codinghorror

13 ms·

571.
by codinghorror 18y ago
This is a good idea and conceptually similar to showing how many times something has been flagged as off topic. Although I still maintain that upvote and "off-topic" are not symmetric actions.. but choosing between public visibility of data
572.
by codinghorror 18y ago
1) submitted links cannot be voted down. This is, in fact, correct. 2) comments can be voted down, but it's uncommon, and the UI is invisible (literally) to the point that a casual user wouldn't even see it happening on most posts (very few
573.
by codinghorror 18y ago
> It's all very confusing, and completely needless Well, the funny thing is that the complexity is there for the some of the same reasons that HN explicitly doesn't document its behavior -- it's a small barrier. But these are much lower
574.
by codinghorror 18y ago
> This is a simpler approach Having a secret cabal of editors, whose behavior and rules are not documented, is simpler than spending karma to vote against things? Really?
575.
by codinghorror 18y ago
> We have HN, we can examine it and decide for ourselves if HN has been "harmed." When a clearly political post about the drug war stays on the front page for two days, that's harm in my book. I expect you will see more and more of this
576.
by codinghorror 18y ago
I totally respect the Economist, but are they really saying something about the pointlessness of the drug war that I haven't heard a thousand times over already? Furthermore does it belong on a site devoted primarily to programming topics?
577.
by codinghorror 18y ago
Considering I hadn't seen a single negative voted comment in a few dozen visits to HN, I'd say they're at the very least underutilized. Although I did notice that a few people went out of their way to vote down stuff in this thread. Ironic?
578.
by codinghorror 18y ago
See my response to the first PG comment, along with related comments below. Downvotes do exist (mea culpa), but are so nerfed as to be effectively useless -- that's part of the reason I never saw them. And they don't exist for article sub
579.
by codinghorror 18y ago
And yet we trust these very same people with upvotes? I agree the potential for damage is much higher with downvotes, but there's an asymmetry there. The trick is to make downvotes cost a little bit of karma, IMO. And while I'm on the topic
580.
by codinghorror 18y ago
I totally respect the Economist, but are they really saying something about the pointlessness of the drug war that I haven't heard a thousand times over already? Furthermore does it belong on a site devoted primarily to programming topics
581.
by codinghorror 18y ago
Good and worthy discussion, though, because this is the very heart and soul of designing software (or at least web apps with discussion) for human beings.
582.
by codinghorror 18y ago
> Not everyone agrees on what is interesting The problem is that the upvoters get a highly disproportionate say in the matter. Let's say - 30% of the HN community finds that drug war article interesting. They all upvote it. - 20% don'
583.
by codinghorror 18y ago
Fair enough. I understand how voting works, but how does the flagging mechanism work? Once it's flagged by (n) people, what happens? I checked http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and I coul
584.
by codinghorror 18y ago
> Also, the ones that say "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site", which I wish you would respect. But that's precisely what happens when you give people no other option to vote against
585.
by codinghorror 18y ago
yes, that's true -- but we also allow people to vote against those off-topic articles, and move to close (or reopen) them. There's no way to vote down a link submission on HN.
586.
by codinghorror 18y ago
Isn't this exactly why downvoting should be a bit more prevalent than it is now? For marginally topical (and in my opinion completely off-topic) political stories like that? Right now only the people who upvote it get to have a say.
587.
by codinghorror 18y ago
Shouldn't these rep limits, and the information about them, be codified into the FAQ?
588.
by codinghorror 18y ago
Are you and I reading the same guidelines? http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, Isn't "How to stop the drug wars" about politics? I know it is exactly the kind of
589.
by codinghorror 18y ago
Where's the UI to flag a story as off-topic? I don't see anything on the article page itself, and the FAQ ( http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html ) doesn't mention anything about flagging?
590.
by codinghorror 18y ago
Regardless, I think it's a terrible story for a site about programming topics, and I would absolutely vote it down. But I can't.
591.
by codinghorror 18y ago
First, I should apologize for my misunderstanding. I do feel like a doofus for not realizing that downvotes are possible on HN. But I swear I have never seen a single downvoted post any time I’ve visited! I am a very occasional HN user, mos
592.
by codinghorror 18y ago
> The reason HN doesn't need downvotes is that HN, unlike Reddit, kills lame articles. Honest question, and I do not mean this as a flame, because generally I quite enjoy Hacker News. How, exactly, is the current top-rated story on HN,
593.
by codinghorror 18y ago
I agree, I edited it to clean it up a bit
594.
by codinghorror 18y ago
you know Zed worked at Bear Stearns, right.. on in house IT stuff? I was one of the people at CUSEC urging him to get the hell out of there. Ultimately BS went out of business while Zed was there, so I guess it's moot.
595.
by codinghorror 18y ago
> From what I can see, the problem of "overly-rule-bound developers" is nowhere near the magnitude of the problem of "developer's who don't really have a clue." The deeper problem is that developers who don't have a clue are immune to r
596.
by codinghorror 18y ago
er, yeah, but look at where Jobs ended up versus Woz. Sure, Woz did well, but I can't help thinking he got taken advantage of along the way.
597.
by codinghorror 19y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_buffalo_incident Sometimes when you shout "shut up, you water buffalo", people misunderstand. It might have been more effective to simply shout "shut up" and leave out the part that can be misconstrued o