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> E.g. Stackoverflow would be much less useful if I couldn't rely on "wisdom of the crowd" to rank the various answers on my behalf. Usually, the best answers a
by wott 6y ago
> E.g. Stackoverflow would be much less useful if I couldn't rely on "wisdom of the crowd" to rank the various answers on my behalf. Usually, the best answers are at the top and the worst buggy answers are at the bottom.
It works rather well for StackOverflow because comments are not supposed to be a free-form discussion but only technical answers. (I guess we can agree that it is pretty respected.)
> I lived through the old computer discussion forums without scores such as USENET, Compuserve, etc, and the lack of ranking wasted more of my reading time than Reddit/HN.
That's not my feeling. I don't think ranking is working well on this kind of free-form discussion forums.
Here on HN, I see more and more comments which, despite simply stating facts or being personal testimony, are greyed out. I cannot even figure out a possible reason (I am not looking for a reason I would agree with, just any kind of reason, of mechanics): they are not opinionated in a way or another, they are not part of a heated sub-thread, nothing. I just don't understand what goes on.
As far as I am concerned, I for example avoid like plague any post or thread that talks about C. I've been a C programmer for 25 years this year, and I know that if I post something about C, it will get downvoted. Opinionated, non-opinionated, based on my decades of personal experience or not, it will be downvoted (and when we say 'it' gets downvoted, of course truth is it feels like 'I' get downvoted). So I try to remember not to comment on those threads or even better: not to open them and let for example the RESF or people who only used C in their introductory programming course at the university repeat their mantra on how dangerous it is, for the 2000th time of the year, in peace.
If I post something semi-factual, semi-opinionated, I have to pray that it fits with the mood of the day of the readers of the day of the thread. The same comment could end up positive one day, negative another day depending on the crowd that has been attracted by the post title.
Anyway, I know I can always make a joke to get back a few upvotes ("oh no, we are not Reddit", well yes we mostly are, we just dress a bit better when we come over here), after getting a few downvotes for a mostly factual statement :-) If I really wanted upvotes, I'd post a random Wikipedia article and get more upvotes in 4 hours than I'd otherwise get in a year (and the moderator would find that highly 'substantive') :->
- yesenadam 6y ago> I know that if I post something about C, it will get downvoted. You "avoid like plague any post or thread that talks about C" because you will lose points?! I suggest you try caring less or not at all about fake internet points and more about saying what's important to you. Post if you have a point worth reading, that contributes to HN and the conversation. Write as well as you can. That's all anyone can do.
- MockObject 6y ago> I suggest you try caring less or not at all about fake internet points and more about saying what's important to you. They aren't fake, since they determine and unlock all sorts of real powers on the site. Also, if the community doesn't appreciate his wisdom, why should he continue to provide it? The downvotes are giving him useful feedback, and he's smart to respond to it.
- Kye 6y ago>> Here on HN, I see more and more comments which, despite simply stating facts or being personal testimony, are greyed out. I cannot even figure out a possible reason (I am not looking for a reason I would agree with, just any kind of reason, of mechanics): they are not opinionated in a way or another, they are not part of a heated sub-thread, nothing. I just don't understand what goes on. A recent example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324109 I referenced a simple fact: Joe Rogan's show is going exclusive to Spotify in October. Then added a plausible speculation: the link will probably break. I meant it to be helpful, but could have expanded it with a suggestion to add more context. Or at least an episode number so people could find it later on Spotify. It sits at -2. I have to guess the ~3 downvoters assumed I was in some way criticizing Rogan and made a snap, thoughtless decision to downvote. This seems to happen a lot more.
- raziel2p 6y agoReading your comment, it seems completely non-sequitur. Were you expecting this particular comment to be read 6 months from now, and felt it very important for the author to take this into account? I think your comment just didn't add anything to the conversation, no one was really disagreeing with you. But that's one of the major disadvantages of downvotes: It's natural to make assumptions about the motive behind it. Also, your link might stop working if HN switches to UUIDs instead of unsigned integers.
- Kye 6y agoI like the odds of a smooth migration on HN over two competing platforms cooperating on an exclusivity agreement. >> Reading your comment, it seems completely non-sequitur. Were you expecting this particular comment to be read 6 months from now, and felt it very important for the author to take this into account? Link rot is a growing problem, and it's not going away. Extra context, reference numbers, etc can help rediscover the content behind broken links. In this case, it's more of a certainty than usual that it's going to break, and there's zero chance it'll show up (or stay) on something like Internet Archive. But you're right. Without that context, my comment is easy to misread, and there's no way to know what votes in either direction mean.