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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 p

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• 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.
      • choko 8y ago
        The upvote/downvote system should be to promote interesting (and factually accurate) discussion and to demote factually incorrect or low effort comments. Downvoting well articulated opinions with which you disagree contributes to the echo chamber and groupthink effects and makes HN boring. There are many other popular websites you can visit if you want validation on your opinions.
      • dingaling 8y ago
        And your down-voted comment is a perfect example. The down-arrow is de facto used to express disagreement, you stated this and someone disagreed and down-voted you. QED.
        • bunderbunder 8y ago
          I wouldn't be at all surprised if people were just downvoting the comment as a joke.
  • resters 8y ago
    A comment being down voted doesn’t constitute a mistake, usually it’s a case where someone disagrees but lacks the verbal fluency to express why.
  • rusk 8y ago
    Who said it's mistakes? Sometimes you can just be making a wholly correct remark that goes against the grain. If you should be forced to "own" your downvotes, then downvoters should be forced to "own" them too by accompanying their downvote with an explanation.
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      "If you should be forced to "own" your downvotes, then downvoters should be forced to "own" them too by accompanying their downvote with an explanation. " Maybe the whole voting thing should be abandoned and comments should stand on their own. What's the benefit of karma?
      • rusk 8y ago
        Don't get me wrong. Voting and Karma do have value. It's not a perfect system though.
      • crankylinuxuser 8y ago
        > What's the benefit of karma? Probable answer: so a venture capitalist firm that runs this place can: 1. Get a feel of what's coming 'in' and climbing in popularity. 2. To control the narrative by upvoting and/or downvoting submitters to control where the news goes. Transparency would indeed solve this. But it would also end those asymmetric benefits of controlling your own news agency/site.
      • reitanqild 8y ago
        On lobsters comment scores are public, downvotes has to specify a reason and moderation is public. Programming topics are probably better at lobsters. (And almost all other topics are off topic.)
      • krapp 8y ago
        I don't know about the benefit of karma, but the purpose of karma is to enforce and reward conformity to guidelines and culture through operant conditioning, with the intended net effect being only high-quality comments (and commenters) wind up on top, and are engaged with, while low quality comments (and commenters) are left alone at the bottom, unreadable, to discourage both commenters and posters. This is in line with HN's culture of aggressive curation and "quality over quantity," though, so I don't see it changing or going away.
  • bdz 8y ago
    Disagree. Negative comments are not mistakes. Maybe you are just going against the hivemind. HN is an echochamber like every other social media platform. It does a good job to negate the side effects but you can still be downvoted to hell just because you are an outsider.
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  • gdy 8y ago
    Nowadays the cost of a mistake can be disproportionally big.
• danharaj 8y ago
  My favorite comments are those that swing wildly around 0. And I think it's not a big deal if people delete any of their comments. It's internet threads.
  • resters 8y ago
    Exactly. That is the sign of a great comment.
  • jlawson 8y ago
    My favorite is: upvoted, with tons of responses, and flagged to death. At this point being flagged is mostly an indication of speaking outside the window of permitted opinions on HN, which makes the comments actually more interesting.
    • AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      I disagree with "mostly". To me, it seems that the majority of flagged comments are attacks on a person or group, or completely off-topic BS. (And if you're going to argue that attacks are "speaking outside the window of permitted opinions on HN", well, yes, they are, and for very good reason.)
      • jlawson 8y ago
        The issue is that it's often possible to stretch the category "attacks" to encompass to useful arguments, if you're motivated to do so. This becomes a mechanism to shut down discussion, ultimately weakening the conversation, leading to groupthink conclusions and boring echo chambers. E.g. Imagine someone posts (in a context where it's on-topic), "Research [0] has shown that Trump supporters have significantly greater racism than Trump resisters." We can easily see how that statement can be interpreted as an "attack on a group". A pro-Trump forum may flag it to death. Yet assuming there is a good-faith effort to link valid science there, it's also an on-topic scientific result that advances discussion. Rational, valid, discussion-advancing points can also be easily interpreted as "attacks on a group". However, just because something pattern matches as an "attack on a group", one should not discount it (assuming one values rational discussion itself, which I do). Because it may be a necessary part of the discussion. -- Appendix: (Of course I don't think a statement about Trump supporters would get flagged here, not because of the form of the statement but because of who is being discussed. Imagine the statement is changed to any of a million ideas or science papers which step outside the very narrow corridor of acceptable beliefs in the San Francisco morality. I use the Trump supporter example to give some perspective of how it might feel to be on the side who thinks a statement is valuable and on-topic, but be slagged by the local majority as making an "attack". And there really is no other way to get those facts into the discussion; it's not a matter of wording or good faith, it's the notion that some facts and ideas are simply not allowed.)
• specialp 8y ago
  Often times it is not even a mistake. I have been downvoted before with an on topic valid point because some people might not have agreed. I don't mind that, someone can read it and judge for themselves. I personally only downvote comments that are factually incorrect, rude, or off topic. If someone does post something that is wrong they can reply and say hey sorry about that I got that wrong. Deleting posts ruins all context.
  • kreetx 8y ago
    If someone appears to be unduely downvoted I just go and upvote plus add a comment to bring it back up again. And by unduely I mean when I haven't the slightest idea why the downvote is for. I.e I don't upvote those where someone voiced his/her opinion by downvoting -- regardless where I myself stand on the issue.
    • iamben 8y ago
      Same. One of the best things about HN is the discussion. When others downvote because they disagree, people end up afraid to share an unpopular opinion.
      • rusk 8y ago
        Not only that, but you'll often find that some potentially valuable counterpoints to the discussion get downvoted to the bottom where they can't be read. Sometimes greyed out. Sometimes flagged. Such comments are effectively buried anyway so may as well delete ...
        • dragonwriter 8y ago
          > but you'll often find that some potentially valuable counterpoints to the discussion get downvoted to the bottom where they can't be read Yes, they can. Even if they are dead, if the reader chooses to see dead comments.
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• ataturk 8y ago
  Exactly--I don't care if people downvote me because I understand a lot of my opinions are unpopular. But I think as a marketplace of ideas, the Internet exists to help open minds and tear down foregone conclusions. I like to think I am helping that process along. I understand that young people, especially those brought up by disgusting leftist indoctrination, may be reviled at many of my ideas. In my defense, I've lived long enough to know how those policies are ultimately destructive (see: Detroit) and have been paying taxes and listening to mountains of bullshit excuses from politicians for decades now, so I have experience with the passel of nonsense that serves as public discourse these days. I'm sure they'll perfect their idiotic ideas any day now, though. Open your minds, dare to live free(r) and stop being a pussy about everything! What does concern me is the rampant censorship these days, though. It's one thing to downvote, quite another to delete and pretend nobody has a different viewpoint than your fragile, nonsensical one.
  • VoiceOfWisdom 8y ago
    I don't know if you realize this, but your account is shadow banned. This is one of your few comments that is viewable without having show dead on.
• NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Quite. I've never cared much about internet points. Really, only the moderators should for those accounts that get everything downvoted. I'm more interested in the patterns I don't see beforehand. The times something I expect to be controversial turns out to be heavily upvoted. Or when USA and EU differ so it's heavily voted one way in EU peak hours and the other in US hours. The simple and obvious comment where I turn out to be wildly misinformed. :)
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• hycaria 8y ago
  I thought the same, and despised the behavior. But too many ill-intentioned people crawl through user histories for various reasons. I ended up deleting my history on reddit, downvoted or upvoted, so I do not appear as a person and comments have no context. You could create new accounts regularily too for the same purpose, but there are often posting limits.
  • apatters 8y ago
    Eternal comments might actually be a pretty bad design pattern. Humans forget things that other humans say in face to face conversations. By conversing naturally with each other over a casual electronic medium, our brains might be tricked into believing they're in a similar context, when in reality they're in a context where one unrecoverable slip of the fingers could cost them their job, earn them infamy for the rest of their lives, etc. See also the right to be forgotten. The immutability of comments also imposes a chilling effect on controversial or unconventional speech (if it doesn't go down well with the masses, you'll be paying for it forever). When they can't be deleted, immutable electronic comments eventually become more important than face to face conversations simply because most of the latter get forgotten. I'd argue isn't a trend we want to encourage (unless you own a forum and want to feed Googlebot and slap ads on more things, of course).
• cabaalis 8y ago
  Unrelated but am I the only one annoyed by "reply hoverers?" Unless you are asked a question and are responding, make your point and allow others to reinforce it. No need to have an answer for everything.
  • mannykannot 8y ago
    If a reply contains a novel argument or claim, it seems just as reasonable for it to be responded to as it was for the original points.
• mannykannot 8y ago
  On account of the fade-out, the practice of downvoting to express disagreement, especially without an accompanying response, has a similar effect: unpopular ideas may disappear, regardless of how they are expressed.
• TheChaplain 8y ago
  > Not to mention, when you go down that path by curating your posting history, what does it tell about you? Posting unpopular opinions and getting minus-voted on a forum like HN could have an impact on your career path. Anyone smart enough would curate.
  • AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    My posting history here should reveal that I'm a Christian, I'm married, I have kids, I'll disagree with people on either side when I think they're wrong, and occasionally I can be a bit of a jerk. Oh, and I don't get FP. If any of that has an impact on my career path, well, if they're going to go through my HN posts hard enough to find some reason to not hire me, it's probably a place I don't want to work anyway.
  • krapp 8y ago
    I suspect the vast majority of downvoted comments on HN are not so controversial that they would significantly affect anyone's employability. If you're self-aware enough to want to 'curate' your identity here for potential employers, you should already have an alt account for your controversial statements.
• dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Not to mention, when you go down that path by curating your posting history, what does it tell about you? I wouldn't personally do it automatically (for one think, going negative can be a transitory state), but reviewing downvoted posts and deleting them if, on review, you think they don't really add value says that you respect the community. > Being self-absorbed and depending on validation of others are not exactly healthy attributes Taking community feedback seriously is the opposite of being self-absorbed.