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A) I didn't mod you down. B) No one is forcibly stopping you from expressing your opinion. We can even still see your comment. Whining "look at me I'm being ce

• aston 19y ago
  How you mod me (or not) is your perogative. However, I think the practice of modding people down on a piece of pure opinion is about as dumb as it gets. I make a habit of modding up anyone in the ditches (0 karma or lower) who made the 'mistake' of expressing an unpopular opinion. Why silence opposition? Save the downmods for posts with poor quality.
  • pg 19y ago
    That's a bit dramatic. How does downmodding "silence" you? I think it's time to add another principle to the evolving news.yc list of house rules: don't add comments that do nothing more than complain about people downmodding you. This whole branch of the thread is a waste of pixels.
    • aston 19y ago
      I agree this little detour is pretty wasteful, but while we're on it, I might as well clarify. The silencing comes by way of a disincentive to post your opinion, at least until it's clear that no one's going to downmod you for it. How powerful that disincentive is hinges mostly on how much you care for your karma. Even if you don't care at all, it's an expression that the community's not really welcoming you/your opinions. Ultimately, I think it leads down the path of group think, but maybe that's too dramatic as well. Anyway, I'm more than done here. My apologies for the derailing.
      • rms 19y ago
        I usually find that the community sorts itself out anyways. I mod up a lot of posts I find at 0 points. If I get modded down to 0 or -1, it usually gets back up to 1 or higher. If I didn't, I probably deserved it.
    • dpapathanasiou 19y ago
      If someone cares about his karma points, it may discourage him for commenting again in the future. Maybe the best solution is to eliminate the "leaders" page and each user's karma score from public view.
    • blored 19y ago
      Ohh, let's spice up the Leaders page. Those are (I know how hard they are to earn) hard earned karma points. People should at least get to show their web app if they are in the leaders section. Or change the colors. Either way, it's a point of pride among those on it. Or let's increase the size of the Leaderboard to reflect growing YC traffic, or have a 'Most Karma' this month. Anybody listening?
      • rms 19y ago
        I'd love a free link without nofollow on the leaders page. I'm not sure that it's actually a good idea to have rewards for the highest karma, it seems like a bad idea to make the karma overly meaningful.
      • epi0Bauqu 19y ago
        I also put this on the features page, but I think separating submission karma from comments karma would also be a useful expansion. Perhaps a few columns of leaders using different metrics would work. For example, top leaders, top submission leaders, top comment leaders, and then maybe some time ones, like upcoming comment leaders, etc.
        • Xichekolas 19y ago
          Who honestly cares about Karma? I find it useful if I want to skim the posts/comments for a good one, but holding it up like it was some kind of achievement just distorts the whole point of the site, which is to keep up on things in startup-land. When you spend your entire day working on your karma score, you might as well go play WoW. No offense Paul, but WoW has way better 3d graphics!