4 ms·

Sorry, I don't really agree. HN is full of people who react to headlines without reading the article and the underlying materials, and in my opinion it greatly

Sorry, I don't really agree. HN is full of people who react to headlines without reading the article and the underlying materials, and in my opinion it greatly decreases the quality of discussion.

Groxx 6y ago
That's what downvotes are for. They're certainly not useful comments to allow to bubble up to the top.
totetsu 6y ago
I was reading ..somewhere.. that a person having a negative interaction on an online forum increased the likelihood of that person then going on to make a negative comment themselves 300%. When I read that HN's zealous downvotes of slightly impolite comments started to make a bit more sense to me. It's better to avoid snark and sarcasm, as fun as they are.
- vaxman 6y ago
  If your life revolves around acceptance by HN mods, then you need to wakeup from The Matrix! Nobody wants another cesspool like /. was in its hay day, but ultimately only HackerNews/Ycombinator are harmed by this phenom of over-moderation. For example, whose brilliant idea was it to create a user community that downvotes on comments hostile to Chinese Communist Party (that aims nuclear weapons at us while supporting North Korea in every sense and planning to kill our trading partners in Hong Kong and Taiwan) or on comments brutally critical of Apple for abusive trade practices? A lot of the downvotes also come from users that are obviously very inexperienced and unable to understand subtle contexts leading one to believe that a great way to solve this “problem” would be to only allow moderation by senior members of the community, as determined by peer votes, not by account age.
  - totetsu 6y ago
    Isn't 500 karma needed to downvote? Karma might be an indicator of seniority indicated by peer vote. As for the other issues, there are ways of being highly critical without needing to be brutal.
    - vaxman 6y ago
      "peers" lol

Sorry, I don't really agree. HN is full of people who react to headlines without reading the article and the underlying materials, and in my opinion it greatly decreases the quality of discussion.

Groxx 6y ago

That's what downvotes are for. They're certainly not useful comments to allow to bubble up to the top.

totetsu 6y ago

I was reading ..somewhere.. that a person having a negative interaction on an online forum increased the likelihood of that person then going on to make a negative comment themselves 300%. When I read that HN's zealous downvotes of slightly impolite comments started to make a bit more sense to me. It's better to avoid snark and sarcasm, as fun as they are.

vaxman 6y ago
If your life revolves around acceptance by HN mods, then you need to wakeup from The Matrix! Nobody wants another cesspool like /. was in its hay day, but ultimately only HackerNews/Ycombinator are harmed by this phenom of over-moderation. For example, whose brilliant idea was it to create a user community that downvotes on comments hostile to Chinese Communist Party (that aims nuclear weapons at us while supporting North Korea in every sense and planning to kill our trading partners in Hong Kong and Taiwan) or on comments brutally critical of Apple for abusive trade practices? A lot of the downvotes also come from users that are obviously very inexperienced and unable to understand subtle contexts leading one to believe that a great way to solve this “problem” would be to only allow moderation by senior members of the community, as determined by peer votes, not by account age.
- totetsu 6y ago
  Isn't 500 karma needed to downvote? Karma might be an indicator of seniority indicated by peer vote. As for the other issues, there are ways of being highly critical without needing to be brutal.
  - vaxman 6y ago
    "peers" lol