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Some comments degrade the quality of the conversation. We might disagree about which ones, but surely we can agree about that, right? The obvious candidates are

Some comments degrade the quality of the conversation. We might disagree about which ones, but surely we can agree about that, right? The obvious candidates are purely asshole comments, trolling comments, intentionally racist comments, etc., and there are less obvious ones too. (Almost any joke where the author feels a need to reply, "guess no one around here has a sense of humor" after being downvoted probably fits.) The discussion is better if those comments are lower on the page and, ideally, discouraged from being made at all. Downvoting does both. > Then all you have is upvoting, which is based purely on merit. It sounds like people don't like the idea of forum meritocracy, though. I don't understand what this means or what a "meritocracy" is in this setting. (The moderators are in charge; the highest ranked users will never form a ruling class or be in power. Most forums are not "meritocracies", "socialist exeriments", "democracies", "plutocracies", "oligarchies", "monopolies", or anything that implies something other than a loosely managed commenting system.) HN has many readers that know an absolute shitload about different subjects, and I'd like them to share interesting information and anecdotes about interesting articles. I don't want to read stupid jokes and memes on HN, because there are other places that are better for that. So I like that there are ways to explicitly encourage certain comments and explicitly discourage others.

peterwwillis 12y ago
> Some comments degrade the quality of the conversation. We might disagree about which ones, but surely we can agree about that, right? Yes. > I don't understand what this means or what a "meritocracy" is in this setting. Basically, thread sorting would be based (mostly) on merit. > the highest ranked users will never form a ruling class or be in power The highest ranking users have high social power. Their power is simply a tendency to steer the group without telling anyone what to do. Usually it's unintentional, and sometimes they have no idea they're doing. Most forums are actually discrete social communities made up of ingroups, with their own cultural standards and hierarchies, and often a few custom heuristics. Some of them are really incredible from a behavioral standpoint, like an internet chat galapagos island. HN is not so special, but it does have a clearly defined social structure. I agree with you that the stupid jokes, memes etc should stay off HN. That's why I think some kind of meta-voting is necessary: because a simple downvote is used for a lot of things right now, and not just "this-comment-is-out-of-bounds" like you're talking about. Barring meta-voting, removing the downvote keeps the troll talk but it still filters down to the bottom with the other useless comments.

peterwwillis 12y ago

> Some comments degrade the quality of the conversation. We might disagree about which ones, but surely we can agree about that, right? Yes. > I don't understand what this means or what a "meritocracy" is in this setting. Basically, thread sorting would be based (mostly) on merit. > the highest ranked users will never form a ruling class or be in power The highest ranking users have high social power. Their power is simply a tendency to steer the group without telling anyone what to do. Usually it's unintentional, and sometimes they have no idea they're doing. Most forums are actually discrete social communities made up of ingroups, with their own cultural standards and hierarchies, and often a few custom heuristics. Some of them are really incredible from a behavioral standpoint, like an internet chat galapagos island. HN is not so special, but it does have a clearly defined social structure. I agree with you that the stupid jokes, memes etc should stay off HN. That's why I think some kind of meta-voting is necessary: because a simple downvote is used for a lot of things right now, and not just "this-comment-is-out-of-bounds" like you're talking about. Barring meta-voting, removing the downvote keeps the troll talk but it still filters down to the bottom with the other useless comments.