[user837387]

HN is full of contrarians. Say anything blunt, not rude but blunt, and you will get down-voted to oblivion.

And not even that, say something in a polite way that people cannot discredit but still not like and you will get down-voted. I feel like you have to mold yourself to the hive mind if you want your stuff to be up-voted. Not sure if this is really how it is or if it is just me.

On the other hand, a lot of times when I say some feel good one liner BS I get dozens of up-votes.

[omginternets]

With respect, you say this as though bluntness were a virtue.

I've found that putting a little bit of effort into form goes a long way in generating useful feedback.

Stated otherwise, it's about recognizing that we're not talking face-to-face, and that the characteristics of this particular mode of communication make it easy to misinterpret (often for worse) what is being said.

tl;dr: my favorite way to start a comment is "With respect, ...". It helps a lot.

[ensiferum]

Respect is not a given, it's earned. If you "respect" everyone it's the same as respecting no one.

[candu]

I prefer to extend respect, trust, etc. to others by default, with the understanding that it can be unearned. This way, I counter whatever unconscious or "first impression" biases I might have about what "respect-worthiness" looks like, and I find it leads to a much more positive / open-minded relationship with the rest of humanity than demanding others prove "respect-worthiness" up front would.

There are also degrees of respect, and accordingly there are absolutely people I respect more than others. (It's not a total ordering, though, nor is it a zero-sum game.)

[vertex-four]

Respect, in this context, is a measure of how much you give a shit about not hurting, embarrassing, or otherwise causing negative reactions for someone. It's also a measure of how much you're willing to attempt to understand their points of view, by extension of that. You can respect everyone by default in this sense, and you can respect certain people more or less.

[omginternets]

"With respect" has more to do with politeness than the form of "respect" you're suggesting.

And frankly, this brand of tough-love is really ill-adapted to semi-anonymous written discourse. I suspect the reason people appeal to it so much has less to do with its purported righteousness than the ego boost that follows from talking down to people.

[metaphorm]

the easiest way to collect upvotes is effluvient praise for whichever silicon valley company is currently the "great golden hope".

the easiest way to collect downvotes is to contradict any of PG's implicit or explicit biases. the weight of mass down-voting seems to have improved since sama has taken over and PG is blogging less.

[willstrafach]

interestingly, posts such as yours (calling out hivemind / mass up/down-voting) seem to easily get a large amount of upvotes as well.

[dasil003]

They get a lot of eye rolls too, but we don't have any metrics on that.

[logfromblammo]

No, it isn't.

That may seem like a flippant joke, but I assure you that my intent is that it only be about 60% that. I am not gratuitously disagreeing here, as it is my sincere opinion that when people here argue for the opposite of what a parent post says, it is more often than not because they genuinely believe that it contains an error of fact or because they wish to express their own, different opinion on the matter.

As for up-votes and down-votes, that's a measure of popularity, not correctness. You can be right about everything and still be unpopular.

[flukus]

> Say anything blunt, not rude but blunt, and you will get down-voted to oblivion.

I think that's because HN is full of pedants. Blunt messages don't cater to exceptions.

[RUG3Y]

There are a lot of great things here on HN but people can be pedantic and the hive-mind mentality is strong. There are a lot of conversations that I avoid because of this.

[grigjd3]

All social media is like that.

[maverick_iceman]

I always wonder why people care so much about getting downvoted. I get downvoted all the time but who cares, these votes are just some meaningless statistic.

[mikekchar]

Why post at all?

For me there are 3 reasons:

- I want to formulate some idea in my head and writing down something in response to other people is a way for me to organise my thoughts. In this case, I don't really care about upvotes or downvotes.

- I want to help a specific person. Sometimes people post something and I think, "I'm pretty sure I can write something that will help that person out". Again I don't care about upvotes or downvotes. It's nice if the person responds and says that it helped them, though. It's depressing when they respond and you realise that they didn't understand at all ;-)

- To practice communicating. Ideally it's on a topic that I know something about. Upvotes are my measure to see if people understand what I'm saying. Downvotes are useful to show when I'm just plain wrong (which happens from time to time).

The problem with voting systems, though, is that it becomes a proxy for approval. People try to cultivate approval and it becomes important for them to write something that gives them that approval. I'm not immune to this, but it's something that I try to avoid as best I can.

I think it is reasonable to care about downvotes to the extent that it means you should probably examine your message or the way that you are delivering your message. Given that you want to communicate, excessive downvotes mean that you are not being successful to the bulk of your audience. That should be an inward process, though. Getting angry at other people for your own inability to communicate is understandable, but not productive (I'm not implying that you do that, BTW...)

P.S. This post can be filed in category #1 ;-)

[whack]

You could say the same thing about half the things that piss people off. "Why do people care so much if a stranger flips them off?" Why do people care so much if a million people follow their blog?" When it comes to social interactions, irrationality is the norm, not the exception.

[user837387]

That is the rational approach, but we are emotional beings and we cannot always be completely detached.

[jventura]

Honest question: is anything supposed to happen when you get towards negative karma points? I use a forum where there's a limitation on how much posts you can write on a given topic depending on your number of "karma" points..

[jdc]

Thanks for the reminder.

[jaimex2]

Its a stupid system.

Its essentially giving the Internet a self moderation system for... the Internet.

I hate myself for have an impulse to read the comment section too, I don't know why I do it. There's nothing productive in it.