show HN" or something. I'd like to run that on my comments.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

AndrewOMartin 8y ago

Part of the fun of HN are the downvoted comments. Karma shouldn't be seen as a score, but rather as a currency you've earned, to be spent on intentionally provocative shitposts.

paulie_a 8y ago

Honestly who cares about votes on comments? It's fake internet points. They don't matter, post what you think is appropriate, don't be a jerk. Go on with your life.

yodon 8y ago

If you have enough negative point comments on HN that you're even considering needing a bot to delete them, you're probably doing HN wrong. I wouldn't say that about other sites, but HN karma drives good conversations way more effectively than most places.

krapp 8y ago

I don't mind deleting comments without replies but as far as I'm concerned, "deleting" a comment that's been replied to is an act of vandalism. I don't know why HN allows that, but given that they do, it should be a bannable offense.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> I don't know why HN allows that It doesn't seem to intend to, the delete link goes away when there are replies. > but given that they do, it should be a bannable offense. If an action should never be allowed, then it should be systematically prevented (since it can be with no other harm), not punished after the fact.
- krapp 8y ago
  In this case I mean "editing by clearing all of the content out of a comment" as deletion, or replacing it with a period, or something similar. I don't know if you can literally delete after being replied to but I have seen destructive edits happening more frequently here.