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good question. recently there was a "capitalism as a ponzi scheme" article and i wrote that ponzi had better insight into nature than malthus. i can't see anyt
by fredBuddemeyer 18y ago
good question. recently there was a "capitalism as a ponzi scheme" article and i wrote that ponzi had better insight into nature than malthus. i can't see anything objectionable here - just an expression of opinion and an implicit comparison between tim o'reilly's thinking and that of thomas malthus. i got dinged 2 points for this and i just can't understand why. if there was a reason so be it but i dont understand why anonymous negativity like this is part of the system. it has made me hold back from further commenting... till now :)
- dcminter 18y agoI wouldn't have dinged you - but I don't think that the comment really added anything. Since as I understand it the karma's supposed to be about improving the SNR that moderation seems reasonable. If you'd justified why you felt that Ponzi had a "better" insight than Malthus then it would have been a useful contribution.
- tome 18y agoYes indeed. I think your comment was too brief. A statement without justification is not particularly interesting to me, and I imagine others felt the same and downmodded you.
- fredBuddemeyer 18y agothanks that is the feedback i needed; it seems when an online community resonates with you this misleads you to think they would get anything you say. its a kind of projected myopia.
- mixmax 18y agoI just modded you up to encourage you to start commenting again. Remember to make it interesting :-)
- fredBuddemeyer 18y agothanks - i think im gonna cry :>
- biohacker42 18y agoMeh, I was down modded for asking who here likes the writing of Maureen Dowd and Bill Kristol. Apparently asking that simple question bothered some people. In no way can you let anonymous up or down modding affect you in any way. It's not like you can exchange your karma points for cash. Let your honest opinion represent you, not your efforts to stay popular.
- graywh 18y agoSome people just down-vote anything they disagree with despite any merits the comment may have.
- rokhayakebe 18y agoExactly. I think every time you downvote, you owe it to every one else to explain why.
- Xichekolas 18y agoThere was a thread long ago about this for those that are interested: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=147098 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=147098 (And rokhayakebe, I agree, responding is infinitely more useful than anonymous downmodding, provided the response is civil.)
- johngunderman 18y agoA new feature, perhaps? non-anonymous down-voting?
- graywh 18y agoI see plenty of pointless, off-topic comments that deserved to be downvoted without explanation. But I agree that if you want to downvote just because you disagree, you should probably state your case why. Or upvote someone who already has.
- petercooper 18y agoThere was a thread about this on HN several weeks ago. In it, pg seems to imply (to me, at least) that the behavior you talk about is just fine. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392228 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392228 I got modded down for suggesting people should not downvote posts that have merit but that they just disagree with.. but hey :)
- graywh 18y agoYes, I'm aware of pg's opinion.