7 ms·

My experiences with Hacker News.

75 points by imwhimsical 14y ago

noonespecial 14y ago
HN is a smorgasbord of "strong opinions held loosely". The best advice is not to take anything that goes on here in the echo chamber personally. Relax, sit back, and enjoy your accidental tour of the human zoo.
- srl 14y ago
  Agreed. HN seems uniquely engineered to prevent the formation of echo-chambers. You /will/ come into contact with the completely opposite viewpoint; that's the point. Enjoy it.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
denzil_correa 14y ago
I liked how you put your perception about HN and in particular this part of your post - In my opinion, it’s not the fact that people here are skilled enough to comment on the various topics that makes it special. That people here have the ability to think in more creative and vivid ways and have diverse opinions (some not always correct, as seen in the case of 'misfits') makes Hacker News an interesting place. I also think you are quite mature to play "I'm a Kid" card (take this as a compliment). Good luck!
iuguy 14y ago
> I am never going to play the "I'm-a-kid" card, because in my opinion my work (not just articles from my blog, I also develop software that I like to show around on HN) are a result of my hardwork, and I think they deserve competing with set standards, and it'd be belittling to have them receive positive feedback just because they were submitted by a "kid" Brilliant. I've just come from the linkbait thread where a 14 year old who's never been part of the HN community and is still only posting in that thread is playing the just a kid card pretty hard.
- imwhimsical 14y ago
  So I'm guessing it's the one about an iPhone app?
  - iuguy 14y ago
    Yeah, but if you look at his submissions, comments and account lifespan you can see he has no interest in taking part in the community, only pimping his app.
    - shantanubala 14y ago
      He could have been reading HN without necessarily having the confidence to post something until he had something he felt he could contribute (i.e. an app he built). Obviously we can't read his mind, but I wouldn't mind giving him the benefit of my doubt.
      - iuguy 14y ago
        So in other words you're saying that he might have no interest in participating in the community, only pimping his app?
        chris_wot 14y ago
        The "community" at HN is made up of those create thing, those who read articles and those who write comments. In fact it's a mix of the three. Clearly he knows about HN. Possibly he was lurking. Maybe he's not sure or is not confident enough to comment often. What he has done is created an app and a few interesting blog posts. As far as I'm concerned, that is what HN is all about!
        fatalerrorx3 14y ago
        I would say that an even larger part of the HN community is lurkers. Those that read the articles, comments and upvote, but don't actively participate in discussions. I've been lurking on HN for 4+ years, and I rarely ever contributed comments, mostly just read articles and read the comments to see others opinions. Don't think this is true? Take a look at how many comments are left on articles on the front page, then if you were lucky enough to reach the front page of HN, take a look at your analytics software. You'll see something like 20k visits in a short period of time, there's no where near that number of comments. Most people passively participate in this community.
udp 14y ago
I know you explicitly don't want to play the "I'm a kid" card, but you're kind of doing that just by mentioning it in this follow-up post. I think 17 is probably the age when you just don't have that card to play anymore. I released my first OSS project (here) at 17, and mentioning my age didn't even cross my mind. You just take the feedback and criticism and reiterate like everyone else, because you won't have an excuse forever.
- thaumaturgy 14y ago
  Oh, relax. I'm over twice his age at this point (and still younger than many here). If you work at it, then your judgement improves Zenoically each year. At 17, you can have reasonably adult-like judgement about most things, but still get other things wrong by lack of experience. So, sure, he's still got that card to play. Not that he needs it; choosing to sit back and wait things out and not get dragged in to the HN morass was pretty level-headed thinking. I certainly would've screwed that up at 17.
huhtenberg 14y ago
To be blunt - this is an attention whoring flirty meta. Please keep this sort of thing off the front page.
- orofino 14y ago
  Isn't this the kind of comment discussed directly in the post? Perhaps I'm feed the trolls, but honestly, knock it off unless you have something useful to add.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    I have to agree. Flag the article, but don't moan if it gets on the font page. It'll go soon enough.
    - huhtenberg 14y ago
      They took away my Flag option when Steve Jobs died, after I flagged all but one Jobs-related posts on the front page. I really don't like navel gazing posts. "How much traffic I got from HN", "What I learned from being on the front page", "How I was brewing my coffee when I hit the front page", etc. This is self-centric bullshit that may with some effort be turned into an interesting discussion, but it is not inherently interesting, leave alone being notable. It's neither N nor is it H.
      - chris_wot 14y ago
        That's really fairly disruptive. Don't do that. I'm not really surprised they did this.
        huhtenberg 14y ago
        > Don't do that. Yes, sir.
      - DanBC 14y ago
        There are some articles which you don't find interesting. One option is to flag those articles. You've lost your ability to flag. Why do you think that commenting on these articles, especially with strongly negative content free sentences, is the right thing to do? > I really don't like navel gazing posts. "How much traffic I got from HN", "What I learned from being on the front page", "How I was brewing my coffee when I hit the front page", etc. This is self-centric bullshit that may with some effort be turned into an interesting discussion, but it is not inherently interesting, leave alone being notable. It's neither N nor is it H. The fact that those posts are so common, and voted up, seem to imply that for many people they are inherently interesting. But let's assume that you're correct. Your options are to flag, to ignore, to add to the signal, or to add to the noise. You chose to add to the noise! That feels really sub-optimal to me.
alaskamiller 14y ago
This place turned more pedantic than I remembered 5 years ago. The benefit is that sometimes the tangential discussions bring about something interesting but most times the pedantry is a negative as it just gets people riled up and nitpicking to death. It's also more hostile than I remembered, but oddly people use politeness as some weird passive-aggressive pulpit to combat each other. Replies and comments get seen as personal attacks and others quickly get dismissed as trolls. And when the simplest solution to dealing with anonymous people on the internet vying for fake internet points is just to leave well alone, some -- especially nicks I've seen around from five years ago -- have decided the best way to react is to respond. And poorly at that. It's very much the same catty atmosphere I've encountered when hanging out with my art school friends and their cliques that they endure for their art. But then again, it's the same eternal september problem that was discussed back then, regurgitated every year, and now we're here. That said, there are good signals here and I keep seeing the same advice that people give: ignore the noise. But the challenge is two folds: what is noise and should you really be ignoring it? The first is relative, you decide you own level of involvement but I do have opinions on the second question. I don't think it's right to ignore the negative comments. You can't improve your craft living on good vibes and hugs. So understanding that this place, relative to the rest of the world, is different place, it's both a sanctuary and a padded room. So take the inputs, review them, filter them, and prioritize them. Never internalize the hate but at the same time don't be naive. PS: 17 is young but it's not that young. When I was in the Marine Corps we gave 17 year olds guns and entrusted them to be men and women that can get a job done when need be.
- ignostic 14y ago
  Why do you think the pedantic comments have become so common? There was one post recently about a breakthrough in cancer research. There was an oncologist in the thread who gave more detail and talked about how exciting the research was, but no one was paying attention to him. All anyone could talk about was whether the headline was or was not misleading. I found myself nodding in agreement at the author's lines: "...most of them just criticized for the sake of criticizing." "They simply hold on to one point and stretch it out, overlooking the fact that the point that they want to make is tangential to the discussion at hand." I couldn't agree more. I have never seen a community where this is so true, nor have I ever understood why.
richo 14y ago
You're sad because people disagreed with you? Have fun in the OSS world. Your original post is a bit ridiculous too. OSS isn't for the commonfolk? I guess android isn't the most popular smartphone OS and ubuntu isn't grabbing huge market share.
- _Simon 14y ago
  This sort of response is precisely what the OP was alluding to. Try and read his post with a degree of rationality and a modicum of humility and then respond. You'll be amazed at how much better you and your point comes across.
  - richo 14y ago
    I disagree completely. His signoff line about a green on black terminal- _must be a hacker_ just struck me as arrogant and dated. Programmers aren't some mythical beast people hear about but don't see. Open source software is usable by your grandmother. Obviously there are exceptions to both sides, but I found it very conflicting reading his article with so many things that (to my interpretation, at least) read as though he was trying to put himself on a badass pedestal.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
eranation 14y ago
You might be "only" 17 years old, but with emotional intelligence higher than some 40 years old I've known (and much more than I had when I was 17). p.s. thanks for introducing rhok.org via your post, sounds like a great initiative. p.s. I have read your original post's comments (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016620) and I completely agree the comments were nastier than they should have been to make the same point.
phatbyte 14y ago
wow, a blog post ranting about a blog post where HN users don't have the same opinion as you...really ?
doctorfoo 14y ago
I'm never going to play the "I'm a kid" card, he says - 10 paragraphs after playing it. ("My 17-year-old-brain thought...")
thoughtcriminal 14y ago
HN is the herd mind. There are outliers but there are more who mindlessly vote up the karma leaders just because they are karma leaders - and there is nothing you can do to stop them. It's why I read comments from the bottom, up. Learn to have a healthy disdain for HN, I do, but every now and then a thoughtful comment or submission will sparkle like a gem in this muddy noise and being here may even seem worth it.
- mnicole 14y ago
  > It's why I read comments from the bottom, up. Great idea, I'll be trying this. Edit: Actually in this particular thread it's the opposite..
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
A couple of observations, for what they're worth. "Tell them you're only 17!" If you do, you'll only self-identify as one of them. Average age is high teens to low 20s, if I remember correctly. "People seemed to have a problem with everything." To me this is the result of a large number of people participating. It makes the commenting system rather challenging. Basically anything that can be misinterpreted will be misinterpreted. Sometimes it's so bad I wonder if people aren't being purposefully idiotic, just to score some karma. From reading your article, I imagine you found the attention worthwhile, though frustrating. Welcome to the club. In a strange way it's very seductive to have 10K fellow hackers come by and look at your work, even if they do miss the point, wander off on tangents, and generally posture for each other. Just be careful you're not subtly sucked into writing just for the HN crowd, unless you have an idea you want to sell to a lot of nerds.
- talkingquickly 14y ago
  I'd be genuinely curious where the average age numbers come from? From a point of zero objective information I'd have guess the average age to be mid to late twenties...
  - DanielBMarkham 14y ago
    We've polled this at least twice that I remember. In addition, I did a poll on caffeine and age among HNers a year or two ago (dig, dig) Here it is: http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-caf.php http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-c... My poll showed mid-20s, but that was 3.5 years ago. If I remember correctly, polls show the age continuing to drop as more folks join. This isn't much of an argument, but if you think about it, people most likely to be on HN are people who are not doing anything useful besides consuming stuff. That group should trend heavily towards the younger and unemployed. As total numbers rise, total number of young people who are actively consuming HN at any one time should rise disproportionately, no?
    - talkingquickly 14y ago
      Makes sense the most active users would be the one's with the most free time (the younger and unemployed). Unless of course there are many people - such as myself - who consider Hacker News a fairly useful learning resource and so contribute (albeit not very often) despite having a lot of other things to do? I'd be very interested to see how the average age of the submitters of "useful" content - e.g. posts which rate highly (ok a very tenuous definition of useful) and content heavy comments - compares to the overall average.
nirvana 14y ago
Suggestion: Put comments on your blog. You might get better feedback that way. There are many people who have given up on hacker news but still use it to find links. (I mean how many times do you want to put up some cogent information only to have it mindlessly attacked by idiots? Either its the fashion of the time, or hacker news is overrun with narrow minded anti-intellectuals.)
Aardwolf 14y ago
The "problem with open source" article doesn't have that many comments... 15, of which 5 are the poster's own.
RyanZAG 14y ago
The best discussions and comments on HN are the ones based off technical and constructive submissions. The discussions and comments based off any submission that is someones opinion or is politically/culturally charged will be far less insightful and more about 'winning'. As can be seen, most of the comments on this submission are now about discussing the age of the poster and how 17 is or is not a kid. Real enlightening stuff.
fatalerrorx3 14y ago
If you don't want to play the "I'm only 17 years old" card, how come your main blog landing page says so very clearly =), just kidding, I oddly agree with your point. You can get some good feedback by posting on HN, but there will be the occasional troll that might ruin your day. Give it some time and you'll build up a thicker skin and learn to let them go.
chrisringrose 14y ago
My biggest complaint about HN is the users with enough karma to down-vote that do so just because they disagree with you. I've had legit discussions here about real tech topics (for example web apps vs standard EXE apps), and the guy who continually disagreed with me clearly down-voted every comment I made, and replied with out-dated counterarguments. I wound up losing almost all my karma from one discussion, all while remaining civil. It's very discouraging to be new here, and try to openly express an opinion. It should take more than one to down-vote a comment successfully.

75 points by imwhimsical 14y ago

HN is a smorgasbord of "strong opinions held loosely". The best advice is not to take anything that goes on here in the echo chamber personally. Relax, sit back, and enjoy your accidental tour of the human zoo.

srl 14y ago
Agreed. HN seems uniquely engineered to prevent the formation of echo-chambers. You /will/ come into contact with the completely opposite viewpoint; that's the point. Enjoy it.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

denzil_correa 14y ago

I liked how you put your perception about HN and in particular this part of your post - In my opinion, it’s not the fact that people here are skilled enough to comment on the various topics that makes it special. That people here have the ability to think in more creative and vivid ways and have diverse opinions (some not always correct, as seen in the case of 'misfits') makes Hacker News an interesting place. I also think you are quite mature to play "I'm a Kid" card (take this as a compliment). Good luck!

iuguy 14y ago

> I am never going to play the "I'm-a-kid" card, because in my opinion my work (not just articles from my blog, I also develop software that I like to show around on HN) are a result of my hardwork, and I think they deserve competing with set standards, and it'd be belittling to have them receive positive feedback just because they were submitted by a "kid" Brilliant. I've just come from the linkbait thread where a 14 year old who's never been part of the HN community and is still only posting in that thread is playing the just a kid card pretty hard.

imwhimsical 14y ago
So I'm guessing it's the one about an iPhone app?
- iuguy 14y ago
  Yeah, but if you look at his submissions, comments and account lifespan you can see he has no interest in taking part in the community, only pimping his app.
  - shantanubala 14y ago
    He could have been reading HN without necessarily having the confidence to post something until he had something he felt he could contribute (i.e. an app he built). Obviously we can't read his mind, but I wouldn't mind giving him the benefit of my doubt.
    - iuguy 14y ago
      So in other words you're saying that he might have no interest in participating in the community, only pimping his app?
      - chris_wot 14y ago
        The "community" at HN is made up of those create thing, those who read articles and those who write comments. In fact it's a mix of the three. Clearly he knows about HN. Possibly he was lurking. Maybe he's not sure or is not confident enough to comment often. What he has done is created an app and a few interesting blog posts. As far as I'm concerned, that is what HN is all about!
        fatalerrorx3 14y ago
        I would say that an even larger part of the HN community is lurkers. Those that read the articles, comments and upvote, but don't actively participate in discussions. I've been lurking on HN for 4+ years, and I rarely ever contributed comments, mostly just read articles and read the comments to see others opinions. Don't think this is true? Take a look at how many comments are left on articles on the front page, then if you were lucky enough to reach the front page of HN, take a look at your analytics software. You'll see something like 20k visits in a short period of time, there's no where near that number of comments. Most people passively participate in this community.

udp 14y ago

I know you explicitly don't want to play the "I'm a kid" card, but you're kind of doing that just by mentioning it in this follow-up post. I think 17 is probably the age when you just don't have that card to play anymore. I released my first OSS project (here) at 17, and mentioning my age didn't even cross my mind. You just take the feedback and criticism and reiterate like everyone else, because you won't have an excuse forever.

thaumaturgy 14y ago
Oh, relax. I'm over twice his age at this point (and still younger than many here). If you work at it, then your judgement improves Zenoically each year. At 17, you can have reasonably adult-like judgement about most things, but still get other things wrong by lack of experience. So, sure, he's still got that card to play. Not that he needs it; choosing to sit back and wait things out and not get dragged in to the HN morass was pretty level-headed thinking. I certainly would've screwed that up at 17.

huhtenberg 14y ago

To be blunt - this is an attention whoring flirty meta. Please keep this sort of thing off the front page.

orofino 14y ago
Isn't this the kind of comment discussed directly in the post? Perhaps I'm feed the trolls, but honestly, knock it off unless you have something useful to add.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  I have to agree. Flag the article, but don't moan if it gets on the font page. It'll go soon enough.
  - huhtenberg 14y ago
    They took away my Flag option when Steve Jobs died, after I flagged all but one Jobs-related posts on the front page. I really don't like navel gazing posts. "How much traffic I got from HN", "What I learned from being on the front page", "How I was brewing my coffee when I hit the front page", etc. This is self-centric bullshit that may with some effort be turned into an interesting discussion, but it is not inherently interesting, leave alone being notable. It's neither N nor is it H.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      That's really fairly disruptive. Don't do that. I'm not really surprised they did this.
      - huhtenberg 14y ago
        > Don't do that. Yes, sir.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      There are some articles which you don't find interesting. One option is to flag those articles. You've lost your ability to flag. Why do you think that commenting on these articles, especially with strongly negative content free sentences, is the right thing to do? > I really don't like navel gazing posts. "How much traffic I got from HN", "What I learned from being on the front page", "How I was brewing my coffee when I hit the front page", etc. This is self-centric bullshit that may with some effort be turned into an interesting discussion, but it is not inherently interesting, leave alone being notable. It's neither N nor is it H. The fact that those posts are so common, and voted up, seem to imply that for many people they are inherently interesting. But let's assume that you're correct. Your options are to flag, to ignore, to add to the signal, or to add to the noise. You chose to add to the noise! That feels really sub-optimal to me.

alaskamiller 14y ago

This place turned more pedantic than I remembered 5 years ago. The benefit is that sometimes the tangential discussions bring about something interesting but most times the pedantry is a negative as it just gets people riled up and nitpicking to death. It's also more hostile than I remembered, but oddly people use politeness as some weird passive-aggressive pulpit to combat each other. Replies and comments get seen as personal attacks and others quickly get dismissed as trolls. And when the simplest solution to dealing with anonymous people on the internet vying for fake internet points is just to leave well alone, some -- especially nicks I've seen around from five years ago -- have decided the best way to react is to respond. And poorly at that. It's very much the same catty atmosphere I've encountered when hanging out with my art school friends and their cliques that they endure for their art. But then again, it's the same eternal september problem that was discussed back then, regurgitated every year, and now we're here. That said, there are good signals here and I keep seeing the same advice that people give: ignore the noise. But the challenge is two folds: what is noise and should you really be ignoring it? The first is relative, you decide you own level of involvement but I do have opinions on the second question. I don't think it's right to ignore the negative comments. You can't improve your craft living on good vibes and hugs. So understanding that this place, relative to the rest of the world, is different place, it's both a sanctuary and a padded room. So take the inputs, review them, filter them, and prioritize them. Never internalize the hate but at the same time don't be naive. PS: 17 is young but it's not that young. When I was in the Marine Corps we gave 17 year olds guns and entrusted them to be men and women that can get a job done when need be.

ignostic 14y ago
Why do you think the pedantic comments have become so common? There was one post recently about a breakthrough in cancer research. There was an oncologist in the thread who gave more detail and talked about how exciting the research was, but no one was paying attention to him. All anyone could talk about was whether the headline was or was not misleading. I found myself nodding in agreement at the author's lines: "...most of them just criticized for the sake of criticizing." "They simply hold on to one point and stretch it out, overlooking the fact that the point that they want to make is tangential to the discussion at hand." I couldn't agree more. I have never seen a community where this is so true, nor have I ever understood why.

richo 14y ago

You're sad because people disagreed with you? Have fun in the OSS world. Your original post is a bit ridiculous too. OSS isn't for the commonfolk? I guess android isn't the most popular smartphone OS and ubuntu isn't grabbing huge market share.

_Simon 14y ago
This sort of response is precisely what the OP was alluding to. Try and read his post with a degree of rationality and a modicum of humility and then respond. You'll be amazed at how much better you and your point comes across.
- richo 14y ago
  I disagree completely. His signoff line about a green on black terminal- _must be a hacker_ just struck me as arrogant and dated. Programmers aren't some mythical beast people hear about but don't see. Open source software is usable by your grandmother. Obviously there are exceptions to both sides, but I found it very conflicting reading his article with so many things that (to my interpretation, at least) read as though he was trying to put himself on a badass pedestal.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

eranation 14y ago

You might be "only" 17 years old, but with emotional intelligence higher than some 40 years old I've known (and much more than I had when I was 17). p.s. thanks for introducing rhok.org via your post, sounds like a great initiative. p.s. I have read your original post's comments (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016620) and I completely agree the comments were nastier than they should have been to make the same point.

phatbyte 14y ago

wow, a blog post ranting about a blog post where HN users don't have the same opinion as you...really ?

doctorfoo 14y ago

I'm never going to play the "I'm a kid" card, he says - 10 paragraphs after playing it. ("My 17-year-old-brain thought...")

thoughtcriminal 14y ago

HN is the herd mind. There are outliers but there are more who mindlessly vote up the karma leaders just because they are karma leaders - and there is nothing you can do to stop them. It's why I read comments from the bottom, up. Learn to have a healthy disdain for HN, I do, but every now and then a thoughtful comment or submission will sparkle like a gem in this muddy noise and being here may even seem worth it.

mnicole 14y ago
> It's why I read comments from the bottom, up. Great idea, I'll be trying this. Edit: Actually in this particular thread it's the opposite..

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

A couple of observations, for what they're worth. "Tell them you're only 17!" If you do, you'll only self-identify as one of them. Average age is high teens to low 20s, if I remember correctly. "People seemed to have a problem with everything." To me this is the result of a large number of people participating. It makes the commenting system rather challenging. Basically anything that can be misinterpreted will be misinterpreted. Sometimes it's so bad I wonder if people aren't being purposefully idiotic, just to score some karma. From reading your article, I imagine you found the attention worthwhile, though frustrating. Welcome to the club. In a strange way it's very seductive to have 10K fellow hackers come by and look at your work, even if they do miss the point, wander off on tangents, and generally posture for each other. Just be careful you're not subtly sucked into writing just for the HN crowd, unless you have an idea you want to sell to a lot of nerds.

talkingquickly 14y ago
I'd be genuinely curious where the average age numbers come from? From a point of zero objective information I'd have guess the average age to be mid to late twenties...
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  We've polled this at least twice that I remember. In addition, I did a poll on caffeine and age among HNers a year or two ago (dig, dig) Here it is: http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-caf.php http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-c... My poll showed mid-20s, but that was 3.5 years ago. If I remember correctly, polls show the age continuing to drop as more folks join. This isn't much of an argument, but if you think about it, people most likely to be on HN are people who are not doing anything useful besides consuming stuff. That group should trend heavily towards the younger and unemployed. As total numbers rise, total number of young people who are actively consuming HN at any one time should rise disproportionately, no?
  - talkingquickly 14y ago
    Makes sense the most active users would be the one's with the most free time (the younger and unemployed). Unless of course there are many people - such as myself - who consider Hacker News a fairly useful learning resource and so contribute (albeit not very often) despite having a lot of other things to do? I'd be very interested to see how the average age of the submitters of "useful" content - e.g. posts which rate highly (ok a very tenuous definition of useful) and content heavy comments - compares to the overall average.

nirvana 14y ago

Suggestion: Put comments on your blog. You might get better feedback that way. There are many people who have given up on hacker news but still use it to find links. (I mean how many times do you want to put up some cogent information only to have it mindlessly attacked by idiots? Either its the fashion of the time, or hacker news is overrun with narrow minded anti-intellectuals.)

Aardwolf 14y ago

The "problem with open source" article doesn't have that many comments... 15, of which 5 are the poster's own.

RyanZAG 14y ago

The best discussions and comments on HN are the ones based off technical and constructive submissions. The discussions and comments based off any submission that is someones opinion or is politically/culturally charged will be far less insightful and more about 'winning'. As can be seen, most of the comments on this submission are now about discussing the age of the poster and how 17 is or is not a kid. Real enlightening stuff.

fatalerrorx3 14y ago

If you don't want to play the "I'm only 17 years old" card, how come your main blog landing page says so very clearly =), just kidding, I oddly agree with your point. You can get some good feedback by posting on HN, but there will be the occasional troll that might ruin your day. Give it some time and you'll build up a thicker skin and learn to let them go.

chrisringrose 14y ago

My biggest complaint about HN is the users with enough karma to down-vote that do so just because they disagree with you. I've had legit discussions here about real tech topics (for example web apps vs standard EXE apps), and the guy who continually disagreed with me clearly down-voted every comment I made, and replied with out-dated counterarguments. I wound up losing almost all my karma from one discussion, all while remaining civil. It's very discouraging to be new here, and try to openly express an opinion. It should take more than one to down-vote a comment successfully.