Not really, people with high Karma can flag posts and get them taken down. This happens a lot more with politics than other types of controversial topics. Personally I could flag this post, but it's interesting AND novel so IMO it stays.
The bug being the policy of discouraging feedback to commenters/submitters on exactly why their comment/article was down-modded. Meta-discussion, last I checked, was no-no.
Meta-discussion is not needed. You can teach a neural net to dance simply by saying Yes, and No. The problem with saying "you did X wrong here is how you fix it" is many people only hear "Only do Y" where we want any acceptable submission even if it's on juggling (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=418460).
What happens is somebody makes a comment, gets downmodded, then wonders why. So they ask (trust me, I've tried this). Their question itself then gets downmodded -- meta discussions not tolerated. So the commenter, who is not psychic, is left with negative feedback from the moderation system without any idea at all what or what not to do in the future.
This idea of treating HN as just a large dataset with contributors simply being data suppliers to train the neural net has some really big limitations. Last I checked, the board was full of human beings, and posting in some fashion approximates the social activity of having a conversation. The further the system strays from the social/linguistic/psychological needs of conversation, the less effective it is as a community facilitator, in my opinion.
Meta-discussion might not be needed by the computer, but it's a natural part of human behavior and to the degree the system does not allow this, the system is broken.
You can see other posts that where up modded. So for the most part you can learn what a good post is by looking at good examples.
So yes you can get down modded for asking but think of it like a Nash Equilibrium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium) the benefit you can from Meta discussion is at the cost of everyone else who needs to read it and understands the guidelines. Even as it benefits others who don't understand.
I expect if people keep trying to make insightful comments then they can learn what people on HN like. Or if you really don't understand take a karma hit and get some feedback. Just don't think Meta Discussions are without cost. A tiny fraction of the time it's probably, OK but it's extremely corrosive.
PS: It's easy to waste peoples time by saying thinks like "My opinion only" or "I don't mind getting down modded for this" but if we post it people can assume that so such things just clogg up the communication channel.
Either I'm not making my point or you're not receiving it.
I got your point. Data and the "communications channel" trumps the individual. The needs of the group win.
But I already had it. I'm just wondering if any of this is sinking in with you. So far, I think the answer is "no" There seems to be a prevalent opinion that the purpose of HN participants is to provide data, the blander the better.
Real world group discussions are interesting mixes of public and private conversations. Ever sit in a crowded conference room? Ever work in a large group that made significant progress towards collecting and analyzing data, coming up with new and interesting conclusions? It's a balance of individuals and group needs. Either you advance the art of synthesis, not just rating, or your "data" will eventually be scraped and fed into just another larger, better data aggregation system.
It's a simple question, really: either you build systems to accommodate people or you try to redefine people to fit your system. You can only get so far trying to make people fit the system. I've been on here for more than a year. To the degree people are providing active negative feedback (how many HN-is-going-to-heck threads have there been? How many people get downmodded to -20 and never work out why?) I'd think it would be cause for a bit of self-reflection.
Subjectivity or opinions, are what it's all about. The whole thing is opinions. You don't get the magic from simple up-down voting and promoting terseness over humanity.
In fact, you want as much subjectivity as possible. The comm channel can handle it. If a reader is getting bored or seeing too much that turns them off, that's a UI issue, not a poster issue. Critiquing users for acting naturally is not-so-smart.
There are many society's that could be built using the HN code. For now it seems like the combination of Software and Society has produced one of the most interesting websites on the internet. Call it Obama News and the same system software in not going to build the same community. Or PG could change the software and add a private messaging system, but doing so would change the nature of the site and it's society.
You have 3k Karma so clearly you learned how to gain Karma and clearly you like the website / society. But, these are not the types of posts that make people want to come to the site. Meta discussion is like philosophy it attracts the intelligent and leads them in circles.
Karma is a psychological instrument PG could show Karma divided by the number of days after account creation and on the leader board but if he wanted to increase the amount of Karma trolling going on. I suspect that showing his Karma 32029 on the leader board would change the nature of the site. For now the balance seems to work. We don't see every XKCD posted and the political submissions are dieing down. Looking back there has been far less change as the site has grown than you might expect.
If the goal where to make money changing the system to accommodate people might be useful but there is no advertising so it's costing more money as the site grows. You can find several statements that HN is an experiment and I suspect it's also a recruiting tool and part of the vetting process for ycombinator. Which suggests that people who never discover how to get positive Karma are supposed to leave. This is probably a good thing. A funny twist of irony is the site about making money is more interesting because it's not trying to directly make money.
Edit: NM, You win someone up modded the thread so it might be interesting. Anyway, I am going to sleep have a nice night.
What kind of meta discussion is harmful? I'd say none of it. If people don't like a meta discussion, they'll not vote it up, and it thus won't consume the top reading spots.
A tricky issue is that threads are elevated based on the originator's score. But, there are a number of threads where the originator may have a low or negative score, and follow ups have enormous scores. Where should these go?
Doesn't do any good to complain. Many of us have tried.