Do you realize that you just said, in essence, that you have to be popular in order to dissent? That's like saying only celebrities should be allowed to voice their opinion.
in essence, that you have to be popular in order to dissent?
No, I am not saying that. And if I understand the dissent correctly being used in the sentence thus, hold or express opinions that are at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially expressed, you are already doing that to my post as an example and you didn't have to be popular to express such an opinion.:)
Voting is a form of expression, and a comment has much less weight than a downvote in terms of ranking.
The only way to be able to express that type of opinion is by complying with the masses long enough to hoard enough karma. So, yes, only the "popular" people get that power.
Reaching a karma threshold does not signify popularity, but it can indicate that the user has somewhat of a track record of likely being able to engage in civil, informed commentary.
You can post a dissenting comment with 0 points. You just can't contribute a silent, negative assessment of a comment until you have 500 points.
I'm not sure it takes popularity to make comments that average upvotes either (I would attribute my thousands of fake points more to persistence than to popularity...).
I find it comical that the number is 500. It used to be much lower (Google searches show that).
HN keeps raising the bar in order to limit the # of people who can downvote. I would be genuinely interested to know what % of users that actually is.
The only way to get a large number of upvotes is to be lucky enough to post something at just the right time, or to make a comment on a controversial topic that most of the HN audience will agree with. Be careful, though, that you make the right political statement, though, because otherwise you will get downvoted and lose karma.
The story for most of us, though, is that we're just a second-class citizen here at HN.
No, I am not saying that. And if I understand the dissent correctly being used in the sentence thus, hold or express opinions that are at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially expressed, you are already doing that to my post as an example and you didn't have to be popular to express such an opinion.:)