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I don't think it's unreasonable that the stances that most regularly get highly upvoted to the top of the threads are taken as a gestalt 'HN opinion'.

stickfigure 6y ago
It's not that consistent which stances get upvoted. Different stories attract different readers, and comment upvotes depend on the quality of the message as well as the content.
leetcrew 6y ago
it's a reasonable mistake to make, but it's probably not correct. dang made a good post about this recently. I'm having a hard time finding it now (he posts a lot), so I'll just paraphrase. a lot of (sometimes vile) positions are strongly advocated for by a minority of users, but only weakly opposed by the majority. that vocal minority will upvote any friendly post, while the majority will just shake their heads but not necessarily downvote every single post. so it's actually quite common for the top comment to be against the aggregate opinion of the userbase.
- pc86 6y ago
  Edit: Surprised it took almost twenty minutes for the downvotes to start. It also proves my point perfectly. For what it's worth I'm not saying bicycle licenses are good or should be implemented. But it's the most well-understood example of this phenomenon. This is the argument about why "bicycle licenses" aren't a thing. The number of drivers who aren't cyclists dwarfs the number of cyclists by many orders of magnitude in most US states. In many municipalities, some cyclists regularly break traffic laws and cause (at best) frustration or (at worst) deadly accidents. This leads to drivers-who-aren't-cyclists making the seems-reasonable comment that you should need a license to drive a bike the same way you do for a vehicle. So let's say a politician supports bicycle license. This isn't enough to get anyone who supports a bike license to vote for them, because it's not a Top Ten issue for anyone on that side. But not only will every cyclist in their district vote against them, they'll campaign and donate to any opponent of that bill. If they even think you support the legislation they're writing checks to your opponent. I'm not making an argument on bike licenses in particular but I can see a similar effect where a minority percentage of HN feels strongly enough about a given topic that they upvote the articles based on title alone. When an issue is particularly divisive, the odds increase that people feel strongly on both sides so you end up with the #1 posts on two different days expressing diametrically opposed positions, but both very heavily upvoted.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Well, your example also isn’t up to democratic vote. There may be more compelling reasons why bike licenses don’t exist, like how it’s not worth the trade-off of liberty, how it wouldn’t achieve anything, you can already be prosecuted for causing an accident, the opinion of car owners against cyclists is usually just irrational hate rather than deliberated policy ideals, etc.

stickfigure 6y ago

It's not that consistent which stances get upvoted. Different stories attract different readers, and comment upvotes depend on the quality of the message as well as the content.

leetcrew 6y ago

it's a reasonable mistake to make, but it's probably not correct. dang made a good post about this recently. I'm having a hard time finding it now (he posts a lot), so I'll just paraphrase. a lot of (sometimes vile) positions are strongly advocated for by a minority of users, but only weakly opposed by the majority. that vocal minority will upvote any friendly post, while the majority will just shake their heads but not necessarily downvote every single post. so it's actually quite common for the top comment to be against the aggregate opinion of the userbase.

pc86 6y ago
Edit: Surprised it took almost twenty minutes for the downvotes to start. It also proves my point perfectly. For what it's worth I'm not saying bicycle licenses are good or should be implemented. But it's the most well-understood example of this phenomenon. This is the argument about why "bicycle licenses" aren't a thing. The number of drivers who aren't cyclists dwarfs the number of cyclists by many orders of magnitude in most US states. In many municipalities, some cyclists regularly break traffic laws and cause (at best) frustration or (at worst) deadly accidents. This leads to drivers-who-aren't-cyclists making the seems-reasonable comment that you should need a license to drive a bike the same way you do for a vehicle. So let's say a politician supports bicycle license. This isn't enough to get anyone who supports a bike license to vote for them, because it's not a Top Ten issue for anyone on that side. But not only will every cyclist in their district vote against them, they'll campaign and donate to any opponent of that bill. If they even think you support the legislation they're writing checks to your opponent. I'm not making an argument on bike licenses in particular but I can see a similar effect where a minority percentage of HN feels strongly enough about a given topic that they upvote the articles based on title alone. When an issue is particularly divisive, the odds increase that people feel strongly on both sides so you end up with the #1 posts on two different days expressing diametrically opposed positions, but both very heavily upvoted.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Well, your example also isn’t up to democratic vote. There may be more compelling reasons why bike licenses don’t exist, like how it’s not worth the trade-off of liberty, how it wouldn’t achieve anything, you can already be prosecuted for causing an accident, the opinion of car owners against cyclists is usually just irrational hate rather than deliberated policy ideals, etc.