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It's the "without comment" that is the poison here, IMHO. The dilemma here is that most people don't want to read petty squabbles. So if a poster says somethi

by Goladus 15y ago

It's the "without comment" that is the poison here, IMHO. The dilemma here is that most people don't want to read petty squabbles. So if a poster says something you think is really stupid and offensive, commenting is likely to devolve into a back-and-forth that earns a pile of downvotes from everyone else. I realize there's a difference between a single downvote for a post and a series of "punishment" downvotes, but the same idea applies. It occurs to me that a nice feature for hacker news would be to have a comment box on the user profile page which would allow the equivalent of private messages. That way instead of the alternatives being (a) downvote, (b) public response and sometimes (c) email; you could resolve the conflict with the person via private messages.

dhimes 15y ago
So if a poster says something you think is really stupid and offensive If I think a poster is trolling, I'll ignore him/her. I encourage others to do the same. Trolling is no fun if somebody doesn't take the bait. If the person doesn't seem to be trolling but is just posting something "stupid and offensive," call him/her out on it and say why. The poster may not realize how "stupid/offensive" the post is. That's the value of this community. You can learn here.
- Goladus 15y ago
  call him/her out on it and say why. Often, it's really hard to do this without starting a petty meta-argument. It can be hard to call someone out and maintain focus on the topics people actually want to read about. For example, I have downvoted people for complaining about getting downvotes. Sometimes I explain, if I can do it in a way that I think adds real value to the discussion, but really: it's in the guidelines. Nobody wants to see someone complain about downvotes and then see me complain about the complaining, which can easily start a flamewar. So I downvote and move on. Another example is prefacing a sentence with "look,". This is almost always condescending and unnecessary in written communication. If I really think people would appreciate an explanation of why this is condescending I will explain, but usually doing that will distract from the real discussion. Sometimes really lazy posts with blatant logical fallacies and lack of substance get a downvote without a comment. Because really, if there's no substance then what is there to comment about?

by Goladus 15y ago

dhimes 15y ago

So if a poster says something you think is really stupid and offensive If I think a poster is trolling, I'll ignore him/her. I encourage others to do the same. Trolling is no fun if somebody doesn't take the bait. If the person doesn't seem to be trolling but is just posting something "stupid and offensive," call him/her out on it and say why. The poster may not realize how "stupid/offensive" the post is. That's the value of this community. You can learn here.

Goladus 15y ago
call him/her out on it and say why. Often, it's really hard to do this without starting a petty meta-argument. It can be hard to call someone out and maintain focus on the topics people actually want to read about. For example, I have downvoted people for complaining about getting downvotes. Sometimes I explain, if I can do it in a way that I think adds real value to the discussion, but really: it's in the guidelines. Nobody wants to see someone complain about downvotes and then see me complain about the complaining, which can easily start a flamewar. So I downvote and move on. Another example is prefacing a sentence with "look,". This is almost always condescending and unnecessary in written communication. If I really think people would appreciate an explanation of why this is condescending I will explain, but usually doing that will distract from the real discussion. Sometimes really lazy posts with blatant logical fallacies and lack of substance get a downvote without a comment. Because really, if there's no substance then what is there to comment about?