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I downvoted you. Frankly, I would have upvoted you if not for your ridiculous meta comment about HN, including: "I predict this comment will be heavily voted d

by jnbiche 13y ago

I downvoted you. Frankly, I would have upvoted you if not for your ridiculous meta comment about HN, including: "I predict this comment will be heavily voted down just because people disagree with me [...]". I suspect that your comments about what HN is or isn't likely to do in response to your comment is why you're being downvoted, not because of your rational (if wrongheaded) discussion. I rarely engage in meta debates, and it's possible you're just trolling, but I just wanted you to know.

blisterpeanuts 13y ago
Politically tinged comments seem to get downvoted quite a bit here, similarly to Slashdot and many other forums. I've experienced this myself. In my opinion, downvoting a comment for any reason other than flagrant trolling, personal attacks, or similar content that degrades the dialogue should be considered inappropriate use of the privilege, because it undermines the feature and renders it pointless. On a Slashdot political topic, I have to read at -1 to catch all the points of view.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  To be clear, my downvote was very much in the spirit of two of HN's guidelines: Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you. See: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I didn't downvote your comment, but you're pretty clearly flouting the first guideline. If you want to be a productive part of a community, please respect the guidelines of that community. I have no problem with contrarian political remarks, as long as they're presented rationally and refrain from breaking the community's guidelines.
EGreg 13y ago
I appreciate that feedback, but I actually added that "prediction" after the value on the comment reached -2. So I am pretty sure it was because people disagreed with my stance, as I had provided a bunch of thoughtful reasoning besides simply stating my opinion and the comment was inviting reasonable discussion. So I decided to call out this phenomenon and make this a genuine test of whether I would be downvoted simply because people disagreed with my position, WITHOUT discussing it first. But sadly it was contaminated by people like you downvoting because I had violated a guideline. I guess in retrospect it wasn't that productive to do it.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  Two things: 1. If you really wanted to make it a test of downvoting, you should have discussed the phenomenon in another thread (although I would have downvoted you in that thread, since any discussion of being downvoted flouts HN guidelines). 2. You should have given it a chance, even after two downvotes. It's not unusual to receive one or two quick downvotes and then be upvoted back to full visibility if you're comment is unpopular but rational, unemotional, and no ad hominems or other personal attacks. For one, I would have upvoted it. In my experience, it's rare to see good but unpopular arguments downvoted to reduced visibility after the initial 20-30 mins.

by jnbiche 13y ago

blisterpeanuts 13y ago

Politically tinged comments seem to get downvoted quite a bit here, similarly to Slashdot and many other forums. I've experienced this myself. In my opinion, downvoting a comment for any reason other than flagrant trolling, personal attacks, or similar content that degrades the dialogue should be considered inappropriate use of the privilege, because it undermines the feature and renders it pointless. On a Slashdot political topic, I have to read at -1 to catch all the points of view.

jnbiche 13y ago
To be clear, my downvote was very much in the spirit of two of HN's guidelines: Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you. See: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I didn't downvote your comment, but you're pretty clearly flouting the first guideline. If you want to be a productive part of a community, please respect the guidelines of that community. I have no problem with contrarian political remarks, as long as they're presented rationally and refrain from breaking the community's guidelines.

EGreg 13y ago

I appreciate that feedback, but I actually added that "prediction" after the value on the comment reached -2. So I am pretty sure it was because people disagreed with my stance, as I had provided a bunch of thoughtful reasoning besides simply stating my opinion and the comment was inviting reasonable discussion. So I decided to call out this phenomenon and make this a genuine test of whether I would be downvoted simply because people disagreed with my position, WITHOUT discussing it first. But sadly it was contaminated by people like you downvoting because I had violated a guideline. I guess in retrospect it wasn't that productive to do it.

jnbiche 13y ago
Two things: 1. If you really wanted to make it a test of downvoting, you should have discussed the phenomenon in another thread (although I would have downvoted you in that thread, since any discussion of being downvoted flouts HN guidelines). 2. You should have given it a chance, even after two downvotes. It's not unusual to receive one or two quick downvotes and then be upvoted back to full visibility if you're comment is unpopular but rational, unemotional, and no ad hominems or other personal attacks. For one, I would have upvoted it. In my experience, it's rare to see good but unpopular arguments downvoted to reduced visibility after the initial 20-30 mins.