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Why am I being down voted for a question? Sorry I am old and new to Hacker News but I have a Phd. Am I doing something wrong?
by podgaj 7y ago
Why am I being down voted for a question?
Sorry I am old and new to Hacker News but I have a Phd. Am I doing something wrong?
- nitrogen 7y agoWelcome to HN! I'm not an expert on the subject, nor am I anybody important here, but give it time. Sometimes downvotes are accidental, sometimes it takes a while for a refutation to make it clear what was wrong, sometimes you just never find out. Best to just take it in stride as something random until more information is available.
- podgaj 7y agoThanks!
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoYou can add a blurb about your credentials to help with down votes. For example, lead with "I have a PhD in <subject>" when your creds are applicable to the case you're trying to make. Also, votes are just fake internet points. No need to worry about them too much :)
- w3mmpp 7y agoYou're most likely penalized for some kind of wrongthink, don't worry about it. Upvoted.
- j45 7y agoThere is a lot more drive by downvoting than there used to be. It takes an open mind to openly entertain a viewpoint that isn’t ones own. Also takes an open mind to say just because I don’t understand/agree with something, it doesn’t mean there can’t be understanding in it.
- podgaj 7y agoI would suggest that any down or up votes must be accompanied with a reason and reply then, yes? Or maybe just get rid of the voting and let the comments speak for themselves.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoDrive-by downvoting of quality or interesting comments usually are offset by upvotes in any marginally popular post. Don't worry about it. Points here mean much less than they do on sites like Stack Overflow and Reddit.
- j45 7y agoNot worried at all .. OP had lamented. In terms of the type of behaviour that should be encouraged on YC.. celebrating a diversity of understanding, belief and practice should be OK in a community of individuals wanting to build things that are different. OP had reflected out loud :)
- j45 7y agoThat would be interesting. Maybe also limiting the number of downvotes per period.
- malandrew 7y agoThe drive by downvoting is out of control. I wish they changed it from a threshold of 500 to a threshold of 500 and you’re only allowed to downvote accounts that came after you until you get to like 2000 points or something like that. Basically we need a mechanism to mitigate the impact of eternal September. There are too many new people with downvote ability changing the culture here for the worse. What’s insane is the number of times I see people downvoted for simply asking for sources/citations/references/ evidence/etc.
- DanBC 7y agoI agree that downvoting feels like it's got a lot worse. People claim that pg said it's not a problem. But he has said that it needed to be addressed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403716 The problem isn't just downvoting, it's also that not enough people are upvoting reasonable-but-gray comments.
- dodgyb 7y agopodgaj - have you checked out https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/? It a well moderated discussion thread focused solely on the science. You will find it a little saner there.