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It makes it quite rewarding to quickly post conformist opinions in typical circle jerk threads, at the same time it punishes participating in smaller and older

by thomasz 12y ago

It makes it quite rewarding to quickly post conformist opinions in typical circle jerk threads, at the same time it punishes participating in smaller and older threads.

jordigh 12y ago
Yeah, I really hate this. I have some relatively unpopular opinions (e.g. I believe that porn, strip clubs, and prostitution are the core problem holding back equality of women) but trying to express these opinion penalises me. The downvotes eventually hide my opinion. I don't know if there is a better model for human discourse on the internet. Maybe it's a good thing that unpopular opinions get silenced, unless they're phrased in very careful, smart-sounding ways. I have to go through great lengths to convince my voters that I'm not a complete idiot for believing some things, and it's a lot of work. It's just easier to express unpopular opinions very selectively. edit: Wow, there's a very good-looking response to this by lostcoyote which is marked as dead and will probably disappear. What a weird coincidence, very à propos.
- honestcoyote 12y ago
  There is a better model. I'm personally partial to Slashdot's old system. Only randomly selected people get upvote / downvote privileges on a given day, and the rating mechanism has a brief explanation attached: "funny", "insightful" etc. or "offtopic", "troll" etc. so high ranking, or downvoted, comments can be sorted or filtered by type. Metafilter also has a great system where posts and comments can be marked as a "favorite", which is an upvote-only system. To show disagreement, the reader actually has to participate in the thread rather than just making a lazy downvote. And participation for all users is treated equally by the software, no matter how many favorites you have or don't. Even though Metafilter skews heavily to the left, there are still some conservative users who regularly comment because they know their posts will not be downvoted to oblivion without any response. I think downvotes overall are a terrible idea, though HN has a much better implementation* than Reddit. If a site is going to have them, there should be a way to force the downvoter to give a reason. Otherwise, the site is just subtly creating a certain level of circlejerks and groupthink. There will always be trolls and assholes but a "report to moderator" button can handle those. * -- HN is better in most ways, but I do dislike the semi-hiding, faint grey text, of unpopular comments, especially when the grey comment has responses. Someone's opinion may be wrong or may be unpopular, but if this comment leads to dialogue, then the comment should be presented in the same format as the others. If one of the goals of your site is to encourage conversation, then the people who create unpopular or inaccurate comments should be somewhat valued as this is one of the better ways to get a conversation started online.
- eevilspock 12y ago
  > I believe that porn, strip clubs, and prostitution are the core problem holding back equality of women) but trying to express these opinion penalizes me It's particularly bad because of the dominance of males on this site, who unsurprisingly are on the whole far less sensitive to the issues of equality of women. How HN tends to respond to women's treatment in tech is a good example of this. HN is far more apt to attack Apple than attack misogyny[1][2]. Recently I've made some posts questioning the morality of advertising[3]. But, as Upton Sinclair said so well, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." My comments were quickly down-voted. I expect this comment itself to get down-voted quite a bit. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6357317#up_6359738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6357317#up_6359738 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601572#up_4601807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601572#up_4601807 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733713

by thomasz 12y ago

It makes it quite rewarding to quickly post conformist opinions in typical circle jerk threads, at the same time it punishes participating in smaller and older threads.

jordigh 12y ago

Yeah, I really hate this. I have some relatively unpopular opinions (e.g. I believe that porn, strip clubs, and prostitution are the core problem holding back equality of women) but trying to express these opinion penalises me. The downvotes eventually hide my opinion. I don't know if there is a better model for human discourse on the internet. Maybe it's a good thing that unpopular opinions get silenced, unless they're phrased in very careful, smart-sounding ways. I have to go through great lengths to convince my voters that I'm not a complete idiot for believing some things, and it's a lot of work. It's just easier to express unpopular opinions very selectively. edit: Wow, there's a very good-looking response to this by lostcoyote which is marked as dead and will probably disappear. What a weird coincidence, very à propos.

honestcoyote 12y ago
There is a better model. I'm personally partial to Slashdot's old system. Only randomly selected people get upvote / downvote privileges on a given day, and the rating mechanism has a brief explanation attached: "funny", "insightful" etc. or "offtopic", "troll" etc. so high ranking, or downvoted, comments can be sorted or filtered by type. Metafilter also has a great system where posts and comments can be marked as a "favorite", which is an upvote-only system. To show disagreement, the reader actually has to participate in the thread rather than just making a lazy downvote. And participation for all users is treated equally by the software, no matter how many favorites you have or don't. Even though Metafilter skews heavily to the left, there are still some conservative users who regularly comment because they know their posts will not be downvoted to oblivion without any response. I think downvotes overall are a terrible idea, though HN has a much better implementation* than Reddit. If a site is going to have them, there should be a way to force the downvoter to give a reason. Otherwise, the site is just subtly creating a certain level of circlejerks and groupthink. There will always be trolls and assholes but a "report to moderator" button can handle those. * -- HN is better in most ways, but I do dislike the semi-hiding, faint grey text, of unpopular comments, especially when the grey comment has responses. Someone's opinion may be wrong or may be unpopular, but if this comment leads to dialogue, then the comment should be presented in the same format as the others. If one of the goals of your site is to encourage conversation, then the people who create unpopular or inaccurate comments should be somewhat valued as this is one of the better ways to get a conversation started online.
eevilspock 12y ago
> I believe that porn, strip clubs, and prostitution are the core problem holding back equality of women) but trying to express these opinion penalizes me It's particularly bad because of the dominance of males on this site, who unsurprisingly are on the whole far less sensitive to the issues of equality of women. How HN tends to respond to women's treatment in tech is a good example of this. HN is far more apt to attack Apple than attack misogyny[1][2]. Recently I've made some posts questioning the morality of advertising[3]. But, as Upton Sinclair said so well, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." My comments were quickly down-voted. I expect this comment itself to get down-voted quite a bit. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6357317#up_6359738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6357317#up_6359738 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601572#up_4601807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601572#up_4601807 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733713