Personally, I miss the old slashdot system. It was far from perfect, but it was still much better I think.
What does this mean? Does reddit actually ban you if you're downvoted "too much"?
Seems crazy.
That's fascinating. I never knew this.
My brother's reddit account was suspended recently. He's somewhat conservative and the last bit of posting he made (that I could find) was arguing about COVID & masks. I don't know if he posted anything controversial beyond that because I haven't had a chance to talk to him recently. He seemed to relish going into hostile subreddits and "mixing it up."
HN isn't any different. Possibly worse, since only accounts with a certain level of internet points are permitted to judge others.
Well, I'd argue Reddit is worse simply because of the topics of discussion that proliferate there, and because insulting is allowed in many subs. But the gamification part and the subtle flamewars are very present here on HN.
Not everyone plays that game. I upvote all of my opposition in reasonable, heated arguments on Reddit to give them an advantage. That way, if my ideas truly have merit, the wisdom of the crowd will let me know. It’s a way to check myself and call BS on my own ego.
If I can frustrate them enough to make a violent threat, that's usually enough to get their account permanently banned. And then I win.
I got an account with an 11-year history wiped out the other day, that's my high score so far. Good times.
Parent poster could just be an asshole trolling people.
On the other hand, I find it's easy to be downvoted into oblivion for no apparent reason. I find it hard to just ignore and forget about those threads, even though I know I should. Example (sorry, I have to get this off my chest): a redditor with a history of substance abuse started with winemaking (as a hobby) and asked how many glasses of wine they could safely consume. A physician (verified in that subreddit) responded that two glasses every day would be fine. I commented (as a medical layperson) that suggesting OP that it's safe to drink two glasses of wine every day (not just every now and then) might not be a good idea considering their history, at least to my knowledge. Suffice to say, that day I learned that some people seem to be easily offended when commenting about reasonable alcohol consumption considering past addictions. Or perhaps I'm vastly overestimating the risks of substance abuse disorders...
I agree with you. Perhaps they read your post after their second (or later) glass of wine!8-)).
I thought that was a good idea, until I started seeing posts about stuff I knew really well.
There’s no perfect system or perfect just-world. Like you, I see mistakes like this all the time on Reddit, with some of the best examples of what you describe found on r/todayilearned. And I’ve seen lots of cognitive bias at work just like you have. For example, if multiple people downvote someone who has the correct answer, other people will often jump in and follow the downvoters just because of the bandwagon effect. When my Reddit account gets more than 100,000 karma, I will often abandon it and start over, because people tend to upvote accounts with higher karma instead of honestly appraising the content. I love starting with zero karma and watching all the dynamics play out with a fresh account to limit this kind of bias.
The absolute worst are when some mod shadow bans you (all posts / comments are silently removed), and refuses to tell you why. I had that happen on my city subreddit, I guess because I said we needed a larger police presence to get property crime under control. That was the only remotely controversial thing I've ever said there.
The joke goes that BPT is all white people, and TwoXChromosomes isn’t actually moderated by anyone XX
black people in the US have some kind of shared experience they want to discuss, conservatives maybe don't want to fight with everyone all the time. its not my place to invade then. if there are people who to engage online with multiple viewpoints there are plenty of places to do that.
i wish the city subreddits enforced residency requirement or something similar to post
What I really disagree with is having a public sub that's basically 'read only' except for your chosen group. I will straight up filter your sub from r/all if you do that.
Win the crowd and you'll win your freedom.
It's too bad the content of a site is tied to its moderation system. It would be great if you could, say, use reddit but abide by a completely independent way of moderating.
Edit: yup, still works! #86xxx
Used to love the site back in the day.
The last time I was in such a contest I started out very proud of my low number, but was quickly and thoroughly beaten many times by people with numbers down to the single digits...
Oh well, I was an early user of the WWW too, using Mosaic. Before that: nn and gopher.
That's why there are no social networks. They are moron menageries. Idiot aggregators. Stupidity sieves.
Plenty of ways to market without clickable ads. Shaping consensus and datamining reactions, in real time, is far more useful than getting the bottom 33% to click on ads which are easily blocked by modern browser plugins.