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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

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.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Ok, you’re right. Not all are legitimate and should be downvoted for not adding too much intellectual curiosity.
ItsMonkk 5y ago
This is a consequence of scale. The larger the community, the less you see each individual, the less you are able to understand the other person. One of the most important posts I read on here was on weirdness budgets. Most people want to speak with people with opinions +/- 5% of their own. If you go beyond that limit, people will ignore you and seek feedback from those within their circle. If someone like TeMPOraL makes a weird argument I am going to pay attention, because he has proven himself as a member of the community. One of the big related problems I've found is that people are replying wrong. You should almost never reply to the person that you are disagreeing with. If you do so, and your argument is a good one, the most likely result is that the person you disagree with will be down-voted(even if their argument was in good faith and is their viewpoint was common beforehand!), and your post will follow their post all the way down the page, and no one will see it. This is much worse on reddit, where your post will be hidden. Instead you should reply to their parent, so that your comment and their comment are at the same level, and by up-voting and down-voting you get to compare the different viewpoints directly.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > If someone like TeMPOraL makes a weird argument Well, speaking of weird arguments... the one you make in the last two paragraphs is very weird to me. It's like... not how this is supposed to work, dangit! My take has been: you reply to the person whose comment you want to address. You reply in parallel if you want to present your point standalone - as a counterweight to a sibling comment, but not something to be read as a direct reply. I like it when discussions follow a nice, logical order in the tree (hence I'm replying to you, and not to your parent). Not sure how upvote/downvote tree pans out in practice - myself I upvote high-quality comments that I disagree with, and doubly so if someone else replies to one with a quality rebuttal, as to keep the whole subtree up. But I guess others have other patterns. HN threads are usually small enough that I don't think it matters where a given discussion subtree is happening on the page. But I see the pragmatic value of your suggestion.
  - ItsMonkk 5y ago
    I mostly agree with your reply, and can thus, using my own rules, reply to you. I don't think I am 100% right. I don't think replying is 100% right. At this point the only person who will ever see this message is you, so it's clear that my reply should 100% be to your comment. I've picked up habbits on Reddit, and on Reddit replying like this is absolutely correct. On here it matters less(perhaps not at all), but the more people join, the more it matters. I've got a feeling this is result of the reply system having a single option. It's to simple, so we get issues like this. I look to sites like StackOverflow that have Answer - Comment - Chat hierarchy for guidance here. I think if someone is going to over-take Reddit, this being done correctly will play a big part.
disgruntledphd2 5y ago
> Anyone that wants to challenge this view can just browse threads from 2015 and see it for yourself. Yeah, the entire (English-speaking) internet went crazy that year, and it hasn't really improved since.
mindcrime 5y ago
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. I do some of that as well. "Corrective upvotes" and vouches for things that have been penalized, but which appear to me to have been penalized purely for partisan reasons. It's not much, but we do what we can.

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.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Ok, you’re right. Not all are legitimate and should be downvoted for not adding too much intellectual curiosity.

ItsMonkk 5y ago

This is a consequence of scale. The larger the community, the less you see each individual, the less you are able to understand the other person. One of the most important posts I read on here was on weirdness budgets. Most people want to speak with people with opinions +/- 5% of their own. If you go beyond that limit, people will ignore you and seek feedback from those within their circle. If someone like TeMPOraL makes a weird argument I am going to pay attention, because he has proven himself as a member of the community. One of the big related problems I've found is that people are replying wrong. You should almost never reply to the person that you are disagreeing with. If you do so, and your argument is a good one, the most likely result is that the person you disagree with will be down-voted(even if their argument was in good faith and is their viewpoint was common beforehand!), and your post will follow their post all the way down the page, and no one will see it. This is much worse on reddit, where your post will be hidden. Instead you should reply to their parent, so that your comment and their comment are at the same level, and by up-voting and down-voting you get to compare the different viewpoints directly.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> If someone like TeMPOraL makes a weird argument Well, speaking of weird arguments... the one you make in the last two paragraphs is very weird to me. It's like... not how this is supposed to work, dangit! My take has been: you reply to the person whose comment you want to address. You reply in parallel if you want to present your point standalone - as a counterweight to a sibling comment, but not something to be read as a direct reply. I like it when discussions follow a nice, logical order in the tree (hence I'm replying to you, and not to your parent). Not sure how upvote/downvote tree pans out in practice - myself I upvote high-quality comments that I disagree with, and doubly so if someone else replies to one with a quality rebuttal, as to keep the whole subtree up. But I guess others have other patterns. HN threads are usually small enough that I don't think it matters where a given discussion subtree is happening on the page. But I see the pragmatic value of your suggestion.
- ItsMonkk 5y ago
  I mostly agree with your reply, and can thus, using my own rules, reply to you. I don't think I am 100% right. I don't think replying is 100% right. At this point the only person who will ever see this message is you, so it's clear that my reply should 100% be to your comment. I've picked up habbits on Reddit, and on Reddit replying like this is absolutely correct. On here it matters less(perhaps not at all), but the more people join, the more it matters. I've got a feeling this is result of the reply system having a single option. It's to simple, so we get issues like this. I look to sites like StackOverflow that have Answer - Comment - Chat hierarchy for guidance here. I think if someone is going to over-take Reddit, this being done correctly will play a big part.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago

> Anyone that wants to challenge this view can just browse threads from 2015 and see it for yourself. Yeah, the entire (English-speaking) internet went crazy that year, and it hasn't really improved since.

mindcrime 5y ago

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. I do some of that as well. "Corrective upvotes" and vouches for things that have been penalized, but which appear to me to have been penalized purely for partisan reasons. It's not much, but we do what we can.