4 ms·

What's happening in Hnews then? Is it bad?

drstewart 5y ago
HN is a rare exception to this effect due to its more focused niche (though the bubble effect is definitely there to some degree). I'm more referencing larger platforms, particularly reddit.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  A subreddit tends to be more focused than HN. I'd chalk it up to user maturity, not that HN is without great fault on this either.
rand0mx1 5y ago
Not all users can downvote,only few can.
rootusrootus 5y ago
I'm sure it happens here, too. I know that if I start getting voted into oblivion, I walk away for a while. Clearly the community disagreed with my thoughts and it's not worth it to continue to engage. Ironically, it doesn't affect me at all on Reddit. I have such low expectations for the platform that I don't even notice my own karma score nor do I bother to look at posts of mine to see how they're being received. HN makes your score much more prominent so it's easy to see it moving and you know immediately whether you've said something controversial somewhere.
playguardin 5y ago
Yes it's bad. Only boring agreeable normies get the up vote's necessary to get downvote privs, then they do their school marm routine, exercising their petty tyranny.
Ajedi32 5y ago
It's not as bad on HN in my opinion, for a few reasons: 1. Comments cannot fall below -4 points 2. Downvoted comments only get greyed out, not hidden entirely 3. Most topics on HN are not political (though there are certainly exceptions) 4. The community here is (usually) a bit more mature than on other sites like Reddit
- JulianMorrison 5y ago
  Surprisingly many topics are political [1], and an answer the very right-wing libertarian consensus here disagrees with will absolutely be voted all the way down. [1] Often, the assertion "this topic is not or should not be political" is political. Because politics is how we organize society on a large scale and saying things should be exempt from that, guess what, is a political opinion.
  - phreeza 5y ago
    Dunno, I'm pretty sure I've seen calls to break up or even nationalize Google and similar sentiments at the top quite a lot. That doesn't strike me as particularly right-wing?
    - JulianMorrison 5y ago
      The groupthink here isn't straight party-line, but it does have a lean.
      - andrewflnr 5y ago
        That's moving the goalposts quite a bit from "...absolutely be voted all the way down."
        JulianMorrison 5y ago
        Not really. It just means the topics people are touchy about don't follow the party line. They're still touchy and political about them.
        phreeza 5y ago
        I actually agree, I just think libertarian right wing is a mischaracterization, and I think it matters because the stereotype of the tech nerd is the atlas shrugged-toting libertarian, but HN doesn't really match that stereotype most of the time, I think.

HN is a rare exception to this effect due to its more focused niche (though the bubble effect is definitely there to some degree). I'm more referencing larger platforms, particularly reddit.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
A subreddit tends to be more focused than HN. I'd chalk it up to user maturity, not that HN is without great fault on this either.

rand0mx1 5y ago

Not all users can downvote,only few can.

rootusrootus 5y ago

I'm sure it happens here, too. I know that if I start getting voted into oblivion, I walk away for a while. Clearly the community disagreed with my thoughts and it's not worth it to continue to engage. Ironically, it doesn't affect me at all on Reddit. I have such low expectations for the platform that I don't even notice my own karma score nor do I bother to look at posts of mine to see how they're being received. HN makes your score much more prominent so it's easy to see it moving and you know immediately whether you've said something controversial somewhere.

playguardin 5y ago

Yes it's bad. Only boring agreeable normies get the up vote's necessary to get downvote privs, then they do their school marm routine, exercising their petty tyranny.

Ajedi32 5y ago

It's not as bad on HN in my opinion, for a few reasons: 1. Comments cannot fall below -4 points 2. Downvoted comments only get greyed out, not hidden entirely 3. Most topics on HN are not political (though there are certainly exceptions) 4. The community here is (usually) a bit more mature than on other sites like Reddit

JulianMorrison 5y ago
Surprisingly many topics are political [1], and an answer the very right-wing libertarian consensus here disagrees with will absolutely be voted all the way down. [1] Often, the assertion "this topic is not or should not be political" is political. Because politics is how we organize society on a large scale and saying things should be exempt from that, guess what, is a political opinion.
- phreeza 5y ago
  Dunno, I'm pretty sure I've seen calls to break up or even nationalize Google and similar sentiments at the top quite a lot. That doesn't strike me as particularly right-wing?
  - JulianMorrison 5y ago
    The groupthink here isn't straight party-line, but it does have a lean.
    - andrewflnr 5y ago
      That's moving the goalposts quite a bit from "...absolutely be voted all the way down."
      - JulianMorrison 5y ago
        Not really. It just means the topics people are touchy about don't follow the party line. They're still touchy and political about them.
        phreeza 5y ago
        I actually agree, I just think libertarian right wing is a mischaracterization, and I think it matters because the stereotype of the tech nerd is the atlas shrugged-toting libertarian, but HN doesn't really match that stereotype most of the time, I think.