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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 Go

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.
thecatspaw 12y ago
which recent LSD threads are you talking about?
dang 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. I'm not sure what new downvoting trend you're referring to, but I'm pretty sure there is no new anti-anti-Western-government trend on HN. There's a strong cognitive bias toward seeing one's own views as being treated more unfairly. But as far as we can tell, there's nothing so systematic in voting behavior on the site.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

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.

thecatspaw 12y ago

which recent LSD threads are you talking about?

dang 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. I'm not sure what new downvoting trend you're referring to, but I'm pretty sure there is no new anti-anti-Western-government trend on HN. There's a strong cognitive bias toward seeing one's own views as being treated more unfairly. But as far as we can tell, there's nothing so systematic in voting behavior on the site.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]