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It sounds like you have a lot more fear and assumption than experience here. In reality, crazy unfair downvote bombing is not even close to the norm here in my

• OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  I think the downvote brigading is getting more frequent. Just look at the recent threads where a submission was flagged and you will see a ton of them. Unfortunately, HN isn't showing the data behind quantities but due to the oscillations we see, there are definitely significant amounts of downvoting occuring.
  • Tenoke 5y ago
    Submission flagging is the main place it happens and I personally wish HN will not treat flagging as downvotes, or would just call it downvotes, or would have some sort of penalty for obvious cases of mis-flagging.
    • gwking 5y ago
      FWIW every time I have ever flagged something on HN it’s been a fat finger mistake on mobile. Probably a drop in the bucket but worth considering that the signal is still polluted even with perfectly good faith user behavior.
      • semireg 5y ago
        I’m entering grey beard territory, been on HN for years, and I still don’t know what the [-] button does. Is it a downvote? Or does it just collapse the parent so I can read more without clutter? You’d hope downvote UI would be more explicit.
        • NortySpock 5y ago
          [–] collapses the comment and all children. When logged in, I have upvote buttons on all comments, and I believe downvote buttons are enabled at over a certain amount of karma.
          • Akronymus 5y ago
            https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m... 501 apparently
        • soperj 5y ago
          You don't have the ability to downvote. It's a down arrow right below the upvote (up arrow). [-] collapses the parent, you're correct. You can also unvote if you change your mind on your vote.
  • f38zf5vdt 5y ago
    It happens to me whenever I say something critical of any given specific country. USA, China, Russia, I get hammered with downvotes and flags. Make a positive comment, hammered with upvotes. It's frustrating.
    • dec0dedab0de 5y ago
      If you say anything positive or negative about something people hold as part of their identity you're going to get a response. I think it's better that you get votes, instead of a bunch of emotional comments.
      • asteroidbelt 5y ago
        No, it is better to get comments, even emotional and not well written. Because with comments I might understand where I was wrong, or at least know where exactly my opponent disagrees with me, because it I could have written a wall of text, not every sentence of it is wrong. Even a comment like "fuck you you are dumb bastard hateful shit" tells me much more than a downvote. With comment like that I know that the opponent is not interested in productive conversation, so I move on. And if people downvotes because they are emotional, this is not the place where I'd like to participate in discussions. I'm interested in the grown up respectful dispute and the extending each other world view. A place where everyone agrees with each other is boring and a waste of time.
        • dec0dedab0de 5y ago
          A place where everyone agrees with each other is boring and a waste of time. If everyone agreed there would be no need for voting, or even for comments. Very rarely do people gang up and down vote someone to oblivion, usually controversial opinions are up and down throughout the day. Plus there is a max amount of karma you can lose from down voting anyway, I think it's 5. It basically only affects new users who are out of line, or are trying to be provocative. I think it's the main thing that keeps HN the best forum on the internet. Well, third best thing behind dang, and sctb. edit: also, HN is generally geared towards less comments of a higher quality. The biggest example is that if comments exceed votes by a certain amount, the story is automatically dropped from the front page.
  • at_a_remove 5y ago
    Curiously, just mentioning the existence of Windows LTSC / Windows LTSB used to get me four to five downvotes as an expected behavior, despite it being relevant to many "I thought Enterprise had more control than thins!" conversations.
    • gruez 5y ago
      >Curiously, just mentioning the existence of Windows LTSC / Windows LTSB used to get me four to five downvotes as an expected behavior Just to be clear, you expect to get downvotes when mentioning LTSB? This does not match my experience, and I also made several LTSB mentions.
      • at_a_remove 5y ago
        Well, my comment is already at -1, so yes.
    • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      I could see that happening if you are presenting it as a solution to some problem and the downvoters perceive it as an unrealistic alternative. As far as I’m aware it isn’t that easy to obtain.
• austincheney 5y ago
  > In reality, crazy unfair downvote bombing is not even close to the norm here in my ~decade of experience. My experience on HN is that it desperately hangs on the words you choose and the threads you visit. The lower the barrier to entry (social subjects for example) the more delicate and convergent things become.
  • dahart 5y ago
    Yes lower barrier to entry topics are expected to increase the noise, and also the number of participants, which makes patterns easier to see, right? Possibly lower barrier to entry also correlates with lower expertise too. I'm not sure this is unique to HN at all, and haven't noticed it being any different or worse here than elsewhere. I think we have lots of words and phrases and platitudes to categorize and comment on how people behave, one that comes to mind immediately is bike shedding, or the Law of Triviality.
• brightball 5y ago
  Agreed. It’s very out of the norm on HN. On Reddit though, it’s the standard.
  • BEEdwards 5y ago
    In the default subs sure, but if you're subscribed to those shitholes you get what you get.
    • jolux 5y ago
      Every sub has its sacred cows that you can’t question. It just takes a while to figure them out sometimes.
    • BitwiseFool 5y ago
      The default subs are really toxic, for sure, but it seems like the 'shithole threshold' is a sufficiently large subscriber count. Especially when the subreddit gets the attention of the admins and powermods get pulled in.
      • Akronymus 5y ago
        Or even small subs that are against the prevailing opinions of the plurality of the userbase of all of reddit. Those regularily get called out as "bad", "toxic" or "hateful". Or banned. Which actually is the reason I got rid of my reddit accounts.
  • f38zf5vdt 5y ago
    Reddit and Twitter shows the endgame of online voting systems. I don't think HN is far off. In my ideal world I would be able to choose to _only_ view upvotes and downvotes from a subset of users I trust and ignore everything else (trust subset ranked filtering). I would also like the ability to turn off downvotes all together if I desired, or even just for some user subset. This is different from Facebook or YouTube recommendations in that I get to experience the same diverse amount of content, but things particularly interesting to people I trust will be indicated without censoring all the rest of the content.
• antattack 5y ago
  Ideological issues get people to use downvote. Technical discourse is more civilized, upvotes are more likely than downvotes.
  • sharken 5y ago
    Absolutely my experience too, tech is not really controversial. But discussions on health, religion and culture that is where the downvotes are used. If you can accept that premise, then HN is a great place to be. Reddit is just not in the same league when it comes to thoughtful, well-articulated discussions where you get some great insights.
    • asteroidbelt 5y ago
      > tech is not really controversial Unless it is a topic about Rust and how it is better or worse than C++. Try to make a claim C++ is better, and nobody is going to read your bullet point explanations, you just get tons of downvotes. (I'm not claiming anything is better or worse in this comment, I only present an example.)
  • dec0dedab0de 5y ago
    I agree, as long as you realize that vim/emacs, static/dynamic, frontend/backend, etc., are all Ideological issues, and not technical ones. :-) ...and jokes are generally not treated well either, unless it's Friday.
    • wutbrodo 5y ago
      This isn't my experience. I occasionally make pretty strong statements about traditionally polarizing technical topics, and I find that people are a lot more likely to respect differing opinions than when talking about, eg, urban planning or politics.
  • austincheney 5y ago
    Weird. Saying the same thing a few comments down earned me several down votes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27983945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27983945
• pugets 5y ago
  I think it depends on the website. I used Reddit between 2012-2020 and I believe that website's community was ruined by the upvote/downvote system. For me, what it always comes back to is this: A downvote is meant to indicate "this comment does not contribute to the conversation," but many website userbases misuse downvotes to say "I disagree." If upvotes/downvotes are proxies for agrees/disagrees, then the comment sections can get ugly. I believe HN thrives despite the upvote/downvote system because this website is a little more mature than others.
  • forbiddenvoid 5y ago
    It doesn't hurt that new users also can't downvote by default, and that it takes nontrivial contributions to get that ability.
  • asiachick 5y ago
    The HN downvote is also for disagreement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314
  • astrange 5y ago
    Reddit's comment quality is actually better than it used to be, though I don't understand what changed. It's true that the #1 comment on every post used to be wrong or a series of unfunny jokes, and then maybe #2 was good. Currently their main problem (which is unsolvable) is just that everyone uses it and so there's new teenagers to ask trivial gender war questions on AskReddit every week.
• nindalf 5y ago
  Look, for what it's worth I agree. In my experience, HN is welcoming of my viewpoints. My karma is over 9000, so I'm not worried if a few comments get downvoted. But that still doesn't invalidate what GP was saying. They perceive a difficulty in contributing to the conversation because they're afraid of being downvoted. You're telling them not to worry and that they'll be fine ... but it's still a legitimate concern for them and for many other people who lurk and don't participate in the conversation directly. And there are plenty of lurkers. In my limited experience of receiving visitors from HN on my website, the number of clicks is 100x the number of comments on the thread. And this is exactly why Facebook doesn't have a downvote button. It's trivial to add it. I've even seen it implemented in internal versions. But it only takes a couple of bad experiences of being downvoted for a user to get turned off from the platform. TFA does some handwaving about how it'll save democracy, but it's a crock of shit. All it does is make fewer people participate. crazy_horse tried to tell you that. The solution to saving democracy isn't reducing participation. What's more, this experiment of having downvotes does exist. It's called reddit. Plenty of people use it. If the author could use examples from reddit to illustrate their point, it'd be great. Like the thriving, polite, constructive exchange of ideas that took place on /r/the_donald for instance?
  • graeme 5y ago
    They’re also positing a conspiracy against them, with people making multiple alts to downvote their comments. It’s more than just fear: it’s an empirical claim. That whatever they said was legit unpopular is vastly more likely.
    • nindalf 5y ago
      And I'm not endorsing this idea of them being persecuted. But I am saying that their hesitancy is real, and is widely shared. It's an inescapable consequence of having downvotes. HN does it best, by gating downvoting privileges to accounts in good standing but even then it's not easy.
    • squeaky-clean 5y ago
      I've actually had someone message me on Reddit (years ago) with several alt accounts that a reply I posted in a programming-related subreddit was wrong (it wasn't), and they were right, and they'd be mass downvoting my account. This was back when reporting actually did something I guess, because a couple of the alt accounts did get banned a few weeks later. Later another new account messaged me a censored screenshot of their bank account with a few million dollars in it and saying some crap along the lines of "I earned this money by selling a software startup, so I know more about C++ than you". That's only one time I definitely know I was getting downvoted with alt accounts, but it really sucks. And now how do I know it hasn't happened several times since except with someone who doesn't have an inflated enough ego that they need to PM me proof of it.
• not_jd_salinger 5y ago
  edit: this comment initially made claims that it looked like HN was removing climate change related content from the front page. I still believe this to be the case, but don't really have strong enough evidence to back it up. I'll wait until I have something more convincing before posting about this again. Who knows, maybe I am just paranoid.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • foobarbecue 5y ago
    Things generally don't stay on the front page for long. Your claim sounds pretty paranoid.
  • wutbrodo 5y ago
    Do you have any examples of downvote-bombing simple claims that climate change is real? I'd be beyond surprised to find out this phenomenon is real, even just based on the demographic prior of HN. No worries if not, I get that it's not a trivial ask to dig up an example.
    • throw1f78aa0a80 5y ago
      Not climate change. But three days ago this is a bit strange. Article regarding to anti-vax and astroturfing. First submission flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27946430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27946430 Lots of comments saying it is being artificially vote inflated. Second submission more objections https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27951293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27951293 stating conspiracy voting. Not sure what to make of it. And just one example.
      • wutbrodo 5y ago
        Thank you for the links, but I was asking about the (since-edited-out) claims that these comments were being downvote-bombed. Submission ranking is considerably more complicated, and is not what I was asking about.
• squeaky-clean 5y ago
  I agree with the GP commenter. It's not about everyone being against you. All it takes is just a couple people, or even one. I don't particularly care about downvotes myself. But the lazy and incorrect drive-by responses, the ones where you can tell the responder did not even read your full comment... Those just really get to me. Enough to upset my whole day and making it so I have to put effort into not ruminating on it. Should I care less? Definitely. But that's not so easy for me. So more than half the time on HN I'll write a full comment, read it back, and then decide not to post it because it's not worth whatever incorrect response it will get. I don't comment on Reddit at all anymore because it's not worth it. I've been waffling on whether or not it's even worth posting this comment, haha.
  • neogodless 5y ago
    I agree with @dahart. The political threads were a special beast, where any comment that revealed your political leanings would get a deluge of downvotes from the opposition. The Tesla and Apple threads sometimes get a bit of this too. But the vast majority of my experience is that the downvotes I've received were well-deserved. Maybe I was just misinformed and propagating misinformation. Maybe I was trying and failing to be funny - and thus didn't contribute to the conversation or cultivate curiosity. Low effort / incorrect comments don't bother me a great deal. Usually someone else comes along and downvotes those. If it's a thoughtful comment that I disagree with, I'll attempt to engage, if I think there's some value in putting the effort in. With experience, you do get a feel for when comments just are not worth bothering with. If they are low effort / failing to contribute, downvote and move on with your life. A community is very much the sum of the contributors, with spirit that stems from the guidelines and moderation. Without individuals putting something in, something more than what detractors try to take away, it couldn't exist and thrive.
    • xphos 5y ago
      So like I think this is kind the authors point. Downvote isn't going to solve everything but it is a tool that let people signal to one another of something being a miss. You can have spammers that downvote everything but like thats also detectable and can signal biases. In response to spammers, there is away to cancel out those biases with upvotes. And if there are spammers on both sides you'd expect to arrive close to 50/50 in which case that signals something to a read. If its 80% negative that also signals maybe we should understand why this is bad or why its to be avoided. However without a balancing force whats the difference of +50 and +1000? Both are positive even if the +1000 has 1000s of negative comments not everyone has the time to engage on a topic completely and +/- give a quick way to understand the content that should be engaged with on a deeper level because it is divisive. Without the tool not only would you never know the difference but you can never know the difference without engaging every topic at max effort which no person can do
• tomjen3 5y ago
  >In reality, crazy unfair downvote bombing is not even close to the norm here in my ~decade of experience. What makes you certain that someone with multiple accounts has downvoted you? If you write a comment that is against what the majority of the site beliefs you will be downvoted. If you agree with the majority you probably won't have experienced this. I know that if I make a comment that is positive of bitcoin it will get to -3 or -4 in a very short time and then in a few days it will get to +2 or +3. I don't know that it is a specific group of people who do that, but it is consistent enough that I can pretty much count on it happening every time, and clearly since it earned more upvotes than downvotes the community did consider the comment somewhat valuable. Granted you get hammered much harder on r/politics or r/news, but the problem is the same. The solution is also pretty obvious: randomly review downvoted comments and if they are downvoted for disagreement and not merrit, ban the people who downvoted it from future voting. For new users shadow the votes for a while to be sure they understand the community[0]. [0]: No democracy permits people to move there and vote right away. For native born citizens they have to wait 18 years to get the vote.
  • detaro 5y ago
    > The solution is also pretty obvious: randomly review downvoted comments and if they are downvoted for disagreement and not merrit, ban the people who downvoted it from future voting. For new users shadow the votes for a while to be sure they understand the community[0]. Even if you could objectively review that, HN doesn't have a rule against downvoting for disagreement, pg decided it was acceptable very early on and it hasn't been changed. (although plenty people think it should)
  • Akronymus 5y ago
    > If you write a comment that is against what the majority of the site beliefs you will be downvoted. I don't think this is a regular occurence on HN. But on reddit? All day every day. Personally, I often upvote posts I disagree with, because it is a good discussion starter or just generally a good comment/discussion/disagreement.
  • ryandrake 5y ago
    > I know that if I make a comment that is positive of bitcoin it will get to -3 or -4 in a very short time and then in a few days it will get to +2 or +3. This down-then-up pattern happens on all sorts of topics here. Almost everything I post gets a few downvotes within two minutes or so, then inevitably crawls back upward as people actually read what's said. One change suggestion I'd have for HN is to disallow downvotes within some time of posting, like 30 minutes, give people a chance to read it, and decide whether it is truly not contributing to the conversation.
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  > is not even close to the norm here Maybe not here, but he said here and Reddit. It's definitely the norm on Reddit.
• AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  HN was the way you describe. But I think that it is becoming less so. I feel the difference from, say, five years ago. It's not the same. It's more strident, less thoughtful, more reacting by reflex. My own suspicion is that, as HN has grown, it has become more influential, and therefore more worth manipulating, and therefore more people are trying to manipulate it rather than just participating in it.
• renewiltord 5y ago
  I find it amusing but people will go downvote unrelated stuff once you offend them. I can tell because I’ll get a flood of downvotes across unrelated comments when I make a controversial post. Of course that’s all fine. I have no right to participate in this community and the community has a right to behave how it does. Or perhaps I’m just miscalibrated and I’m saying totally douchey things here (only provided for example reasons): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27952366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27952366
  • themacguffinman 5y ago
    I'm just speculating here, I don't think your linked example comment was downvoted because it was douchey or because you offended people in other comments. In my experience, comments like your example are downvoted because they're "obviously" wrong or irrelevant, which is of course very subjective. Clearly you don't think your own comment is obviously wrong or irrelevant, but you were rebutting "people don't want to send cryptocurrencies in their messaging app" by pointing out how useful you find Venmo: an app that is popular for sending non-crypto legal tender. FWIW I didn't downvote your comment when I encountered it days ago, but I do notice that comments that have very basic logical flaws in them tend to be downvoted without replies. Downvotes aren't just a tool to enforce civility. This is just my assessment of your comment, I hope you take it in the good faith that I intended.
    • renewiltord3 5y ago
      Hey, thanks for the feedback. Have hit my rate limit again. FWIW the comment was upvoted and left so for 36 h or so before I made my other comment on “real engineers” being worse than software engineers because they kill people (which was rather flamebaity). I don’t want to transform this into a discussion of the original but I specifically intended to mean that to imply that the whole thing is that crypto functions like M3 and that value transfer is the underlying goal, legal tender just being a tool. After all, we use IOUs commonly (Splitwise exists on this principle) and they aren’t legal tender. I felt there was enough there to make the connection. But anyway, if you think it is a logically incorrect comment, that’s on me to communicate better. Thanks for the feedback. Anyway, I can’t have this discussion any more with you, because I have to save my comments for the most information transfer (I have an account rate limit).