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Worth considering that this isn't simply mechanical: to make those posts fade away requires humans clicking the downvote button. Which requires some kind of cul
by wool_gather 7y ago
Worth considering that this isn't simply mechanical: to make those posts fade away requires humans clicking the downvote button. Which requires some kind of culture that includes clicking the button on "bad" posts, for whatever the definition of "bad" is. If there were downvoting on say, YouTube, I'm not sure that it would produce the same results that it does on HN.
- blululu 7y agoHacker News is indeed a special place on the internet and it would probably be difficult to reproduce its style of discussion. That being said I think it is worth considering why HN has succeeded and to what extent is this a function of the presentation algorithm (upvotes/downvotes)? It is worth remembering that the visible part of an internet community is a small part of the total possible community. Following the classic 90-9-1 rule there are a lot more people who could participate than people who do participate. This means that the visible face of an online community has a lot of room to change.