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Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. From http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://news
by dfc 12y ago
Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. From http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- eridius 12y agoActually, saying "please reply instead of downvoting" does seem to help. Of course, my goal isn't meaningless karma, it's to find out why people think my comment is worth downvoting. The few times I've edited a comment to say "please reply instead of downvoting", the downvotes stopped, and people start replying instead.
- dfc 12y agoThe guidelines were written in order to make HN a better place for the entire HN community. Your defense of "please reply instead of downvoting" only touches upon how it "seems to help" you.
- eridius 12y agoEncouraging discussion helps everyone. That's what the comments are for. The guidelines have that line in them because people do not like reading complaints about being downvoted, and because those complaints are not productive conversation. Not because there is some underlying reason why drawing attention to the existence of comment moderation is somehow wrong.
- scott_s 12y agoIn my experience, the corrective upvotes happen without calling out that the downvotes are happening.
- eridius 12y agoSometimes, yes. But my actual goal is to encourage dissenters to reply, because I actually want to know why they disagree with me. The karma itself is entirely meaningless except in that it affects how many people end up reading the comment.
- SamReidHughes 12y agoWho says they disagree? Your post was just spam, saying all the obvious things everybody already knew.
- scott_karana 12y agoI would love to see a statistical analysis of this. :)