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What gets me is that unless you are really interested in GO, Haskell, dislike Microsoft, think you can write a real encrypted instant messaging system in JavaSc

What gets me is that unless you are really interested in GO, Haskell, dislike Microsoft, think you can write a real encrypted instant messaging system in JavaScript crypto, and have a libertarian leaning you will never have enough karma/points to downvote other people. It encourages group think in the extreme. Also, at around 180 gold stars/dingles it just stops. I mean seriously...there is a vast amount of consensus around a set of things here that are just impermeable. Yes I have read "the approach to comments" and it sounds like you guys think that "resisting decline" means everyone basically has the same opinion but everyone gets to restate it to each other in "civil" and interesting ways. EDIT: You also have to really be into crypto-currency...it also helps if you mention hayek while talking about it. You rebel.

jfoster 12y ago
Is downvoting other people an important part of HN, though? It's important that someone is doing it responsibly to keep things clean, but upvoting gems and adding value to discussion through intelligent comments seem like they would be far more valuable activities for HN.
- bl4hblahblat 12y ago
  Well, that's kind of my point. You are at the mercy of people who disagree with you if you are in the minority. If you disagree with the consensus you will be downvoted to the point that you can't be seen anymore. I think that differing views add value. Having contrary opinions just disappear so that everyone can keep restating the same thing to each other is really frustrating. EDIT: Clarification...
  - jfoster 12y ago
    Fair enough. I see the theory of that. Does it happen in practice? Are there comments that were intelligent, adding to the discussion, not being mean, and so on... which were then downvoted to the point where they couldn't be seen? I don't think I've seen it happen on HN, but I have seen it on other sites. I hypothesize that there is actually a craving for intelligent but unusual viewpoints on HN.
vacri 12y ago
Your own biases are showing. I am interested in none of those things, not even the bits in your edit (and in particular, think that libertarianism is damagingly naive), yet I accrue a few votes here and there. I have plenty of karma. Seriously, the downvote mechanism is overrated anyway, and is one of the most poorly implemented features of HN - if you're using access to that as a yardstick for value on the site, I'd suggest reviewing your expectations.
- bl4hblahblat 12y ago
  I accrued 188 points on my last account before it just stopped, like I was invisible...so I logged in with another account and couldn't even see my other posts. I'm not saying that I want to downvote people...I'm saying that you haven't been downvoted into oblivion because you don't disagree with people. Start commenting with a contrary opinion and you'll see what I'm talking about. Also..."Your own biases are showing" might sounds like a reasonable and measured thing to say to someone, when you say it to yourself in your head, but its not. Somehow the rest of you have no bias? And are you saying that I should ignore conservations that I disagree with to protect my votes...??? That's exactly what I was saying happens here. It's a self censorship that leads to this massive amount of consensus on everything from posts to comments.
  - jeorgun 12y ago
    If you literally couldn't see your other posts, wouldn't that suggest that your other profile was hellbanned or something, not that people just stopped upvoting you?
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > I accrued 188 points on my last account before it just stopped, like I was invisible...so I logged in with another account and couldn't even see my other posts. Herein lies your problem. You don't get that from disagreeing with the group or challenging the status quo; as far as I can tell, you need to have serious problems with the form, not the content of your comments to achieve that state.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
gjm11 12y ago
I have never written a line of Go, and have only a casual acquaintance with Haskell. I'm not a Microsoft fan but spend approximately zero HN time bashing them. I would not attempt to write any sort of crypto anything in Javascript. I am not a libertarian. I am slightly interested in crypto-currency but have never owned any. I think Hayek is way overrated. My karma score is approaching 8000, and I promise it's enough to downvote other people. I dare say there is some groupthink on HN. There is groupthink everywhere where like-minded people congregate. But I've seen a very wide range of ideas treated with respect here, and pretty much the same very wide range of ideas treated with contempt, depending on who happens to be reading and responding.
- bl4hblahblat 12y ago
  Well congratulations on that, and I swear I'm not trying to be snide here, but you've been on HN for 6 years. If you are a new user and you actually want to communicate with people...and hold a minority opinion...you will be downvoted out of visibility.
  - gjm11 12y ago
    I wasn't looking for congratulations, I was pointing out that your claim is factually incorrect. I hold plenty of the opinions you say are minority opinions. So far as I know, I was neither much more nor much less typical of the HN population when I was new here than I am now. But I did OK and continue to do so. It's perfectly obvious that holding a minority opinion can't guarantee getting downvoted into oblivion, for the boring reason that you can hold that opinion without expressing it, and in that case no one can possibly downvote you for it. Of course you might (very reasonably) not want to censor yourself to that extent. Very well: all you need do is have some other things you can talk interesting about besides your shortlist of pet dislikes. Then the upvotes you get from being interesting on other topics will outweigh the downvotes you allegedly get from daring not to be a libertarian. Although, I repeat: I'm not a libertarian, I've dared to express not-libertarian views more than once, and I don't recall ever getting wiped out by downvotes as a result. I've seen plenty of other not-libertarian comments that aren't invisibly light grey. So you might consider the possibility that what you got hammered for was not the mere fact of expressing an unpopular opinion, but something about how you expressed it. Now, even the approach outlined in the previous paragraph might not be enough, if what you say about your pet dislikes gets you not merely downvoted but hellbanned. (That's the thing where your comments are invisible except to you, the moderators, and people with the "showdead" feature turned on, so you never get any karma or any replies ever again.) But -- barring cockups and miscarriages of justice, both of which inevitably happen but are pretty rare -- that will only happen if what you say is not merely unpopular but particularly stupid, or repeatedly boring, or something else of the sort to attract the attention of a moderator and make them think "This person is not adding anything positive to HN by being there". So don't do that. Be civil. Be interesting. Don't try to turn HN into a political flamewar. It's not really that difficult.
bl4hblahblat 12y ago
And so now i'm being downvoted, because you know...disagreement isn't cool. How can I save this...Who wants to talk about Rust? Huh? Anybody? Bitcoin? That god damn NSA? Amirite?
- minimaxir 12y ago
  Complaining about downvotes isn't cool either.
  - klibertp 12y ago
    Not if what a downvote means changed that drastically recently. I never complained about downvotes, because I believed in the community collective wisdom. However, in the past few weeks, I've seen many cases of downvotes being used to basically communicate that "I disagree with you and your six-paragraphs, coherent, civil post, which is even on-topic, but I'm too lazy to write my own comment explaining why, so have a downvote." I'm seriously thinking on putting some effort into collecting some examples and starting a discussion on the topic, because it's IMHO very bad tendency. EDIT: Although in the case of your parent post downvotes are understandable.
    - lotharbot 12y ago
      pg has said many times in the past that it's OK to downvote for disagreement -- even if a comment is civil, coherent, on-topic, etc. (I usually prefer to voice disagreement in such a case, but don't always have the time/energy.) It's usually self-correcting. A lot more people can upvote than downvote, and most people don't like seeing good comments in the gray.
  - bl4hblahblat 12y ago
    Fuck you.
- vacri 12y ago
  In this case, disagreement isn't the problem, it's being snarky that is.
DanBC 12y ago
I like Microsoft; I think Bitcoin is stupid. I'm not particularly (for HN) libertarian. I don't get many downvotes and when I do I can usually understand why. Perhaps people expressing minority views are just doing so in sub-optimal ways? (Having said that I tend to agree that any threads that are MS vs Google vs Apple are death.)

jfoster 12y ago

Is downvoting other people an important part of HN, though? It's important that someone is doing it responsibly to keep things clean, but upvoting gems and adding value to discussion through intelligent comments seem like they would be far more valuable activities for HN.

bl4hblahblat 12y ago
Well, that's kind of my point. You are at the mercy of people who disagree with you if you are in the minority. If you disagree with the consensus you will be downvoted to the point that you can't be seen anymore. I think that differing views add value. Having contrary opinions just disappear so that everyone can keep restating the same thing to each other is really frustrating. EDIT: Clarification...
- jfoster 12y ago
  Fair enough. I see the theory of that. Does it happen in practice? Are there comments that were intelligent, adding to the discussion, not being mean, and so on... which were then downvoted to the point where they couldn't be seen? I don't think I've seen it happen on HN, but I have seen it on other sites. I hypothesize that there is actually a craving for intelligent but unusual viewpoints on HN.

vacri 12y ago

Your own biases are showing. I am interested in none of those things, not even the bits in your edit (and in particular, think that libertarianism is damagingly naive), yet I accrue a few votes here and there. I have plenty of karma. Seriously, the downvote mechanism is overrated anyway, and is one of the most poorly implemented features of HN - if you're using access to that as a yardstick for value on the site, I'd suggest reviewing your expectations.

bl4hblahblat 12y ago
I accrued 188 points on my last account before it just stopped, like I was invisible...so I logged in with another account and couldn't even see my other posts. I'm not saying that I want to downvote people...I'm saying that you haven't been downvoted into oblivion because you don't disagree with people. Start commenting with a contrary opinion and you'll see what I'm talking about. Also..."Your own biases are showing" might sounds like a reasonable and measured thing to say to someone, when you say it to yourself in your head, but its not. Somehow the rest of you have no bias? And are you saying that I should ignore conservations that I disagree with to protect my votes...??? That's exactly what I was saying happens here. It's a self censorship that leads to this massive amount of consensus on everything from posts to comments.
- jeorgun 12y ago
  If you literally couldn't see your other posts, wouldn't that suggest that your other profile was hellbanned or something, not that people just stopped upvoting you?
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > I accrued 188 points on my last account before it just stopped, like I was invisible...so I logged in with another account and couldn't even see my other posts. Herein lies your problem. You don't get that from disagreeing with the group or challenging the status quo; as far as I can tell, you need to have serious problems with the form, not the content of your comments to achieve that state.
- dragonwriter 12y ago

gjm11 12y ago

I have never written a line of Go, and have only a casual acquaintance with Haskell. I'm not a Microsoft fan but spend approximately zero HN time bashing them. I would not attempt to write any sort of crypto anything in Javascript. I am not a libertarian. I am slightly interested in crypto-currency but have never owned any. I think Hayek is way overrated. My karma score is approaching 8000, and I promise it's enough to downvote other people. I dare say there is some groupthink on HN. There is groupthink everywhere where like-minded people congregate. But I've seen a very wide range of ideas treated with respect here, and pretty much the same very wide range of ideas treated with contempt, depending on who happens to be reading and responding.

bl4hblahblat 12y ago
Well congratulations on that, and I swear I'm not trying to be snide here, but you've been on HN for 6 years. If you are a new user and you actually want to communicate with people...and hold a minority opinion...you will be downvoted out of visibility.
- gjm11 12y ago
  I wasn't looking for congratulations, I was pointing out that your claim is factually incorrect. I hold plenty of the opinions you say are minority opinions. So far as I know, I was neither much more nor much less typical of the HN population when I was new here than I am now. But I did OK and continue to do so. It's perfectly obvious that holding a minority opinion can't guarantee getting downvoted into oblivion, for the boring reason that you can hold that opinion without expressing it, and in that case no one can possibly downvote you for it. Of course you might (very reasonably) not want to censor yourself to that extent. Very well: all you need do is have some other things you can talk interesting about besides your shortlist of pet dislikes. Then the upvotes you get from being interesting on other topics will outweigh the downvotes you allegedly get from daring not to be a libertarian. Although, I repeat: I'm not a libertarian, I've dared to express not-libertarian views more than once, and I don't recall ever getting wiped out by downvotes as a result. I've seen plenty of other not-libertarian comments that aren't invisibly light grey. So you might consider the possibility that what you got hammered for was not the mere fact of expressing an unpopular opinion, but something about how you expressed it. Now, even the approach outlined in the previous paragraph might not be enough, if what you say about your pet dislikes gets you not merely downvoted but hellbanned. (That's the thing where your comments are invisible except to you, the moderators, and people with the "showdead" feature turned on, so you never get any karma or any replies ever again.) But -- barring cockups and miscarriages of justice, both of which inevitably happen but are pretty rare -- that will only happen if what you say is not merely unpopular but particularly stupid, or repeatedly boring, or something else of the sort to attract the attention of a moderator and make them think "This person is not adding anything positive to HN by being there". So don't do that. Be civil. Be interesting. Don't try to turn HN into a political flamewar. It's not really that difficult.

bl4hblahblat 12y ago

And so now i'm being downvoted, because you know...disagreement isn't cool. How can I save this...Who wants to talk about Rust? Huh? Anybody? Bitcoin? That god damn NSA? Amirite?

minimaxir 12y ago
Complaining about downvotes isn't cool either.
- klibertp 12y ago
  Not if what a downvote means changed that drastically recently. I never complained about downvotes, because I believed in the community collective wisdom. However, in the past few weeks, I've seen many cases of downvotes being used to basically communicate that "I disagree with you and your six-paragraphs, coherent, civil post, which is even on-topic, but I'm too lazy to write my own comment explaining why, so have a downvote." I'm seriously thinking on putting some effort into collecting some examples and starting a discussion on the topic, because it's IMHO very bad tendency. EDIT: Although in the case of your parent post downvotes are understandable.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    pg has said many times in the past that it's OK to downvote for disagreement -- even if a comment is civil, coherent, on-topic, etc. (I usually prefer to voice disagreement in such a case, but don't always have the time/energy.) It's usually self-correcting. A lot more people can upvote than downvote, and most people don't like seeing good comments in the gray.
- bl4hblahblat 12y ago
  Fuck you.
vacri 12y ago
In this case, disagreement isn't the problem, it's being snarky that is.

DanBC 12y ago

I like Microsoft; I think Bitcoin is stupid. I'm not particularly (for HN) libertarian. I don't get many downvotes and when I do I can usually understand why. Perhaps people expressing minority views are just doing so in sub-optimal ways? (Having said that I tend to agree that any threads that are MS vs Google vs Apple are death.)