Ask HN: Is it fair that someone decide to follow your post and vote it down?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2066784

by 10smom • 16 years ago

1 7 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

All for making a comment? Or just because they could? What would you like me to do? Remove all the news I posted? Give a newbie a break.

melling• 16 years ago

You've made over 20 posts in one day. pg might need to bring back average karma. This is not the kind of site where you want to games the system for karma. It definitely goes against the spirit of HN.

slater• 16 years ago

Well said.

10s: I flagged your posts. Which isn't really too helpful, either, but I doubt this is a place that condones posting dozens of links in one go. Especially when they're old (Top Start-ups to watch in 2010, etc.)

brk• 16 years ago

Good advice for any "newbie" is to stil back and pay lots of attention first. Get a feel for the norms of the site, and also for the sometimes non-obvious taboos as well.

One tip: most people like HN because it can be a good source of non-mainstream tech news and info. While some of the stuff coming out of CES is interesting, the "Consumer" aspect of CES also means that it's covered end-to-end by dozens of tech journals. CES news is almost inescapable, and so probably not the optimal sort of thing to post to HN.

Second tip: posts whining about your karma hits or inability to grasp the flow of HN also do not yield you a lot of love.

10smom2• 16 years ago

Second tip: posts whining about your karma hits or inability to grasp the flow of HN also do not yield you a lot of love.

but post and threads publicly flaming someone for making newbies mistakes does give you a lot of karma love I see.

michael_dorfman• 16 years ago

Give a newbie a break

As a newbie, you can give yourself a break, but lurking quietly for a little while, and watching how things work. It should be pretty obvious, fairly quickly, what kind of behavior is frowned upon, and what is appreciated.

Hint: bulk-posting and complaining about karma/downvotes are generally frowned upon.

brudgers• 16 years ago

Usually: Downvoting is fair. It provides feedback about how the community views the quality of your posts. Posts about posting and karma in the middle of other threads are generally viewed as non-contributing.

Occasionally: People will downvote because they disagree with you, however the community often corrects this...people will upvote comments which they think are too low.

Always: The nature of Karma is to be inevitable, so there no point in worrying about it, even if you do.

10smom2• 16 years ago

>Usually:. Posts about posting and karma in the middle of other threads are generally viewed as non-contributing.

If that is the case then why did the person who created a thread flaming me and complaining about posts, benefit from probably 100 karma pts today?

Ask HN: Is it fair that someone decide to follow your post and vote it down?

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