This goes for working environments too -- where it may not be ethnic or political minorities being intrinsically oppressed, but instead anyone expressing minority opinions within the context of the organization.
Open-plan surveillance workspaces are meant to produce monoculture, and a whole generation of programmers has essentially gifted that opportunity to employers by failing to insist upon minimally acceptable working conditions, in favor of an extension of college / dorm life.
One wonders why a staff that is uniformly willing to give up personal time for Whisky Thursday isn't viewed as a liability, in terms of lack of thought diversity.
But a company generally doesn't want diversity, they want predictability. Predictability as to how fast and when something will be done, predictability on the quality of the work. Sure having thought diversity in solving problems is a good thing, but look at how complicated software project scheduling is already.
This usually applies to commodity work, and there's a long history of Taylorism.
It makes a lot less sense in knowledge work, where the problems are not standardized and often solutions are unknown. In these cases, the uniformity desired through these surveillance measures makes no sense. It's fundamentally not the same as a McDonald's burger, no matter how much management wishes so.
Worse still, even if you did want homogeneity of software design output, the best way to get it is to give workers conditions in which the environment supports their productivity. Taylorized fast-food kitchens support certain types of productivity and are a rational response to that business need. But it's more of a cargo cult superficiality to try to impose the same idea on a knowledge domain where quiet and privacy are fundamental to the product.
On the other hand, if instead of productivity the employer cares more about having a visually fancy-looking space, as a means for status signaling, or cares about having a good staff on-paper to heighten an acquihire valuation, then open-plan makes more sense. It's bad for the employees though, because of course the employer can't admit to hiring people just for status, show, or credential, so they have to at least feign concern over productivity, thus putting knowledge workers in the bind of having to be productive in a fundamentally anti-productive setting.
The entire offshoring software industry is already Taylorised. I'm not saying it's good or efficient but it is the reality of large software projects.
The architects are onshore and have never coded in their lives. They draw boxes on whiteboards and feed UML to offshore dev 'factories'. That UML gets decomposed so that you will have factory lines of developers producing classes (sometimes just methods) in isolation. LOC is frequently used as a productivity measure by their management. It's about as far from software as craft as you can get.
The whole having to be productive in an otherwise anti-productivity environment seems like some sort of weird hazing ritual.
Though I still think that regardless what job one is doing (knowledge work or factory), that subconsciously the company wants predictability. So maybe putting people in an environment where it is anti-productive puts people of all skills at the same basic predictable level?
That is a good point. I had never considered that they would actually Harrison Bergeron their own people, but it's entirely plausible. If they want predictability more than output, it would make sense, and then they extract value mostly just from your credential and your organizational fealty.
Yes. But the people who run the institutions will mostly reflect the majority and hence protect their kind.
When the society was mostly anti-gay the government machinery was used to hurt these target homosexual groups. Now that society is pro-gay we see government forcing bakers to bake cake for gay weddings.
I will not be surprised if the surveillance mechanism would be used to hurt Libertarians and anti-government people.
That's an interesting premise, do you think that the heads of e.g. the KGB were representative of the majority of Soviets? It was my impression that there was a large class distinction between the Soviet intelligence apparatus and the proverbial average Joe.
Note: I selected the USSR/KGB not for any particular resemblance to current Western intelligence agencies (much more human intelligence and shotgun mics back then) but rather because they seem to me to be the textbook case of the effects of mass, pervasive surveillance over a long time.
To give a growth hacking analogy, becoming KGB head is the final step in the funnel. To be a KGB head you should probably have qualities that 99.99% of the people do not posses. But it is wrong to say he does not represent the majority of soviets because the entry to the system and almost every other step in the funnel is highly biased towards those who conform to majority opinion.
For example when I say Donald Trump is representative of majority of conservative base I do not mean majority of conservative base is narcissist and billionaire. I basically mean Trump is pro-Gun, pro-Life, pro-Christian, anti-Gay. Because without those criteria he would not have entered the funnel in first place.
Conservatives or Liberals the current trend among American politicians is "trust us", "bend before authority", I am 100% sure no person can rise to top in American government if he does not conform to these ideas.
I haven't studied the period, but my impression was that it was very much possible for a brilliant person from humble origins to rise to the top on the basis of their skills. Though becoming outright head would probably require networking/corruption as in any large organization.
Look at Xi Jinping's regime. Lots of party officials, members of the politburo, etc. who while they support the party itself may not support Mr. Xi, or vice versa.
Even strong (executive power) leaders like Mr Xi or Mr Putin do not rule over a monolith.
That seems a little too simplistic; the parent example of McCarthyism was used to drive people out of the government so the "power/no power" binary doesn't seem adequate.
This suggests we should implement mass surveillance of law enforcement personnel. If, as many people assert, the bad behavior of law enforcement is the actions of a minority, then mass surveillance of law enforcement should provide a chilling effect on that minority and result in fewer examples of these abuses.
Somehow I don't think that argument would win the day though.
Honestly I think the reverse panopticon is both a good idea and generally politically palatable. Deep down almost everyone is a good-government liberal if it doesn't break their arm or pick their pocket.
Can they be turned off or conveniently covered, malfunction, repositioned, break, run out of power, stop recording, corrupt data or have the recorded data be 'just not in the system' when an officer is alleged to have committed a crime?
All of those things will happen because it happens all the time with video evidence from dash cams and audio from body mics when it's subpoenaed.
IMO if any of those things happens, then either the Officer or the IT staff need to be fired. If a piece of equipment fails its either the provisioner or users fault. One of them must be accountable.
Interesting. I would expect it to also foster radicalism. By creating an environment where only the most-vocal, least-risk-averse adherents to a particular way of thinking are willing to risk making their ideas known.
If you make an environment where only those who are willing to face death, imprisonment, or harassment for their ideas are the ones doing the talking, then you make the only voice being heard be one of extreme conviction and cause.
Yep, you can see that happening right now in various tech fields. The scope of opinions that one can publicly hold without risking doxxing and mob harassment has been narrowed tremendously, with the result that while many have been bullied into resentful silence the ones still willing to talk have been thoroughly radicalized.
And when only the radicals talk, those who have been forced into silence (or feel they are forced into silence) ends up being radicalized too. I think a lot of Trumps support comes from that fact (along with the genuine frustrations of blue collar workers) and also because he can be counted on not to apologize.
Radicals don't gain majority support, can be demonized, scapegoated and persecuted into being impotent. It is very easy to rally people with moderate or disparate ideas together against a common enemy.
The inquiry alone is frightening, although much less so than the implications of a surveillance state. Watching Trumbo and learning more about how the US dealt out the "Red Scare" is crushing to my soul. You want to assume people are inherently good actors, but that's not always the case.
> You want to assume people are inherently good actors, but that's not always the case.
Most people are... But reality is subjective, and the people you call "bad actors" in this case surely thought themselves "good actors." The problem happens when, in your good-actor zeal for righteousness (capturing bad-actors), you inconvenience a large number of good actors in order to more completely capture a small number of bad ones... and thus become a new bad actor.
An example of another (IMHO) "high recall, low precision" practice is AML/KYC laws, which find a very small percentage of bad actors at the cost of inconveniencing a large number of good ones (as well as missing some bad actors).
It has some good examples, for example the one about a journalist exposing corruption in high places but who has a secret (like drug abuse in the example). She could be attacked for this secret in order to discredit her exposé on a totally unrelated matter. I think everyone has secrets of some kind, but even if you are not a journalist, you want journalists like this to exist and be free to conduct their investigations. This is why the argument that "you shouldn't be afraid if you have nothing to hide" is bogus.
Freedom is the right to be wrong. If I am free only to agree with the popular consensus, I'm not free.
If I can't have a quiet chat with friends in public making clear I'm a gay, atheist, muslim, vegan, witch, then I'm not free. If I can't have a private chat with any other member(s) of the populace, I'm not free.
Someone will always think I'm living my life wrong.
The majority can be wrong in their opinion after all, like being bigots and racists.
Freedom of expression shield us from the 'wrong' opinions being surpassed, in the hope that they provide corrective feedback more often than not to the population at large.
At least, that's the hope.
People provide racist and divisive commentary to the population at large, no matter how unjustified. No doubt it will change some people opinion.
People also continue to provide anti-vaccine messages, scaring parents and causing public healthcare crisis.
Paradoxically, the lack of political speech is the mark of authoritarians and tyrants in our political life.
Most of the commentary here so far is really quite tangential to the actual research done. Everyone commenting on this article should make sure they've read the study first, with particular attention to the 'Limitations' section on page 11: http://m.jmq.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/02/25/1077699016...
One other feature of the study that limits its wider applicability is that it is entirely US-centric. It would be interesting to read follow-up work on samples taken from other cultures and countries.
How about leaving down and up vote, but including a button for "disagree", which doesn't affect karma. I would use "disagree" instead of downvoting quite often. Leave the downvote button with its karma loss. That lets people downvote trolls/spams/irrationality, but lets the person being disagreed with that something's wrong. A "disagree" button may also help people to write a reply with the reason for disagreeing, rather than just downvoting and moving on, which in my experience happens a lot.
The surveillance state makes our system more brittle by entrenching a status quo that is creating accelerating income and wealth inequality, and destroying institutions that enable upward social and income mobility. We're headed for a rupture, and the response appears to be more armor, weapons, and security personnel.
>“The fact that the 'nothing to hide' individuals experience a significant chilling effect speaks to how online privacy is much bigger than the mere lawfulness of one's actions. It's about a fundamental human right to have control over one's self-presentation and image, in private, and now, in search histories and metadata,” she said.
Even the bootlickers censor their more controversial opinions, leading to a thought monoculture in which there is no dissent of any kind. This should be evidence that mass surveillance and any government which supports it needs to go, pronto.
I certainly self censor and even now am posting semi anonymously obviously.
But those in favor of mass surveillance could answer the study by claiming that if the surveillance is kept secret then 1. it won't stifle minority opinions and 2. it will work better
By saying this they could not only answer the study's concerns but could now advocate zealously punishing whistle blowers.
I only had time to briefly skim the study, but I don't think there was any follow-up done. Although it might immediately affect minority opinions to be reminded of that, I would be much more interested to see if the group reminded of surveillance still kept their opinions to themselves a day, a week, a month later.
This is the proof that people who say that they have nothing to hide to defend surveillance are lying more often than not. It's basically the same as gay legislators vocally supporting anti-gay legislation.
Mass surveillance is a really ineffective way to silence minority opinions. Personally I prefer down-votes from people with more karma to get the job done.
HN is the most intelligent and open minded online community of this size that I know online.
I have deep respect for you guys and girls and your opinions are always enlightening and thought provoking.
I really feel much smarter because I have access to all these very valid points of view that you are surfacing.
But even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" which leads me to go into this spiral of silence.
I often find myself self-censoring or abandoning the comment halfway, because I know it will get down voted and it's just a waste of time.
And I'm not talking about trolling or being aggressive or flaming..
Some opinions are just not accepted here on HN and the comment will get down voted fast regardless of how politely or respectfully you try to put it.
This is my 3rd HN account - I've abandoned the others (with lots of karma on them) specifically as a protest for (what I thought were) valid opinions being down voted and dismissed.
For example, mentioning ideas that some tech might be bad or harmful - that people are addicted to devices, that tech is causing widespread pollution - and the likes - are quickly buried, even though in my view these are subjects which we must openly discuss, since they widely affect us all.
Which brings me to the thought: If one of the most intelligent and open minded online communities can exhibit censorship or can determine users to self-censor, then what can be said about other communities/platforms ?
Anonymity often brings relief to people who weight otherwise self-censor. 4chan is a really good example of this. Though it's got a terrible SNR, the peak signal is actually really high and sometimes you see really intelligent discussions about taboo topics like incest, furrydom, and racism. The anonymity allows people to state beliefs that simply wouldn't be acceptable anywhere else.
Maybe HN should have an 'anonymous' feature for accounts above a certain karma that allows a post to be made with no username attached, and no effect on karma. Behind the scenes, admins can still issue bans for unacceptable comments but the opinion gets protected from the groupthink.
I am often stunned at how eloquent some conversations are on 4chan, and am dismayed when I realize this is because anonymity allows us to be truthful without the baggage of reputation and consequences of controversy - which is how we make progress.
We must never lose our ability to remain anonymous when necessary.
Watch the non-NSFW boards as a starter and just browse through threads. People will come up with theories or ideas and then it is expanded upon with insights from opposing viewpoints.
Then there is the crazy things that /b/ will do with a photo. There was a principal who was goading the group with a photo of two underage girls, the tenacious Anonymous was able to run down the school and principal.
It's also great that even though certain boards have heavy biases (e.g., /pol/ is overwhelmingly right wing, /o/ mostly hates American cars, etc.), you can still walk into the proverbial lion's den with an opinion that goes against the prevailing narrative and have an interesting discussion about it. There's no instant censorship through downvoting, and, as you hinted at, there's no upvoting just because people like the username that posted.
Quote from the current owner of 4chan: "All information is treated equally; only an accurate argument will work."
Rather than an "anonymous feature", how about a "please moderate this post" flag? A post that requests moderation would not be eligible for upvotes or downvotes, or would even appear until it passed moderation.
Of course, that means added work for the mods, or a new class of moderators altogether.
I'd encourage you to stop 'self-censoring'. What matters a few karma points, if you have something important to say? You'll find that often an initial knee-jerk downvoting can turn around half a day later, as more considerate users join the conversation.
I've made a few downvoted comments. One was flagged and removed, and drew a rebuke from dang (on the Slashdot sale story, as it happens), and though my initial comment was perhaps to telegraphically negative, there was substance there.
Also: while it does little good to complain about downvotes as the OP, I've occasionally noted comments in which the downvote brigade strikes me as emotional and/or hivemindish. I'll also frequently drop to the bottom of long threads and upvote comments I feel are getting undue negation even where I disagree with the contents.
This last: so long as the sentiments seem grounded in facts and reason, I don't believe any comment should be greyed.
As for moderation in general, it's a Hard Problem. HN is coasting largely on a community that has good, though far from perfect tendencies. I've seen far too many discussion systems be overwhelmed by the combination of toxic social dynamics and poorly conceived moderation systems. HN suffers only one of those handicaps, for now.
"Me too" comments are usually not useful, but I'm putting this one here so that GP can see JoeAltmaier isn't the only one who thinks this.
Post away. Sometimes, I have been known to rethink my position (not a bad thing) when I get downvotes. Sometimes I even change my mind when good arguments surface. I learn this way.
I comment a lot less on HN than I used to, and a lot of that I think has to do with the change in the community, the tone, something like that. For me I don't care about internet points, but upvotes and downvotes affect how visible your comments end up being in a thread. It seems as though there's a lot less substantive discussion on HN than there used to be. The front page moves faster and people aren't interested in having discussions. It's not a matter of going through the effort of making a post and then being disappointed in being downvoted, or not being upvoted. It's a matter of writing something and then having it ignored, which makes you wonder why you even bothered in the first place. Are you just shouting into the void?
Please comment more. It may just be that I like your username but I've read many excellent comments and noticed they were yours. This is totally selfish of me but I'd rather have you yelling into the void sometimes so long as that keeps happening.
I disagree. I have sometimes faced reply comments that are quite unreasonable and at times meant solely as insult. It's very rare here, but still a risk.
But what's far worse is that the moderation of Hacker News functions with very little transparency. Even just Googling for the moderator `dang` turns up a lot of angry rants on other blogs and in other sections of the internet, full of people who feel wronged by black-box and one-sided moderation.
It can be quite psychologically upsetting to post a comment, fall victim to group-think downvoting, try to add clarity or try to defend yourself against unreasonable comments, and then find yourself on the non-negotiable end of a black-box moderation action.
If it was just meaningless karma downvotes, few would care. It's the actually hurtful responses and, there's no other way to put it, mean-spirited moderation activity that give pause.
And I'm speaking as someone with a lot of anti-authoritarian tendencies. I'm not shy at all about speaking my mind and I struggle with finding a way to feign respect for authority apparatuses that are not legitimate, like HN moderation. If I feel this apprehension and backlash, I can only imagine that more timid readers feel it to a much more damaging degree.
I had no idea this kind of thing happened. I've never seen it (and known what I was looking at anyway). I have, however, looked at some hellbanned accounts to see what caused the hellbanning and sometimes it's not apparent- that is, replies that aren't particularly insulting or vapid or anything obviously antisocial. I figured they were banned for some other reason- like sneaking advertisements in or something (that are now removed).
Sometimes accounts get caught in an accidental hellban. In that case (if you've gone through the history and can't find anything obvious) you might want to email dang to let him know, or email the person to let them know. Or you could vouch for the person's posts. I think enough vouching would mean the account becomes unbanned?
(Of course, this is just my opinion. I have no idea if it's true.)
Posts don't get removed, even if they're ads. Do a perusal of hellbanned accounts and you'll find about 20% of them didn't deserve to be. In fact, a large chunk of that 20% continue posting, blissfully unaware that they've been hellbanned.
Another account of mine was hellbanned for triggering some automated response based on voting patterns - which were very suspicious, but had a legitimate reason (specifically I downvoted comments that were of topic, which was most if not all the comments in that thread).
It makes sense to me for someone to down vote the most top-level comment that led to an off-topic thread. But then further down voting comments that are replies within that thread makes little sense, and could be mistaken by some as vindictive down voting (which is likely why the automatic ban you describe exists).
Further, if there are enough replies in a given thread such that your down votes on all of them were enough to lead to a ban, it strongly suggests that the thread really was on-topic, that it generated valuable interest and discussion, and that actually it's just a controversial thread (one you may not like perhaps), but clearly not off topic.
I do see this a lot on HN. When a thread is controversial in a way that HN group-think disapproves of, then "off topic" is used as an inappropriate excuse to down vote it, try to derail any discussion about it, etc.
For example, I think effectively all of the stuff from the subreddit TheRedPill is utter nonsense, and it's often very controversial and I dislike it when some of it appears here at HN.
But it's rarely actually off topic when it's brought up, and it generates actual community interest (usually from people who rightfully point out how problematic and baseless it is).
I'd rather that controversial topics and tangents, even when they are things I don't like, are permitted when they clearly generate community engagement, than to basically have some implicit HN blacklist of disallowed topics that are facetiously treated as off-topic as a way to simply exclude unapproved opinions.
It would be nice if HN had some way to say, "this whole sub-thread together tanks the SNR". Sometimes a thread will go wildly off topic, but there are so many replies off the topic that more interesting on-topic points can't be raised above the noise. Sometimes I wonder if this could be a deliberate astroturfing strategy.
One recent example was a useless conversation about whether the US was a democracy or a republic, with 10 different people saying the same thing. Those 10 comments with replies fill several scrolling pages, so the real topic of conversation is buried.
On the other hand, you could argue that if a comment generates substantive replies (as opposed to just replies that say "this is off topic") then it's actually pretty strong evidence that the community feels the comment is on topic.
In fact, I think it would be a good thing if it was made impossible for moderators to detach comments that receive enough up-votes, or have child comments (especially comments that disagree) with many up-votes.
In those cases, it's clear that community members get value from the comment, which should infinitely override bespoke opinions of whether it's "on topic enough" to remain -- those subjective opinions ought to count for way less than simply observing whether there are up votes or replies.
It only takes about ten redundant comments (wild guess number) to derail a thread for thousands of would-be participants. This doesn't indicate community value; at best it indicates accidental nerd sniping, and at worst could be a coordinated attack on what would otherwise be a productive discussion, from which more people could derive far greater value.
But the comments are drawn from the distribution of Hacker News readers. You can't presume that just because you see a thread of ten comments as an off-topic distraction that so must the other thousands of readers, especially if there are healthy replies and up votes.
Your comment that it "derail[s] a thread" makes the implicit assumption that the comments are actually off-topic. If they are on-topic, but you happen to have the opinion that they aren't (even thought they are) then it's not derailing anything, it's just a healthy reflection of the comment-generating process that is "the pool of all HN readers." I think of it like the John Lennon quote: "Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted."
I don't have a magic answer for how to accurately detect off-topic diversions in a way that satisfied most people most of the time. All I'm saying is that upon seeing a healthy back and forth, it should give me a lot of pause that if I merely think it's off topic, I am probably wrong, and it's just an opinion that should not be indulged by moderator activity.
Interesting points. I'll just add that I don't think that enjoyment is the best metric for evaluating a thread, but maximal enjoyment and/or maximal usefulness. Especially if what I'm calling off topic prevents the community from addressing a threat to its values. I could be wrong, but it seems that the HN team want HN to be more than just a fun place to hang out for hackers.
There was another example of derailment recently, with a dozen comments arguing over what a "middleman" is when the original comment was really about how best to support indie makers.
Anyway, thanks for the interesting discussion, and I hope I haven't made this thread less useful for someone else in the process.
> And I'm speaking as someone with a lot of anti-authoritarian tendencies. I'm not shy at all about speaking my mind and I struggle with finding a way to feign respect for authority apparatuses that are not legitimate, like HN moderation. If I feel this apprehension and backlash, I can only imagine that more timid readers feel it to a much more damaging degree.
(I'm preemptively sorry if I end up delving into the realm of armchair psychology here)
Is it possible that, if you know you tend to look for authoritarian themes in the artifacts you interact with, that maybe part of your perception is the result of false positives magnified by the emotional impact of the administrative action?
There's always some subjective elements to imposing community rules as a moderator -- that's common in every community, ever. What would be less expected is malice in those actions.
I would agree if it was just me. But Googling around for some of the stuff that's happened, like with Michael O. Church, some blog posts about alleged anti-semitism in HN moderator actions, I think it's hardly just me.
I also don't think that bad moderator actions are common either. Most users probably don't even notice it. It's arguable that this makes it even worse, since it's harder to get the community to care about healthy community-approved policies if they are only protecting a handful of people who are sometimes outside of the HN group-think.
I've had that happen to me before, I've built up enough karma over my time here to stop caring as much, and sometimes it comes back, other times not so much. It usually depends, but even though the karma system may have it's flaws it at least keeps us from turning into the abyss that other communities have turned into.
I'm sure this is an emotional reaction to receiving overwhelming negative feedback, not a calculated one. I'd direct my comment toward the site rather than OP.
The second part is true, I have had comments going from -4 or five to plus four or five, then tank again back to minus 4.
The problem is that when they get downvoted they don't produce any response, and if nobody is going to do anything based on what you write, why write it at all? You might as well start yelling at the walls.
Sometimes I might recognize legitimate reasons for getting down voted, in this case I clarify or review my opinion
But sometimes I just keep the comment there, because that's my opinion and hopefully some other person shares it as well even if it costs some down votes
Self-censoring is plainly wrong. You have a human right of free speech - use it!
I never care if people vote me down. I have been downvoted often. It's just a convenient way to censor unwelcome messages.
If people don't want to listen to you even when you have good arguments then the downvoters aren't worth your opinion. Their response however points out if they have something important to say which could question your point of view so that you can use it to advance your own view.
it may be worth checking to see if your friend made other comments around the same time that may have actually been the source of a shadow ban. I've had half a dozen times where someone linked to a comment that supposedly got another account shadow-banned, and I looked at their history and found another comment made at about the same time that was a much more likely culprit.
Like, "I got shadow-banned for this comment about memory management in iOS" "... you sure it wasn't for this comment from a few hours earlier about how people who vote for the other political party are [long list of expletives]?"
He's a lawyer who runs a blog that dips into related topics often. His identity was clearly associated with his account, so I doubt he was making such comments.
I'll see if I can get the account details because it's renewed my interest.
except that it can get you banned or harassed. I had deng(dang?) follow me around, and he (she?) was obviously prepping for a ban.
At one point he wholesale deleted a comment of mine because it was widely misinterpreted in a sexist way (I clarified to multiple people, but it wasn't enough apparently). The sad part is the only ones being sexist were the ones interpreting it that way, I was personally shocked that so many people thought I was being sexist.
And that was just the last time he stepped in, he had been threatening me repeatedly, and why? My best guess is either
a) because I was having a conversation with another poster in which he came in and bitched at them, only I defended that poster, or
b) after I was "flag bombed" (I think that's the term?) for having an opinion many didn't like [1].
I'm not sure which because they were both a part of the same thread, but immediately after I started seeing deng everywhere, threatening me repeatedly. I've been online long enough to know what being targetted by a mod looks like.
This idea that you shouldn't be self censoring on HN is naive. It means you haven't attracted deng's ire (or one of the other mods) or said something that was truly an "unsafe" minority opinion.
There's apparently another person who won't allow linking from HN I believe? I don't know the full story behind that, but I can absolutely understand that person's opinion of HN.
HN is honestly one of the oppressive environments for actual discourse I've seen and that's not a joke. The only site I can think of off the top of my head that's unequivocally worse is hubski.com.
The poster who spoke about 4chan is spot on. You can optimize for good discussion or you can optimize for feel good politeness, but you can't optimize for both. Most communities attempt to balance it, but HN leans far to the side of feel good politeness. You don't actually come to HN for discussion, you come to HN to make comments on random things that pop up. Unfortunately, some mistake that for discussion, but I'm of the opinion those folks don't actually understand what a good discussion is.
To end this post, I'm just going to say I find your opinion to be horrifically naive. Even now I know the reaction is going to be folks piling on to tell me how great a person deng is, and I'll find myself taking another multi-month long hiatus from HN until deng (once again) forgets about me.
I've been online for entirely too long.
[1] The poster I defended took issue with my opinion and we were going round and round about it and deng apparently thought he was getting too heated. I was the recipient of said "heat" and I disagreed.
I do the same on HN (self-censor, constantly) and have come to peace with it. I don't submit over 80% of the HN posts I write, and I immediately delete anything that gets one down vote. Furthermore, if I do post something that gets a down vote, I update my "don't post" probabilities to match, meaning I post even less.
I'd encourage you to try and not feel bad about the situation. It's not your job to provide insight or knowledge to others, or even just plain old participation. If you don't like the response you get, just keep doing what you're doing: don't post. It's their loss.
P.s. If this comment gets down-voted, which my filters tell me is "highly likely", I'll just leave this P.s. comment instead of doing a full delete like I usually do. Hopefully you'll have read it by then. :)
I on the other hand assume that random downvotes are part of the system and don't worry about them overly much. I also don't check on my post history except to see if there are replies to my comments.
I have been kicked out of online communities for not aligning with the groupthink, but I tend to see that as a positive for me in the long run. If I'm so disliked by a community then I'm not going to force it. I one angered a guy so much he made up some random bullshit about me being a pedo and the mods bought it hook line and sinker. I decided that any place where the mods will ban you and never even respond to or probably even read your appeals is not worth the effort. That said, I don't go looking for fights. I'm not going to register a StormFront account anytime soon because everything I might say on there would just cause arguments and strife.
Be an adult and stand by your opinions. Other people may disagree, but that's life. Sometimes you may even be wrong and change your mind later, but that's also life. The situation may also change and invalidate your old opinion. Most importantly don't be a dick.
The problem is that karma is all-important on this site, and ends up creating different social strata, and a feedback mechanism which is what these other posters are complaining about.
On Reddit, for example, it really doesn't matter if you get a few downvotes. Your post is still visible, and you still have the ability to up or downvote anyone else. You are not a lesser member of the community on that site when you get some downvotes.
On here, you are. The system is explicitly designed to make it an echo chamber. If you have low karma, you can't downvote people, you can't post very much, and there are probably other more subtle ways they punish you for having low karma.
So it's absolutely to your advantage, if you want to be a member of this "community" and actually have your posts seen and commented on so you can participate in useful and interesting discussion, to self-censor.
> "If you have low karma, you can't downvote people"
This is a good thing. It makes it difficult to create a downvote-bot-brigade. It means that only people who have participated in building the community up to a certain degree have the right to act as gatekeepers.
> "you can't post very much"
I'm not aware of any such restriction, except for very-very new accounts.
> "it's absolutely to your advantage ... to self-censor"
In a sense, this is by design. If downvotes don't help people learn what sort of comment is and isn't welcome here, then we'd be overrun with cat pictures. Downvotes are supposed to teach you "this doesn't belong" just like upvotes are supposed to teach you "this is an appreciated comment".
I think it's even OK that occasionally a decent comment will pick up a couple of downvotes because it's slightly disagreeable, poorly written, or just that someone clicked the wrong button on accident -- a few random points of negative won't hurt someone whose contributions are generally positive.
Where it becomes a problem is when well-thought-out, civil, reasonable comments get heavily downvoted. When someone with a contrary opinion can't make any positive progress. I try to make it a point to toss upvotes on comments like that, but perhaps more could be done.
One thought: even if we don't require a comment box for all downvotes, perhaps requiring a comment box for downvoting something beyond a certain level of negative (like, beyond -1) would keep people from piling on mindlessly or needlessly.
If you put even a basic effort into posting quality content and avoid trolling you will have positive karma. This is always true. You may take a hit from time to time, but in the long run your total score will be overwhelmingly positive. This is true of every forum. You only need to worry about karma if you like to start arguments or shitpost.
Let's hope I never accidentally downvote any of your posts then. It happens, and I've seen a few other people apologize for it, when your tapping around on a smartphone and try to hit the upvote button without zooming, or just scrolling. (We should really get that fixed, and add another step for downvoting, or such, seeing that it has such a negative impact on people and can't be taken back.)
> I immediately delete anything that gets one down vote.
That's a problem that's on you to solve, not the HN community. You should stand by your comments instead of just deleting them, and you shouldn't take downvotes as an indication that you should post less.
Why do you give such importance to individual clicks?
I really don't get it. You reward a person whose opinion you disagree with, punish yourself (in a very minor way) and take away any chance that other people will click the other button.
I see up votes as meaning "this comment is worth reading" (not: I agree with this comment). Down votes are the opposite, of course.
I delete comments that are deemed "not worth reading" because it's low cost to do so and improves the overall comment quality, at least for some people.
The simple fact is that mildly negative comments are worth much less than mildly positive comments, so it's almost always a good idea to err on the side of removing negative comments. The potential bad, in this case, far outweighs the potential good.
...I immediately delete anything that gets one down vote.
You're missing out. I regularly have posts that go to -2, -3, etc., which are then upvoted back into positive territory. Here's a fairly recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11332081 (I think that one got downvoted initially for the explicit religious imagery.)
The little mental boost I get from an occasional 'yo-yo' completely counteracts the 0 and -1 votes I get all the time. But mostly, I don't care about internet points. The point is to learn and share.
Which isn't to say that I don't occasionally delete a post, or wish that I had. Another word for "self-censorship" is "judgment".
Reviewing the common nature of the disagreement in replies is also a good way to practice presenting unpopular opinions. There's a lot of pitfalls I've learned to avoid when being tactful
I looked at your comment history, and I don't think you got downvoted because of your opinions. It's more likely a matter of writing style. The folks here like efficient communication and concise, well thought-out arguments. Some of your long comments are more along the lines of Socratic self-debates where you are thinking through a subject in detail. There's nothing wrong with it, but it just doesn't fit the medium. HN is great for sharing insights on the news of the day, but not conducive to in-depth intellectual engagements.
I've been around for many years here on HN. I tend to change my password to something random from time to time, so I don't get too attached to my karma, burning man style.
It helps.
I don't think there's a fixed HN style for comments.
Some people like flash comments and replies, some people enjoy longer, more thoughtful conversations. I guess it depends on the article/subject.
I tend to be a slow thinker and a slow writer and apart from their length, I also spend a lot of time writing them.
But once again, thanks for taking the time and maybe next time I'll remember to keep it shorter and to the point :).
> This is my 3rd HN account - I've abandoned the others (with lots of karma on them) specifically as a protest for (what I thought were) valid opinions being down voted and dismissed.
Hi there from my 2nd account! I have also abandoned about 1K points of karma, because I thought I should censor myself less and care less about it.
Surprisingly, I didn't get downvoted as much as I expected. Lot of comments I make and consider really silly get high karma, and yet other my comments which I consider to be a really good points are sitting there with 1. The moderation system seems quite random.
I think the big problem of modern moderation systems is the fleeting nature of all those discussions. Having a persistent discussion about a topic is difficult. I think something like Wiki or Stackoverflow works, but only to an extent.
I don't really care enough to self-censor and I often play a game of negative karma with myself here.
To motivate myself to finish the comment I know won't be taken well in the average I first remind myself that the point of my comment isn't to cater to the consensus of the majority of the HN crowd but the reason I started writing it was because I felt something needed to be said and if there is one other person who finds my comment valuable, I have succeeded regardless of everything else. Secondly, in entering the game of negative karma I expect downvotes with the idea that the more I get the more sure I am I did strike the right chord there. It doesn't always work and I get a wave of upvotes instead, but you get the idea. I rarely look back except when my karma changes a lot overnight which is when I might take a look at what happened.
Note that I don't, or at least I don't intend to, troll, insult, or talk off-topic in order to hog downvotes for my game. The downvotes themselves aren't the goal: I just consider them an indicator of success when writing a comment I'm pretty sure I won't be getting many upvotes either. It's like targetting controversy. Ideally, I aim to make remarks that question the status quo or find blind spots in collective assumptions.
To close, I'm thinking about your question in the end. I think that self-censorship is about the need to belong. If you're an independent individualist you have no need for self-censorship because you don't care if people were to oust you because of what you said. Yet humans need that feeling of belonging which I think is best reserved for people closest in your life. You can shrug off a lot of thoughts when it comes to your spouse, your kids, or good friends -- thoughts that you could defend and question till the end in principle, but because principles are merely mental tools you know you can afford to shrug off a few of them as between you and these people you (hopefully) have something that goes beyond mere mental gymnastics.
Curiously, the original message sparked a lot of commentary and it seems like lots of people here are feeling the pain of "unjust" moderation sometimes.
Sometimes I also play the "fuck it, let them mod me down, I'll just say it" game - I expect to be buried and that's fine -(although people tend to heavily up vote maverick comments).
But sometimes modding takes me by complete surprise - "Wtf, why did I they mod me down?"..
For some reason, I tend to internalize negative feedback from random strangers a lot more than I internalize the positive feedback.. And I feel like I'm not the only one doing this, which is a bit of a relief :).
But my original comment wasn't necessarily a complaint about the status quo here on HN - some hiccups aside, it's still the most civilized and wise forum online..
What worries me is that we still haven't figured the public forum thing out and some versions of it are plain dangerous (eg. forums on certain news websites tend to degenerate into racism, hatred, bigotry, etc).
The up/down vote paradigm seems to have reached it's peak, we need a new way to collectively filter thoughts.
I couldn't agree more. I'm not sure how to solve the problem though, other than trying to teach people to treat the down vote button more respectfully.
IMO there shouldn't be a down vote button at all, and to be honest I can't see its purpose. If a comment is trolling or being aggressive then you should flag it, so where is there room for the down vote button?
It becomes quite intuitive to just use it for what you consider an "invalid opinion" regardless of how much you try to teach people otherwise, because it's so convenient to use and people are less rational when they are angered.
The downvote button is supposed to be for non-constructive (i.e. stupid/useless) or offtopic messages. Flag is for spam and very very inflammatory stuff.
It is NOT supposed to be used for incorrect messages! (Or at least, if the message is grey, don't keep downvoting it just because there is a mistake in it. One downvote is enough.) And most especially it is not for disagreeing with someone - that's what the reply button is for.
Too many people come here from reddit with the mentality that downvote is for disagreement.
I think the mentality that downvote = disagreement is widespread on any site with a karma/voting mechanism. Many subreddits themselves say right in the sidebar (and often elsewhere) that "downvote only if something is off-topic or does not contribute to discussion", but everyone still tends to use it that way.
So I think the issue is somewhat bigger than reddit or HN or even just a certain slice of users. It seems to be a fundamental problem in understanding up/down votes. Maybe psychologically we're inclined to downvote when we disagree, whether consciously or not.
I am also guilty of this even though I know better. It's hard to resist downvoting something I disagree with. It's like a natural response I have to actively work against.
It's human nature. If something offends you, you WANT it to be wrong/unfair/trolling. And so it becomes just that, and then your downvote is justified.
My theory is that it's because it's to convenient.
A solution could be to move it to next to the flag button, maybe? And also making it a bit more difficult to do, like requiring the user to input a reason.
I agree that some people will always downvote to disagree. (I do, but I'm trying to stop it (to the point where I'm going to greasemonkey a script to take the button away)).
I also agree that people should probably not downvote to disagree.
But also, when other people see a grey comment and they think it's unfairly downvoted they should supply a corrective upvote. I know some people on HN do this, but I get the impression that not enough people do.
>Too many people come here from reddit with the mentality that downvote is for disagreement.
I'm not so sure about that.
I came from Reddit too, however I've been here for months now, and I still can't downvote anyone. From what I'm told, you need a karma of 1000 to get that ability. I can only upvote.
So, you have to be a longtime HNer to even have this ability to silence other peoples' opinions. You cannot be some newbie here and downvote people, unless you hit the karma jackpot by making a few posts that get hundreds and hundreds of upvotes.
Therefore, I think it's much more likely that what you're seeing (dissenting opinions being downvoted) is coming from both the heavy-handed non-transparent moderators, and from others in their "inner circle" of longtime members.
> Therefore, I think it's much more likely that what you're seeing (dissenting opinions being downvoted) is coming from both the heavy-handed non-transparent moderators, and from others in their "inner circle" of longtime members.
???
There is no such group on HN. Where are you getting this idea? (Look at my karma score and date joined - if there was such a group I'd know about it by now.)
And on top of that there are tons of users who can downvote, you don't have to be part of some mythical inner circle.
What you said is of course correct, but what I'm saying is that while the concept of a down vote button is useful, people end up using it in the fashion I described because of its convenience.
Maybe merging them isn't the best idea, but changing it to mimic the flag button (i.e. moving it and requiring a reason to be specified before submission) would probably fix this issue, I'd wager.
Well, some systems have a seperate option for 'like/dislike and agree/disagree'. And a bunch of other things.
So maybe something like that could work on Hacker News. Slashdot had it, XenForo forums have used for a plugin for it for years and Facebook has just introduced something akin to it in Reactions.
Some companies game the voting system on HN. You only need a few/dozens accounts with 2000+ karma to create group thinking by down-voting non-popular opinions that may harm the reputation of the company. We can regularly see this behaviour from a certain company from Redmond, their news on HN are heavily "moderated", and "not so great" news about them get flagged from the HN frontpage in no time and at the same time they release another "nice" news blurb that gets many votes in seconds. The HN users were more in favor of the competition, and since Build'15 a swamp of new HN accounts got created to form the opinion about new products, and give them a positive spin while on the same time hide and downvote all true comments about the evil spy features of their OS v10 and their other newer products that cannot be turned off by end consumers.
HN needs more logging to detect such coordinated (down-)voting rings to avoid group thinking and opinion shaping orchestrated by bad players.
I think this is where the "community" metaphor breaks down; HN is not the equivalent of a civilization where a thousand flowers need to bloom to preserve the intellectual integrity of society; it is the equivalent of the club you shouldn't join if they'd have you as a member.
The problem is not that people self-segregate into (multiple) communities where there is a common creed as to what ideas are worthy of discussion; the problem is when there is a suffocating universal consensus where there are ideas that have no home. There is no (useful) better, more open-minded community; there are just places where you can say things you shouldn't say on HN and vice versa.
There's nothing wrong with circlej-rks as long as every jerk has a circle.
> If one of the most intelligent and open minded online communities can exhibit censorship or can determine users to self-censor, then what can be said about other communities/platforms ?
Climate researchers are also self censoring, but for slightly different reasons. Given the stakes, its also an interesting case study.
"In several important respects the modelling community is self-censoring its research to conform to the dominant political and economic paradigm"
> I often find myself self-censoring or abandoning the comment halfway, because I know it will get down voted and it's just a waste of time.
Please don't, it is just karma.
> Which brings me to the thought: If one of the most intelligent and open minded online communities can exhibit censorship or can determine users to self-censor, then what can be said about other communities/platforms ?
I think its an example of a problem that is difficult to solve because you want to surface the content that makes the majority happy which becomes naturally self reinforcing.
That said, I'd like to see a platform that surfaces heavily downvoted content that received some upvotes as a hybrid with purely upvoted content. [e.g. +70, -100 is a comment probably worth ranking at +35 because the downvote/upvote split is likely opinion-based rather than purely factual]
It is not "just karma". This isn't Reddit. On here, low karma means you can't downvote (while higher-karma people can, so they can use that to suppress the opinions of the low-karma people), which effectively makes you a second-class citizen here. Even worse, if the mods disagree strongly with your post, they'll happily detach it (so no one else can see it) and threaten to ban you.
> It is not "just karma". On here, low karma means you can't downvote (while higher-karma people can, so they can use that to suppress the opinions of the low-karma people)
It is "just karma". Without karma, you can't negatively effect other people's karma, which is also just karma. This is the default state everyone started in. Moreover, you can still suppress opinions while having low karma - simply upvote everything else.
I'm of the opinion that the style of disagreement matters a lot more than the opinion itself, for karma impact. I have seen - in another community, granted - serious arguments in favor of cannibalism gain more upvotes than down, because it was done in a well reasoned and constructive manner.
As for communities where this isn't the case? Well, I'm interested in proper conversation and dialog on topics. One that prefers unity of thought, instead, is an echo chamber of parrots I want no part in - voting/karma system or not. I have left communities over smaller issues, and lived a happier life for it. In that case, it's not even "just karma" - it's "just karma in a community I've left."
> Even worse, if the mods disagree strongly with your post, they'll happily detach it (so no one else can see it) and threaten to ban you.
That can happen regardless of your karma - speaking from the perspective of a 'karma' 1%er in another community who's eaten temp-bans.
I disagree. On here, with low karma, you're a second-class citizen. You have much less ability to suppress opinions; you can only upvote, not downvote, so you can't target someone specifically. Hoping to drown them out by upvoting everything else isn't the same; only posts that are actually downvoted get turned to gray here. So because of this mechanism, this place ends up being exactly what you complain about: "an echo chamber of parrots".
Newbie complaint. Stick around for a little while, get a little karma, and become a full citizen. This isn't some echo chamber just because newbies can't drive the conversation. Just the opposite.
It is to me. I've got ~9 HN accounts over 1k and I cycle to a new one every so often because that is how little I care about the features that karma-gated.
If you take HN seriously enough to care, ummm, why?
No offense but this place largely acts like a more technically sophisticated Reddit with everything from downvoting factual statements to upvoting provably false opinion. That doesn't include the inherent bias in the design towards YC companies and so forth.
How long have you been on here? I've been on here a few months I think, and I'm just a little over 400. I'm still a long way from 1000, and that's just one account. So to me, karma is pretty important; AFAIC, I'm just a second-class citizen here at this point.
I do agree about your comparison to Reddit. Honestly, if my workplace didn't block Reddit, I probably wouldn't spend much time here.
Maybe there's something to be said that the users with downvote ability have earned enough karma through upvotes. The community determines in this way that the only ones that can silence others are those with majority valued opinions
I really like discourse's stance on this which also gives points to users for reading posts.
It's the lurkers who only give input when it's compelling and thought out that I want to hear from, vs jerks like me that spout their opinion on everything.
Your comment is a good example. People here are willing to look at things from various angles and question things, while being respectful towards each other.
Well, a community needs certain borders to become one; these may be implicit, but they certainly exist here. What's special in this forum, imo, is the level of discussion and the willingness to listen carefully and to react thoughtfully, and not its realization of some utopian ideal freedom (which probably would have destroyed it as a community).
Yet again, an online community is obviously not a nation-state: one has chosen voluntarily and consciously to participate in it, and could always decide to leave and go elsewhere.
HN is just aggressively positive. I miss Slashdot. I liked that it had people who had industry knowledge who would post as an Anonymous Coward to correct someone who was being idealistic. I don't know where those people have gone, but it is certainly not here. They probably were dispersed to other sites.
Those people are gone now. They're not on SoylentNews, and there's sure as hell not on here. I don't think they're on Reddit either. They're not anywhere.
My guess: they've retired from tech after getting tired of all the BS and nasty personalities, and done something entirely different with their lives. Maybe they took their savings and moved to Costa Rica and opened a restaurant on the beach.
I see a lot of throwaway accounts here post interesting stuff - clearly like anon.
Slashdot incurs a large cost (noise) in allowing anon comments - depending on who you ask, the moderation system either barely keeps that in check, or is completely insufficient.
> even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think"
There is absolutely no social cost for downvoting without commenting.
Adding costs and accountability:
- force comment box on downvotes
- deduct from karma
- flagging only
Is it important for HN's community to have a "psychologically safe" [1] at this point in time?
I can not think of a more critical time for the "STEM" crowd to have a viable forum of discussion.
Topics ranging from the expected behavior of tall steel structures subject to excessive heat (ahem), to digital rights, cryto, crypto-currency, voting systems, genetics, AI, ..., can all benefit from informed discussion and debate.
HN membership, considering the depth and range observed, is entirely capable of this.
I have to say, I prefer when someone responds to my comments vs. an influx of downvotes which don't allow me to learn anything. I come here to learn, not to feel like I can't and shouldn't contribute. I originally got really discouraged from posting anything when all I ever got was downvoted and didn't know why, or how the rules worked here. Also as was mentioned above, the fact that I would make statements that others didn't agree with would get me downvoted to oblivion would stop me from commenting most of the time. I usually ctrl + f to see if anyone else is posting from the same viewpoint as me, and if nobody has I don't bother, some people who probably call themselves open-minded are not as such, everyone has their own prejudices.
One paradoxical thing about discussions here is that often I see a bad post, followed up with a really good reply. And I want the two to be seen in tandem, but if I sink the parent I also sink the child. So I often upvote both.
I would say that if a "bad post" has resulted in good discussion, then it wasn't a bad post. It might be in poor taste, but if that is a filtering criteria then you're going to get groupthink around controversial subjects.
Karma economy: Every submitted link or comment: +1 karma, every upvote, another +1, but a -1 for the upvoter. In the case of a downvote on a comment: -1 for the comment writer, -1 for the downvoter.
I think the upvoter should remain karma neutral. That keeps a steady flow of karma currency entering the system, which is necessary when the primary mechanism for filtering and ranking interesting content is upvoting.
If you penalise users for doing that, they'll do less of it, which will make the ranking/filtering less effective.
Like any major site, I would guess the majority of HN readers do not comment, or only comment rarely.
Losing karma for upvoting means you need to comment if you want to upvote, and I suspect many readers will simply choose not to participate in either activity rather than try to maintain a positive karma balance.
Each upvote on a submission: +100 for submitter, -1 for voter.
Each upvote on a comment: +10 for commenter, -1 for voter.
Each downvote on a comment: -10 for commenter, -1 for voter
This aligns with the ladder of engagement, where there are 10x as many creators as commenters as voters, while keeping a steady stream of currency injection.
It's rather the opposite. There are tens of thousands of potential voters, a fraction of that in comments and a fraction of that in quality link submitters (once you filter out the spam). Anyway, regardless of the situation there is an easy way out of this: measure and adjust accordingly, I'm sure 'arc' has the ability to define named constants.
This would also answer the question 'what is karma good for?' once and for all.
I like the idea of deducting karma for a downvote. However, forcing a comment on downvote, while perhaps leading to less downvotes, might also just lead to many more comments that are not thought out and simply put there in order to downvote.
Maybe we need more nuanced voting options? While this could get a bit complex, such a system may function better. People could upvote a post as it is well written/thought out and/or is provocative/clever/interesting, but downvote it as they disagree. The overall comment karma would balance out, rather than it just being downvoted as lots of people disagreed with it.
Facebook is now using a similar type of system with their multiple emotes. I think such a system would work well with the HN community. It may lead to more thought out comments, as simple opinions can be expressed more accurately via the voting system.
Or simply force a comment if none already exist from a previous down voter. That way first one in has to give a reason for the downvote, which others can then +1 (or is it -1..)
That's a good point. The system could potentially be much more expressive with that approach, in that its not limited to simple categorical voting.
It will still have the problem that child comments of a downvoted comment will not get as much exposure. It also means that even if the comment was just unpopular (despite being well thought out) it will be downvoted after the first person posts a comment disagreeing.
Another approach could be to factor child karma when ranking comments. Though this gets significantly more complex as there are many edge cases where this will not work as intended.
Just to present another point that I just thought of:
Imagine if we take the downvote ability away from everyone. I believe there is still an "implicit" downvote in the form of every other comment getting upvoted. Under the current system, upvoted posts will be pushed to the top and downvoted posts will be on the bottom. Would this not cause the same effect as previous? Being ignored several times because your opinion does not conform the social norm will cause you to self sensor (or leave HN), would it not?
At the same time I think we recognize the value of upvotes, which in theory should allow for relevant and thoughtful content to be pushed to the top so more people can be exposed to it. Otherwise we'd have the traditional forums, which has widely variable SNR.
I'm not sure how to reconcile these points:
1. The wish to filter for "good" post and filter out the "bad" posts.
2. The subjective definition of "good" or "bad".
3. "Bad" (opposite) opinions gets buried because of point 2.
On the other hand I think education does work, as personally I refrain from downvoting when i disagree, only when it clearly does not add value (but even then, that is subjective). Although I'm not sure if this is obvious enough to HN users who first gained the ability to downvote.
The idea of forcing a comment on downvote is an excellent one, and I for one would like to try that for a little while. (I say this as someone who tries to only downvotes for tone and trolling, never for disagreement.)
HackerNews is a marketing channel for a technology investment firm.
Why should they care about balanced conversation? What if those balanced conversations somehow promote criticism of companies that they are involved with?
They should care because they've created an excellent community and a wonderful forum for thoughtful discussion, not many of which exist on the internet. It's something to embrace and be proud of.
It's not perfect but it puts every other fairly large public internet forum I've seen to shame.
Not everything has to be done for economic gain. If you want to pretend it's all a ruse to make more money then you are free to consider having such a robust discussion forum to be good PR for Y Combinator; it garners an enormous amount of goodwill and respect in the tech community.
And they do care about earnest thoughtful balanced conversation. There are plenty of posts critical of YC companies or PG or you name it that are not censored. Mods interact with the community regularly to enforce standards and curate post quality.
So the community itself should have no say in how things work? It's this sort of attitude that leads me to make comments which get downvoted.
More logically, Ycomb gets a lot of prestige and "free" marketing from the quality and popularity of HN. It's in their interests to maintain and improve that quality. Besides, they're hardly going to lose clients because a couple of negative comments don't get downvoted into oblivion as swiftly as before.
Groups of people only become mindlessly profit driven when that's the last common goal they have left. In a large enough group that seems to always happen because people's goals are so diverse, but I suspect that HN team is still small enough to have some common goals outside of just collecting a paycheck.
Adding to this: Replace the down vote icon completely with the flagging icon, as the down vote icon probably encourages aggravated people to use it in the wrong way.
Here's what dang, who's currently in charge of HN, had to say about downvoting a while back:
> Downvoting for disagreement is not always bad, but it sometimes is. There should be some nuance here. Don't be indiscriminate. When a comment is blatantly false, downvoting is probably ok, especially when there's something else wrong with the comment. But high-quality, polite posts don't deserve penalizing just because you don't share their position. When you see one of those in negative territory, please be a good citizen and upvote it back to par. Users doing that is one of the community's self-correcting mechanisms, and it's more important now that we've made some downvotes more powerful.
(Emphasis mine)
For what it's worth, I agree that this should be in the site rules.
in the past, pg has used the analogy that upvotes are not only for civility, so downvotes aren't restricted only to incivility.
My own personal guideline: upvote = "I would like more comments like this" and downvote = "I would like less comments like this". My reason for wanting less comments of a particular type can be a lot of things -- incivility, factual incorrectness, being off-topic or distracting, being technically correct but misleading, or even being repetitive in relation to prior comments that already made the same point better.
PG had a few comments about downvoting. Two were like you said - people use upvote for agree so it makes sense that they downvote to disagree. But he also said that downvote for disagreement was a problem. That's (one of the) reason(s) why comment scores are no longer visible.
I think pg is wrong in this next comment, I think people vote to disagree, and I think there's a pile-on effect. But I don't have the data, and he (and dang) did (and do). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403716
EDIT: Some of those threads talk about the "meanness" of HN. I know I'm sometimes dumb and sometimes mean, so please if you see me doing that downvote me, flag me, send me an email.
yeah, it's more nuanced than "downvote for disagree" or "downvote only for flagrant hostility".
It's clear that some people are using downvotes aggressively, and that needs managed. I actually had a period of time when every comment I posted (no matter what time of day or what topic) received exactly one downvote between 5 and 6 pm in my time zone, as if I'd offended someone and they were retaliating. But I've also seen people post comments that are purely inflammatory with no worthwhile content (along the lines of "[group] is evil", where [group] is mainstream -- not ISIS or Nazis, but like, Republicans or Muslims) that didn't get downvoted. So the issue is more than "too few downvotes" or "too many downvotes".
So I try to be part of HN's corrective mechanism. If I see something blatantly inappropriate, I downvote and flag if appropriate. If I see something reasonable that's grayed out, I upvote. If I see something non-gray that I think is of negative value, I downvote, and I hope that if I misjudged it someone else will come along and cancel out my vote.
Socially conservative views often get downvoted, but it seems to depend heavily on the thread. Whether it's a function of a given thread's topic or its participants is hard to say.
The discussions of Brendan Eich's appointment and resignation contain lots of examples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/canada-en...
https://overland.org.au/2014/07/surveillance-of-activists-is...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr...