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down voting on HN has become absurd. Also noticing this on other comments in this thread.

by cyphunk 12y ago

throwawayaway 12y ago
I think the problem is the consensus is the NSA/GCHQ use the tool. Your disagreement is whether the NSA/GCHQ originated it. Your comment reads as if you disagree with there being proof of any use, based on the evidence in the article. There's very little doubt the NSA/GCHQ use the tool. Here's some background reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8653454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8653454 https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/13/belgacom-hack-gchq-inside-story/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/13/belgacom-hack-...
- btown 12y ago
  Whether they originated it, though, is the crux of the issue. Nobody doubts that government agencies undertake cyberwarfare. But the idea that they might have created something that is now being used by nongovernmental parties is the scary thing - it's like saying that the Army lost a cache of weapons now being used by ISIS. (Which itself is true [1], but that's another story.) [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-captured-a-key-syrian-air-base-2014-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-captured-a-key-syrian-ai...
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    > But the idea that they might have created something that is now being used by nongovernmental parties is the scary thing Who has that idea? I don't see anyone saying that. also: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-...
DanBC 12y ago
Ignore initial downvotes. People usually supply corrective upvotes if the downvote is unfair.
- cyphunk 12y ago
  fare enough. but wondering what the value down voting brings at all, or if current model of blessing according to activity gives better results than blessing random users or randomly blessing users with N down votes per time or other quantifier. One of the later two would certainly be less cast based. Whereby the cast system of HN is according to "activity" not expertise.
anonbanker 12y ago
I've been tracking the new downvoting trend for the last week or so. Seems there's a lot of accounts downvoting everything that doesn't coincide with Western Government sensibilities. The recent North Korea and LSD threads (not just my replies, but you can get to the threads from my comment history) are really interesting examples to trudge through and see how many valid replies are sitting at -1 or worse.
- zo1 12y ago
  Would you care to post/link to how you're tracking the voting trends? I didn't realize that data was available.
- rndn 12y ago
  I've experienced a couple of really bad downvotes as well lately, and they had definitely no intention of editorial feedback, but it was quite obviously mindless prejudice, almost on the level of /r/politics or /r/worldnews. I wished HN would replace downvotes with a system for short and private annotations, so that people could receive concrete feedback, not something that is vaguely implied by a number. That would also remove the problem that people mindlessly jump on the downvote bandwagon.
  - a3n 12y ago
    And/or, make up and downvotes public. A link from a comment to the list of uppers and downers. Or make it semi-private, and only the commenter can see the list. But that would just encourage useless activity as commenters selectively out their up and downvotes.
  - res0nat0r 12y ago
    Even better would be to turn on an option for a user to show/hide political posts from the site all together
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      That would be nice, but in practice, there's no commonly accepted clear criteria for what is "political" and what is not, and any attempts to enforce some such criteria would likely bring arbitrary and unfair results.
dang 12y ago
The comment you're complaining about downvotes looks to be at +33 right now. The downvote situation is always in flux, which is one reason why the HN guidelines ask you not to post comments complaining about being downvoted. I'm going to detach this subthread and mark it off topic now.
- cyphunk 12y ago
  your guidance always welcome. i think posting about the community despite requests not to happens because there isn't a thread or forum to discuss administrivia. when people feel something strange or new is happening on the administrative side they are more likely to ask peers what is up rather than email site administrators.
  - dang 12y ago
    I think that's spot on, but also that having a thread or forum to "discuss administrivia" would be worse than the status quo.
    - cyphunk 12y ago
      Spoken like a true Stalinist, and so true. It would be complete debauchery. Unless the comments auto-delete after N minutes. This would create a very interesting metric giving insights into psychology at the same time. That is, it would be interesting to explore the relationship between N minutes on downvote thread and number of down vote comments in other threads. With conclusions like "1.2 minutes is just enough downvote-thread time for the individual to feel they released their angst enough while also having a R powered reduction on complaints overall in other threads" I don't know why HN doesn't do these types of crazy experiments in social/political science. I'd have a heigh day.

down voting on HN has become absurd. Also noticing this on other comments in this thread.

by cyphunk 12y ago

down voting on HN has become absurd. Also noticing this on other comments in this thread.

I think the problem is the consensus is the NSA/GCHQ use the tool. Your disagreement is whether the NSA/GCHQ originated it. Your comment reads as if you disagree with there being proof of any use, based on the evidence in the article. There's very little doubt the NSA/GCHQ use the tool. Here's some background reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8653454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8653454 https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/13/belgacom-hack-gchq-inside-story/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/13/belgacom-hack-...

btown 12y ago
Whether they originated it, though, is the crux of the issue. Nobody doubts that government agencies undertake cyberwarfare. But the idea that they might have created something that is now being used by nongovernmental parties is the scary thing - it's like saying that the Army lost a cache of weapons now being used by ISIS. (Which itself is true [1], but that's another story.) [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-captured-a-key-syrian-air-base-2014-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-captured-a-key-syrian-ai...
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  > But the idea that they might have created something that is now being used by nongovernmental parties is the scary thing Who has that idea? I don't see anyone saying that. also: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-...

DanBC 12y ago

Ignore initial downvotes. People usually supply corrective upvotes if the downvote is unfair.

cyphunk 12y ago
fare enough. but wondering what the value down voting brings at all, or if current model of blessing according to activity gives better results than blessing random users or randomly blessing users with N down votes per time or other quantifier. One of the later two would certainly be less cast based. Whereby the cast system of HN is according to "activity" not expertise.

anonbanker 12y ago

I've been tracking the new downvoting trend for the last week or so. Seems there's a lot of accounts downvoting everything that doesn't coincide with Western Government sensibilities. The recent North Korea and LSD threads (not just my replies, but you can get to the threads from my comment history) are really interesting examples to trudge through and see how many valid replies are sitting at -1 or worse.

zo1 12y ago
Would you care to post/link to how you're tracking the voting trends? I didn't realize that data was available.
rndn 12y ago
I've experienced a couple of really bad downvotes as well lately, and they had definitely no intention of editorial feedback, but it was quite obviously mindless prejudice, almost on the level of /r/politics or /r/worldnews. I wished HN would replace downvotes with a system for short and private annotations, so that people could receive concrete feedback, not something that is vaguely implied by a number. That would also remove the problem that people mindlessly jump on the downvote bandwagon.
- a3n 12y ago
  And/or, make up and downvotes public. A link from a comment to the list of uppers and downers. Or make it semi-private, and only the commenter can see the list. But that would just encourage useless activity as commenters selectively out their up and downvotes.
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  Even better would be to turn on an option for a user to show/hide political posts from the site all together
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    That would be nice, but in practice, there's no commonly accepted clear criteria for what is "political" and what is not, and any attempts to enforce some such criteria would likely bring arbitrary and unfair results.

dang 12y ago

The comment you're complaining about downvotes looks to be at +33 right now. The downvote situation is always in flux, which is one reason why the HN guidelines ask you not to post comments complaining about being downvoted. I'm going to detach this subthread and mark it off topic now.

cyphunk 12y ago
your guidance always welcome. i think posting about the community despite requests not to happens because there isn't a thread or forum to discuss administrivia. when people feel something strange or new is happening on the administrative side they are more likely to ask peers what is up rather than email site administrators.
- dang 12y ago
  I think that's spot on, but also that having a thread or forum to "discuss administrivia" would be worse than the status quo.
  - cyphunk 12y ago
    Spoken like a true Stalinist, and so true. It would be complete debauchery. Unless the comments auto-delete after N minutes. This would create a very interesting metric giving insights into psychology at the same time. That is, it would be interesting to explore the relationship between N minutes on downvote thread and number of down vote comments in other threads. With conclusions like "1.2 minutes is just enough downvote-thread time for the individual to feel they released their angst enough while also having a R powered reduction on complaints overall in other threads" I don't know why HN doesn't do these types of crazy experiments in social/political science. I'd have a heigh day.