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if my comment was so low quality, why did 30 users choose to upvote it? why isn't HN respecting user's opinions and manipulating the positions as they wish?

ascar 5y ago
> why isn't HN respecting user's opinions and manipulating the positions as they wish? Because certain comments can be quite agreeable, but don't encourage interesting discussions. Your particular thread had more discussion about bitterness and etiquette than content. Even though your points are valid that's not the kind of discussion one wants to have at the top of any article. Derailing the comment section about this article with your own agenda isn't particularly helpful either. But at least I appreciate that I now know about that feature.
j4yav 5y ago
At least in theory, you can get people worked up with inflammatory, wrong, inciteful, off-topic, meta, or similar content. I don’t know if your comment(s) fit into those kinds of categories, but as a user I’m fine with those sorts of things being downranked/flagged so more interesting things can rise to the top. I think they do a pretty good job generally with moderation, though I’m sure mistakes are sometimes made and maybe your situation was one.
- ushakov 5y ago
  i'm fine with being downvoted and i'd be happy if this would've been the case here but what happened though is that it wasn't legitimately downvoted, it was moved down the page check my history, i didn't get 5000 points for posting "inflammatory, wrong, inciteful, off-topic, meta, or similar content" did i?
  - j4yav 5y ago
    What I mean is that you can get people to upvote those kinds of things, so pointing to them as having been upvoted isn’t on its own proof that it isn’t inflammatory, meta, off-topic, etc. I checked the post in question at your request, and to be honest they way I read it is a bit off topic picking fights or meta discussion around the politics of HN. I read it as a bit inflammatory as well. Some of your responses here seem kind of similar, maybe you’re experiencing it differently but it seems like you are angrily responding to almost every branch of the threads here. But that’s all just my personal opinion of what I’m seeing.
dang 5y ago
You seem to be under a mistaken impression of how HN works. Upvotes are an important signal but far from the only one. If HN were to go by upvotes alone, it would consist of little more than sensational flamewars about the same few hot topics over and over again (plus tons of meta drama). This is a weakness of the upvoting system. Lots of past explanation about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22upvotes%20alone%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Since HN's mandate is not to be that, we have to have countervailing mechanisms to compensate for that weakness. Otherwise the system would get stuck in one of its failure modes. The countervailing mechanisms include things like flags, software mechanisms (including automated up- and down-weights) and moderation (including manual downweights and other interventions). All this is happening all the time. If it weren't, HN would be a completely different place. None of this is secret; it's not all transparent in the sense that we don't publish a full moderation log of all the factors, but we're happy to answer specific questions.

ascar 5y ago

> why isn't HN respecting user's opinions and manipulating the positions as they wish? Because certain comments can be quite agreeable, but don't encourage interesting discussions. Your particular thread had more discussion about bitterness and etiquette than content. Even though your points are valid that's not the kind of discussion one wants to have at the top of any article. Derailing the comment section about this article with your own agenda isn't particularly helpful either. But at least I appreciate that I now know about that feature.

j4yav 5y ago

At least in theory, you can get people worked up with inflammatory, wrong, inciteful, off-topic, meta, or similar content. I don’t know if your comment(s) fit into those kinds of categories, but as a user I’m fine with those sorts of things being downranked/flagged so more interesting things can rise to the top. I think they do a pretty good job generally with moderation, though I’m sure mistakes are sometimes made and maybe your situation was one.

ushakov 5y ago
i'm fine with being downvoted and i'd be happy if this would've been the case here but what happened though is that it wasn't legitimately downvoted, it was moved down the page check my history, i didn't get 5000 points for posting "inflammatory, wrong, inciteful, off-topic, meta, or similar content" did i?
- j4yav 5y ago
  What I mean is that you can get people to upvote those kinds of things, so pointing to them as having been upvoted isn’t on its own proof that it isn’t inflammatory, meta, off-topic, etc. I checked the post in question at your request, and to be honest they way I read it is a bit off topic picking fights or meta discussion around the politics of HN. I read it as a bit inflammatory as well. Some of your responses here seem kind of similar, maybe you’re experiencing it differently but it seems like you are angrily responding to almost every branch of the threads here. But that’s all just my personal opinion of what I’m seeing.

dang 5y ago

You seem to be under a mistaken impression of how HN works. Upvotes are an important signal but far from the only one. If HN were to go by upvotes alone, it would consist of little more than sensational flamewars about the same few hot topics over and over again (plus tons of meta drama). This is a weakness of the upvoting system. Lots of past explanation about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22upvotes%20alone%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Since HN's mandate is not to be that, we have to have countervailing mechanisms to compensate for that weakness. Otherwise the system would get stuck in one of its failure modes. The countervailing mechanisms include things like flags, software mechanisms (including automated up- and down-weights) and moderation (including manual downweights and other interventions). All this is happening all the time. If it weren't, HN would be a completely different place. None of this is secret; it's not all transparent in the sense that we don't publish a full moderation log of all the factors, but we're happy to answer specific questions.