[grzm]

> "Most people on HN believe that technology will only ever improve society, with very limited negative effects that can be mitigated or eliminated with more technology."

I think it's safe to say that there are people who are enthusiastic about the promises of technology and those who are concerned about how it can be used, and likely significant overlap of those two groups. The likelihood of making an error when making sweeping generalizations about the constituency of HN (or anything else, for that matter) is pretty much guaranteed to miss the mark for a large subset of the population.

Your comment upthread likewise is very general and unsubstantive, and comes off as flip, for that matter. I suspect that has more to do with why your comment was down voted than about your particular concerns or position: after all, the comment doesn't say much. Granted, the comment you're replying to doesn't have a whole lot either, but that isn't an excuse for commenting poorly oneself. Dig in. Share specific thoughts or concerns you have. Help move the conversation in a constructive direction.

[syshum]

>>Dig in. Share specific thoughts or concerns you have. Help move the conversation in a constructive direction.

I have, most substantive comments get higher levels of down votes so why bother.

HN has become a echo chamber and if you push to hard against the echo chamber you just get banned.

[grzm]

Yeah, I can imagine that's frustrating. Is it something you actually want to take some action on? Do you want to help make HN a better place? Please don't take that as accusatory: it takes effort to be constructive, and each person has to make a decision whether or not that's worth the effort. If it's not (or perhaps at least not right now), it may not worth commenting at all: as you say, your comments have been attracting downvotes regardless.

If you think it is worth the effort, then I'd ask you to take a step back and see if there may be ways you can change how you're commenting: Communication is a many way street, involving all parties involved. The only one you have control over however, is yourself, so really the only thing you can do.

You mention "push[ing] hard against the echo chamber", so it sounds like you are interested in making HN a better place. I definitely think it's important to figure out ways to have constructive conversations about difficult topics. I also think there are ways of going about this that actively work against that. It's really important to keep in mind normal human psychology and behavior.

Unconstructive complaining is very unlikely to move the needle in a positive direction. It adds to the noise and degrades the overall atmosphere. Commenting on the internet is hard: it's low bandwidth compared to many other forms we're used to: we don't have the benefit of intonation or body language. On a diverse forum, we can't rely on a common background in which to place what we're saying. It sometimes feels like there are more ways it can go wrong than to go right.

So extra time and care is important, particularly if you're interested in discussing contentious issues. When things go wrong, it's really important to take a step back and see how you might have contributed to the situation, and, even if you think you didn't do anything wrong, to look at what you can do to actively prevent whatever went wrong in the future.

It's perhaps trite, but I think it often can be summed up in "it's not what you say, it's how you say it", with the corollary that as the topic becomes more contentious, it's even more important to take care in how you say it.

I hope you do choose to look at ways you might change how you comment to have the effect you want, to make HN the place you want it to be. HN is a community and how each member chooses to contribute makes HN what it is. We can each help make it the place we want it to be by how we participate: how we comment, vote, and submit.

[syshum]

My biggest problem with HN commenting is the rate limiting, if you get too many down votes other people can respond but you are barred from responding, any attempt get met with "you are posting to fast"

I honestly do not care about the down voting, I do care about being silenced... That is what is frustrating to not be able to respond to people. I understand the rationality behind the rate limiting but personally I find it to be an affront to free speech.

HN actively works against controversial conversations and promotes the echo chamber by the way the moderate and implement commenting.

[grzm]

I'll sign off after this, as it's not clear to me whether I'm being effective.

I'm going to take a step back and look at the behavior you're describing. I'm going to use as a starting point that the moderators penalize behavior, not position.†

* Member begins commenting in a way that's unconstructive.

* Mods rate-limit the member, in an effort to limit the opportunities the member has to continue to post unconstructively.

* Member feels this is limiting their ability to respond.

It is limiting the member's ability to respond, but the member has shown that they're responses aren't, on balance, constructive. They aren't completely banned from responding, and in your case, you're aware you're rate-limited. That should make each comment you can post more valuable to you, and an opportunity to take extra care in each comment you post. It's human nature to react negatively to restrictions, so I can understand it's frustrating.

However, it's frustrating to many members who do mostly follow the guidelines and post in the spirit of the sight to have conversations degrade due to repeated behavior of a minority of members. You acknowledge the rationality behind rate limiting, and feel frustrated when it's applied to you. That's human nature, and understandable as well. It's on all of us to work against our more destructive tendencies, and help each other in doing so. "Better angels of our nature", and all that. (That's why I'm taking the time to write these comments, by the way.)

And the mods do lift rate limits. It doesn't need to be a permanent condition. Contact them via the contact link in the footer and see if there's something you can do. I encourage you to do so.

---

† If you don't subscribe to this, I think your options are to limit your discussions to non-contentious topics, or to stop commenting all together. You're unlikely to change how the mods moderate HN by behaving in a way they consider destructive. Continuing to comment in ways you're aware are against the guidelines or you believe the mods are going to react poorly to is very likely going to get you banned eventually, with frustration all around.

[syshum]

>>>I'll sign off after this, as it's not clear to me whether I'm being effective.

I hope not, I believe this is a decent conversation. I understand your point, and yes some of my comments are flippant and oneliners, I personally believe those kind of comments are relevant and constructive as well. hell the last election was won with bumper Sticker rhetoric. Not everything needs to be a dissertation

I seems to me that I am the one being ineffective, as it seem you have come to the impression that I understand my comments would be downvoted and/or that I know my comment is "nonconstructive" and have chosen to post them anyway. This is not true, my original comment that started this was a parody of the comment I replied to, i did not add more because the original comment did not have any additional substance. They made a statement of fact backed by no data, and I made a statement of fact backed by no data. The political bias of HN lead to my comment, which IMO has clear historical reasons for being true prediction, Was downvoted multiple times whereas the parent comment gets up voted. [My comment as since rebounded and is now in the Positive, it was in a negative when this conversation started]

Your claim however is the downvotes are not motivated by politics or disagreement but instead because the community believes it was a unconstrictive comment. this is the basis of our disagreement and resulting conversation.

>>>Member begins commenting in a way that's unconstructive.

That is a big assumption, that downvotes == unconstrctive. when more often downvotes == unpopular or against the mainstream view.

Contrary to every web sites attempts and goal down votes are used by users to express disagreement. So if a person disagrees with a post regardless of it substantive value to the conversation it they will down vote it. So to assume a heavily down voted comment is unconstructive is a terrible, and flawed assumption to make

Also I Pretty sure on HN rate limiting is an automated not manual process. If I am wrong on that then may opinion would shift to the moderators which I will not comment on as that seems to be instant ban here...

>>>You acknowledge the rationality behind rate limiting, and feel frustrated when it's applied to you

I understand the logic they applied when creating it. To limit spam, flame wars, etc. I do not agree with that logic and believe it a failed and overly aggressive policy. If anything it should be thread not user based, meaning the thread should be rate limited instead of the user...

>>>Continuing to comment in ways you're aware are against the guidelines or you believe the mods are going to react poorly to is very likely going to get you banned eventually, with frustration all around.

Well technically speaking any comment is "against the guidelines" if is deemed so by the moderators, HN guidelines like most sites are written is such an overly broad manner as to include anything and nothing at the same time, all dependent upon the mods subjective opinion and personal bias. This is not just a problem on HN but every websites anymore as the political landscape gets more polarized and people start creating echo chambers for themselves, and HN is a political echo chamber even if it attempts to claim an apolitical stance.

>>>I think your options are to limit your discussions to non-contentious topics, or to stop commenting all together.

Where politics meets technology is where my interest lies. No topic I am interested in non-contentious. I desire to advocate using technology to advance individual freedom, and guard against using technology to create or aid Authoritarian societies filled with surveillance, censorship, and tyranny. As the technology industry in general along with HN moves more and more away from Individualism and more towards Authoritarianism my views seem to considered "destructive" even though 5 or 10 years ago they would not have been. I desire to see HN and society in general shift away from this Authoritarian censorship culture and more towards Individualism and free speech. I simply can not self censor to the point where I only comment on apolitical topics as that will only allow the echo chamber to fester.

[grzm]

A point of clarification:

When I describe moderator action, I'm speaking specifically of action by HN admins, who are able to rate-limit. As I understand it, downvotes on their own do not result in rate-limiting. I can understand why you may have misread this, as the conversation started out discussing downvotes, and while I was careful in the language I chose, I didn't point out that I was also excluding downvotes from my last comment.

I did so for a couple of reasons: you brought up rate-limiting and banning, which are actions only a mod can take, or change; downvotes are by far the action of HN members, and as such, much harder to categorize systematically. People downvote for all kinds of reasons, and not everyone agrees on how downvotes should be handled, and why they were given in any particular instance. A distinct impression I have is that often people view downvotes as disagreement, when they could just as easily be interpreted as a downvote for an unsubstantive or uncivil comment. And I believe that a disagreement couched in a civil and substantive way is much less likely to receive a downvote than one that is rude, snarky, and unsubstantive. You'll note a recurring theme here: it's more often than not what you say, but how you say it. You mention parody: parody is really difficult, and while I appreciate the wit of those who are able to wield it, most are not able to do so in a manner that's enlightening, and the misses hurt discourse much more than the rare win helps.

There's not a lot else I have to say with respect to the rest of what you've commented here. I think I've addressed most of it, if not specifically, in a way that's pretty easy to derive given other things I've commented. Operating from a position of defense and opposition does not lend itself to good faith and moving forward. Some games are played to win, and some are played to keep playing: and conversation, particularly on contentious topics, is most definitely the latter.