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Ask HN: Is it fair game to downvote someone's comments indiscriminately?
I have noticed comments on another HN account being consistently downvoted, once or twice, about 24 hours after they were posted, regardless of the comments' content and the subject matter of the OP. This has been going on for several months.
There may be a number of reasons someone or some group of people would employ this tactic, but is it "fair game" with respect to HN's policies and the sensibilities of HN's readership?
- benologist 11y agoYou can always write dang at hn@ycombinator.com when you spot stuff that might be circumventing the rules.
- walterbell 11y agoWhat remedies would HN have for indiscriminate downvoting?
- plorkyeran 11y agoRemoving the person's ability to downvote if they're clearly severely misusing it.
- buro9 11y agoA number of things could be done, though the long-term effect of them might not be desired. Perhaps the threshold whereby you are permitted to downvote should be raised. Perhaps HN could allow karma to be 'spent' as downvotes. The act of downvoting would be something that costs you, and unless you're a top 100 commenter that's probably going to make you hesitate. HN probably already check for and punish the malicious downvoter, i.e. so-and-so said something that I didn't like and so I'm going to go through their historical comments downvoting all. That stuff is really easy to detect. HN could probably check whether downvotes given by a person occur on a few topics, or for a few individuals. These are probably slightly angry downvotes, they could be reversed. Ultimately though they'd hit a grey area. There are obvious and easy things to deal with, and once those low hanging fruits are grabbed then everything else is nuanced, it has context and requires understanding to moderate fairly.
- PeterWhittaker 11y agoEliminate downvoting. Replace it with "flag as abusive, reason required". Require the reason to be selected from a very short, concise list, e.g., "rascist, mysogynistic, homophobic, espouses violence, spam". Block userids that flag inappropriately.
- pen2l 11y agoWhat if it actually is dang/HN that's responsible for these downvotes? I think the downvoting is a new version of "rankbanning" mechanism. Users that are anti-immigration reform are rankbanned on HN (this means that no matter the number of votes on the post, their comments fall down in the page. Users like eli_gottlieb, larrys, etc. are rankbanned for these various reasons; some people detected this and called HN on it, and I think their response is to make a new system which auto-downvotes users... then it makes it seem like their comments are organically falling down the page, rather than being targeted by rankbans.)
- xtrumanx 11y agoGot a link to the call-out regarding the rankbanning? I've never heard of that happening.
- TheLoneWolfling 11y agohttps://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/heres-why-paul-graham-probably-owes-me-an-apology/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/heres-why-pa...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pen2l 11y agoSee blogpost by michaelochurch where he proves this. Examples of users currently on rankban include larrys, eli_gottlieb, thinkcomp, DanielBMarkham, etc. This is verifiable quite easily if you go into the comment history of these users. Take eli_gottlieb, for example. Sure, he often voices quasi-Marxist views, but why do his posts on technical things fall down so rapidly? Even below heavily downvoted trolls? Why did his post in 'Who wants to be hired?' so heavily sink to the very bottom? Lastly, some users who have engaged with HN moderators via email were taken off of rankbans, so they have never denied that these rankban mechanisms exist, they generally remain silent when this is brought up, and try to force the conversation surrounding it to a private medium ("please email us at support@ycombinator.com", etc.)
- jkoudys 11y agoRampant, indiscriminate downvoting is one of the main reasons I generally dislike reddit and prefer HN. There's a natural decline to subs over there, as anything or anyone who deviates from mainstream opinions gets downvoted into obscurity. I'm just a casual reader, and I have no expertise on HN's policies, but it definitely offends my sensibilities to see anyone gaming this system.
- jqm 11y agoOne approach if you notice this (aside from contacting mods of course) is to up-vote the comments...
- DanBC 11y agoHN should have built in mechanisms that prevent downvote sprees. May I ask whatthe username is? (Feel free to email me if you don't want to make it public).
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- nightcracker 11y ago> If you care then you're doing something wrong. Seem contradictionary with: > This is why there are so many people who post with one off accounts. Every post is a risk and there are no controls, no safeties.
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- reinhardt 11y agoYou still didn't address the contradiction - when you first claim that "if you care then you're doing something wrong", then where's the risk if you "do it right" and don't care?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 11y agoYour post seems to read a lot into the OP; more than I did. > Every post is a risk and there are no controls, no safeties. A few people have the ability to downvote. Everybody with an account has the ability to upvote.
- eropple 11y agoI wonder (though not enough to go digging, and I'm not sure how I'd do it anyway) how many active posters have the 500 karma necessary for downvotes.
- fixxer 11y agoDoes karma play a part in the YC selection process? Restated: who cares? If any prospective hire told me their handle under the notion that karma indicates anything useful, I'd show them the door. EDIT: Exactly.
- fsk 11y agoI've seen job ads that ask for your StackOverflow ID, presumably to check your karma total there.
- dec0dedab0de 11y agostack overflow can also include code examples, and the quality of questions you ask.
- fixxer 11y agoExactly. I would put stackoverflow closer on the spectrum to github: it provides information that relates to how to the candidate performs actual work, not intellectual masturbation.
- jakejake 11y agoI'd be surprised if it was just to see one's karma points. Reading the actual comments would be more useful.
- fixxer 11y agoYeah, sure. I'm in Illinois, so I can discriminate based on political ideology... totally valuable. EDIT: My point is this can be a bad idea.
- jere 11y agoI've noticed the same thing on reddit for as long as I can remember. Obscure comments that are polite, useful, and avoid controversial topics routinely get down to 0 or -1 points. I know this is all rather meaningless, but something about it is very upsetting to me and I always upvote such comments. On that note, I like the Stack Overflow model: you have to pay reputation to downvote.
- brudgers 11y agoStackOverflow actively deletes content and does so without mercy. That's a more important part of the utility of its model than the mechanics of downvotes. And flagging costs nothing except a daily flag, and the reward for good flags is more flags.
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- tremols 11y agoYou will be punished if you criticize communism and angular.js among other subjects where political correctness and idiotical consensus have more weight than reason. The kool kidz rule with an iron fist, and they know no mercy.
- brudgers 11y agoStatistically, downvotes correlate to comments that the community deems low quality. Throwing out buzzwords in lieu of clearly articulated views supported by rationales, reasons, and examples often falls in that category. So do comments that assume that people with contrary views lack reason. Statistically, the way to avoid downvotes and earn upvotes is with thoughtful well-written comments that contribute to improving or maintaining the quality of HN.
- krapp 11y agoThe thing is, despite what many people here seem to think, HN doesn't really have a consensus. If it did, it wouldn't be as paranoid about the Eternal September effect as it is, as one of the symptoms of Eternal September is users not agreeing with and following the consensus set by older members. What HN does have is a number of mutually opposed consensuses each believing the others are destroying the site by astroturfing and posting irrelevant nonsense. So yes, if you criticize angular.js and communism, you might be punished. But if you criticize capitalism and praise front-end frameworks, someone else will have their knives out for that as well.
- whybroke 11y agoYou do realize that you're trying to provide a calm, reasonable explanation to a party who believes HN is plagued by communists.
- krapp 11y agoAs far as I know, HN's only policy regarding downvotes is that you shouldn't complain about them when you get them. Although what you describe might expose some flaw in their brigade/voting ring detector, the site and the culture appear to be far more concerned with stopping indiscriminate upvotes than downvotes (which is understandable, given the financial incentives for startups and entrepreneurs to want to game the system.) With downvotes, the more the merrier. Edit: reading this thread, i'm wondering whether being able to delete posts after they've been replied to isn't a bigger problem than downvoting. That and drive-by edits.
- humanlike 11y agoLots of nerd jealousy exhibits itself via downvoting. I'm sure it's based on insiders and outsiders. I'm also sure many try to repress ideas that might be competitive to their own. I've seen this happen and this is repulsive. Change needs to happen on HN.
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- StopGamingHN 11y agoLots of nerd jealousy exhibits itself via downvoting. I'm sure it's based on insiders and outsiders. I'm also sure many try to repress ideas that might be competitive to their own. I've seen this happen and this is repulsive. Change needs to happen on HN.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]