6 ms·

this opens my eyes, TIL some people on HN have the ability to downweight a comment (which is not equivalent to downvoting)

by VMtest 4y ago

ushakov 4y ago
yes, now you know the game is rigged just imagine how much of the HN comment section is manipulated by these elites i guess some YC-investor isn't happy that us regulars are devaluing his investment and downranks negative comments so that people will give Fig a try after reading bunch of good ones
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  > elites I don't think this is the proper use of the word. These are just people with vested interest in making a product more popular - it has nothing to do with any "elite."
  - ushakov 4y ago
    google: "elites meaning" "a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society." the people who downranked my comments, were indeed elites, because they're a select group of privileged users with the ability to downrank
    - fold_left 4y ago
      Elite like a Janitor? because only he can open the Office in the morning?
      - ushakov 4y ago
        the power they have is that they can influence opinions millions visit HackerNews every day when those people see Fig ad here, first thing they do is check what the people are saying about it in the comment section now, imagine that instead of real feedback, you're mostly seeing cherry-picked comments praising the product it certainly shapes your opinion of the product and makes you more likely to try
        Brian_K_White 4y ago
        That makes them merely select, like the janitor. People do commonly use elite as a pejorative stand in for select group, but elite still does mean in some way better or superior, and surely you don't mean to say they are superior in any way than position.
      - FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
        no elite like owning the building the janitor have some keys to
- staindk 4y ago
  Just my 2c I don't know why you are 'a regular' if you have such a toxic opinion of and attitude towards HN. Also although this is not going to sway you, I at least want to mention it as I found it interesting when I came across this - see the response and embedded search link in the FAQ question "Are negative stories about YC suppressed on HN?" here [1] Edit: also want to note that I'm thankful for you and others who bring up the privacy issues because I likely would have looked at the fig.io page, thought 'hey this looks cool' and upvoted the post without thinking much further... which is likely where a lot of the upvotes come from. So IMO putting things more lightly (even in your original response 9 days ago) would have sufficed. Perhaps if you had qualified what you meant by fig relying on "free labour" (it just sounds like a hectic accusation) your comment would have stayed at the top. Though overall I agree it doesn't seem like the kind of comment that should have been suppressed and it's good to push back against that a bit. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
  - emerongi 4y ago
    I think I would very much be dissatisfied as well after finding out that someone can arbitrarily devalue my opinions. The original comment by the author wasn't even that negative in my opinion, it just outlined real problems with Fig. Someone didn't like that though and the author got the hammer for it.
    - theturtletalks 4y ago
      This is the disconnect. HN wants to come across as a discussion of free ideas that can be voted upon, but some users can down-weight comments to the bottom? That’s well within HN’s prerogative since it was started by YC, but they should be straight forward that YC companies are given preferential treatment. Most lurkers and users think YC companies make it to the front page organically and based on merit alone.
      - dang 4y ago
        YC companies are not given preferential treatment, with three exceptions, which are clearly defined in the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html): Launch HN posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches), job ads (https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs), and alumni usernames being displayed in orange to other alumni. Other than that, YC companies have to compete for attention on HN along with everyone else, and I can tell you that most find it maddeningly difficult. In some ways we use moderation power to YC startups' disadvantage - we moderate criticisms of YC startups less, not more, than usual (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20%22not%20more%22%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). For example, the tedious angry-generic-repetitive sort of subthread that tends to get upvoted on most common topics is exactly the kind of thing we downweight as part of standard moderation, but we do that less when a YC startup is the topic. That's not because such discussion is any higher-quality in those cases (it isn't), but rather because people are quick to jump to the conclusion that we're doing nefarious things and we need to be able to answer those concerns in good conscience. The fact that there's all this drama about one such subthread having gotten downweighted is actually an indication of how we don't do that. It happened, but only by mistake.
dang 4y ago
We've been doing experiments for many years with the intention of extending moderation abilities to broader segments of the community. Some of these experiments end up getting dropped, while others end up as official features on the site. For example, it used to be that only moderators could unkill a [dead] post and restore it to full visibility. Then we started an experiment in letting non-moderators do that, and this turned into the 'vouch' feature which allows most HN users above a certain karma threshold to have a say in which posts get unkilled. That was the biggest success to date - it has made a big difference both in thread quality (many interesting comments become visible) and community happiness (there's less resentment about posts being dead than there used to be). That was a great outcome, and we're always thinking about more possibilities for such things. The current experiment is very much in the same spirit. Personally I would love to find ways to extend these things to everyone (most likely above a certain karma threshold) but it's not often obvious how to do that. Another example is the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), which gives submissions a random placement on HN's front page.

this opens my eyes, TIL some people on HN have the ability to downweight a comment (which is not equivalent to downvoting)

by VMtest 4y ago

this opens my eyes, TIL some people on HN have the ability to downweight a comment (which is not equivalent to downvoting)

ushakov 4y ago

yes, now you know the game is rigged just imagine how much of the HN comment section is manipulated by these elites i guess some YC-investor isn't happy that us regulars are devaluing his investment and downranks negative comments so that people will give Fig a try after reading bunch of good ones

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
> elites I don't think this is the proper use of the word. These are just people with vested interest in making a product more popular - it has nothing to do with any "elite."
- ushakov 4y ago
  google: "elites meaning" "a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society." the people who downranked my comments, were indeed elites, because they're a select group of privileged users with the ability to downrank
  - fold_left 4y ago
    Elite like a Janitor? because only he can open the Office in the morning?
    - ushakov 4y ago
      the power they have is that they can influence opinions millions visit HackerNews every day when those people see Fig ad here, first thing they do is check what the people are saying about it in the comment section now, imagine that instead of real feedback, you're mostly seeing cherry-picked comments praising the product it certainly shapes your opinion of the product and makes you more likely to try
      - Brian_K_White 4y ago
        That makes them merely select, like the janitor. People do commonly use elite as a pejorative stand in for select group, but elite still does mean in some way better or superior, and surely you don't mean to say they are superior in any way than position.
    - FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
      no elite like owning the building the janitor have some keys to
staindk 4y ago
Just my 2c I don't know why you are 'a regular' if you have such a toxic opinion of and attitude towards HN. Also although this is not going to sway you, I at least want to mention it as I found it interesting when I came across this - see the response and embedded search link in the FAQ question "Are negative stories about YC suppressed on HN?" here [1] Edit: also want to note that I'm thankful for you and others who bring up the privacy issues because I likely would have looked at the fig.io page, thought 'hey this looks cool' and upvoted the post without thinking much further... which is likely where a lot of the upvotes come from. So IMO putting things more lightly (even in your original response 9 days ago) would have sufficed. Perhaps if you had qualified what you meant by fig relying on "free labour" (it just sounds like a hectic accusation) your comment would have stayed at the top. Though overall I agree it doesn't seem like the kind of comment that should have been suppressed and it's good to push back against that a bit. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- emerongi 4y ago
  I think I would very much be dissatisfied as well after finding out that someone can arbitrarily devalue my opinions. The original comment by the author wasn't even that negative in my opinion, it just outlined real problems with Fig. Someone didn't like that though and the author got the hammer for it.
  - theturtletalks 4y ago
    This is the disconnect. HN wants to come across as a discussion of free ideas that can be voted upon, but some users can down-weight comments to the bottom? That’s well within HN’s prerogative since it was started by YC, but they should be straight forward that YC companies are given preferential treatment. Most lurkers and users think YC companies make it to the front page organically and based on merit alone.
    - dang 4y ago
      YC companies are not given preferential treatment, with three exceptions, which are clearly defined in the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html): Launch HN posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches), job ads (https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs), and alumni usernames being displayed in orange to other alumni. Other than that, YC companies have to compete for attention on HN along with everyone else, and I can tell you that most find it maddeningly difficult. In some ways we use moderation power to YC startups' disadvantage - we moderate criticisms of YC startups less, not more, than usual (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20%22not%20more%22%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). For example, the tedious angry-generic-repetitive sort of subthread that tends to get upvoted on most common topics is exactly the kind of thing we downweight as part of standard moderation, but we do that less when a YC startup is the topic. That's not because such discussion is any higher-quality in those cases (it isn't), but rather because people are quick to jump to the conclusion that we're doing nefarious things and we need to be able to answer those concerns in good conscience. The fact that there's all this drama about one such subthread having gotten downweighted is actually an indication of how we don't do that. It happened, but only by mistake.

dang 4y ago

We've been doing experiments for many years with the intention of extending moderation abilities to broader segments of the community. Some of these experiments end up getting dropped, while others end up as official features on the site. For example, it used to be that only moderators could unkill a [dead] post and restore it to full visibility. Then we started an experiment in letting non-moderators do that, and this turned into the 'vouch' feature which allows most HN users above a certain karma threshold to have a say in which posts get unkilled. That was the biggest success to date - it has made a big difference both in thread quality (many interesting comments become visible) and community happiness (there's less resentment about posts being dead than there used to be). That was a great outcome, and we're always thinking about more possibilities for such things. The current experiment is very much in the same spirit. Personally I would love to find ways to extend these things to everyone (most likely above a certain karma threshold) but it's not often obvious how to do that. Another example is the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), which gives submissions a random placement on HN's front page.