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by nzmsv 1644 days ago
You are right, it's not really random, but it can certainly feel that way.

I can throw the pedantry right back at you though: I didn't quote a percentage of randomness so I made a true statement. Some degree of randomness is present (if nothing else, it would be the percentage of readers having a bad day at that moment). So there :P
1 comments
SilasX 1644 days ago
> I didn't quote a percentage of randomness

Ah, you're right, I blurred it with the comment that said they agree 100%.

>so I made a true statement.

No, you didn't, and it's not pedantry to say "don't dismiss a rating system because you can find the occasional outlier". That would be a big mistake, and merits being called out. Even speaking loosely, none of that justifies calling it "basically random".

The test of a discussion forum is whether good comments are generally pushed up (and vice versa) and how well that does compared to discussion forums in general. The occasional pathological case does not suddenly make it worthless or "basically random".

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nzmsv 1644 days ago
It's interesting that we had a back and forth discussion here. If we were talking in person, this kind of error correction would be natural (me: "it's random", you: "this is not what random is", me: "oh yeah, I'm using it in the colloquial sense, how silly of me, my main point...") but comments don't have that immediate feedback. At the same time they are not essays: one cannot spend as much time editing and forecast every small negative reaction.

Thank you for an interesting discussion!

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SilasX 1644 days ago
That's not what happened. You're wrong in the most charitable, colloquial sense too, and that should have been clear from my previous reply. You didn't just "goof" or speak casually, you mischaracterized what the voting patterns look like, or, at the very least, you need to back up your view with more than "hey! Look at these weird cases!"

"Basically random" looks nothing like what we see on HN.

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