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If you consistently have no idea why you got downvoted, then HN might not be the place for you. Learn quickly to adapt, start lurking more, or find another comm

by compbio 11y ago

If you consistently have no idea why you got downvoted, then HN might not be the place for you. Learn quickly to adapt, start lurking more, or find another community without high standards for replies. If you don't read the community guidelines [1] and then complain about negative karma you are to be avoided. If I did not get downvoted for my very first flame-y, half-assed or dumb replies, then I would have continued making them. Wickedness and cruelty is forcing low standards upon a community and sucking away all the fun. With downvoting comes a little responsibility: to not only reward good posts, but lower the visibility of posts that do not contribute to the quality or enjoy-ability of HN. That is why you need 500 upvotes to get downvote functionality. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

solve 11y ago
Translation: become a subservient hive mind conformist wimp.
- mahouse 11y ago
  This is pretty accurate, actually—votes in an Internet community just encourage the hive mind. I just say what I want and never mind my "karma" or "vote count" or whatever it is called in the community.
  - zo1 11y ago
    I know, why don't we just have elections every 4 years for community moderators to represent us. And they can vote/downvote on our behalf! Sounds brilliant. A bit of a sarcastic tone, yes. But the hive-mind comment strikes at the heart of the issues of "democracy" and group dynamics. I'd even argue that group-moderated internet discussions are more "democratic" than actual democracy, with the only difference being the real-world physical repercussions of said voting.
    - solve 11y ago
      An excellent benevolent dictator can be so much better than any system where there's a big pressure to converging to the crowd average, or even the lowest common denominator of the crowd. Most of us joined HN for exactly this reason. It was run in dictator fashion by a guy whose writings and actions showed that he was clearly above what ever be achieved by a general crowd average, at least in a particular area of expertise. Unfortunately, his other work prevented him from spending much time here, and it's now been years since he left all active involvement in the community entirely. The departure of the benevolent dictator is almost always catastrophic, as far as I sense. Imagine if Linus had left Linux after just a couple years, or if Guido had left Python after just a couple years. You can start to see evidence of the problems that a disappearing excellent dictator causes in the decision paralysis facing the Bitcoin community now. What's good, is that the HN successor should appear within the next few years.
  - solve 11y ago
    It's a totally non-conscious change that keeps pulling you in further. You get so addicted to pleasing, or at least not upsetting the forum. You unknowingly adapt to learn their language, try to stay ahead of the latest themes. Pretty soon, mixed in with the great stuff, you also start believing some total uninformed nonsense that the community has emergently evolved to, and you don't even realize how terribly wrong some of it was until years later when you experience how badly they mislead you first hand. That includes a few things that HN believes too. So terribly wrong, on a few particular things. No different than religion. We're made to fall for this stuff. People who believe themselves smart, MORE SO than anyone else. Same reason that parents try so hard to keep their children from "falling in with a bad crowd". Your mind is weak and desperate to please those you're surrounded with.
    - unclebucknasty 11y ago
      Don't know why you were downvoted, but have an upvote from me. You nailed it. There is such an assuredness of the rightness of some beliefs here and I have used the word religion to describe it as well. It's a shame. It's called Hacker News and presumably seemed to have Libertarian leanings that you might expect. Yet, in reality, there is a solid emphasis on conforming over individualism. A bunch of comformist hackers (oxymoron) and professed libertarians who insist that you believe as they do? And, to your point, I think a lot of people do conform (knowingly or not). Because, unless everyone actually does agree with one another on everything (not likely), then the choices are to conform or simply stop participating.
  - Gracana 11y ago
    I've talked about this a lot with friends, and while voting on aggregated content seems like an obviously good idea, voting on comments is not. On HN it's not a huge problem because it's generally easy enough to read all the comments in a thread, but in busier threads (for examples see popular forums on reddit), minority viewpoints are quickly and efficiently hidden from view. The system is very effective at promoting the most popular viewpoint (at the expensive of every other quality), which makes comment threads boring and predictable.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  I feel like my views are reasonably heterodox on HN and the only posts I really get slammed on are the drive-by low-effort ones.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
DanBC 11y ago
> If you consistently have no idea why you got downvoted, then HN might not be the place for you. Learn quickly to adapt, start lurking more, or find another community without high standards for replies. If you don't read the community guidelines [1] and then complain about negative karma you are to be avoided. Or even just ask why your post is getting downvotes. Ignore single downvotes; they can be errors, but asking for clarification if you really don't understand why you're getting downvotes usually gets some replies.
- lmz 11y ago
  > asking for clarification if you really don't understand why you're getting downvotes usually gets some replies. Unless you sound defensive about it -- that leads to more downvotes.
msutherl 11y ago
'if you have to ask, you don't belong'
tomjen3 11y ago
That is great in theory, but in practice you get a lot of flack if you like Javascript or think Universal Basic Income is a bad idea. You get this flack regardless of the quality of your arguments. Hn definitely has a hivemind.
- EGreg 11y ago
  I like Javascript. I use it all the time. (Testing... but it's true.)
- techlibertarian 11y ago
  It's very similar to Reddit in a lot of ways. Say one negative thing about the government and you can expect a lot of downvotes.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Wait what? Just to check: Are you saying that people on HN can't say anything bad about the US government without risking a lot of downvotes?
    - techlibertarian 11y ago
      Yes. It's not the case every single time. I've been upvoted for negative comments about the government but I have to be much more indirect about it. If I'm blatant about it, I get downvoted to hell.
  - csandreasen 11y ago
    I've had the exact opposite experience (i.e. getting downvotes for saying something in defense of the government). I think political threads tend to lean in one direction pretty quickly. I usually check HN after getting home from work, at which point most threads have already been going on for several hours. At that point, if a thread doesn't already have discussion from multiple sides by then, I don't bother commenting. I feel like at that point you're only going to get downvotes for disagreeing.
tzs 11y ago
Down votes here aren't just for discouraging flames, dumb replies, posts that do not contribute to the quality of HN, and such. PG has stated (several years ago) that down votes are also for indicating disagreement with the poster. I've seen many thoughtful, well presented, well reasoned posts get down voted almost certainly solely because they argued for a minority opinion on some issue.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  >I've seen many thoughtful, well presented, well reasoned posts get down voted almost certainly solely because they argued for a minority opinion on some issue. Exactly. Advocating downvotes for disagreement simply has the effect of encouraging groupthink. It can also be dismissive of thoughtful people's efforts to contribute something insightful to the discussion. In fact, there are some topics on HN that are practically undiscussable because the dogma is too entrenched. But, what's the value of a discussion-oriented site if the incentive is on encouraging people to say "I agree"?
deciplex 11y ago
>find another community without high standards for replies I think you're generally right about post quality on HN, but don't confuse capricious voting culture with high standards. HN might have high standards, but you see it more in well thought-out replies which generate further discussion, than in the occasional greyed-out post which, in my experience, is usually a very poor indicator of the actual quality of the post. It's mostly a good indicator of what sort of person happened to read it first, and little else.

by compbio 11y ago

solve 11y ago

Translation: become a subservient hive mind conformist wimp.

mahouse 11y ago
This is pretty accurate, actually—votes in an Internet community just encourage the hive mind. I just say what I want and never mind my "karma" or "vote count" or whatever it is called in the community.
- zo1 11y ago
  I know, why don't we just have elections every 4 years for community moderators to represent us. And they can vote/downvote on our behalf! Sounds brilliant. A bit of a sarcastic tone, yes. But the hive-mind comment strikes at the heart of the issues of "democracy" and group dynamics. I'd even argue that group-moderated internet discussions are more "democratic" than actual democracy, with the only difference being the real-world physical repercussions of said voting.
  - solve 11y ago
    An excellent benevolent dictator can be so much better than any system where there's a big pressure to converging to the crowd average, or even the lowest common denominator of the crowd. Most of us joined HN for exactly this reason. It was run in dictator fashion by a guy whose writings and actions showed that he was clearly above what ever be achieved by a general crowd average, at least in a particular area of expertise. Unfortunately, his other work prevented him from spending much time here, and it's now been years since he left all active involvement in the community entirely. The departure of the benevolent dictator is almost always catastrophic, as far as I sense. Imagine if Linus had left Linux after just a couple years, or if Guido had left Python after just a couple years. You can start to see evidence of the problems that a disappearing excellent dictator causes in the decision paralysis facing the Bitcoin community now. What's good, is that the HN successor should appear within the next few years.
- solve 11y ago
  It's a totally non-conscious change that keeps pulling you in further. You get so addicted to pleasing, or at least not upsetting the forum. You unknowingly adapt to learn their language, try to stay ahead of the latest themes. Pretty soon, mixed in with the great stuff, you also start believing some total uninformed nonsense that the community has emergently evolved to, and you don't even realize how terribly wrong some of it was until years later when you experience how badly they mislead you first hand. That includes a few things that HN believes too. So terribly wrong, on a few particular things. No different than religion. We're made to fall for this stuff. People who believe themselves smart, MORE SO than anyone else. Same reason that parents try so hard to keep their children from "falling in with a bad crowd". Your mind is weak and desperate to please those you're surrounded with.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    Don't know why you were downvoted, but have an upvote from me. You nailed it. There is such an assuredness of the rightness of some beliefs here and I have used the word religion to describe it as well. It's a shame. It's called Hacker News and presumably seemed to have Libertarian leanings that you might expect. Yet, in reality, there is a solid emphasis on conforming over individualism. A bunch of comformist hackers (oxymoron) and professed libertarians who insist that you believe as they do? And, to your point, I think a lot of people do conform (knowingly or not). Because, unless everyone actually does agree with one another on everything (not likely), then the choices are to conform or simply stop participating.
- Gracana 11y ago
  I've talked about this a lot with friends, and while voting on aggregated content seems like an obviously good idea, voting on comments is not. On HN it's not a huge problem because it's generally easy enough to read all the comments in a thread, but in busier threads (for examples see popular forums on reddit), minority viewpoints are quickly and efficiently hidden from view. The system is very effective at promoting the most popular viewpoint (at the expensive of every other quality), which makes comment threads boring and predictable.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
I feel like my views are reasonably heterodox on HN and the only posts I really get slammed on are the drive-by low-effort ones.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

DanBC 11y ago

> If you consistently have no idea why you got downvoted, then HN might not be the place for you. Learn quickly to adapt, start lurking more, or find another community without high standards for replies. If you don't read the community guidelines [1] and then complain about negative karma you are to be avoided. Or even just ask why your post is getting downvotes. Ignore single downvotes; they can be errors, but asking for clarification if you really don't understand why you're getting downvotes usually gets some replies.

lmz 11y ago
> asking for clarification if you really don't understand why you're getting downvotes usually gets some replies. Unless you sound defensive about it -- that leads to more downvotes.

msutherl 11y ago

'if you have to ask, you don't belong'

tomjen3 11y ago

That is great in theory, but in practice you get a lot of flack if you like Javascript or think Universal Basic Income is a bad idea. You get this flack regardless of the quality of your arguments. Hn definitely has a hivemind.

EGreg 11y ago
I like Javascript. I use it all the time. (Testing... but it's true.)
techlibertarian 11y ago
It's very similar to Reddit in a lot of ways. Say one negative thing about the government and you can expect a lot of downvotes.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Wait what? Just to check: Are you saying that people on HN can't say anything bad about the US government without risking a lot of downvotes?
  - techlibertarian 11y ago
    Yes. It's not the case every single time. I've been upvoted for negative comments about the government but I have to be much more indirect about it. If I'm blatant about it, I get downvoted to hell.
- csandreasen 11y ago
  I've had the exact opposite experience (i.e. getting downvotes for saying something in defense of the government). I think political threads tend to lean in one direction pretty quickly. I usually check HN after getting home from work, at which point most threads have already been going on for several hours. At that point, if a thread doesn't already have discussion from multiple sides by then, I don't bother commenting. I feel like at that point you're only going to get downvotes for disagreeing.

tzs 11y ago

Down votes here aren't just for discouraging flames, dumb replies, posts that do not contribute to the quality of HN, and such. PG has stated (several years ago) that down votes are also for indicating disagreement with the poster. I've seen many thoughtful, well presented, well reasoned posts get down voted almost certainly solely because they argued for a minority opinion on some issue.

unclebucknasty 11y ago
>I've seen many thoughtful, well presented, well reasoned posts get down voted almost certainly solely because they argued for a minority opinion on some issue. Exactly. Advocating downvotes for disagreement simply has the effect of encouraging groupthink. It can also be dismissive of thoughtful people's efforts to contribute something insightful to the discussion. In fact, there are some topics on HN that are practically undiscussable because the dogma is too entrenched. But, what's the value of a discussion-oriented site if the incentive is on encouraging people to say "I agree"?

deciplex 11y ago

>find another community without high standards for replies I think you're generally right about post quality on HN, but don't confuse capricious voting culture with high standards. HN might have high standards, but you see it more in well thought-out replies which generate further discussion, than in the occasional greyed-out post which, in my experience, is usually a very poor indicator of the actual quality of the post. It's mostly a good indicator of what sort of person happened to read it first, and little else.