It's gonna take the kind of courage and patience exemplified by Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll to grow in the ways we need to grow to survive and evolve as a species.
We need to remember who we are.
Please don't include bait like this in your comments. It triggers avalanches of offtopicness. (It's also not true—people share their feelings on HN all the time, and are welcome to, as long as the comments are substantive. The only kind of feeling-sharing that isn't cool is ragey venting with no information.)
I think you should always be encouraged to share your point of view, whether I agree or not (in this case I do), and only get downvoted if you're just flat out spreading misinformation. I often upvote opinions I don't agree to on the basis that they make their case in a valid way.
Comments can be [dead] for many reasons, including software (which doesn't get everything right) or the account being banned (which doesn't mean that every post is bad—indeed, some users start posting good comments only once we've banned them). So there are plenty of good comments that need to be rescued, which is why we introduced vouching in the first place. It works well when users use it.
EDIT: just checked a few dead links. It seems I do have the ability to vouch. I'll try to use it responsibly!
Thanks.
We're always happy to restore privileges if people give us reason to believe that they've had a change of heart and want to use HN as intended in the future.
With it having been there a while, I can't think of any specific comments one way or another, but was and have always intended to use it to rescue (typically) a comment making a good point to the discussion, or the question I'd be interested in an answer to as well.
So I can't imagine how I crossed whatever line. I generally agree wth the tone of moderation here, and degree of leeway usually given. I think my comment history would bear out in tone and style that I'm using as intended, and I don't recall ever having had a mod pick up any of my comments. :p I disagree with the odd rare one - this is hard to generalise without going away to dig for examples - usually where it seems to get a slap on the wrist for a reasonable, or historically accurate point within the flow of a discussion where the complaint of nationalistic or whatever seems a bit of a stretch.
Case in point, the guy posting links that seemed to be reliably going on every climate related topic - I'd have said nowt for one or two, but had seen enough, like on every related post I'd read in a couple of days, that I thought it would have been missed by mods and worth a mention. Others trigger much sooner than I.
Make of that as you will. :)
There can also be words that some people find offensive. Not everybody agrees on the words that qualify.
Decades on the net has been an interesting education that some, for some reason especially American, don't recognise sarcasm without the helpful /s. I learnt to pull my punches online on that score years ago. On the [vouch] front I'm not hugely bothered as it doesn't really detract from using HN, more surprised as I don't generally trigger moderator interest anywhere I've been since BBS days.
I'm sure dang will respond in due course as to whether I rate forgiveness or not.
Edit: I should add that I would think it highly unlikely I'd have resurrected comments heavy with sarcasm, I've been well aware for years it doesn't fly around here.
Sarcasm and snark rarely improve the quality and direction of a discussion, which is why at least snark is explicitly mentioned in the guidelines. Whether or not one recognizes something as sarcasm is orthogonal to whether a comment overall appropriate and constructive for the forum, and the latter is an overriding concern.
> "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
The opposite can also happen, particularly when somebody has a belief system very different from your own. You might wrongly assume that the comment is sarcasm, when in fact it is thoughtful and substantive.
It's honestly confusing that you're telling us this at all.
That's of course not to say that it's widely known, many details of HN are not well-documented, only mentioned occasionally.
We are quite a bunch of people who start reading the comment threads from below!
Or that you’re being a jerk.
The HN guidance on commentary is clearly a large part of why HN hasn’t devolved into Slashdot, and the generally on-point and respectful discussions invite really interesting and knowledgeable people to hang around, from whom we all benefit.
I’ll admit that I’ve occasionally scratched my head over downvotes I’ve received. But while there may well be some that apply votes contrary to the guidelines, in most cases - if I honestly review what I’ve written - I’ve phrased my comment in a way that’s not conducive to productive discourse.
Votes receive no guidance and most people don't vote for the quality and accuracy of the comment, they do it based on how that comment fits with their personal opinion. I've seen civilized and purely objective comments being seriously downvoted, especially on polarizing topics.
Many go beyond just this and after you have one unpopular comment you realize all of your comments that day just received the same exact number of downvotes at the same approximate time.
So I wouldn't really call it 50/50 between "sacred cow turned burger" and "being a jerk" downvotes but it sure is too close to trust the voting system blindly. I will read even the greyed out comments.
most people [vote] based on how that comment fits with their personal opinion
Isn't that what the voting system is for then? When I see someone has already written what I was going to say, I upvote them instead of writing a "me too" comment. My other upvotes are reserved for posts that spark my curiosity, or grey comments where I think the downvotes were undeserved.
I almost never upvote comments I disagree with, unless (as above) they bring something new to the table. Downvotes I try to reserve for obnoxious or trollish comments only, but I admit there may be occasions where some man's troll is another man's freedom fighter.
Well, there was kuro5hin! I think Slashdot didn't devolve, but perhaps fell off a cliff when it was sold; a strong correlation with Sourceforge. Acquisitions of communities are hard.
Sometimes that's the case. However, I've seen ample legitimate discussion following the guidelines & conducive to further discussion, being downvoted because the downvoter obviously disagrees with the post. It tends to occur on "controversial issues" when not enough "weasel words" & "neutrality modifiers" are being used.
After a while, one realizes the futility of chasing "karma". That being clear & forceful, according to one's ethics, in expression is far more rewarding.
I want to express my appreciation for this comment, but I don't know what will make you happier, an upvote or a downvote?
I expect they feel that they are on a crusade of righteousness of some sort.
When I'm 100% correct about something [1] and I get downvoted, it only strengthens my resolve and solidifies my belief. :)
[1]Which is most of the time
As much as I would love to downvote some Facebook posts, I think they did well at allowing only positive reinforcement. If you don't care, you just don't interact. If someone managed to find a solution to destructive comments everywhere, that would be awesome.
EDIT: If you have too many scrawny kids on your lawn, get out the hose or get a new lawn. Also, GROW YOUR OWN!
This seems to be a very American problem.
Maybe it's the deep conviction that they are operating as part of a fair system (thanks to it having hijacked the name "Democracy") that legitimizes American regulators in their overreach ?
It's a "99% of my financial value is in my house" problem. Once you have that, everybody starts making laws around that.
If housing wasn't so much of people's net worth (a la Japan), these issues would be less severe.
The infamous 25' shark through the roof[1] got to stay, despite the local council trying to get rid of it for years. Shark is still there 30 odd years later. The government's final appeal judgement is, surprisingly, perfect and beautiful.
[1] https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17549881.bill-heine-the-st...
Any alternate wealth stores you can think of?
Most places that have regulations -- at the town or HOA level -- discourage you from doing anything in the front yard besides landscaping. Eg, a shed in a front yard will be forbidden.
Usually the restrictions will be more safety based for back and to some extent side yards. It's sort of a "do whatever you want but don't make us look at it" mindset.
It will cause the most problems if you build the house far back on the lot (since then you end up with a lot of unusable front yard and a tiny back yard), if your back yard is unusably shaded, if your trying to maximize the use of your small lot to the limits, or if you don't pay attention to the rules and either buy a house without knowing them or do a lot of work that has to be undone.
With the stupid reasoning of subjective aesthetic no less. It is almost as stupid as circumcising babies because it 'looks better'.
So many problems can be traced back to the stupid ideal of suburban homes with meticulous lawn neighbourhood.
I live in a 24 flat complex, we have meetings at least every year, there's a law governing these HOA things. And if the community decides they want to paint the walls black, then the walls will be black. (Because a simple majority is enough for that.) And so on.
I know nothing about this particular case, and usually courts are pretty reasonable about these, so I guess this was a rather egregious edge case of community self-governance, but on the other hand it's not a bad thing that people can form communities and have some ground rules (bylaws). Sects are bad, monopolies are bad too, and there is a nice little Goldilocks zone, a balanced mix of rules that empower every individual at the same time, and so on. (Hence circumcising without consent is bad.) These are always trade offs, but when it comes to housing, usually people don't want to live in communities that they don't fit into anyway. (Of course again, bigotry is bad, racial/ideological/financial segregation is bad.)
Also it happens in US because they afford it. Once they can't afford it anymore, everybody will agree that it's OK to plant a garden.