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by muzani
1742 days ago
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I disagree to an extent. There's a Facebook bot that reposts things from HN to FB and you can see the significant drop in quality. When people can't downvote, they yell at each other. There's a similar effect on HN main page where you can't downvote submissions, only flag. So disagreements with the submission float to the top of the comment list, whereas the people who agree give it a silent upvote. One of mine in the past got about 70 upvotes and 20 disagreeing comments, but few people write comments in agreement because a comment like "Well said!" adds nothing to the conversation. However, the fact that this comment was downvoted into negative numbers without any criticism is quite disappointing. It's a good demonstration of where the system doesn't work. |
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This is not stopping me from using HN as such but there are plenty of posts I'd otherwise comment on. But what is the point if they just vanish? If the goal is to only be seeing the approved groupthink, what is the point?
A possible solution is to force people to comment if they want to downvote.
I think I'll resurrect my old reader tool and ditch the HN web site as such. This little experience has reawakened an old gripe.