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But because it's true that data storage is cheaper than ever, human attention is more expensive than ever.
Noise is bad. It is a good thing that HN attempts to optimize for signal.
The only limited thing is time. I have never consciously thought of downvotes like that, but their only truely meaningful use would be to push down items I do not only not want to spend time discussing, but not even spend time reading, under the precondition of the assumption that most others likely feel the same.
"don't feed the trolls", "downvote and move on" are valid pieces of advice.
It sounds like you don’t care to adjust to “the crowd”, which is fine, but then you have to deal with the consequences.
I think of votes as a sort of social currency that makes this a fairly observable marketplace of sorts.
Perhaps in ten years all of OP comments will seem prescient - who knows? Not my intent to say they are doing anything wrong. If nothing else, shows dedication.
Which is a pretty shitty thing to say regardless, but when the real world withers away from us a little more every year, it starts to become monstrous.
I don't get it. We're not talking about reddit here, we're talking about HN.
I mean, I guess we can just talk about HN if you want. Yay, circumstances were such that HN moderation isn't as shitty as reddit, and may even remain that way for the lifespan of the site. How long is that anyway? Will HN be around 30 years from now? 5? It's so much smaller, that how many unlucky heart attacks or misfortunately early deaths would derail it? Is that a higher-than-single-digit number?
So, any discussion of purely HN moderation (besides those asking for input on policy adjustments) aren't talking about anything long term and pointlessly self-congratulatory.
No, moderation varies wildly from place to place. As do the rules and guidelines that the moderation is driven by. Each community has to figure this out for itself.
It is, really and truly, ridiculous, to bring up how moderation works on reddit, when discussing moderation on HN. It's an entirely different group of human beings working from an entirely different set of guidelines using an entirely different set of tools. It's just a total non sequitur.
> I mean, I guess we can just talk about HN if you want.
This whole discussion is about HN! We're discussing a link to the HN guidelines! Like, what made you think we're in any way talking about something else?
What in the world are you even talking about with the rest of this? It just seems entirely unrelated to the topic.
No, we are saying his behavior is unacceptable, and that if he wishes to participate in this community he will need to conform to those standards.
It is not a mercy to allow bad behavior in order to be more "welcoming".
What if this were an in-person community, and the above commenter had a problem with personal space and non-consenual touching? Not only are you driving everyone else away, but you are also risking legal consequences (or worse).
The way to help such people is have firm boundaries and clear rules. If the above commenter had any question about what constituted an acceptable comment, he could refer to the HN guidelines which the subject of this very thread.
Of course, if we alter your metaphor only ever so slightly, then you don't need an invitation to the public square, the town council meeting, or the bus stop bench.
And internet forums have certainly been happy to take the place of those things when it suits them, but without the inclusivity they require. They want the benefits of being those things, without the tradeoffs. We see no effort being made for them to not be those things.
I suspect a strong correlation between those who see no reason to be concerned by that, and HOA members who sneak out at 5:45am to measure your front lawn's grass with rulers.
Interesting. How do you know?
I guess part of us really want to be against other people and the shady systematic downvoter fills that role. It is always stupid, though. Luckily we don’t get much of that here.
Also I vaguely remember a couple of people here bragging that they had networks of sockpuppets specifically for mass-downvoting, but IDK.
This place can certainly be petty enough for that.
Sure, but that's a different phenomenon. If you make a comment that gets a lot of attention, sometimes people will go read a bunch of your other comments. I have also had the opposite of this happen, where I suddenly get upvotes on old comments.
I never down vote here on HN, because why should I waste my time when I can just move on?