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When you're mean to someone else successfully, you shift your pain to somebody else's on a psychic level. Downmodding is an easy way to be mean, especially whe

When you're mean to someone else successfully, you shift your pain to somebody else's on a psychic level. Downmodding is an easy way to be mean, especially when you overkill a bad comment or are over-zealous with it. But in doing so, it will never resolve one's own pain. He why I find HN a highly strung forum: - karma in general. As mentioned it can abused: over modding up and over modding down (yet this has been recently capped). - wanting to post a reply but not having the patience of inclination to read other people's replies first. - unfair distribution of karma. Too many times I've posted a 1 point comment only to have a responder receive around 10: it was because of me that their comment was possible and available. - not being encouraged to reply with apt and polite responses, even though in conversation such would be required, such as "you're right" or "thanks for telling me that" or "are you sure?" etc. Such responses could be easily modded down, hence modding has replaced discourse.

mediaman 17y ago
Adrian, to your last point -- how would you suggest the site encourage polite responses such as your examples? I agree with you that having them makes a huge difference to the character of the site, and others seeing that will take them as cues as to how to behave themselves. Are these responses often modded down? That seems like a bizarre response for a moderator.
- adrianwaj 17y ago
  Well, for better or worse, the notion the mod is the response sticks here. Perhaps my examples weren't great: you wouldn't say "thanks for telling me that, I'd been burning to know..." you just mod up. What can happen is that something can be modded down, without a clear reason why. It could be just me, but sometimes I'm left scratching my head - I'll have to pay closer attention to precise examples: also you generally can't write "someone's modded that down: please explain". The only idea is some type of mod-flagging mechanism. Something like that would unlikely be implemented though, probably for a number of good reasons, the main being complexity, labor and power-shifting.

mediaman 17y ago

Adrian, to your last point -- how would you suggest the site encourage polite responses such as your examples? I agree with you that having them makes a huge difference to the character of the site, and others seeing that will take them as cues as to how to behave themselves. Are these responses often modded down? That seems like a bizarre response for a moderator.

adrianwaj 17y ago
Well, for better or worse, the notion the mod is the response sticks here. Perhaps my examples weren't great: you wouldn't say "thanks for telling me that, I'd been burning to know..." you just mod up. What can happen is that something can be modded down, without a clear reason why. It could be just me, but sometimes I'm left scratching my head - I'll have to pay closer attention to precise examples: also you generally can't write "someone's modded that down: please explain". The only idea is some type of mod-flagging mechanism. Something like that would unlikely be implemented though, probably for a number of good reasons, the main being complexity, labor and power-shifting.