Commenting on Hacker News

https://superbowl.substack.com/p/commenting-on-hacker-news

by superb-owl • 4 years ago

53 112 4 years ago

superbowl.substack.com

IIAOPSW• 4 years ago

I suppose I'll oblige the invitation.

noobermin4• 4 years ago

Ironically posting on new that is likely gaming karma, per the article.

I think a few years ago (almost 10, sheesh) when I started out, it was similar. Basically, most of your karma comes from a few very upvoted comments, or ones that are early and garner conversation. I think something like 3 or 4 got me to 500+ (it's been so long that I forgot the threshold for downvoting). Never had luck with article submissions but getting one to front page does give you a lot of karma too, apparently.

Also, while "upholding the median political viewpoint" is a surefire way to get upvoted, it is worth noting that that can be a moving target and changes from article to article. Poo-pooing crypto on any average crypto article will garner downvotes if it's in a thread likely to be read by crypto enthusiasts, while shitting on web3.0 on another article about the current collapse of everything crypto will engender karma from people who are skeptical. Anyway, the point isn't that there really isn't any median politics here on HN, just that for some topics, it does vary, while for some it doesn't.

MonkeyMalarky• 4 years ago

Just post about whatever gripes have with Google in one of weekly "Google Bad" threads.

jonnycomputer• 4 years ago

#upvotes !~ effort put into comment

either you were one of the first to comment, said something really flame-baity, or were just lucky. most of my high-effort comments fell flat, while I get a +160 from a lucky two sentences.

mindcrime• 4 years ago

#upvotes !~ effort put into comment

Absolutely true in the strictest sense. I've posted very detailed, well researched, citation filled comments in response to questions from people, and gotten absolutely zero upvotes before. OTOH, I've posted borderline flamebait comments that consisted of something like "Fuck the NSA" or whatever, and gotten hundreds of upvotes.

That said, I think that on balance higher quality / higher effort posts are more likely to garner upvotes. But it's definitely not a deterministic, linear correlation at all.

cupofpython3• 4 years ago

effort put into comment !~ value of comment to others

jandrese2• 4 years ago

It should be noted that the author's maximially downvoted comment was one that didn't make any sense[1] so it does give another tip on what not to do.

[1] Serving web sites off of a blockchain somehow.

Tomte• 4 years ago

but getting one to front page does give you a lot of karma too, apparently.

Don't overestimate that effect. I'd say a hundred or maybe two hundred is realistic, but quite often a front page submission only nets you a dozen.

Of course there are outliers in the other direction, but 500 or more is a rare event. You need to keep in mind that karma is discounted, a story that displays n upvotes will add << n points to your account.

mikkergp• 4 years ago

I've been doing this recently, posting a lot more and looking back at my posts to see what was upvoted. This persons conclusions line up pretty well with my predictions based on analyzing my own highest upvoted comments on HN and reddit.

The biggest thing I learned is don't play devil's advocate. Even if it's sincere, don't try to empathize with the other side of the argument. Try to figure out what the "average" (internet points-voter) thinks and say it loud, say it proud. One of my biggest upvotes was on r/politics post, where I posted a direct, forceful and unbeknowingesty satirical support of socialism/socialist policies.

If you're on a media subreddit for a TV show. If there's an obvious character to quote or show trope that people like in response to a post, post that quote/trope.

Some of my biggest downvotes were explaining to a person who asked in a neoliberal subreddit "Why do leftist politicians" say things they know aren't true or can't justify, and pointing out that they are incentivized to exaggerate, precisely because they don't have political power. I guess I figured out later it was a rhetorical question.

And alot of this is in good faith. I'm honestly interested in understanding and discussing the realities of peoples political motivations over and above my own beliefs about them.

kergonath• 4 years ago

The biggest thing I learned is don't play devil's advocate.

Or do it well. Most of the time, “playing devil’s advocate” is just hypocritical trolling, so we’re more or less trained to assume bad faith. Which is an unfortunate bias, but that’s where we are.

On the other hand, posts really need to be very bad to get greyed out. Even if you get a few downvotes, it’s not a huge problem.

nomel2• 4 years ago

Most of the time, “playing devil’s advocate” is just hypocritical trolling

On reddit and twitter, I usually see the opposite of hypocritical lock-step adherence to a narrative, with any nuance and criticism being disallowed and attacked. I tend to assume bad faith for anyone completely taking one side of any complex (and therefore controversial) topic, on the internet.

nomel2• 4 years ago

And alot of this is in good faith. I'm honestly interested in understanding and discussing the realities of peoples political motivations over and above my own beliefs about them.

Related, I really liked the feature on Slashdot where "friends of friends" could be given more visibility, and a karma boost. If I friended you, I would then be exposed to your friends, which I would probably end up valuing, resulting in an amplification of a certain type of mindset across the site. It was a nice way to boost rationality. It would also be a terrible way to make an echo chamber, but to each their own I suppose.

sfink• 4 years ago

Yeah, I've started very slowly accumulating a list of HN commenters who say nonobvious things that I find value in. Occasionally I'll browse through their comment history, and I'm trying to train myself to recognize when they show up in a comment section. It would be nice to have the site automate some of that. But I recognize that it's tough to do without reinforcing an echo chamber.

I don't even wish for a site that would only show me my "blessed community". I like the general commentary to be pretty widely scattered, but I (1) don't want to miss the larger bits of signal, and (2) want to improve my overall cost::benefit ratio. I also definitely don't want the base level to be too widely scattered, or more specifically, too low of an average value.

the_only_law2• 4 years ago

What I've learned is "right place right time". You can make a post that violates half the commenting guidelines, but if you're in the right thread with the right obvious, you can get a good amount of upvotes.

bena2• 4 years ago

One of my most upvoted posts on reddit is a vagina joke. There was someone famous who was going to miss something important due to the birth of their kid and someone responded with "Birthgate" and I responded telling him it was called a vagina.

My most downvoted post was a post about tournament card games where I was actually correct, but no one liked the answer regardless. It is also one of my most awarded posts.

gjsman-1000• 4 years ago

In my mind, while Reddit and Twitter are cesspools, I still hold the opinion looking at my upvotes/downvotes that Hacker News is irreparably broken as well, it just is taking a much longer period of time to show the cracks. Hacker News is a superior system, a longer-lasting system, but one that is still declining. Nuanced or well-intentioned but mistaken (or sometimes even accurate) comments are increasingly getting downvoted when unpopular, whether they be mine or others. Downvoting is not a sign that a comment is poor quality, but a sign of simple disagreement even if the person downvoting can't formulate (or does not bother to formulate) a response indicating why.

I know that @dang always responds with that FAQ post saying that HN is slowly turning into Reddit is a meme and an illusion as old as the hills, but just saying it isn't does not mean that it isn't. That's the weakest argument from authority there could be. "It's not because I say it isn't."

silisili2• 4 years ago

I guess very much YMMV.

My experience here has been the opposite. I try not to be aggressive or antagonizing here, hard as it is via text, but at times have written things that came across as rude and things that were not popular opinions.

Most of the time one or more people would take the time to respond explaining why they feel I'm incorrect, or telling me I'm being harsh. And my upvotes usually just sit at 1, despite perhaps having 5 or more disagreement comments.

Compare that to Reddit, where even mentioning anything against the hivemind, such as disagreeing with a liberal cause, will get you downvoted to oblivion, sometimes even banned.

superb-owl5• 4 years ago

I think it'd be nice to have emoji on here, even if it'd break the aesthetic a bit. They add just enough extra nuance and color that it can diffuse matter-of-fact statements and completely change an interaction.

Honestly if I didn't have emojis in Slack I'd have a much worse relationship with coworkers

noobermin4• 4 years ago

Given this is actually relevant to the article and not meta, we can actually talk about the "turning into slashdot" meme without it being off-topic. It of course is impossible to really quantify how much HN is like reddit or slashdot (or what remains of it), but on relative terms, it's still easy for me to see the difference. You still have much fewer "meme posts" and worse meme threads. I admit this is real nerdiness here, but I favorited this thread years ago, preserved in amber, for you to see[0]. You can still tell it was heavily downvoted. Anyhow, even still, these kind of "meme threads" which pervade reddit just aren't that common here at all even today, usually being snuffed out before they're even started. So, even now, certain ticks that are common across the internet are still discouraged here.

I think one thing that has changed over the years is more acceptance of one sentence replies as long as they uphold the median political perspective. Things like, "this is terrible, how can this be permitted" used to get downvoted more (a lot, in fact), while I see some make it through the cracks lately, as long as they somewhat express a thought. Other than that, not much has changed. I can only say that being on HN so long makes you realize that there are memes and political groupthink here too, it just takes different forms or can be obscured somewhat by the longer more written out comments.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7141357

dleslie3• 4 years ago

Things like, "this is terrible, how can this be permitted" used to get downvoted more (a lot, in fact), while I see some make it through the cracks lately, as long as they somewhat express a thought.

This sort of comment is the hot grits and petrified natalie portman of HN. Probably not good enough to consistently rise to the top, but popular enough to farm karma.

The problem, I think, is that HN is attracting the late-stage users, who see up/down as agree/disagree and not contributing/obstructing.

dleslie3• 4 years ago

Reddit encourages in-group domination, by way of ignoring policy-violating cross-subreddit moderation and banning; Twitter, by design, encourages user retention through passionate engagement with other users, and most often that passion is hatred.

HN doesn't have a corollary for sub-reddits, or a personal feed, or similar. Its singular subject focus is its virtue; but, as you claim, it will fall. All things will, and the problem with HN is that there is _too much money to be made_ by swaying opinion on this forum.

noobermin4• 4 years ago

There is definitely groupthink here too, albeit in certain threads and certain types of articles. It isn't as much of a club like a subreddit is but it definitely exists.

beefman4• 4 years ago

Downvoting is not a sign that a comment is poor quality, but a sign of simple disagreement even if the person downvoting can't formulate (or does not bother to formulate) a response indicating why.

You can lose karma if you reply. You can't lose karma if you downvote.

the_only_law2• 4 years ago

I never understood this line. It seems antithetical to everything the site wants to be/claims to be/is .

cupofpython3• 4 years ago

I do like that you cannot downvote people replying to your own comment

Zeratoss• 4 years ago

Any slightly political thread on hackernews is a cesspool on reddit or twitter level. Topics about january 6, the abortion ban, anything adjacent to the "cultur war"...

I suspect the only difference is that technical topics like shiny-rust-program or webframework3000 are less controversial

willcipriano• 4 years ago

Don't lump HN in with Reddit. Reddit has a single opinion on the majority of political topics and by the time I arrive at them it's just people arguing that view (often with ad hominem attacks) vs a bunch of deleted comments.

Twitter is much less heavy handed with the deletion of comments but if you read the replies they are often the same ad hominem stuff you'll find on Reddit if you dare stray away from the majority opinion.

I don't consider a place that allows views different than mine to be a cesspool, or people that have different views to be defective. A cesspool to me is when someone makes a reasonable point about a subject like economics and the replies are all about his penis size, that's how Reddit and Twitter operate, not here.

justsomehnguy• 4 years ago

Downvoting is not a sign that a comment is poor quality, but a sign of simple disagreement even if the person downvoting can't formulate (or does not bother to formulate) a response indicating why.

Because it requires no effort. But if downvoting required at least 140^W280 char comment describing the reason... or a micro-payment...

But jokes aside this is an unsolvable problem. Though I liked /. comment marking system, but it's not that better too.

jandrese2• 4 years ago

The other side of the coin is that Karma is all fake internet points and HN's system makes it pretty easy to farm enough Karma that you don't have to care what other people think for a very long time if you so choose. The cap on downvotes means that while it is possible to have a single post that generates hundreds of Karma, the most you can ever be downvoted is 4. It's almost impossible to lose significant Karma without continual trolling that would probably get you shadowbanned anyway.

loudmax• 4 years ago

I'd love to see a system where where you could inject nuance into upvotes or downvotes. Say, one set of arrows for agree or disagree with the conclusions, and a separate set of arrows for whether the comment was respectfully or rudely written, and maybe even another set arrows for arguments that are cogent versus poorly thought out.

I usually make an effort to upvote comments that I thought were particularly well written even if I disagree with them. But we all have our biases, and I recognize that, as with most people, I'm likelier to upvote a comment that I agree with even if it was poorly reasoned. It would be great to be able to rate comments "+1 informative, but -1 author is being a jerk". Or "-1 I disagree, but +1 polite and respectful".

I'm not sure how well it would work in practice. Getting the UI right could be a challenge. Netflix used to let you rate content from 1-5 stars, but they later changed it to just thumbs up/thumbs down. The same pressure that led Netflix do dumb down their system might apply here.

superb-owl5• 4 years ago

Agreed! I think this is the idea behind Facebook's emoji responses.

antod• 4 years ago

While not exactly the same that reminds me of metamoderation at Slashdot. Admittedly that was a pretty geeky audience, but the trolling and griefing load there was huge.

bena2• 4 years ago

I think there's a tipping point to social sites. There's a point where they become too big to moderate.

polotics• 4 years ago

Maybe make downvotes have a mandatory "and this is why" comment field that forces the downvoter to formulate grievance... Then you can show what kind of downvoter someone is. Even maybe have rationality check on these downvotes rationales?

hourago• 4 years ago

almost half of the Karma (325 points) comes from only seven comments

Zipf's law.

pwython• 4 years ago

Relative to this, I've seriously thought about whipping up a funny little website that displays a sort of meter showing positive/negative reception for every HN post based on the top comments using sentiment analysis.

I was curious because it seems like whenever I check the comments on a post the top comment is like "ackchyually..."

EddySchauHai• 4 years ago

It really is! I used to get dragged in on them but made a new account with the premise of not falling for those flamewars and to try create more than I consume. I’ll still write a response to an “ackchyually…” post but catch myself and delete it before I send. Life isn’t long enough for those ‘discussions’ :)

cupofpython3• 4 years ago

whenever I check the comments on a post the top comment is like "ackchyually..."

I attribute this to the quality of the source material. there's a limit to how much the linked article can reasonably convey while still being an introduction to whatever is being talked about. Very rarely, if ever, is a website article posted that requires prerequisite reading of a different article. So nuance usually gets shafted a bit, and in-depth research postponed, to keep the article easy to read.

it then gets posted here and inevitably someone has something to say about the nuance

Karrot_Kream7• 4 years ago

IMO as a long time HN reader and poster, the rise in strident un-nuanced posts affirming moral or political opinions is really bringing down the quality of the site. I still defend HN as a good site with a variety of expert technical opinions, but these affirmation posts just turns HN into the worst of Twitter.

desindol• 4 years ago

It was always in the dna of hackernews…

Karrot_Kream7• 4 years ago

Sure. I'm just saying it's getting worse. Or at least, that's my subjective observation.

metadat• 4 years ago

Any specific examples you can share? I'd like to know to gain awareness of whether or not I'm committing or participating in such gaffes so I can modify my behavior in the future, if needed. I don't want to be "that person"!

When I encounter egregiously toxic posts, I email our lone mod warrior, Dang (hn@ycombinator.com) to ensure he has the opportunity to review and take whatever action is appropriate.

The daily post volume on HN is so high, it's challenging (to the point of being impossible) to moderate it all alone. Plus it's a generally thankless, horrifyingly soul crushing job. So I try to help out where I can, when I'm not the one causing the trouble :p :cry:

Karrot_Kream7• 4 years ago

IMO the linked Substack does a great job of demonstrating it. Take a look at the thread in Big Tech regulation that came up earlier today, that's one too.

zozbot234• 4 years ago

For some reason, the Canadian truckers' honking protests were the main topic of discussion here for weeks, with commenters inevitably taking stances for one side or the other. It was ridiculous and I'm pretty sure HN lost plenty of potential users to sites like Lobsters, which just kept posting and commenting about cool tech stuff.

akozak3• 4 years ago

I think I'd rather see short, strident statements of opinion than multi-paragraphed 'reasoned' arguments that are essentially the same thing but with different aesthetics. Much quicker to process!

Semiapies• 4 years ago

I've seen a lot of walls of text lately by people that look copied-and-pasted from their blogs/forum rants/whatever.

armchairhacker• 4 years ago

Issues are

- When the statement is obvious, you mine as well not say it at all. On a lot of Reddit threads every upvoted comment is basically some variation of “This”, “Yep”, “I agree” (sometimes literally those). It’s absurd, there’s no discussion and the entire point of the comments section is wasted. (Honestly, a lot of Reddit is just the same posts and arguments over and over)

- When the opinion actually deserves nuance. When people throw around phrases like “the US is a third-world country”, “Google is an awful company only focused on greed”, “never trust your employer”. No, these statements aren’t 100% true, Google is a greedy company but it really isn’t just a money-making machine, it provides a search engine and mail and office software and video platform that you probably use. Additionally, when the statements are political and derogatory (“all X group is bad”), you start to criticize people who don’t deserve the criticism.

Karrot_Kream7• 4 years ago

I agree. But I don't think most HN posts are particularly longer than most Tweets. Many can be fit in 2 tweets in fact. If you're going to make strident, blanket posts (like the ones armchairhacker talks about), Twitter is probably a better medium.

themodelplumber2• 4 years ago

Avoiding the political is generally easy until the minefield vocabulary comes up, even if by accident.

Moral opinions are tricky because they feed directly into and out of concepts like integrity, fidelity and quality, which are favorites on HN and can be discussed technically as well as morally. But we don't really learn much about that razor edge in general education so it's not as easily avoided.

treis• 4 years ago

The bar charts would be better as scatter plots.

superb-owl5• 4 years ago

Agreed! I timeboxed this, but specifically I would love to see a scatter plot showing number of descendants vs score

themodelplumber2• 4 years ago

At 1001 karma you should get a sidevote button. It is a prompt to look beyond the typical emotional response. Sometimes up or down aren't important. But it would help things if the comment could move aside for now.

(Then at 10,001 karma there's the ability to super-upvote a comment, contingent upon its removal to a different website where it would be REALLY relevant... Would be nice if the web could be this integrative)

rockbruno• 4 years ago

nuanced comments, or comments that defend both sides of an argument, tend to get ignored or downvoted. Which is sad, but makes sense—the supporters of either side are the ones who care enough to interact, and they’re not going to signal-boost the opposition.

I actually don't think this is entirely true. I definitely sometimes see people using downvotes as a "I don't like this, fuck you" button a-la Reddit, but most of the times I feel that HN is very civilized when it comes to using the downvote button.

superb-owl5• 4 years ago

Agreed - I think they mainly get ignored.

I mostly see things downvoted that are factually wrong, or just generally abrasive and tone-deaf.

Brian_K_White• 4 years ago

I can't know but I think I see a fair amount of downvotes arising from misunderstanding.

I am excluding my own downvotes received and given and only thinking of examples where I was a bystander (except that I probably upvoted someone to counter what I thought was undeserved downvotes).

I can't know that someone else misunderstood a comment, or that I understood a comment of course, so I just leave my own comment saying "I interpreted that this way...."

But I have seen some truely inexplicable torpedoing of the most innocuous comments. I never get an answer to "I don't know why you're downvoted..."

Please assume that I know the difference between interesting or valuable and flies my team colors, or at least gave conscious thought to it, in this talk about deserved/undeserved, understood/misunderstood.

Barrera• 4 years ago

Choosing to post anonymously, rather than using my real name, made things much easier. I’ve occasionally commented under my real name, and am embarrassed looking back at my post history. There’s nothing terrible, but I’m sure some of my colleagues and friends have stumbled upon it and smirked. This might be projection or paranoia, but it causes enough anxiety to deter me from posting regularly.

One thing that pseudonymity will do is allow you support positions you don't actually hold. To steel man them. To really stretch your brain to find the best way to present and argue in favor of them. Doing so pseudonymously means never having to explain yourself to friends, family, employers, or three-letter organizations later.

This also works really well for positions you're leaning toward but don't know why. Or half-baked ideas you'd like someone to respond to. Or just questions that you're embarrassed to ask.

This may not fit with the letter of the HN guidelines, depending on the distinctions between "throwaway," "pseudonym," and "temporary pseudonym":

Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.

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

But I think it fits with the spirit. From "What to Post?":

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

lostlogin• 4 years ago

One thing that pseudonymity will do is allow you support positions you don't actually hold. To steel man them. To really stretch your brain to find the best way to present and argue in favor of them. Doing so pseudonymously means never having to explain yourself to friends, family, employers, or three-letter organizations later.

Anonymous posts also allow honesty which might otherwise be impossible. Job safety, physical safety, and protection against embarrassment etc are potentially easier when anonymous.

I have a generally pessimistic outlook but do see a positive here.

mercer• 4 years ago

Indeed! I would never discuss my micro-penis and erectile dysfunction without using a throwaway account like this one.

EDIT: oops

affgrff2• 4 years ago

A long time as a lurker I was actually thinking that HN would not accumulate the karma people are gaining. Maybe that was silly, but I had the idea of people are not here for fake internet points. I am wondering what would happen if karma wouldn't actually accumulate.

lapcat• 4 years ago

I don't think you can really compare HN to Reddit and Twitter, because HN has essentially one experience for everyone (or at most two experiences for everyone, if you count /newest as a separate experience, which the article discusses), whereas Reddit and Twitter are what you make of them, especially Twitter. You decide which subreddits to read, you decide which Twitter accounts to follow (and whether to use Latest Tweets or "Home"). The Reddit or Twitter experience for one individual can be entirely different than for another individual.

It's all too easy to take the worst parts of Reddit or Twitter and claim HN is better, but Reddit and Twitter have a lot more self-curation than HN.

ansible3• 4 years ago

... or at most two experiences for everyone ...

Or three or four, if you count the people who have been shadowbanned, and the people who enable viewing from shadowbanned accounts. But those two groups seem to be in the minority.

I do like the approach https://lobste.rs takes, where there aren't separate subreddits, but instead just tags for various articles. You can then browse by tags, or inversely, exclude them from the home page.

vannevar• 4 years ago

I think limiting the number of upvotes and downvotes a user has per day, with maybe a sliding scale for karma, would vastly improve HN. It would slow down the voting circles considerably and make fake accounts much less valuable to marketing types and political action groups.

Making the order of posts probabilistic instead of strictly ordering by upvotes would also improve the site, making the first post less significant and avoiding some of the rich-get-richer effect noted in the article.

jackconsidine• 4 years ago

TIL a 501 Karma gets you a downvote [0]

[0] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downvo...

jacooper• 4 years ago

As a relatively new commer to HN, i can say overall I agree.

I signed up here because i was fedup with reddit,

I am just fed up with all the politics, Thr extreme US focus and the reddit culture. It began affecting my life, and I wasn't happy about it.

For example I knew more about the US than I should, and the constant negative "the world is ending" news from the US media were very negative.

I still use reddit, its a very good platform if used correctly(only for niches), subreddits like r/selfhosting, r/homelab and others are a goldmine of good discussions and valuable info.

But i stopped following trending or any general/humor subs, and decided to focus more on Tech, and replace US stations with world wide news , because generally all they do is doom and gloom, and us vs them.

I realize the bias of US focused news is obviously coming from the English language, but it helps to diversify, and when possible use sources in another language.

My experience mimcks OP, its a very rich and detailed platform about tech, and I think its like this because of the webiste design, and the things you have to care about to know HN.

The moderation on HN is mostly pretty good, and I think it certainly helps that the mods are also HN users.

I had my fair share of down votes, particularly about The Occupation in Palestine, but it was expected and I stand by my comments.

I signed up as an anon, because its easier to post things that truthfully represent you without being worried about how it might affect your job 10 years later, and what the new trends might be that far in the future.

I have a real name account, but its not as successful as this one, because I'm not really ready to comment on everything, also I really got lucky with that Proton post :).

Also one note, I really wouldn't be able to use HN without the Awesome app called Glider, its an open source HN client on Android, and its really really good, especially for someone coming from infinity for reddit.

Its has bugs, but in general its pretty good.

ansible3• 4 years ago

In the last year, I have joined https://lobste.rs which is relatively low-volume, but tends towards high quality. It is entirely tech / programming focused, and politics and such are not allowed. It is an invite-only membership, so you have to know someone who will extend to you an invite. Since their account is listed as the sponsor for your own account (forever), your reputation will affect your sponsor's. Not automatically, but if the site admins see a particular person inviting a bunch of yaboos, there will be some kind of consequences.

I too mostly don't use reddit for the mainstream subs, but instead of niche stuff like /r/RISCV and /r/rust.

haskell_melody• 4 years ago

One thing I've noticed: US-based commenters are much more negative and cynical than anyone else. I've made posts (under a previous username) when the US folks were asleep and got great, helpful replies, only to get much more negative, less nuanced comments once the US woke up.

AtlasBarfed2• 4 years ago

Didn't you read the article and guidance? This will only attract downvotes. You've stated a political opinion which on HN is any opinion contrary to HN's libertarian US techno-capitalism with bare minimum virtue signalling.

I'll upvote you for limited counterbalancing.

B1FF_PSUVM• 4 years ago

when the US folks were asleep

That's just the US night-owls being helpful before turning in for their daily sleep.

Then the grumpy I-need-coffee crowd comes in swinging.

(only partly kidding)

sytelus• 4 years ago

The best way to game HN is just be "nice guy", go along with everyone and only say nice things. For example, you can create a comment to this post that HN is just great, thank dang for his hard work and watch karma pouring in. If you are contrarian, you will soon be at the bottom of the page greyed out.

superb-owl5• 4 years ago

New karma farming stratagem: post original content about HN

Super happy to see all the discussion in here! Will hopefully have time to reply later

theteapot3• 4 years ago

People with over 501 karma. Please down vote the shit out of this post and wreck this guy's karma (hopefully that's how it works ...). Fuck karma, and Fuck karma farmers.

Brendinooo• 4 years ago

Complaining about Electron is probably a faster approach

cosmiccatnap• 4 years ago

I find that there are many things controlling this not covered here.

1. Fanboys - if an article about an apple product is posted, the very idea of constructive criticism is somehow an affront to Steve's ghost. Same can be said for everyone except Google which seems to be the universal punching bag regardless.

2. Shilling - I'm glad that you are the creater of BloatJS and are willing to answer any questions that show your product in a positive light but you are also on the front page of /r/technology and 20 other blogs because you are trying to get VC funding. Maybe a few of these would be fine but it's hard not to see this suspiciously sitting in the top 5 on any given day and then see the author fumbling to answer the universal question of "what did this solve?"

3. Astroturfing - pick any major article, pick your poison, you will find the comment section littered with suites of all shapes and pay doing damage control with unsubstantiated claims that then cause argument loops that derail useful conversation. Someone will ask for a summery and a well thought out response will get a few bumps, meanwhile Tom who works in marketing has 136 replies to his "rebuttal" that things are fine at BloatSoft and word to the contrary is simply twitters fault.

It's not just HN it's any site that gets sufficiently big but the saddest part for me is how transparent it is. The size causes people who don't use these technologies to lurk around all day and people who make them to defend it all day and the margin of actual people who don't have some axe to grind gets fewer and fewer until they, intelligently, realize one day it's all fluff and not worth their time.

People get called out for just reading the headlines of articles but when half of them are false advertisement and a good chunk of them are just literal ads no wonder...and mercy be upon anyone coming to the comment section for clarity.

AtlasBarfed2• 4 years ago

There's probably some organized downloading going on in crypto discussions. I get Musk downvotes, he's so polarizing.

Why would sociopaths making fintech fraudcoins not defend their cryptoscams in public? It would be job one for something whose value is completely fabricated and perception based.

bookofjoe• 4 years ago

Who invented the wonderful phrase "karma farming?"

theteapot3• 4 years ago

My comment: What is this actually about?

jiveturkey2• 4 years ago

What is any personal blogging about?

theteapot3• 4 years ago

Just seems like an aimless and unsatisfying piece of writing. I guess others must have got something from it. I felt like I was wasting my time.

karaterobot• 4 years ago

HN should make displaying your karma in the header optional. I see no benefits to it other than creating a score some people want to game.

In theory this would be good, if the way to game the score was to write thoughtful and helpful comments. In practice, as noted in this post:

Affirming the political and moral opinions of the average HN reader is the easiest way to get upvotes.

It's easy enough to hide this text using something like uBlock, but I'd rather it were just a thing everybody could toggle. Maybe even turn it off by default.

wrayjustin• 4 years ago

Posting somehow felt both beneath and above me—there’s so much brilliance and nonsense in the comment section

Relatable. I rarely post or comment, as when I have something to contribute to the conversation I usually cannot (NDA, etc.). And for the times I could post, I don't really have anything of value to say; echoing into the void and all.

But then I do get value from the comment sections, oftentimes more than the original post/content.

So thank you to those who do comment and contribute!

anotherevan• 4 years ago

I'm not sure HN has made me less ignorant, but I believe it has made me ignorant on a higher level and about more important things.

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