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The thing I really like about HN's commenting system is that it's explicitly designed to discourage flamewars -- the way heavily downvoted comments end up "dead

The thing I really like about HN's commenting system is that it's explicitly designed to discourage flamewars -- the way heavily downvoted comments end up "dead" means that "edgy" content is quickly buried. Contrast that to Facebook or Twitter, where only positive signals exist, and the entire system is designed to surface "edgy" content as much as possible (because it gets the most engagement!)

sleepysysadmin 5y ago
>The thing I really like about HN's commenting system is that it's explicitly designed to discourage flamewars -- the way heavily downvoted comments end up "dead" means that "edgy" content is quickly buried. It's sad that it goes well beyond that. You don't just remove edgy, you also remove anything controversial or dissenting. You end up with an echo chamber. The question, how do you minimize cost of moderation while allowing discussion under hostile conditions? Nobody has an answer to this question.
xeromal 5y ago
Ditto. Social disapproval seems to actually work here. Piss off too many people and you disappear.
- njharman 5y ago
  How many is too many (people to piss off)? Take your statement in another context. Say native dissidents pissing off local government / foreign natural resource exploitists. Or, americans of african ancestry attempting to be heard / get equal rights in 50's america. They were certainly socially disapproved and silenced by society at large. Social oppression is the most insidious form of censorship. It needs to be combated with the most vigor and rigor.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    I don't disagree with you to an extent, but humans are wired for social behaviors and there is a positive social pressure to be had. Of course your examples are real and pervasive, but we can't throw out the baby with the bathwater. That being said, this is hacker news which definitely seems more composed than most online forums so I think social pressure here is useful.
- what_is_orcas 5y ago
  I think it works here when it works, and it doesn't when it doesn't. If you're a straight white male (note: I'm not), then I think social dis/approval works well for you. I think that conversations about privilege are hard and, unfortunately, often times the social majority is united against the implications that they might be part and parcel to the inequity in our systems. This isn't specific to this site, but I'm frequently appalled by what I see in posts regarding race, gender, etc. and there is no social repercussion for people who post in bad faith simply because it is in the majority's best interest to self-regulate in a meaningful way. (And now here I am, worried about the "social disapproval" of this post, even though I think that the contents are worthy of posting and the tone is respectful)
  - xeromal 5y ago
    I don't think this post will have social disapproval. I appreciate your comments. >I think it works here when it works, and it doesn't when it doesn't. Isn't that how everything works? Even the best of things? >If you're a straight white male (note: I'm not), then I think social dis/approval works well for you. I think that's a stretch. The west coast where SV is based is full of LGBT+ people. Sure, it's probably mostly white but I don't think I've ever seen a case of racism on here and if it existed, dang probably nuked it from orbit.
    - what_is_orcas 5y ago
      > Isn't that how everything works? Even the best of things? You're right, I think I was using that to ease into my argument in a delicate way. > The west coast where SV is based is full of LGBT+ people. To be clear LGBT+ != !straight-white-male (the set !straight-white-male includes but is not equal to LGBT+). I've seen really problematic racism on hackernews. Problematic not because it's extreme (slurs, lynchings, etc) but because it's "logical" in a way that disenfranchises black people (for example). An example (and I don't keep tabs of this, so I don't have a link, but it was in the past month or so) was of someone saying, with respect to a racially sensitive topic "As a black man I think... about this topic." and the replies were overwhelmingly "That you feel the need to qualify with 'As a black man' proves that you are racist. I, on the other hand, do not consider race, ergo I am not racist". These are well-suited-to-hackernews arguments that invalidate the perspective of anyone outside of the accepted majority and thus perpetuate racism. I think this is the last I'm going to say on the matter. I'm not trying to argue with you, and I have no evidence that you have done anything like what I'm talking about here. I just think that it's important not to ignore what other people might perceive, especially those with different contexts & experiences, who might perceive things that you do not. exit: removed unnecessary parenthetical about Dave Chappelle (for obvious reasons) and clarified a bit.
PrincessJess 5y ago
This. So much this. I hate seeing unpopular opinions. Anyone who doesn't agree with the majority should be hidden from view on every website tbh.
- gruez 5y ago
  /s?
jikbd 5y ago
What flagging achieves in many cases is nothing more than turning this site into an echo chamber. One can choose to throw the baby out with the bath water, but let’s not pretend that’s the best approach. It’s a bunch of people nodding at one another all the time.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Dunno, Reddit and other platforms are much more of an echo chamber. You see dissenting opinions on HN far more often.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Let's agree to disagree on that, shall we?
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Can't tell if written ironically or not. :)
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    I think I'd struggle to find five threads in all of reddit for which "sort by top" and "sort by controversial" don't yield dissenting opinions.
    - Mikeb85 5y ago
      More about how some subs ban the hell out of dissenting opinions. Look how r/politics morphed in the last 6 or so years. A few regional subs I frequent are the same way and are completely unrepresentative of the actual region. The Alberta (Canadian province) sub for example is basically just a bunch of kids who've never left home that think communism is a great idea lamenting why the rest of the province does want to leave their homes. It's such an un-representative sub it's actually hilarious, these days I basically only go for the Covid updates. Yes, some subs are OK, I mean, Reddit's model is that each sub is its own world and moderators can more or less do what they want. But on the whole, HN has more (respectful) dissenting opinions versus Reddit's most subs are echo chambers and the rest are anarchy.
gruez 5y ago
>Contrast that to Facebook or Twitter, where only positive signals exist, and the entire system is designed to surface "edgy" content as much as possible (because it gets the most engagement!) But that's the same system used for link submissions? you can upvote them but not downvote them.
- Danieru 5y ago
  True but links are sorted in competition with other links with a zero baseline. Comments piggyback on the link popularity will always show up on the page. Exception of course the massive 100+ comment hot topics. Thus links resting state is a quick falloff and death. In contrast comments tend to hang around, even bad comments if they are part of an interesting conversation.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  You can flag submissions, which works sort of (but not quite) like a downvote. Plus, there are some mechanisms limiting "edgy content", e.g. if the comments/upvotes ratio starts screaming "flamewar!", the submission will drop off the front page like a brick.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    So basically all anyone has to do to suppress a topic is engage the flamewar detection mechanism? What could possibly go wrong on a site where getting an account doesn't even require a pulse. I'm pretty sure I didn't have to fill out a captcha.
    - fragmede 5y ago
      You're assuming what you see (eg lack of capcha) is all the protection that exists, and that there's no other protection. It's kind of like Disneyland - a lot of work goes into making the site what it is, and you don't see even a tenth of the work that goes on into making it look so good.
- OJFord 5y ago
  There are so few votes per view that I'm not convinced that matters at all, not upvoting is enough of a signal.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Contrarian legitimate and respectful views are downvoted constantly and at an ever increasing pace. Let’s not pat ourselves too much. Comparing with FB is a low bar. I am not a fan of self congratulatory rhetoric when evidence doesn’t support it. HN’s quality of discussions are getting worse, more emotional and less objective. Party lines are clearly drawn. Anyone that wants to challenge this view can just browse threads from 2015 and see it for yourself. I’m the guy that goes around and vouches for flagged comments if they’re not obviously vile/disrespectful/rude even if I disagree with it completely. Society functions because we allow voices that we obviously disagree with. Lines drawn today are getting closer towards center and the extremism is widening the spectrum.
- acdha 5y ago
  I agree that there's plenty of room for improvement but I wouldn't say that most of the downvoted comments I see are just “contrarian legitimate and respectful views” — usually the ones I see heavily downloaded are also things like standard issue talking points repeated with no additional contribution and/or especially those containing falsehoods or material omissions.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    Sometimes. I often see weirdly dead posts making reasonable points, which I vouch for (and then upvote). But yeah, a lot of the dead stuff is flamebait, but it doesn't tend to be equal opportunity flamebait. For an example, if you say positive stuff about Facebook in the latest Facebook bad thread, you'll get downvoted. The converse is not true.
    - detaro 5y ago
      There are some users who were banned because the repeatedly broke the guidelines but continue to post, and that they got banned doesn't mean that all their comments are bad, just too many of them.
    - acdha 5y ago
      I have seen some oddly flagged posts which I tend to assume are people going through someone's history in reaction to a different thread. Re: the Facebook effect, some subjects are definitely heated but I tend to see that tracking how genuine someone sounds — it seems like people do okay if they, for example, are talking about how Facebook is helpful for communities they're part of and don't sound like they're doing pro bono PR. One challenge I think certain topics get is that they've been rehashed enough that a lot of people are quick with the downvotes if a comment opens with something which sounds predictable so there is definitely something be said for making sure that the initial opening doesn't sound cliched.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cinntaile 5y ago
It seems to work for flamewars and trollbait, but it also gets used to downvote opinions people disagree with even though the content itself is ok and that's a bit unfortunate.
newacct583 5y ago
Alternatively: it enourages brigading and group think. Controversial opinions, even wildly incorrect ones (think: conspiracy theories and ideological nutjobbery) are also heavily upvoted, and it's the discussion that gets buried, since the only ones voting on comments are the people invested in the discussion. So it's routine here to find topics of general interest, and click on them to find some kind of broad conspiracist screed at the top of discussion, try to reply, and discover yourself rapidly buried. It's a real problem. And, yes, it tends to have a decidedly partisan bent to it. There are lots of perspectives you just can't get in front of eyeballs on HN in a meaningful way, you just end up rolling in the slop with the pigs.
mschuster91 5y ago
HN has another issue, though: anyone expressing an opinion that goes against the HN "group-think" (for lack of a better word) gets downvoted to oblivion as a result, even if no participants go on a flame-bait mission. Most common topics that inevitably end in such downvote-fests are free speech (which is a minefield in itself, given that the US and European notions about free speech are radically different), nuclear energy, genetic engineering, government regulation and social security systems (with the exception of US healthcare, which seems to be generally hated). A democratic debate based on facts or legitimate political differences (again, this is really prevalent in issues that have different mainstream viewpoints between the US and Europe) but still civilized in tone should not result in half the comments being greyed out or flagged.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > HN has another issue, though: anyone expressing an opinion that goes against the HN "group-think" (for lack of a better word) gets downvoted to oblivion as a result, even if no participants go on a flame-bait mission This really isn't true, and the people who argue that it is will often argue that the group think takes diametrically opposed positions to those attributed to it by other people making the same argument. HN has large factions on multiple sides of most issues, which mostly offset each other in pure-disagreement based moderation (though moment to moment it can vary). Mostly, if someone is getting consistently downvoted, its more about approach than opinion, though people strongly-enough biased toward the opinion that they can't see the approach issues through their affection for the position will tend to attribute it to hostility to the opinion. (You can often see this occur on opposing sides in the same thread.)
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    Are you saying HN is evenly populated and has no main faction? If so I'd like to direct you to any post which brings up income inequality, or anything about any of the FAANG companies. Too many times has correct, factual information been greyed out. Quite often I call out 'feels>facts', where correct info is dead/flagged simply for telling the truth. For specifics you are welcome to peruse my comments, I like to comment when I find these occurrences to 'stamp' them for future use.
madeofpalk 5y ago
Curious that this is also the strength of tiktok algorithm, because you're able to send it negative signals
cwp 5y ago
Yes. One of the things I've learned over the years on HN is that I don't appreciate comments that are generic expressions of identity. That is, if somebody posts a comment that contains nothing specific to the subject at hand, that boils down to "I am progressive" or "conservatism is good" or "X is evil" I downvote it. That sort of comment is the bread and butter of so much internet discussion; we don't need more of it, and it doesn't contribute to what I enjoy about HN.
- clairity 5y ago
  > “…generic expressions of identity… I downvote it.” yes, please. identitarian comments are often some of the least reasoned, and therefore the most uncurious and banal.
alex_c 5y ago
On a side note - does HN feel more "downvotey" lately? I feel like I'm seeing more comments that are grayed out but seem perfectly civil and reasonable. Often they're back in the black soon after, but I'm sure the time period when they're greyed out influences the discussion. Of course, I don't have any way to measure this. I wonder if some of the thresholds need to be tweaked.
- ativzzz 5y ago
  I think this is just because HN is getting bigger, and people downvote comments that don't necessarily warrant downvotes, and one or two downvotes will probably attract more people to read a comment and disagree with the downvote.
- chansiky 5y ago
  My opinion is downvotes should require a reason for downvote. Upvotes imply aggreement of the original post therefore do not need further explanation. Getting in the weeds here, but then if others agree with the downvote rationale, they can upvote the downvote which can be used as some metric. This already happens on HN and reddit - people downvote all the time then provide a reason, but not all people provide a reason for their disagreement, allowing for useless downvotes that dont help the community in any way - for example an "ad hominem" downvote. What this means is that disagreeing opinions are allowed attacks without any risk of retaliation, and in what game is that ever fair?
  - ddingus 5y ago
    The downside of that is increased meta. And the reason is simple: They did not agree and or lack shared perspective before the down vote and that being true after the downvote starts another disagreeable discussion. It all gets worse when people know who downvoted them...
    - chansiky 5y ago
      Only the initial downvoting commenter would have to reveal his name. Then others can just bolster the downvote which harms the rating of the original comment, sort of like a "let him without sin be the first to throw the stone" situation. Then others can join in if they agree. And that might hurt if they're throwing stones at us but at least we get to see where the stones are coming from. Currently we dont, we just get stoned and dont know why.
White_Wolf 5y ago
The only problem I noticed a few times on hn is that some comments go dead even if they are right on the money. Edgy or not is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things if the content of the comment is correct. I didn't end up down the oblivion hole just yet but I did see some that had good points... just not mainstream. Like round earth and trepanning used to be. One is mainstream while the other is now gone and considered barbaric. Some things take time to prove... or dissapear. On the positive side: You don't have to content with baiting and such things for long.
- Cycl0ps 5y ago
  I like Dang's comments on the idea that the presentation of the information is just as valuable as the information itself. Much like your round Earth example, sometimes stating the objective truth isn't enough to win over an audience. This isn't a flaw in HN so much as it is a flaw in the way people behave. We all operate with partial information and when new information conflicts with what we know (or sometimes what the collective authority seems to know) we reject it. In general there are two options to this. You can fully commit to your views, and get 10 responses where opponents fully commit to theirs. Or, you can consider the general views of the community your in, and adjust your comments to challenge and question without provoking, usually getting a small number of considered replies in return. The latter tends to be the harder of the two and the less noticable. I think this is why larger discussions with more approachable topics seem to turn toxic faster.
shusaku 5y ago
My understanding is that YouTube will even interpret a dislike as positive feedback. It’s all about engagement as you said.
samoa42 5y ago
> Contrast that to Facebook or Twitter, where only positive signals exist i've never seen a downvote button on HN. Is my browser to old or not supported?
- sleepysysadmin 5y ago
  >i've never seen a downvote button on HN. Is my browser to old or not supported? You have to get enough upvotes first.
- dorgo 5y ago
  you need at least 500 (or 501?) karma
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
seoulmetro 5y ago
That's how you get echo chambers actually, quite far from actual discourse. An echo chamber definitely cannot contain flamewars though.... so there's that.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

>The thing I really like about HN's commenting system is that it's explicitly designed to discourage flamewars -- the way heavily downvoted comments end up "dead" means that "edgy" content is quickly buried. It's sad that it goes well beyond that. You don't just remove edgy, you also remove anything controversial or dissenting. You end up with an echo chamber. The question, how do you minimize cost of moderation while allowing discussion under hostile conditions? Nobody has an answer to this question.

xeromal 5y ago

Ditto. Social disapproval seems to actually work here. Piss off too many people and you disappear.

njharman 5y ago
How many is too many (people to piss off)? Take your statement in another context. Say native dissidents pissing off local government / foreign natural resource exploitists. Or, americans of african ancestry attempting to be heard / get equal rights in 50's america. They were certainly socially disapproved and silenced by society at large. Social oppression is the most insidious form of censorship. It needs to be combated with the most vigor and rigor.
- xeromal 5y ago
  I don't disagree with you to an extent, but humans are wired for social behaviors and there is a positive social pressure to be had. Of course your examples are real and pervasive, but we can't throw out the baby with the bathwater. That being said, this is hacker news which definitely seems more composed than most online forums so I think social pressure here is useful.
what_is_orcas 5y ago
I think it works here when it works, and it doesn't when it doesn't. If you're a straight white male (note: I'm not), then I think social dis/approval works well for you. I think that conversations about privilege are hard and, unfortunately, often times the social majority is united against the implications that they might be part and parcel to the inequity in our systems. This isn't specific to this site, but I'm frequently appalled by what I see in posts regarding race, gender, etc. and there is no social repercussion for people who post in bad faith simply because it is in the majority's best interest to self-regulate in a meaningful way. (And now here I am, worried about the "social disapproval" of this post, even though I think that the contents are worthy of posting and the tone is respectful)
- xeromal 5y ago
  I don't think this post will have social disapproval. I appreciate your comments. >I think it works here when it works, and it doesn't when it doesn't. Isn't that how everything works? Even the best of things? >If you're a straight white male (note: I'm not), then I think social dis/approval works well for you. I think that's a stretch. The west coast where SV is based is full of LGBT+ people. Sure, it's probably mostly white but I don't think I've ever seen a case of racism on here and if it existed, dang probably nuked it from orbit.
  - what_is_orcas 5y ago
    > Isn't that how everything works? Even the best of things? You're right, I think I was using that to ease into my argument in a delicate way. > The west coast where SV is based is full of LGBT+ people. To be clear LGBT+ != !straight-white-male (the set !straight-white-male includes but is not equal to LGBT+). I've seen really problematic racism on hackernews. Problematic not because it's extreme (slurs, lynchings, etc) but because it's "logical" in a way that disenfranchises black people (for example). An example (and I don't keep tabs of this, so I don't have a link, but it was in the past month or so) was of someone saying, with respect to a racially sensitive topic "As a black man I think... about this topic." and the replies were overwhelmingly "That you feel the need to qualify with 'As a black man' proves that you are racist. I, on the other hand, do not consider race, ergo I am not racist". These are well-suited-to-hackernews arguments that invalidate the perspective of anyone outside of the accepted majority and thus perpetuate racism. I think this is the last I'm going to say on the matter. I'm not trying to argue with you, and I have no evidence that you have done anything like what I'm talking about here. I just think that it's important not to ignore what other people might perceive, especially those with different contexts & experiences, who might perceive things that you do not. exit: removed unnecessary parenthetical about Dave Chappelle (for obvious reasons) and clarified a bit.

PrincessJess 5y ago

This. So much this. I hate seeing unpopular opinions. Anyone who doesn't agree with the majority should be hidden from view on every website tbh.

gruez 5y ago
/s?

jikbd 5y ago

What flagging achieves in many cases is nothing more than turning this site into an echo chamber. One can choose to throw the baby out with the bath water, but let’s not pretend that’s the best approach. It’s a bunch of people nodding at one another all the time.

Mikeb85 5y ago
Dunno, Reddit and other platforms are much more of an echo chamber. You see dissenting opinions on HN far more often.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Let's agree to disagree on that, shall we?
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Can't tell if written ironically or not. :)
- jimbob45 5y ago
  I think I'd struggle to find five threads in all of reddit for which "sort by top" and "sort by controversial" don't yield dissenting opinions.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    More about how some subs ban the hell out of dissenting opinions. Look how r/politics morphed in the last 6 or so years. A few regional subs I frequent are the same way and are completely unrepresentative of the actual region. The Alberta (Canadian province) sub for example is basically just a bunch of kids who've never left home that think communism is a great idea lamenting why the rest of the province does want to leave their homes. It's such an un-representative sub it's actually hilarious, these days I basically only go for the Covid updates. Yes, some subs are OK, I mean, Reddit's model is that each sub is its own world and moderators can more or less do what they want. But on the whole, HN has more (respectful) dissenting opinions versus Reddit's most subs are echo chambers and the rest are anarchy.

gruez 5y ago

>Contrast that to Facebook or Twitter, where only positive signals exist, and the entire system is designed to surface "edgy" content as much as possible (because it gets the most engagement!) But that's the same system used for link submissions? you can upvote them but not downvote them.

Danieru 5y ago
True but links are sorted in competition with other links with a zero baseline. Comments piggyback on the link popularity will always show up on the page. Exception of course the massive 100+ comment hot topics. Thus links resting state is a quick falloff and death. In contrast comments tend to hang around, even bad comments if they are part of an interesting conversation.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
You can flag submissions, which works sort of (but not quite) like a downvote. Plus, there are some mechanisms limiting "edgy content", e.g. if the comments/upvotes ratio starts screaming "flamewar!", the submission will drop off the front page like a brick.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  So basically all anyone has to do to suppress a topic is engage the flamewar detection mechanism? What could possibly go wrong on a site where getting an account doesn't even require a pulse. I'm pretty sure I didn't have to fill out a captcha.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    You're assuming what you see (eg lack of capcha) is all the protection that exists, and that there's no other protection. It's kind of like Disneyland - a lot of work goes into making the site what it is, and you don't see even a tenth of the work that goes on into making it look so good.
OJFord 5y ago
There are so few votes per view that I'm not convinced that matters at all, not upvoting is enough of a signal.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Contrarian legitimate and respectful views are downvoted constantly and at an ever increasing pace. Let’s not pat ourselves too much. Comparing with FB is a low bar. I am not a fan of self congratulatory rhetoric when evidence doesn’t support it. HN’s quality of discussions are getting worse, more emotional and less objective. Party lines are clearly drawn. Anyone that wants to challenge this view can just browse threads from 2015 and see it for yourself. I’m the guy that goes around and vouches for flagged comments if they’re not obviously vile/disrespectful/rude even if I disagree with it completely. Society functions because we allow voices that we obviously disagree with. Lines drawn today are getting closer towards center and the extremism is widening the spectrum.

acdha 5y ago
I agree that there's plenty of room for improvement but I wouldn't say that most of the downvoted comments I see are just “contrarian legitimate and respectful views” — usually the ones I see heavily downloaded are also things like standard issue talking points repeated with no additional contribution and/or especially those containing falsehoods or material omissions.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  Sometimes. I often see weirdly dead posts making reasonable points, which I vouch for (and then upvote). But yeah, a lot of the dead stuff is flamebait, but it doesn't tend to be equal opportunity flamebait. For an example, if you say positive stuff about Facebook in the latest Facebook bad thread, you'll get downvoted. The converse is not true.
  - detaro 5y ago
    There are some users who were banned because the repeatedly broke the guidelines but continue to post, and that they got banned doesn't mean that all their comments are bad, just too many of them.
  - acdha 5y ago
    I have seen some oddly flagged posts which I tend to assume are people going through someone's history in reaction to a different thread. Re: the Facebook effect, some subjects are definitely heated but I tend to see that tracking how genuine someone sounds — it seems like people do okay if they, for example, are talking about how Facebook is helpful for communities they're part of and don't sound like they're doing pro bono PR. One challenge I think certain topics get is that they've been rehashed enough that a lot of people are quick with the downvotes if a comment opens with something which sounds predictable so there is definitely something be said for making sure that the initial opening doesn't sound cliched.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cinntaile 5y ago

It seems to work for flamewars and trollbait, but it also gets used to downvote opinions people disagree with even though the content itself is ok and that's a bit unfortunate.

newacct583 5y ago

Alternatively: it enourages brigading and group think. Controversial opinions, even wildly incorrect ones (think: conspiracy theories and ideological nutjobbery) are also heavily upvoted, and it's the discussion that gets buried, since the only ones voting on comments are the people invested in the discussion. So it's routine here to find topics of general interest, and click on them to find some kind of broad conspiracist screed at the top of discussion, try to reply, and discover yourself rapidly buried. It's a real problem. And, yes, it tends to have a decidedly partisan bent to it. There are lots of perspectives you just can't get in front of eyeballs on HN in a meaningful way, you just end up rolling in the slop with the pigs.

mschuster91 5y ago

HN has another issue, though: anyone expressing an opinion that goes against the HN "group-think" (for lack of a better word) gets downvoted to oblivion as a result, even if no participants go on a flame-bait mission. Most common topics that inevitably end in such downvote-fests are free speech (which is a minefield in itself, given that the US and European notions about free speech are radically different), nuclear energy, genetic engineering, government regulation and social security systems (with the exception of US healthcare, which seems to be generally hated). A democratic debate based on facts or legitimate political differences (again, this is really prevalent in issues that have different mainstream viewpoints between the US and Europe) but still civilized in tone should not result in half the comments being greyed out or flagged.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> HN has another issue, though: anyone expressing an opinion that goes against the HN "group-think" (for lack of a better word) gets downvoted to oblivion as a result, even if no participants go on a flame-bait mission This really isn't true, and the people who argue that it is will often argue that the group think takes diametrically opposed positions to those attributed to it by other people making the same argument. HN has large factions on multiple sides of most issues, which mostly offset each other in pure-disagreement based moderation (though moment to moment it can vary). Mostly, if someone is getting consistently downvoted, its more about approach than opinion, though people strongly-enough biased toward the opinion that they can't see the approach issues through their affection for the position will tend to attribute it to hostility to the opinion. (You can often see this occur on opposing sides in the same thread.)
- effingwewt 5y ago
  Are you saying HN is evenly populated and has no main faction? If so I'd like to direct you to any post which brings up income inequality, or anything about any of the FAANG companies. Too many times has correct, factual information been greyed out. Quite often I call out 'feels>facts', where correct info is dead/flagged simply for telling the truth. For specifics you are welcome to peruse my comments, I like to comment when I find these occurrences to 'stamp' them for future use.

madeofpalk 5y ago

Curious that this is also the strength of tiktok algorithm, because you're able to send it negative signals

cwp 5y ago

Yes. One of the things I've learned over the years on HN is that I don't appreciate comments that are generic expressions of identity. That is, if somebody posts a comment that contains nothing specific to the subject at hand, that boils down to "I am progressive" or "conservatism is good" or "X is evil" I downvote it. That sort of comment is the bread and butter of so much internet discussion; we don't need more of it, and it doesn't contribute to what I enjoy about HN.

clairity 5y ago
> “…generic expressions of identity… I downvote it.” yes, please. identitarian comments are often some of the least reasoned, and therefore the most uncurious and banal.

alex_c 5y ago

On a side note - does HN feel more "downvotey" lately? I feel like I'm seeing more comments that are grayed out but seem perfectly civil and reasonable. Often they're back in the black soon after, but I'm sure the time period when they're greyed out influences the discussion. Of course, I don't have any way to measure this. I wonder if some of the thresholds need to be tweaked.

ativzzz 5y ago
I think this is just because HN is getting bigger, and people downvote comments that don't necessarily warrant downvotes, and one or two downvotes will probably attract more people to read a comment and disagree with the downvote.
chansiky 5y ago
My opinion is downvotes should require a reason for downvote. Upvotes imply aggreement of the original post therefore do not need further explanation. Getting in the weeds here, but then if others agree with the downvote rationale, they can upvote the downvote which can be used as some metric. This already happens on HN and reddit - people downvote all the time then provide a reason, but not all people provide a reason for their disagreement, allowing for useless downvotes that dont help the community in any way - for example an "ad hominem" downvote. What this means is that disagreeing opinions are allowed attacks without any risk of retaliation, and in what game is that ever fair?
- ddingus 5y ago
  The downside of that is increased meta. And the reason is simple: They did not agree and or lack shared perspective before the down vote and that being true after the downvote starts another disagreeable discussion. It all gets worse when people know who downvoted them...
  - chansiky 5y ago
    Only the initial downvoting commenter would have to reveal his name. Then others can just bolster the downvote which harms the rating of the original comment, sort of like a "let him without sin be the first to throw the stone" situation. Then others can join in if they agree. And that might hurt if they're throwing stones at us but at least we get to see where the stones are coming from. Currently we dont, we just get stoned and dont know why.

White_Wolf 5y ago

The only problem I noticed a few times on hn is that some comments go dead even if they are right on the money. Edgy or not is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things if the content of the comment is correct. I didn't end up down the oblivion hole just yet but I did see some that had good points... just not mainstream. Like round earth and trepanning used to be. One is mainstream while the other is now gone and considered barbaric. Some things take time to prove... or dissapear. On the positive side: You don't have to content with baiting and such things for long.

Cycl0ps 5y ago
I like Dang's comments on the idea that the presentation of the information is just as valuable as the information itself. Much like your round Earth example, sometimes stating the objective truth isn't enough to win over an audience. This isn't a flaw in HN so much as it is a flaw in the way people behave. We all operate with partial information and when new information conflicts with what we know (or sometimes what the collective authority seems to know) we reject it. In general there are two options to this. You can fully commit to your views, and get 10 responses where opponents fully commit to theirs. Or, you can consider the general views of the community your in, and adjust your comments to challenge and question without provoking, usually getting a small number of considered replies in return. The latter tends to be the harder of the two and the less noticable. I think this is why larger discussions with more approachable topics seem to turn toxic faster.

shusaku 5y ago

My understanding is that YouTube will even interpret a dislike as positive feedback. It’s all about engagement as you said.

samoa42 5y ago

> Contrast that to Facebook or Twitter, where only positive signals exist i've never seen a downvote button on HN. Is my browser to old or not supported?

sleepysysadmin 5y ago
>i've never seen a downvote button on HN. Is my browser to old or not supported? You have to get enough upvotes first.
dorgo 5y ago
you need at least 500 (or 501?) karma
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

seoulmetro 5y ago

That's how you get echo chambers actually, quite far from actual discourse. An echo chamber definitely cannot contain flamewars though.... so there's that.