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Comment by jiggywiggy | Hacker News Reader

Meta comment.

Maybe i misunderstand the downvote mechanism on HN. IMO it should be used for inconsiderate, rude, spam etc. but not against an opinion you disagree with.

Everytime I post something against nuclear it gets a huge amount of downvotes. In this case it didn't happen to me, but happens to another user, see comments at the bottom of the tree.

I would say just don't upvote, or better write an argument why you disagree.

Otherwise leads to huge amount of group think because opposing ideas are pushed down instead of debated.

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HN guidelines are explicit in that downvotes on a thing you disagree with are ok.

That said, I do at times upvote comments that I strongly disagree with but are nevertheless so well argued that I disagree with them disappearing. I bet I’m not the only one.

When I remember to do it, I downvote comments complaining about voting (yours too). Caring about number of votes seems narcissistic and in my opinion tries to turn HN into Reddit with all its negatives including karma farming. Downvoting is not flagging and there is rarely so many comments that downvoted comment would become effectively invisible at the end of xth page.

Yeah I don't think I'm complaining here. But pointing to certain dynamics.

There is a lot of the groupthink on HN, and this might be one of the mechanisms suppressing debating certain ideas.

Downvoting definitely surpresses well written contrarian arguments. It often kills the discussion by moving it down.

On a personal note. It's fun to see a comment get a lot of votes, and also fun to see it get a lot of downvotes. But I'm not very emotionally invested into it.

Speaking against nuclear energy on HN is like burning the Quran in Saudi Arabia.

The level of group think and indoctrination is hilarious.

Meta: If everyone else is downvoting your comment, the problem is definitely with everyone else, rather than with the content, style or factuality of your comment...

Meta meta: if everyone upvotes your comment, it's definitely because it's a correct argumentation rather than just confirmation bias.

Put that's kinda the point right. Downvote is now a mix of not liking how someone writes and opinion?

I get downvoting because of the Quran comment. However to apply your comment "something wrong" to an opinion sounds weird.

The group-think around nuclear power on HN is indistinguishable from religious fervor and doesn't agree with average public opinions in any countries I know of. Certainly not Germany...

Please don't break the site guidelines like this or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35711703. No matter how right you are or feel you are, posts like that are abusive and only make things worse.

As for the community: it's clearly divided on this topic. Each side on any divisive topic complains bitterly about the other side and how it supposedly dominates HN. These perceptions are the product of cognitive bias plus ideological passion, and the comments they lead to are mostly flamewar noise. If you'd please avoid that, and stick to either (1) posting substantive, thoughtful, respectful comments or (2) not posting, we'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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