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> There are also a bunch of activists here on HN as on other forums, who will categorically downvote every comment by certain posters because they maybe wrote s

> There are also a bunch of activists here on HN as on other forums, who will categorically downvote every comment by certain posters because they maybe wrote something they disagreed with several years ago. Interesting. How do you know?

kergonath 3y ago
Confirmation bias. It’s the same in most forums I follow; there is always someone complaining about an imaginary person downvoting everything. Which is always bullshit because even if a couple of posts had one single downvote by the time the comment was written (though there is nothing to say whether this was from a single account), it is never the case if you wait a bit. I guess part of us really want to be against other people and the shady systematic downvoter fills that role. It is always stupid, though. Luckily we don’t get much of that here.
krapp 3y ago
Sometimes you'll make a controversial comment and you'll notice the score on every recent comment you made go down by one. Also I vaguely remember a couple of people here bragging that they had networks of sockpuppets specifically for mass-downvoting, but IDK. This place can certainly be petty enough for that.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  > Sometimes you'll make a controversial comment and you'll notice the score on every recent comment you made go down by one. Sure, but that's a different phenomenon. If you make a comment that gets a lot of attention, sometimes people will go read a bunch of your other comments. I have also had the opposite of this happen, where I suddenly get upvotes on old comments.
carlosjobim 3y ago
Only the admins would have any certain proof of users voting behaviour, but you can deduct things using your own logic. Most of my comments here will get a few upvotes in the beginning after posted and then after a day or two they are downvoted. Completely normal on-topic comments. And if you are familiar with other similar forums with a voting system like Reddit, you know there is no limit to how petty and obsessed people can be online. I never down vote here on HN, because why should I waste my time when I can just move on?
- sanderjd 3y ago
  This sounds like tilting at windmills to me.

kergonath 3y ago

Confirmation bias. It’s the same in most forums I follow; there is always someone complaining about an imaginary person downvoting everything. Which is always bullshit because even if a couple of posts had one single downvote by the time the comment was written (though there is nothing to say whether this was from a single account), it is never the case if you wait a bit. I guess part of us really want to be against other people and the shady systematic downvoter fills that role. It is always stupid, though. Luckily we don’t get much of that here.

krapp 3y ago

Sometimes you'll make a controversial comment and you'll notice the score on every recent comment you made go down by one. Also I vaguely remember a couple of people here bragging that they had networks of sockpuppets specifically for mass-downvoting, but IDK. This place can certainly be petty enough for that.

sanderjd 3y ago
> Sometimes you'll make a controversial comment and you'll notice the score on every recent comment you made go down by one. Sure, but that's a different phenomenon. If you make a comment that gets a lot of attention, sometimes people will go read a bunch of your other comments. I have also had the opposite of this happen, where I suddenly get upvotes on old comments.

carlosjobim 3y ago

Only the admins would have any certain proof of users voting behaviour, but you can deduct things using your own logic. Most of my comments here will get a few upvotes in the beginning after posted and then after a day or two they are downvoted. Completely normal on-topic comments. And if you are familiar with other similar forums with a voting system like Reddit, you know there is no limit to how petty and obsessed people can be online. I never down vote here on HN, because why should I waste my time when I can just move on?

sanderjd 3y ago
This sounds like tilting at windmills to me.