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You won't ever convince the people here that having your comment sent into the gray is detrimental. Not to mention the 1-9-90 rule[0], meaning 90% of people don
by jorvi 2y ago
You won't ever convince the people here that having your comment sent into the gray is detrimental. Not to mention the 1-9-90 rule[0], meaning 90% of people don't even understand how annoying it is to have a good comment sent into the gray.
According to to them, getting your comment grayed out means its still technically there, so you aren't getting censored by the bandwagon.
They fail to understand that graying out your comment signals to the cursory viewer that it is a low quality comment. Whereas often it is not. You might comment something that is factually right, but goes against HN's vibe du jour, so you get one or two downvotes, and then the larger group starts mass-clicking ▼ without any critical thought.
A much more healthy system would just be sorting comments by vote activity and percentage-positive. It would still make controversial comments slightly less visible, but because there is not explicit signal of quality, no bandwagon effects.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
- oezi 2y ago> 90% of people don't even understand how annoying it is to have a good comment sent into the gray Even if 90% of users are lurkers it doesn't mean they don't know how it feels to be downvoted and can't emphasize. Good comments are rarely downvoted disproportionately on HN. Perceived censorship "by the bandwagon" just means it isn't a good comment.
- jorvi 2y ago> Perceived censorship "by the bandwagon" just means it isn't a good comment. It just means you said something that goes against the grain of the larger part of HN. Nothing more. But as stated, you people are inconvincible.
- oezi 2y agoI think it is more nuanced, because the majority of HN is voting on the quality of the argument rather the alignment of ideas. If you present a well reasoned contrarian idea, I don't think you would gather a lot of downvotes. What gets downvoted are the really bad takes with lazy arguments.