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>Why/when do you downvote? I dont have the ability to downvote. I'm not sure I would if I did, who cares about imaginary points. I wish I could at least edit

>Why/when do you downvote? I dont have the ability to downvote. I'm not sure I would if I did, who cares about imaginary points. I wish I could at least edit my posts and improve upon my grammar and spelling or make my posts clearer. Though it does seem my comments get deleted sometimes. I'm autistic, so I'm overly blunt or whatever and I tend to draw hate. >I find places with moderators and/or downvote schemes (HN, Reddit, Discord) extremely difficult to understand and survive long-term. Oh yes, you'll find there's significant brigading on HN worse then Reddit. You'll be + score for hours and then all of a sudden -10 in under a minute. You'll find people will go to your previous posts and downvote everything they can. Your karma score will drop suddenly. I'm -4 on this post for example? Hardly worth downvoting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40075630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40075630 Though yes, I seemed to have hit a bees nest on my TSMC comments and so people are downvoting everything of mine. > It's in some ways worse than other forms of embarrassment because it's your very intelligence and ideas etched in stone as "bad take" forever to the public. We have a problem online that is probably best described by echo chambers but it's a bit wider then that subject. People are accustomed to never hearing any viewpoint but their own. Confirmation bias 100%, blocked! filtered! So when they see a comment that doesnt fully align with them... they don't stop at downvoting that one comment, they have to downvote all your recent comments. >Does HN benefit from downvotes in a way that flagging does not and cannot address? If you don't downvote, answer why you upvote - I'm really curious about the reward system here, what it means and is all about. Why people like and dislike certain kinds of content here. I also never upvote. Not sure how you do that, I assume I'm restricted from doing so? I was told long while back that since I get downvoted so much on so many of my comments that I'm tagged and soft shadow banned because of my low quality content.

_akhe 3y ago
I appreciate the honesty of this post - I feel almost exactly the same way about most things you said. Social media seems over-engineered, and it's interesting that even behind the simple look of this UI there are layers of complexity, bells, & whistles we probably don't even know exist, like your missing upvote button. > they don't stop at downvoting that one comment, they have to downvote all your recent comments This has happened to me on every major platform. YouTube as well - post a comment someone doesn't like and they downvote all your videos lol. I just think of it as engagement since it isn't public there, but it's still interesting how much power random non-experts can have over the visibility and integrity of online information - especially if they're say a Reddit or Discord moderator. They effectively control what the general public sees and perceives as correct.
- incomingpain 3y ago
  >This has happened to me on every major platform. YouTube as well - post a comment someone doesn't like and they downvote all your videos lol. Oh for sure, I've had this happen on reddit many times as well. This is obviously one of Facebook's clear advantages and also why Youtube stopped showing the downvotes. > but it's still interesting how much power random non-experts can have over the visibility and integrity of online information - especially if they're say a Reddit or Discord moderator. They effectively control what the general public sees and perceives as correct. This is the real reason why Reddit, HN, and others are doing this. They intentionally want to be able to curate content. They WANT the echo chambers.
bhaney 3y ago
> I'm -4 on this post for example? I think people are interpreting the "Postgres is the best answer here" part of your post as "if you're not answering 'postgres' then your answer is bad" rather than how I expect you literally meant it (as in "I personally mostly use postgres, and the question is asking what I use, so the best answer for me to give is 'postgres'")

_akhe 3y ago

I appreciate the honesty of this post - I feel almost exactly the same way about most things you said. Social media seems over-engineered, and it's interesting that even behind the simple look of this UI there are layers of complexity, bells, & whistles we probably don't even know exist, like your missing upvote button. > they don't stop at downvoting that one comment, they have to downvote all your recent comments This has happened to me on every major platform. YouTube as well - post a comment someone doesn't like and they downvote all your videos lol. I just think of it as engagement since it isn't public there, but it's still interesting how much power random non-experts can have over the visibility and integrity of online information - especially if they're say a Reddit or Discord moderator. They effectively control what the general public sees and perceives as correct.

incomingpain 3y ago
>This has happened to me on every major platform. YouTube as well - post a comment someone doesn't like and they downvote all your videos lol. Oh for sure, I've had this happen on reddit many times as well. This is obviously one of Facebook's clear advantages and also why Youtube stopped showing the downvotes. > but it's still interesting how much power random non-experts can have over the visibility and integrity of online information - especially if they're say a Reddit or Discord moderator. They effectively control what the general public sees and perceives as correct. This is the real reason why Reddit, HN, and others are doing this. They intentionally want to be able to curate content. They WANT the echo chambers.

bhaney 3y ago

> I'm -4 on this post for example? I think people are interpreting the "Postgres is the best answer here" part of your post as "if you're not answering 'postgres' then your answer is bad" rather than how I expect you literally meant it (as in "I personally mostly use postgres, and the question is asking what I use, so the best answer for me to give is 'postgres'")