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I agree. I think HN in the perfect combination of the old internet, with the text-only posts, and the web 2.0 way of doing likes and threaded conversations. And

I agree. I think HN in the perfect combination of the old internet, with the text-only posts, and the web 2.0 way of doing likes and threaded conversations. And, of course, the moderation keeping it all in check. I'm grateful that I can come here every day.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Includes the very worst part of echo chambering though. Don’t like someone OR their comment? Just do your part with three other people and it’ll be faded, once it’s faded other people will join in hiding the bad man who said the bad thing - and gone! No more contrarian opinion, we protected other people! Everyone agrees now. How wonderful.
- andrepd 5y ago
  How ironic. I agree, downvote-based discussions invariably lead to echo chambers / monocultures. See the dumpster fire that are reddit comments. At least on old-time forums there was no such bullshit (except post count :)).
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    You can’t crowdsource quality. Comment voting systems only tell you what is popular, not what is high quality. So many sites make this mistake, including HN.
    - raffraffraff 5y ago
      You reminded me of a failed experiment I did a while back with music tags. I still purchase music monthly (Bandcamp when possible), and I always tag music. I have a bunch of multi-value tags including 'instruments' and 'moods'. It works really well with a huge collection. I can quickly find songs similar to the one I'm listening to, or generate playlists. Anyway, a few years ago I thought I could speed up the tagging process by pulling tags from Last FM and filtering out the shite by only including tags that matched an instrument name or mood. Luckily I backed up before running the script on my whole collection. The data was absolute garbage.
      - flyinghamster 5y ago
        It reminded me of when I went through and ripped my CD collection. I'd estimate that almost a third of the album data was complete trash, and there were a shockingly bad number of spelling errors. I couldn't help but wonder if someone was deliberately poisoning data.
    - jcfields 5y ago
      Slashdot tried to solve this problem by making mod points limited and requiring you to give a reason for moderating a comment. Then there was a metamoderation system where you decided if the moderation someone gave was fair or not. If someone consistently doesn't use the moderation system correctly (and the metamoderation system is successful in identifying this), they don't get mod points anymore. It didn't work perfectly (obviously the site is still highly opinionated in favor of certain things, like Linux and free software), but it also wasn't the smooth-brained hivemind that Reddit comments sections are. I can't think of another site that's even tried to come up with a better moderation system than simple up/down votes. At best, there are some behind-the-scenes algorithms that decide how exactly to prioritize comments based on the voting, but that's derived from popularity as well. An immeasurable side effect of this is that many heterodox comments simply aren't posted at all since people know they're going to be downvoted to oblivion anyway.
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    If you don't have the ability to vote, you can't influence the content in a positive way either. Some comments are pointless, like some tool making the "and my axe" joke for the millionth time. Reddit lost its way when they started heavily moderating or banning entire subs that didn't fit with their woke US-centric world view, while rape porn was "fine". I closed my account a while back and stopped visiting the site, but unfortunately, there are so many organisations and FOSS projects that use it in an official capacity that it's unavoidable.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      The solution is simple: Use downvotes for rude and disrespectful comments. I am all for moderating a forum for pointless and useless comments. Most downvotes now-a-days are about disagreements. Using downvotes as a tool to push others into conformity is the shittiest part of HN.
      - andrepd 5y ago
        I actually have a sort of nice idea about this: make your downvotes' worth be inversely proportional to how many downvotes you give. A person who gives 100 downvotes per month will have his downvotes count 1/20th as those of a person who downvotes 5 times per month. An incenctive to be really judicious in handing out downvotes and not simply using them to drown out minority opinions.
        systemvoltage 5y ago
        Interesting. I think we would still have the issue of 10 people piling up on a comment with downvotes, as judiciously as they can spend the budget.
        SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        Only issue here is that you are penalized for activity even if it’s in removing objective garbage. But I like the idea quite a bit. That you take a hit for being a negative ass that downvotes questions you think are beneath you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - npteljes 5y ago
    In my experience, your message would get buried or you would get bullied to the point where you leave the forum, nowadays it's done via downvotes. I don't see much of a difference, other than that the new way produces less noise.
- hashkb 5y ago
  They'll also go through your recent history and downvote any comments you've made that are still fresh enough. Downvote culture has some clear drawbacks that I have never seen validated, let alone addressed, by any community mod/admin. Dang responded to me once, but not with validation, and not to my follow up. It's the best I've ever been treated by a mod. I must be a bad person with evil opinions.
xf1cf 5y ago
HN is not anything like the old internet forums or BBSes. Content would get moderated but you could still read messages. Even the ones that went against the dogma. Not at HN, anti-dogma posts get downvoted into oblivion or flagged if they are bad enough. I recently posted a counter-opinion on burnout and was downvoted pretty badly. I didn't flame, and tried to articulate my point well. HN is composed of the exact microcosm of people who have ruined the internet. It's just an echo chamber where counter-points are nuked. No different than facebook, or anything else. At least /. made you think about using your modpoints to downvote. Now it's free - and for many very pathetic people downvoting is a source of dopamine. It's far easier to drive-by-downvote without having to even articulate a reply as to why. Comparing this to the old BBSes and forums, you at least got a moderator note (or a VERY disparaging note from a user) in your PMs about why you're being moderated. It is wildly frustrating to type something well thought out and be downvoted into oblivion because your stance isn't en-vogue.
- Grumbledour 5y ago
  While I don't think it is often as bad as some people here try to make it out to be, it's also sad that comments pointing it or mostly dead, which is why I vouched for you. Because there are to many dead comments that did not deserve that status.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

Includes the very worst part of echo chambering though. Don’t like someone OR their comment? Just do your part with three other people and it’ll be faded, once it’s faded other people will join in hiding the bad man who said the bad thing - and gone! No more contrarian opinion, we protected other people! Everyone agrees now. How wonderful.

andrepd 5y ago
How ironic. I agree, downvote-based discussions invariably lead to echo chambers / monocultures. See the dumpster fire that are reddit comments. At least on old-time forums there was no such bullshit (except post count :)).
- ryandrake 5y ago
  You can’t crowdsource quality. Comment voting systems only tell you what is popular, not what is high quality. So many sites make this mistake, including HN.
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    You reminded me of a failed experiment I did a while back with music tags. I still purchase music monthly (Bandcamp when possible), and I always tag music. I have a bunch of multi-value tags including 'instruments' and 'moods'. It works really well with a huge collection. I can quickly find songs similar to the one I'm listening to, or generate playlists. Anyway, a few years ago I thought I could speed up the tagging process by pulling tags from Last FM and filtering out the shite by only including tags that matched an instrument name or mood. Luckily I backed up before running the script on my whole collection. The data was absolute garbage.
    - flyinghamster 5y ago
      It reminded me of when I went through and ripped my CD collection. I'd estimate that almost a third of the album data was complete trash, and there were a shockingly bad number of spelling errors. I couldn't help but wonder if someone was deliberately poisoning data.
  - jcfields 5y ago
    Slashdot tried to solve this problem by making mod points limited and requiring you to give a reason for moderating a comment. Then there was a metamoderation system where you decided if the moderation someone gave was fair or not. If someone consistently doesn't use the moderation system correctly (and the metamoderation system is successful in identifying this), they don't get mod points anymore. It didn't work perfectly (obviously the site is still highly opinionated in favor of certain things, like Linux and free software), but it also wasn't the smooth-brained hivemind that Reddit comments sections are. I can't think of another site that's even tried to come up with a better moderation system than simple up/down votes. At best, there are some behind-the-scenes algorithms that decide how exactly to prioritize comments based on the voting, but that's derived from popularity as well. An immeasurable side effect of this is that many heterodox comments simply aren't posted at all since people know they're going to be downvoted to oblivion anyway.
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  If you don't have the ability to vote, you can't influence the content in a positive way either. Some comments are pointless, like some tool making the "and my axe" joke for the millionth time. Reddit lost its way when they started heavily moderating or banning entire subs that didn't fit with their woke US-centric world view, while rape porn was "fine". I closed my account a while back and stopped visiting the site, but unfortunately, there are so many organisations and FOSS projects that use it in an official capacity that it's unavoidable.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    The solution is simple: Use downvotes for rude and disrespectful comments. I am all for moderating a forum for pointless and useless comments. Most downvotes now-a-days are about disagreements. Using downvotes as a tool to push others into conformity is the shittiest part of HN.
    - andrepd 5y ago
      I actually have a sort of nice idea about this: make your downvotes' worth be inversely proportional to how many downvotes you give. A person who gives 100 downvotes per month will have his downvotes count 1/20th as those of a person who downvotes 5 times per month. An incenctive to be really judicious in handing out downvotes and not simply using them to drown out minority opinions.
      - systemvoltage 5y ago
        Interesting. I think we would still have the issue of 10 people piling up on a comment with downvotes, as judiciously as they can spend the budget.
      - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        Only issue here is that you are penalized for activity even if it’s in removing objective garbage. But I like the idea quite a bit. That you take a hit for being a negative ass that downvotes questions you think are beneath you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- npteljes 5y ago
  In my experience, your message would get buried or you would get bullied to the point where you leave the forum, nowadays it's done via downvotes. I don't see much of a difference, other than that the new way produces less noise.
hashkb 5y ago
They'll also go through your recent history and downvote any comments you've made that are still fresh enough. Downvote culture has some clear drawbacks that I have never seen validated, let alone addressed, by any community mod/admin. Dang responded to me once, but not with validation, and not to my follow up. It's the best I've ever been treated by a mod. I must be a bad person with evil opinions.

xf1cf 5y ago

HN is not anything like the old internet forums or BBSes. Content would get moderated but you could still read messages. Even the ones that went against the dogma. Not at HN, anti-dogma posts get downvoted into oblivion or flagged if they are bad enough. I recently posted a counter-opinion on burnout and was downvoted pretty badly. I didn't flame, and tried to articulate my point well. HN is composed of the exact microcosm of people who have ruined the internet. It's just an echo chamber where counter-points are nuked. No different than facebook, or anything else. At least /. made you think about using your modpoints to downvote. Now it's free - and for many very pathetic people downvoting is a source of dopamine. It's far easier to drive-by-downvote without having to even articulate a reply as to why. Comparing this to the old BBSes and forums, you at least got a moderator note (or a VERY disparaging note from a user) in your PMs about why you're being moderated. It is wildly frustrating to type something well thought out and be downvoted into oblivion because your stance isn't en-vogue.

Grumbledour 5y ago
While I don't think it is often as bad as some people here try to make it out to be, it's also sad that comments pointing it or mostly dead, which is why I vouched for you. Because there are to many dead comments that did not deserve that status.