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Well that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved into another worthless echo chamber with people fistbumping around the popular opinion. Be

Well that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved into another worthless echo chamber with people fistbumping around the popular opinion. Because that’s how you earn internet points. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

swores 3y ago
Maybe try and stop caring about internet points - other than acting as a prompt to ask yourself "do these downvotes mean I should think more about what I said and consider whether it was a good thing to say", downvotes don't do anything bad to you and a high karma score doesn't do anything good. I wish more people could view points/karma as simple a useful tool for the website, not a metric of personal achievement. Especially as it's such a shit metric for personal achievement - I've earned 124 points (so far) just for submitting this article, which took me 30 seconds and no skill at all. While I've written comments that I felt were useful, intelligent, and not quick to write that only got a single upvote because it was just helpful to one person. Who cares? I'd also add that it doesn't make much sense to say "that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved" about a policy that has been the same since the site launched 15+ years ago. And also that the HN Guidelines even explicitly say "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." with each of the words in the second sentence linking to old comments making the same claims dating back as far as 2009." (though personally I do think it's getting worse... but I've no idea if that's real or just from the angle I'm looking at it from.) But of course you're free to leave if you don't like the site any more, or you could email the mods and lobby them to change the guidelines in some way, or you could try setting a good example to others by only posting substantial and interesting comments etc. Plenty of options :)

swores 3y ago

Maybe try and stop caring about internet points - other than acting as a prompt to ask yourself "do these downvotes mean I should think more about what I said and consider whether it was a good thing to say", downvotes don't do anything bad to you and a high karma score doesn't do anything good. I wish more people could view points/karma as simple a useful tool for the website, not a metric of personal achievement. Especially as it's such a shit metric for personal achievement - I've earned 124 points (so far) just for submitting this article, which took me 30 seconds and no skill at all. While I've written comments that I felt were useful, intelligent, and not quick to write that only got a single upvote because it was just helpful to one person. Who cares? I'd also add that it doesn't make much sense to say "that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved" about a policy that has been the same since the site launched 15+ years ago. And also that the HN Guidelines even explicitly say "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." with each of the words in the second sentence linking to old comments making the same claims dating back as far as 2009." (though personally I do think it's getting worse... but I've no idea if that's real or just from the angle I'm looking at it from.) But of course you're free to leave if you don't like the site any more, or you could email the mods and lobby them to change the guidelines in some way, or you could try setting a good example to others by only posting substantial and interesting comments etc. Plenty of options :)