Seems rather odd to be complaining to the customers that their complaining is wrong.
Sound like a guy running a hot dog stand. Each day, a thousand folks come by and buy hot dogs. Maybe ten thousand just read the signs. About a hundred of the regulars say "Why don't you paint the sign blue?"
You can say, "no" or you can say "yes". What makes no sense at all is to keep arguing with the complainers.
Is there a way to paint the sign blue without losing the traffic? If so, do it. However -- and this is what bugs me -- perhaps you like the traffic more than the contributors. Perhaps the contributors are just suckers creating unique, interesting, and varied content on your site everyday. And if that's the case, well it doesn't really matter at all what 'HN' really is, because the whole point is to let it evolve into a mindless link farm not to service the commenters/readers. In other words, the true customers are the passerbys, not the people eating the hotdogs.
I don't believe this premise, but it is self-consistent. I would like to see a drop-down voting system where there would be 5-7 categories each user could choose from. If I thought the article was interesting, I could choose "interesting". If you thought it was on-topic, you could choose "on-topic". etc. Add a flag and tag feature, get rid of downvotes entirely, and at least then the site is customizable to work no matter the reader's preference.
Sound like a guy running a hot dog stand. Each day, a thousand folks come by and buy hot dogs. Maybe ten thousand just read the signs. About a hundred of the regulars say "Why don't you paint the sign blue?"
You can say, "no" or you can say "yes". What makes no sense at all is to keep arguing with the complainers.
Is there a way to paint the sign blue without losing the traffic? If so, do it. However -- and this is what bugs me -- perhaps you like the traffic more than the contributors. Perhaps the contributors are just suckers creating unique, interesting, and varied content on your site everyday. And if that's the case, well it doesn't really matter at all what 'HN' really is, because the whole point is to let it evolve into a mindless link farm not to service the commenters/readers. In other words, the true customers are the passerbys, not the people eating the hotdogs.
I don't believe this premise, but it is self-consistent. I would like to see a drop-down voting system where there would be 5-7 categories each user could choose from. If I thought the article was interesting, I could choose "interesting". If you thought it was on-topic, you could choose "on-topic". etc. Add a flag and tag feature, get rid of downvotes entirely, and at least then the site is customizable to work no matter the reader's preference.