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I like this question. Currently, it's rendered in gray font, and it has five answers. I think it's the sort of question that's annoying to think about. It's n

by tux3 5y ago

I like this question. Currently, it's rendered in gray font, and it has five answers. I think it's the sort of question that's annoying to think about. It's not a complex technical question with a clearly defined answer you can look up on Wikipedia. It's not even obvious where you should start if you wanted to answer. There is plenty of boring advice out there, but dispensing advice doesn't reliably help people. And yet, it feels like it should. Well-meaning people keep writing more of it. Can we improve that? How do you measure advice? Track compliance? Subjective ranking? Score outcomes? I feel like there's plenty of science we're not doing, data we're not taking, that's applicable even to simple questions like "how do I make my advice more helpful", "what makes people not stick with it", "does following boring advice actually improve outcomes" It's not particularly expensive to measure these problems. They could have a high impact, multiplied by a whole lot of people. I'm not sure why the response today was to hide the question.

mkr-hn 5y ago
I've noticed a lot more grayed out comments in general, including my own. Sometimes it's obvious: they (or I) posted on the political/politicized intersections of a subject. Downvotes are likely a mix of people who are aggressively opposed to the apparent tilt of the comment and people who are ideologically opposed to anything they see as politics. Most times, it's no different from any comment I've made that merely sat at 1. I think there must have been an influx of people in the last half year or so who are more prone to downvote or flag something they disagree with or just don't like. Only someone with access to the vote database could run a more objective analysis, but my anecdotal impression is that HN is getting more downvotey.
afarrell 5y ago
It might not be the sort of thing amenable to measurement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

by tux3 5y ago

mkr-hn 5y ago

I've noticed a lot more grayed out comments in general, including my own. Sometimes it's obvious: they (or I) posted on the political/politicized intersections of a subject. Downvotes are likely a mix of people who are aggressively opposed to the apparent tilt of the comment and people who are ideologically opposed to anything they see as politics. Most times, it's no different from any comment I've made that merely sat at 1. I think there must have been an influx of people in the last half year or so who are more prone to downvote or flag something they disagree with or just don't like. Only someone with access to the vote database could run a more objective analysis, but my anecdotal impression is that HN is getting more downvotey.

afarrell 5y ago

It might not be the sort of thing amenable to measurement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy