[WhackyIdeas]

Maybe one day HN will realise that giving the ability to downvote is pretty pointless and needlessly open to abuse.

That negative ability just promotes negativity itself and a bloody pia when I am reading a greyed out message because I am too stubborn to go into the settings and change defaults - so I just steam on thinking HN are using a relic of an ideology.

[throwaway892238]

It's an ingroup reinforcement method.

If you're part of a cult, and you're not allowed to eject someone from the cult, you can at least ignore them or walk away from them when they talk to you, if you don't agree with what they say/do. It's a way for the members of the cult to reinforce the ingroup's behaviors without having overt power over the group. For other people watching this behavior, it reinforces the need to align themselves with the larger group, to avoid the same fate.

The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.

[ImPostingOnHN]

You're just describing the behavior of every society ever.

I'm not sure where some folks got the idea that they could say whatever they wanted in whatever community they wanted and not expect any reactions, but that's clearly an inhuman expectation. I'm guessing that attitude is a byproduct of internet commenting.

I guess you could call society an "ingroup" or a "cult" like you're doing. It technically fits the definition. It also gives you a convenient victim complex to wave about whenever you feel like people aren't agreeing with you enough. But let's be honest: not every social pariah is a Galileo.

[throwaway892238]

Not really. Society is a broad concept, which contains many different concepts, two of which are ingroup and outgroup. It's a complex topic, but suffice to say that within the concept of ingroup, there are some common behaviors specific to certain kinds of groups, but not all of them. Much like with EQ, if you learn about the tendencies of humans in social groups, you can learn to manage your own behavior to resist falling into common traps. But those who don't learn about them are often subject to them, with unfortunate effects.

As to your assertion ("idea that they could say whatever they wanted in whatever community they wanted and not expect any reactions"), I don't think I or anyone else said that or suggested it. Sounds like a sweeping generalization designed to reinforce an opinion you want to believe. But it also seems like you drank the kool-aid a while back, so I'm pretty sure I can't influence your opinion.

[ImPostingOnHN]

You're just repeating what I said with different words. Yes, throughout history, people who bucked the rules and practices of society might have been called "out group members", but that's just a label. The substance is that they're eschewing society, and obviously should expect society to react and shun them. Confront them, maybe. Some societies used banishment.

Either way, the label is being self-applied here to indulge a victim complex in someone who doesn't like that society is reacting to their decision to go against society. Consider that total jerks and crazy folks use exactly the same logic.

Not that anyone here is a jerk, or crazy, just that the "I'm an independent thinker and everyone else is drinking the kool aid" argument is tired and oblivious and self-indulgent and applies equally when used by jerks and nuts. The dude on the street corner shouting racial slurs at the top of their lungs and swatting at invisible spiders thinks he's "just part of the out group", too.

[fluoridation]

>I'm not sure where some folks got the idea that they could say whatever they wanted in whatever community they wanted and not expect any reactions

Usually, historically, if you said something someone didn't like you could expect the person to either confront you directly, or to silently change their opinion of you and possibly change their behavior, perhaps to your detriment. Even before the Internet existed, there was something else someone might have done, which is to send you an anonymous note reading "fuck you". No argument, no way to reply, nothing but a cheap gratuitous offense that serves no purpose other than upset the person who receives it. I argue that downvoting a comment you don't like is equivalent to that.

[ImPostingOnHN]

> Even before the Internet existed, there was something else someone might have done, which is to send you an anonymous note reading "fuck you". No argument, no way to reply, nothing but a cheap gratuitous offense that serves no purpose other than upset the person who receives it. I argue that downvoting a comment you don't like is equivalent to that.

A better equivalent would be arguing from an anonymous throwaway account (*cough*), where any replies go into the void, rather than to an established community member.

A comment either adds value in people's opinion, or it detracts, or neither. The society that is HN has a voting system to communicate that info, because that is what we prefer.

If people find the non-meta substance of a post interesting enough to reply, they absolutely will do so. But we have the guidelines recommending against moderation meta-discussion because you and the moderation of your comment aren't the topic, and you shouldn't try to make it the topic, because we find that to be more boring than the actual topic. Maybe you find yourself more interesting, or you think conversation is boring unless it includes moderation meta-discussion. In most cases, I don't think others agree (hence the guidelines and the voting).

You can call our society an "in-group", you can call someone who ignores what society wants an "out group member", but in the end, I don't know why it surprises people that society responds with feedback (though perhaps not in the exact feedback format one may personally prefer).

[fluoridation]

>A better equivalent would be arguing from an anonymous throwaway account (cough), where any replies go into the void, rather than to an established community member.

I don't agree with this. How can you say that your reply "goes into the void", just because the name of the account you're responding to is "throwaway892238" rather than "fluoridation"? In either case there's a person on the other end, how does the screen name they go by change anything? I could equally say that unless you tell me your real name, or unless you let me put my hand down your pants, or any other equally arbitrary standard, I don't consider you a real person. Neither the screen name, nor their real name, nor what's in their pants, is what the actual person is.

[ImPostingOnHN]

> How can you say that your reply "goes into the void", just because the name of the account you're responding to is "throwaway892238" rather than "fluoridation"?

I have no idea which of our community members any given throwaway is, I'll never know, their comments are just anonymous notes left with no way to respond to an actual member of our community with an actual history and an actual reputation (vs a throwaway they may never check again). That's why a throwaway comment is like an anonymous "fuck you" note. Or, put another way:

> Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.[0]

My point is further supported by the rest of my post that you responded to, which is the substance of our discussion. Continuing to argue over an analogy instead of the substance of the matter would be silly.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html