[ue_]

I would love to agree that comments on HN can be substantive and civil, but the downvote power afforeded to 'elite' users is horrible, leaving a comment which is perhaps a little challenging to a charged view or commonly held belief is often simply downvoted without explanation, usually once but sometimes up to thrice. Downvoting on HN serves the ingenious function of signalling to others "This comment isn't worth reading", by making is appear gray, similar to the site's background. It is only one step above Reddit in which comments are hidden completely (though that appears to happen here too sometimes).

Edit: Good to know the system works?

[weberc2]

Reminds me of Churchill's quip on democracy: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

HN users will definitely downvote challenges to their deeply-held convictions, but so will any other community, and almost always more vigorously. I say this as the proud recipient of many such downvotes. :)

[ue_]

Some forums don't have downvotes at all, and I find that controversial discussion flourishes there. The moderators also are much more laid back than in HN; they enforce rules like spam and illegal content rather than the task the HN mods have tasked themselves with: preventing flamewar, even when good discussion and education results from it, i.e they see themselves as parents, acting in a preventative measure, we are the children. To further the analogy, there is literally an account flag that the HN mods can put onto your account[0] which puts you into a 'timeout', like sitting in the corner wearing the dunce hat.

This was done to me, such that if I post too quickly, I am banned from posting except for twice every two hours for a while. This, I believe, will stick with my account for as long as I have it - because I apparently post too fast, engage with too many people etc.

One gets the message: "You are posting too fast. Please slow down." Mother and father dang and sctb have told me off. I must therefore go to bed early.

I think it's also a fabulous bit of trickery pulled here - there aren't "rules" for HN, there are "guidelines"; this leads you to believe it is laid back, and being guidelines, they are not enforced. How wrongly one is misled! They are rules in evey sense of the word, as rules are differed from guidelines only in their enforcement. I know many places which say they have rules and enforce them less than HN enforces its "guidelines".

Slavoj Zizek made a point here I think is relevant - when the father tells his son "Visit your grandmother, for if you don't then I will punish you", the son is much more likely to rebel, to complain - he reacts against authority. But another father may say "Please see your grandmother, she is very sick and old, she misses you" -- the circumstance is the same, but the mode of violence used is different, and agruably much more powerful. Few sons can resist this kind of force.

[0] https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc#L15...

[mdekkers]

Indeed. I see this incomprehensible "You are posting too fast" - mostly when I try to submit a link, which I now no longer do. I also limit my visits to the comments section to once or twice a week because fuck random downvotes. I don't give a shit about imaginary internet points, but I give a shit about the feeling of hanging out with a crowd of smug, self-satisfied know-it-all hipster webdevs that are offended by different points of view that cannot be bothered to engage in meaningful discussion and the hyper-focus afforded to them by their adderal doesn't allow for more consideration besides clicking that fucking "down" button. (I apologise if I omitted to offend your specific stereotype, leave a comment and I will be sure to include it next time)

I know that the majority of HN visitors actually are not like that, but if you spend some time considering your point of view, write it down in coherent and mostly grammatically correct English, just for some lazy fucker to come along and click "down" it is they who contribute to the low signal to noise ratio and devalue the HN experience, not you, and that is the feeling you are left with - the visible results to your efforts.

I like how some other sites do this - no downvotes, only a "spam" flag, or a significant cost to downvotes (several karma points or something).

I have been here long enough to know that this will be grey before the database is backed up, and nothing will really change, so I fully applaud "Quiet Hackernews". I personally use an RSS feed. Just came here to check the submission would be flagged (it was - you are sure predictable, if nothing else, HN)

[DanBC]

> Indeed. I see this incomprehensible "You are posting too fast"

Email the mods and ask them to turn it off.

I don't know how they make that decision. I guess if they've had to give someone many warnings about flamewar behaviour they may not want to turn it off. But I'm not a mod and I don't know how it works.

[weberc2]

I don't know either, but I started seeing it after making a bunch of polite comments that challenged a popular political belief. They got a lot of downvotes, but they got a lot of upvotes too. I hope it was an algorithmic error (assuming that the goal of the algorithm isn't too punish polite but controversial conversation) and not petty moderation.

[krapp]

But Hacker News just isn't that, and it doesn't want to be that. Sometimes you just have to do as the Romans do.

[ue_]

I'm sure HN wasn't a lot of things but has become them. For the majority (I'm guessing) of users, HN isn't a place you can downvote. Perhaps this experience of the website should be widened. I respect that I am on a different website, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't campaign for it to change.

[krapp]

I think it would be the best thing in the world if they got rid of user karma altogether, and either made it invisible or just applied it to stories. I can't imagine it happening any time soon, though.

But then again, shadowbanning being publicly reversible seemed like a major step in the right direction, and HN survived that, so I suppose never say never.

[hedora]

sigh. It gives me the down vote button, so I guess I am l33t.

I have noticed a sociological trend in Silicon Valley that equates meritocracy with "I outrank you so this discussion is a waste of time".

Your comment is maybe kinda whiny (i wants my leet downvotez), but nowhere near the level of trolling I would reserve for a downvote.

Also, you make a good point. For me, -1 means "this comment is in bad faith and should be censored", and I have noticed it being overused on my journey to l33t status.

For what it is worth, you too almost have the downvote button, and if I see too many upvotes without some gray flickering at first, I feel like I am pandering.

Anyway, keep fighting the good fight and enjoy my upvote. Also, remember this when you get the down vote button.

Absolute power, and all that. ;-)

[ue_]

I categorise myself as one of the 'elite' beacuse you only need 500 karma in order to downvote; it's not about the fact that I don't have downvoting ability (I do) but about the fact that downvotes do so much to discourage potentially controversial discussion. Thank you for upvoting.