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The fate on HN of this well written and intellectually curious article is a neat proof of the point it's making.

yesenadam 6y ago
Beware of "Being downvoted proves I'm right!" - that way lies madness. EDIT: My thoughts exactly GP, > sometimes they're flagged because they are divisive, and known (or expected) to produce flame wars and unpleasant exchanges. I had a look at the article. I thought it was well-written and interesting, but already I was imagining and dreading a huge messy HN comment page, with a lot of whited-out comments etc, not really worth reading. Sometimes I upvote stories/blog posts I think are really bad, but the comments are really good and I want to encourage them. People coming along later saying "I cant believe this crappy story has 500 votes!" or "Why was this flagged??" miss that point - people also vote on the comments as a whole, even if there's none there yet. Many people mostly just read the comments, so not surprising they'd vote on them, not the story.
- thu2111 6y ago
  As you say, the article is well written and interesting, it's also about a highly topical issue relevant to many in the tech industry. It's also about why critical theorists flat out refuse to engage in debate over their beliefs. And Hacker News, a community that has more than its fair share of critical theorists, is witnessing a systematic effort to stop people even meta-debating why critical theorists don't debate. Obviously defining a flag-worthy story as "one with a lot of flagged comments" is circular logic. The sort of people who want to avoid debate at all costs will certainly white-out and flag people who try to debate them. It's visible on so many threads here. That doesn't mean the article or comments aren't good. Sad to say but Hacker News is really nowhere near as good at promoting intelligent curiousity as its staff like to believe. The software just isn't good enough to do that and nor do the owners ever upgrade or experiment with it to try and make that situation better.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

Beware of "Being downvoted proves I'm right!" - that way lies madness. EDIT: My thoughts exactly GP, > sometimes they're flagged because they are divisive, and known (or expected) to produce flame wars and unpleasant exchanges. I had a look at the article. I thought it was well-written and interesting, but already I was imagining and dreading a huge messy HN comment page, with a lot of whited-out comments etc, not really worth reading. Sometimes I upvote stories/blog posts I think are really bad, but the comments are really good and I want to encourage them. People coming along later saying "I cant believe this crappy story has 500 votes!" or "Why was this flagged??" miss that point - people also vote on the comments as a whole, even if there's none there yet. Many people mostly just read the comments, so not surprising they'd vote on them, not the story.

thu2111 6y ago
As you say, the article is well written and interesting, it's also about a highly topical issue relevant to many in the tech industry. It's also about why critical theorists flat out refuse to engage in debate over their beliefs. And Hacker News, a community that has more than its fair share of critical theorists, is witnessing a systematic effort to stop people even meta-debating why critical theorists don't debate. Obviously defining a flag-worthy story as "one with a lot of flagged comments" is circular logic. The sort of people who want to avoid debate at all costs will certainly white-out and flag people who try to debate them. It's visible on so many threads here. That doesn't mean the article or comments aren't good. Sad to say but Hacker News is really nowhere near as good at promoting intelligent curiousity as its staff like to believe. The software just isn't good enough to do that and nor do the owners ever upgrade or experiment with it to try and make that situation better.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]