4 ms·

A small things: while I'm not much interest in "voting" and "gamification" (and they are NOT part of hacker culture) when people upvote/downvote a post WHY THE

by xte 8y ago

A small things: while I'm not much interest in "voting" and "gamification" (and they are NOT part of hacker culture) when people upvote/downvote a post WHY THE HELL they do not COMMENT to explain their reasoning? I see this trend few times here and it's quietly interesting: one can say "hey you state a false thing" or "I disagree because of this and that". That's help us all to understand something, expand even if a little bit our knowledge, form an opinion with stronger roots/more data etc. Otherwise it's seems to be far more like a censorship mechanism disguised by "a way to promote more interesting contents". Think a bit about that, we miss usenet, many do not even use mailing lists at all, to few have time and resources to keep up personal websites, it's hard without a common mean of communication to reach personal websites... As a result even platforms like HN can potentially drive "the community" (in the most ample sense) to a certain direction desired not by us but by the platform holder itself or someone who abuse the platform "gamified" mechanism.

michaelmrose 8y ago
Downvote for disagree is a poor strategy. For example I didn't downvote you. Downvotes are more useful for low quality posts that don't contribute. If something is a distraction or disruption or just plain not useful sometimes engaging would just magnify the degree of disruption or time wasting and its easier to downvote and move on. In fact something that is worth engaging on is almost always not worthy of downvoting. In fact if you downvote the post people are less likely to read YOUR post and if it comes to pass you are correct you will have missed out on the opportunity to inform readers who now wont read the parent post you are replying to or yours. In the end people are likely to downvote because its easier to click a little arrow than write something. I wonder if one could weigh more heavily those posts which are simultaneously downvoted and not replied to.
- xte 8y ago
  IMO in today's community (too big and less and less acculturated in any sense than the past) we need personal websites that collect peoples public ideas and a discussion platform like usenet. On usenet there is a continuous stream of contents, valuable one may then end-up in some personal sites and being cited in future posts so newcomers can still discover it when needed/desired while not much valuable one slowly or quickly be forgotten in ngs history's... Gamification while have some "attraction" for many does not really guarantee that valuable contents remain available and tend to push far more extreme/non valuable contents fading into oblivion most interest stuff that might be "elitist" by nature... This, of course, while NOT counting all possible abuse in both "artificial downvote" and pushing extra contents to "censor by oblivion" unwanted contents. Splitting platforms like StackExchange or HN vs Facebook might help and might reduce abuses but IMO it's certainly not an answer...

by xte 8y ago

michaelmrose 8y ago

Downvote for disagree is a poor strategy. For example I didn't downvote you. Downvotes are more useful for low quality posts that don't contribute. If something is a distraction or disruption or just plain not useful sometimes engaging would just magnify the degree of disruption or time wasting and its easier to downvote and move on. In fact something that is worth engaging on is almost always not worthy of downvoting. In fact if you downvote the post people are less likely to read YOUR post and if it comes to pass you are correct you will have missed out on the opportunity to inform readers who now wont read the parent post you are replying to or yours. In the end people are likely to downvote because its easier to click a little arrow than write something. I wonder if one could weigh more heavily those posts which are simultaneously downvoted and not replied to.

xte 8y ago
IMO in today's community (too big and less and less acculturated in any sense than the past) we need personal websites that collect peoples public ideas and a discussion platform like usenet. On usenet there is a continuous stream of contents, valuable one may then end-up in some personal sites and being cited in future posts so newcomers can still discover it when needed/desired while not much valuable one slowly or quickly be forgotten in ngs history's... Gamification while have some "attraction" for many does not really guarantee that valuable contents remain available and tend to push far more extreme/non valuable contents fading into oblivion most interest stuff that might be "elitist" by nature... This, of course, while NOT counting all possible abuse in both "artificial downvote" and pushing extra contents to "censor by oblivion" unwanted contents. Splitting platforms like StackExchange or HN vs Facebook might help and might reduce abuses but IMO it's certainly not an answer...