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HN is not a competition or a game. Be glad that the story you thought was interesting has made it on to HN.
by user24 13y ago
HN is not a competition or a game. Be glad that the story you thought was interesting has made it on to HN.
- dsr_ 13y agoHN is not a competition, but it's as much of a game as each poster wants it to be. Karma is a feedback mechanism that acts as a proxy for what the community thinks of your contributions. Treat it as a game and it is one; for the most part ignore it, and you can still use and participate in HN.
- NameNickHN 13y agoThen why do you get points for interacting?
- user24 13y agoTo keep the noise down. You can upvote, or comment "I agree". The latter is not scalable. It encourages good content from people.
- tomp 13y agoNot really. You should upvote if you think the comment provides value, even if you disagree. You should downvote if the comment is wrong/invalid/offensive (as I did now, since I think your comment is wrong), not if you disagree.
- brudgers 13y agoIf downvoting keeps someone from posting an argumentative reply to express their disagreement, HN is better for it. If upvoting a snarky comment keeps someone from posting a mean reply HN is better for that, too. People can vote however they damn well please without anyone shoulding upon them. Votes are an expression of something, whatever that something is is properly in the hands of the voter.
- caf 13y agoI've always thought of it as "useful" / "not useful". (What's the difference between thinking a comment is "wrong" and disagreeing with it?)
- petercooper 13y agoQuite right. But this situation (which is very common, in my experience) shows just how much of a crapshoot the HN front page is nowadays. Not enough people go through /newest often enough for it to be entirely merit based nowadays which is a bit of a shame and a lot of excellent links and stories never make it (good for me though since I get to include them in my newsletters and look fresh ;-)).