4 ms·

Ask HN: Do HN users randomly stalk you and downvote your recent comments?

• nivertech 4y ago
  You probably made some political (or otherwise sensitive) comment, which triggered someone.
• jleyank 4y ago
  Well, pretty all of my attempts at humour get downvoted and anything which is controversial in the wrong way gets zapped as well. I’ve tried to answer some topics “honestly without snark” and watched it go negative. This leaves me thinking I’m not quite in sync with the readership as a whole. But the up/down voting system can be frustrating as it can be done without comment. Often, you have no real idea why you did well or poorly. As a guess, the readership tends to like tech stars, the business and neat programming stuff. It dislikes government, left wing politics and criticism of tech stars.
  • nonrandomstring 4y ago
    If you've played minesweeper you'll understand what I'm about to say. There are sacred cows in these fields, and land-mines buried beneath the cow pats. Even casual, humorous criticism of them will lead to swift rebuke by "defenders" (no doubt a tiny minority) who police the pastures. After some months with HN I now see; - It's probably normal and no worse than any online community. - Very little use comes of pointing it out. We all experience it. - Not much to be gained by fighting it. - Making a meal of it goes against the spirit Dang is obviously working hard to cultivate here of avoiding petty confrontation. - It's actually really useful, from a research perspective. It's the last of these points that relates to minesweeper. A lot can be learned from those who reveal themselves and their fealty as they act to suppress. It's great for putting out 'feelers' for those land-mines whose positions reveal a useful map. I'm even starting to sense how negative information is more valuable than affirmative. Keep the down-votes coming :)
    • ss108 4y ago
      Or one can make an innocuous comment like mine (no pun) here, and get downvoted and flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33818141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33818141 Perplexed by that one.
      • necovek 4y ago
        While I haven't downvoted or flagged your comment, I don't immediatelly get it: what is so peculiar that makes you think/joke it might be a UK org? Perhaps if you explained yourself better, you wouldn't get any downvotes.
        • ss108 4y ago
          The original post headline the OP used was "Mozilla have acquired Pulse"
• rvz 4y ago
  You're not the only one; It happens if you tell jokes, go against a herd narrative (with counter evidence) or just disagree. But really at this point, who cares. It really doesn't matter. Downvoting doesn't mean anything unless a direct reason or reply is given. Most of the times the ones that do it to me are sometimes having a bad day or just very angry. So it's fine, it happens, just ignore it.
  • dave4420 4y ago
    Most jokes are not as funny as the people telling them seem to think. An unfunny joke is a waste of space. A comment that’s a waste of space is going to get downvoted.
• dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Then all of a sudden, some of my most recent comments (in different threads) get downvoted at the same time What this typically means is you made some comment that (whether because it was seen as good or bad, and maybe both by different users) got people to click through to your profile and past comments, giving added attention to comments that otherwise would have flown under the radar. If people were stalking you, rather than a sudden reaction to a particular post, you'd expect consistent downvotes as you posted things, rather than focussed flurries on groups of older posts.
• hxugufjfjf 4y ago
  Hackernews has a downvote function? Genuine question.
  • jjgreen 4y ago
    Yes, for karma > 500
• schmookeeg 4y ago
  I have no idea, but kudos to this being one of the problems in your life, having conquered all others. :)
• t-3 4y ago
  I haven't seen the pattern you've described, but I have noticed that many downvotes seem to come to in twos. It always strikes me as a bit suspicious when that happens suddenly, but I try to avoid paying too much attention to the score because I consider it a toxic antipattern.
• ngoilapites 4y ago
  Attention to yourself is always good, no matter what form, positive or otherwise.
• LinuxBender 4y ago
  I had that happen to me a long while back. No idea if that has happened recently as I use uBlock filters to remove my view of karma. I found these filters here on HN submitted by another member. This assumes you have the uBlock addon installed. In Addons -> uBlock Preferences -> My Filters ## HN Block Karma View news.ycombinator.com##.comhead .score:style(overflow: hidden; display: inline-block; line-height: 0.1em; width: 0; margin-left: -1.9em;) news.ycombinator.com##.comhead:not(.sitebit):style(overflow:hidden; display: inline-block); news.ycombinator.com###hnmain > tbody > tr:first-of-type table td:last-of-type .pagetop:style(font-size: 0!important; color: transparent!important;) news.ycombinator.com###hnmain > tbody > tr:first-of-type table td:last-of-type .pagetop > \*:style(font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.45em;) news.ycombinator.com###logout::before:style(content: "|"; padding: 0.25em;) news.ycombinator.com##form.profileform tbody tr:nth-child(3)
• krapp 4y ago
  Sometimes, if I made someone mad enough. I think some people just get so frustrated that they can only downvote a specific comment once that they vent their spleen on your comment history. Given how vituperative and hostile this place can be I wouldn't be surprised if someone actually created a network of alts and built up their karma and created a mass downvoting botnet. I wonder what language they used.
• paulcole 4y ago
  I downvote nearly every comment I see by default. It makes the few I upvote that much more special.