4 ms·

You have the power.

by eganist 7y ago

You have the power.

tpmx 7y ago
This isn't a complaint.
- cambalache 7y ago
  This happens all the time here and to be honest, HN is one of the best sites regarding censorship. It is pretty scary how in the last 5 or so years the policing of online discourse has ramped up and it is accelerating. I know, I know if you don't like it, spin up your own mastodon instance. If you don't want to seat back on the bus, create your own bus service and so on.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  The voting system on HN is a joke. To some degree it does work for an audience of intellectuals, but it wouldn't work at all with a general audience. Everyone just downvotes what offends their sensibilities, but because messages get greyed out, moved down the page, and eventually hidden with relatively few downvotes, they're effectively saying "nobody should hear your opinion", no matter how civil your language. Just take the downvotes as a badge of pride. I expect this very comment to get downvoted and those same voters won't even bother to tell me why I'm wrong.
  - jimktrains2 7y ago
    I've always felt that as a general rule across all platforms, downvotes should be required to come with a hand typed, not selected from a drop-down, comment of at least 50 characters. Sure, I could just hold down 'r' and be done with it, but I feel like the mods could easily clean that up.
    - dang 7y ago
      Comments about downvotes are among the lowest-quality comments that get posted here. Requiring more of them would be a big mistake. If a user has something meaningful to say about how they disagree with another comment, they already can—and do—reply. If they don't have anything substantial to say, and downvoting prevents them from saying it, that's a feature not a bug. It's tempting to imagine that placing hurdles in front of users could solve the quality problem, but IMO that's a fantasy. There are no easy ways to do that and no technical fixes for it.
      - at_a_remove 7y ago
        I am reading the comment as more of a "reasons must be explained to the moderators for a downvote," without those reasons being posted to the thread proper.
        dang 7y ago
        HN users would not welcome having to explain themselves to moderators in that way, and we have no spare capacity to read them anyhow.
        jimktrains2 7y ago
        I meant for the comments to be public. If someone is wrong, misguided, or simply thinks differently than you do, it's better for the group as a whole to have a discussion about that than it is to censor someone.
      - jimktrains2 7y ago
        > If they don't have anything substantial to say, and downvoting prevents them from saying it, that's a feature not a bug. See, this is the problem. I'd many of the downvoted posts I see are simply contrarian, not something insubstantial.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Complaining about how people vote is explicitly against the Hacker News guidelines. That’s likely why people downvote comments that are only complaining about downvotes.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

You have the power.

tpmx 7y ago

This isn't a complaint.

cambalache 7y ago
This happens all the time here and to be honest, HN is one of the best sites regarding censorship. It is pretty scary how in the last 5 or so years the policing of online discourse has ramped up and it is accelerating. I know, I know if you don't like it, spin up your own mastodon instance. If you don't want to seat back on the bus, create your own bus service and so on.
ravenstine 7y ago
The voting system on HN is a joke. To some degree it does work for an audience of intellectuals, but it wouldn't work at all with a general audience. Everyone just downvotes what offends their sensibilities, but because messages get greyed out, moved down the page, and eventually hidden with relatively few downvotes, they're effectively saying "nobody should hear your opinion", no matter how civil your language. Just take the downvotes as a badge of pride. I expect this very comment to get downvoted and those same voters won't even bother to tell me why I'm wrong.
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  I've always felt that as a general rule across all platforms, downvotes should be required to come with a hand typed, not selected from a drop-down, comment of at least 50 characters. Sure, I could just hold down 'r' and be done with it, but I feel like the mods could easily clean that up.
  - dang 7y ago
    Comments about downvotes are among the lowest-quality comments that get posted here. Requiring more of them would be a big mistake. If a user has something meaningful to say about how they disagree with another comment, they already can—and do—reply. If they don't have anything substantial to say, and downvoting prevents them from saying it, that's a feature not a bug. It's tempting to imagine that placing hurdles in front of users could solve the quality problem, but IMO that's a fantasy. There are no easy ways to do that and no technical fixes for it.
    - at_a_remove 7y ago
      I am reading the comment as more of a "reasons must be explained to the moderators for a downvote," without those reasons being posted to the thread proper.
      - dang 7y ago
        HN users would not welcome having to explain themselves to moderators in that way, and we have no spare capacity to read them anyhow.
      - jimktrains2 7y ago
        I meant for the comments to be public. If someone is wrong, misguided, or simply thinks differently than you do, it's better for the group as a whole to have a discussion about that than it is to censor someone.
    - jimktrains2 7y ago
      > If they don't have anything substantial to say, and downvoting prevents them from saying it, that's a feature not a bug. See, this is the problem. I'd many of the downvoted posts I see are simply contrarian, not something insubstantial.
- baddox 7y ago
  Complaining about how people vote is explicitly against the Hacker News guidelines. That’s likely why people downvote comments that are only complaining about downvotes.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]