a) the voter isn't required to identify their reason for down voting
b) it's not just allowed but encouraged to downvote things that you simply disagree with
Those two things wouldn't mean much if it was just a number. But it isn't. The site actively hides comments as they get down-voted, and people down vote things they simply disagree with.
In case you hadn't realised, that's basically a recipe for an echo chamber. I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments that are either factually true, or at least informative while subjective, down voted into oblivion because they don't follow the standing ideals of a large percentage of those who vote.
I disagree. I can't find any encouragement for downvoting things you simply disagree with (I just reread the guidelines to make sure). It's also not my perception this is happening: I do read downvoted comments (or parts of those), and almost always there is a good reason other than disagreement. I frequently see grayed articles coming up again after a while due to something you might call "corrective upvotes" when the only reason for a downvote seems to be a different opinion.
> I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments ...
Interesting to see how far two subjective perceptions of the same thing - yours and mine in this case - can be away from each other ...
Do you have a sample link to such a downvoted comment? I generally find that downvotes make sense. When they don’t, the comment often bounces back via upvotes.
Because I disagree with how HN's downvotes work, I have `showdead` enabled, so I can see the comments/articles that have been downvoted simply because of disagreement.
But that also shows all the articles that are clearly just spam - so I can have the spam removed, or I can see the things the HN hive mind disagrees with, but not both.
HN for me is still (touch wood) a relatively high quality discussion forum. That said, I could certainly do without:
- Persistence of myopic and uninformed views about MBAs in tech and finance. No, MBAs do not get cushy jobs in top-tier firms because they know how to build a pricing model in Excel and look nice in a suit. Tons of MBAs have relevant industry experience, and they're there to work, not stifle innovation by implementing stack ranking or whatever in a frenzied rush to cut costs.
- Comments on stories where a company commits wrongdoing: "I don't know why people are surprised, X has always behaved in this way. If you don't want [bad thing], then do [thing that inconveniences you but does nothing to hold the wrongdoer accountable]"
- Elon Musk worship. I used to think it was just aspirational wealth worship, but now I'm starting to think people see him as a sort of Tony Stark figure, a misunderstood genius trying to save the world against all odds.
I hate how politically ambivalent and "both sides are the same" people here are, despite it being shown again and again that this is simply not the case.
I hate how free speech is unduly prioritized over everything else, even when it marginalizes people and whittles away at our separation of powers.
I hate how often social issues are eye-rolled or actively decried. I hate how rarely policies such as WeWork's meat ban or California's mandate to put women on corporate boards are discussed in good faith. I don't always agree with these kinds of drastic actions, but I enjoy talking them over with my social science friends. You simply can't find this kind of discussion here.
I hate how engineers often don't see themselves as rich. I make FANG salary and feel absurdly wealthy. My grad school friends are squeaking by on $30k a year. I hate how "get as rich as humanly possible" seems to be the unstated goal of so many tech founders, and how any discussion of CEO salary caps or wealth redistribution is quickly shut down.
It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values. People here aren't nearly angry enough about the political clusterfuck going on in the US. People here want to make nice and are unwilling to burn bridges to stand up for what's right.
And finally, I hate how people have the gall to say that they'd rather shut their ears and avoid politics altogether, even when it's affecting everyone around them in drastic ways.
A furious and motivated Silicon Valley could change so much in the world. Instead, we'd rather just shrug and collect our paychecks.
I've seen a lot of comments on HN saying how good the level discussion is here. It's true if it's talking about JS engines or term sheets, but when it starts moving towards social issues or politics, I see better discussions on Facebook.
Thanks for the stimulating post! I do have a few comments/disagreements -
> And finally, I hate how people have the gall to say that they'd rather shut their ears and avoid politics altogether, even when it's affecting everyone around them in drastic ways.
I mean, it's kind of explicitly the idea of this forum to not involve discussions of politics. I guess you could claim otherwise, but I for one think it's legitimate to have a place where people choose not to talk about politics. Not literally every discussion has to be about politically charged topics.
(Which is not to say they don't get discussed here anyway.)
> It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values. People here aren't nearly angry enough about the political clusterfuck going on in the US. People here want to make nice and are unwilling to burn bridges to stand up for what's right.
I'm not in the US. But, there's a lot to be said for calming down - it seems to me that a big part of the problem today is exactly that too many people are too emotional/angry about everything, without necessarily having a reason to be. The reason there's a political clusterfuck, to me at least, seems to be exactly because people are willing to burn bridges, refuse to compromise, refuse to listen to one another, etc.
And btw, as to your "deeply held values" thing - this is a technical/business forum. It makes sense that the forum as a whole doesn't have "values" - it's made up of a very diverse group of people (well, not very diverse actually, but that's another problem). A diverse group of people getting together to talk about e.g. sports, wouldn't necessarily be expected to have more shared values than just people in general have.
> I hate how politically ambivalent and "both sides are the same" people here are, despite it being shown again and again that this is simply not the case.
Look, it's not that I disagree with all of your post or something, I thought it was well written and interesting. But you seem to be operating under the assumption that your view of things is clearly right, and other's views are wrong, which is why it makes you angry that others don't buy in wholesale to your views or values. For example, you write "It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values.", but also write "I hate how free speech is unduly prioritized over everything else, even when it marginalizes people and whittles away at our separation of powers.". Some people's deeply held values are that free speech is prioritized over (almost) everything else. You might not agree with that deeply held value, but it is one that supposedly the community here values (I don't know if that's actually true).
1. The sizes of the voting buttons and the expand/collapse links are terrible. They’re so tiny (and the voting buttons placed so close to each other) that even a mouse cursor is not a proper tool to target them. On touchscreens, it’s way worse. The “tap targets” are very tiny for fingers and very difficult to use. Having to zoom in just to use one of those buttons is painful.
2. While looking at some child comment way down on a discussion, there’s no easy and quick way to figure out which comment it’s a reply to. It’s cumbersome and next to impossible. So I don’t even bother reading nested comments after the first or second reply to a comment. There ought to be a way to collapse all other comments above it and just leave the main one that it’s a reply to.
3. Very limited formatting options, with the default way of treating newlines tripping up many people. This results in a long piece of text that’s not easily readable. Just a day or two ago, I saw a YC recruitment ad post that someone had just copy pasted from elsewhere but forgot to use additional newlines to suit the HN formatting requirements. [1] It was a big wall of unreadable text in many places. This is not the first time that something like this has happened.
For #2 you can click a comment's posting time, and from there repeatedly click "parent" to see the conversation history.
You may have already alluded to this as it's not exactly "easy and quick"; though as it's arguably both, I'm commenting in case others haven't discovered it.
The community. There’s a whole lot of sexism. Overall it feels like all the part of the tech industry that make me feel skeeved out to work in it. When people try to speak up about it they get downvoted, flagged, and/or chided for off-topic discussions about it get shut down as off topic or not following the rules.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that it’s a community of almost all wealthy/privileged cis men.
This. As a woman it sometimes makes me want to ragequit not just HN but the industry as a whole.
And then people wonder why women don’t want to go into tech and make even more assumptions about our not being interested. Nope, it’s just that a whole lot of us quite understandably would rather work in a field where we’re not constantly made to feel unwelcome.
Long text quotes in fixed width format (indented by 2 spaces).
When viewing on mobile this forces to scroll that text horizontally, for every line in the paragraph. If people would just stick to using this for code only and use ""'s or > for quoting text that would be great.
In hyperbolic terms i'd say that HN will become a consumer electronics & politics platform read by "metoo" developers who call them selves founders in exchange for giving up their pension and their rights as a employee. More will be driven to do the same because they read a story on HN covertly plugged by the only client of the previously mentioned metoo guy.
Tongue in cheek, this is a exaggerated version of the trend i see and that's what i hate most about HN.
There's a lot of casual elitism in many threads. However, I've not found anywhere else on the internet with such a high quality level of discourse so it doesn't bother me too much.
1. The thing I now dislike about HN are the posts that get upvoted. Yes, eternal September and all, but this has persisted through the slower summer months and I don't see it ever returning to the high S/N ratio of the recent past. I find myself more often finding gems on pages 3+ with top posts just being a general feed.
2. Discussions are now becoming rare. So many posts sit on the front page with many upvotes and zero comments.
3. Downvote misuse as mentioned is irksome but not fatal. My problem with them is the UI for them. Upvote if you agree, so downvote symmetrically (and incorrectly) implies disagree. Downvote should really be represented as 'flag' with a type such as factually incorrect, disruptive, adding nothing to the discussion, or other poor conduct (as mentioned in other replies regarding the guidelines).
So many posts sit on the front page with many upvotes and zero comments.
There's a weird mechanism that punishes posts with comments, because they are deemed "controversial".
Regarding downvoting - just disable it. What makes the echo chamber even worse is that only users with a certain amount of points are able to downvote. So people who have already avoided being downvoted by others get to effectively police who else amasses the required number of points to be able to downvote. It's a vicious cycle where only a group of like minded people will be able to downvote.
In terms of the community, I would like to see more people recognize fake leading questions that are answered by alt accounts promoting some product. Those don't get flagged fast enough.
I am also not a fan of news site reporters challenging anything that doesn't have several references to back it up. It takes away from discussions and becomes an academic research article. In my experience, links do not equate to facts. They are just more opinions on some other site.
Leading questions and/or alt accounts are my biggest gripes right now. I called out an account for being a Facebook employee or something the other day. They were literally copy pasting the same response over and over. It was a paragraph from some Facebook documentation.
Another alt account suggested I should be banned for calling out the other user.
Honestly nothing at all. It's a decent site that does what it says on the tin. In my ideal world we'd have more hacker and less news but I can always visit /show if I'm in a particularly tech mood.
I guess I would like to be able to add a reason to a flag. Always feel a bit weird just hitting flag and hoping there's someone on the other end that can interpret what I'm flagging
There is not much of a need to distinguish disagreement downvoting versus bad quality here. In a technical forum, these two are very closely aligned: you disagree with something because it gets the facts wrong.
If you disagree with something which is mere opinion, it is in fact legitimate to downvote it on grounds that it is just someone venting their opinion.
If you disagree with something technically, and you have all the facts straight, it is legitimate to downvote it based on inaccurate content.
So basically, from all angles, disagree-downvoting works fine around here.
While not repeating existing complaints I have that others have made...
1) This community takes itself far too seriously.
2) The kerning is too damn small, and so are the vote arrows. Why is a forum, whose purpose is to be read, so difficult to read at length?
3) I, an idiot who has contributed nothing of value either to society or to this community, have more karma than Alan Kay[0], proving that karma doesn't measure anything worthwhile and should be done away with.
> The kerning is too damn small, and so are the vote arrows. Why is a forum, whose purpose is to be read, so difficult to read at length?
Suppose HN had this simple feature: an editable field associated with your account where you could drop in a piece of CSS. When you're logged in, HN spits out that piece of CSS into the web page, just for you.
The only ability users have to kill posts comes from flagging, which is something everyone over a low (> 30) karma threshold can do. It also requires quite a few flags to kill a post.
The comments when all comments seem to be concentrated in a couple of threads rehashing the same issues.
All stories concerning the housing problem in SF. Nobody cares, move on, it's just a city. Yes I know there must be a disproportional amount of SF residents in this forum, but nobody still cares about your housing problems :)
Front page quality seems to have deteriorated. I brought this up in an Ask HN and I think I came off as self-righteous and that was my fault.
But I think the crux of the issue is I just don't get how certain low-quality stuff makes the front-page and a lot of high-quality stuff from new gets missed.
I've actually created an RSS feed that grabs anything in New that has gotten at least 1 upvote. It's a lot of content but at least it is going beyond what is displayed on the front page.
low-quality stuff makes the front-page and a lot of high-quality stuff from new gets missed
... which is a byproduct of how many dupes get submitted. Many submissions get pushed off the Newest page so quickly because so many dupe and crap submissions push them off.
People who don't look beyond the front pages (news or newest) are missing a lot.
If HN were to release the votes dataset to trustworthy AI/ML partners, wonders could be extracted from that. I'm sure I'd be way less interested in what the mob wants to hear about, compared to what is upvoted by antirez, pron, chrisseaton, BrendanEich, just to name a few.
PageRank could be run on that to identify articles that are low noise but key to people at the edge; as well as ALS for a personalized selection.
My main dislike is a technical feature: that every response to a comment does not link back to the parent comment. This often makes discussions difficult to follow. (Indentation helps very little when reponse threads grow over multiple pages.)
that every response to a comment does not link back to the parent comment
But it does, unless I misunderstand. Clicking on the time-ago link gets you to both the Parent (of that comment) and on: (top of comment thread for the submission overall) links.
What I do in this case is to close the tree (-) when reaching a comment less indented, so I can continue the current responses and remember where I was.
[+] [-] stephenr|7 years ago|reply
a) the voter isn't required to identify their reason for down voting b) it's not just allowed but encouraged to downvote things that you simply disagree with
Those two things wouldn't mean much if it was just a number. But it isn't. The site actively hides comments as they get down-voted, and people down vote things they simply disagree with.
In case you hadn't realised, that's basically a recipe for an echo chamber. I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments that are either factually true, or at least informative while subjective, down voted into oblivion because they don't follow the standing ideals of a large percentage of those who vote.
[+] [-] ifdefdebug|7 years ago|reply
> I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments ...
Interesting to see how far two subjective perceptions of the same thing - yours and mine in this case - can be away from each other ...
[+] [-] christophilus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billconan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephenr|7 years ago|reply
Because I disagree with how HN's downvotes work, I have `showdead` enabled, so I can see the comments/articles that have been downvoted simply because of disagreement.
But that also shows all the articles that are clearly just spam - so I can have the spam removed, or I can see the things the HN hive mind disagrees with, but not both.
[+] [-] klohto|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masonic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|7 years ago|reply
- Persistence of myopic and uninformed views about MBAs in tech and finance. No, MBAs do not get cushy jobs in top-tier firms because they know how to build a pricing model in Excel and look nice in a suit. Tons of MBAs have relevant industry experience, and they're there to work, not stifle innovation by implementing stack ranking or whatever in a frenzied rush to cut costs.
- Comments on stories where a company commits wrongdoing: "I don't know why people are surprised, X has always behaved in this way. If you don't want [bad thing], then do [thing that inconveniences you but does nothing to hold the wrongdoer accountable]"
- Elon Musk worship. I used to think it was just aspirational wealth worship, but now I'm starting to think people see him as a sort of Tony Stark figure, a misunderstood genius trying to save the world against all odds.
[+] [-] archagon|7 years ago|reply
I hate how free speech is unduly prioritized over everything else, even when it marginalizes people and whittles away at our separation of powers.
I hate how often social issues are eye-rolled or actively decried. I hate how rarely policies such as WeWork's meat ban or California's mandate to put women on corporate boards are discussed in good faith. I don't always agree with these kinds of drastic actions, but I enjoy talking them over with my social science friends. You simply can't find this kind of discussion here.
I hate how engineers often don't see themselves as rich. I make FANG salary and feel absurdly wealthy. My grad school friends are squeaking by on $30k a year. I hate how "get as rich as humanly possible" seems to be the unstated goal of so many tech founders, and how any discussion of CEO salary caps or wealth redistribution is quickly shut down.
It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values. People here aren't nearly angry enough about the political clusterfuck going on in the US. People here want to make nice and are unwilling to burn bridges to stand up for what's right.
And finally, I hate how people have the gall to say that they'd rather shut their ears and avoid politics altogether, even when it's affecting everyone around them in drastic ways.
A furious and motivated Silicon Valley could change so much in the world. Instead, we'd rather just shrug and collect our paychecks.
[+] [-] 07d046|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edanm|7 years ago|reply
> And finally, I hate how people have the gall to say that they'd rather shut their ears and avoid politics altogether, even when it's affecting everyone around them in drastic ways.
I mean, it's kind of explicitly the idea of this forum to not involve discussions of politics. I guess you could claim otherwise, but I for one think it's legitimate to have a place where people choose not to talk about politics. Not literally every discussion has to be about politically charged topics.
(Which is not to say they don't get discussed here anyway.)
> It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values. People here aren't nearly angry enough about the political clusterfuck going on in the US. People here want to make nice and are unwilling to burn bridges to stand up for what's right.
I'm not in the US. But, there's a lot to be said for calming down - it seems to me that a big part of the problem today is exactly that too many people are too emotional/angry about everything, without necessarily having a reason to be. The reason there's a political clusterfuck, to me at least, seems to be exactly because people are willing to burn bridges, refuse to compromise, refuse to listen to one another, etc.
And btw, as to your "deeply held values" thing - this is a technical/business forum. It makes sense that the forum as a whole doesn't have "values" - it's made up of a very diverse group of people (well, not very diverse actually, but that's another problem). A diverse group of people getting together to talk about e.g. sports, wouldn't necessarily be expected to have more shared values than just people in general have.
> I hate how politically ambivalent and "both sides are the same" people here are, despite it being shown again and again that this is simply not the case.
Look, it's not that I disagree with all of your post or something, I thought it was well written and interesting. But you seem to be operating under the assumption that your view of things is clearly right, and other's views are wrong, which is why it makes you angry that others don't buy in wholesale to your views or values. For example, you write "It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values.", but also write "I hate how free speech is unduly prioritized over everything else, even when it marginalizes people and whittles away at our separation of powers.". Some people's deeply held values are that free speech is prioritized over (almost) everything else. You might not agree with that deeply held value, but it is one that supposedly the community here values (I don't know if that's actually true).
[+] [-] newscracker|7 years ago|reply
1. The sizes of the voting buttons and the expand/collapse links are terrible. They’re so tiny (and the voting buttons placed so close to each other) that even a mouse cursor is not a proper tool to target them. On touchscreens, it’s way worse. The “tap targets” are very tiny for fingers and very difficult to use. Having to zoom in just to use one of those buttons is painful.
2. While looking at some child comment way down on a discussion, there’s no easy and quick way to figure out which comment it’s a reply to. It’s cumbersome and next to impossible. So I don’t even bother reading nested comments after the first or second reply to a comment. There ought to be a way to collapse all other comments above it and just leave the main one that it’s a reply to.
3. Very limited formatting options, with the default way of treating newlines tripping up many people. This results in a long piece of text that’s not easily readable. Just a day or two ago, I saw a YC recruitment ad post that someone had just copy pasted from elsewhere but forgot to use additional newlines to suit the HN formatting requirements. [1] It was a big wall of unreadable text in many places. This is not the first time that something like this has happened.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169707
[+] [-] AndrewOMartin|7 years ago|reply
You may have already alluded to this as it's not exactly "easy and quick"; though as it's arguably both, I'm commenting in case others haven't discovered it.
[+] [-] masonic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rimunroe|7 years ago|reply
It’s hard to escape the feeling that it’s a community of almost all wealthy/privileged cis men.
[+] [-] cimmanom|7 years ago|reply
And then people wonder why women don’t want to go into tech and make even more assumptions about our not being interested. Nope, it’s just that a whole lot of us quite understandably would rather work in a field where we’re not constantly made to feel unwelcome.
[+] [-] aequitas|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coretx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lewisflude|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gieksosz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karmakaze|7 years ago|reply
2. Discussions are now becoming rare. So many posts sit on the front page with many upvotes and zero comments.
3. Downvote misuse as mentioned is irksome but not fatal. My problem with them is the UI for them. Upvote if you agree, so downvote symmetrically (and incorrectly) implies disagree. Downvote should really be represented as 'flag' with a type such as factually incorrect, disruptive, adding nothing to the discussion, or other poor conduct (as mentioned in other replies regarding the guidelines).
[+] [-] Melchizedek|7 years ago|reply
There's a weird mechanism that punishes posts with comments, because they are deemed "controversial".
Regarding downvoting - just disable it. What makes the echo chamber even worse is that only users with a certain amount of points are able to downvote. So people who have already avoided being downvoted by others get to effectively police who else amasses the required number of points to be able to downvote. It's a vicious cycle where only a group of like minded people will be able to downvote.
[+] [-] LinuxBender|7 years ago|reply
In terms of the community, I would like to see more people recognize fake leading questions that are answered by alt accounts promoting some product. Those don't get flagged fast enough.
I am also not a fan of news site reporters challenging anything that doesn't have several references to back it up. It takes away from discussions and becomes an academic research article. In my experience, links do not equate to facts. They are just more opinions on some other site.
[+] [-] wil421|7 years ago|reply
Another alt account suggested I should be banned for calling out the other user.
[+] [-] corobo|7 years ago|reply
I guess I would like to be able to add a reason to a flag. Always feel a bit weird just hitting flag and hoping there's someone on the other end that can interpret what I'm flagging
[+] [-] patagonia|7 years ago|reply
- downvotes without discourse
- no differentiation between a vote for agree/disagree vs bump/vote-down
[+] [-] kazinator|7 years ago|reply
If you disagree with something which is mere opinion, it is in fact legitimate to downvote it on grounds that it is just someone venting their opinion.
If you disagree with something technically, and you have all the facts straight, it is legitimate to downvote it based on inaccurate content.
So basically, from all angles, disagree-downvoting works fine around here.
[+] [-] krapp|7 years ago|reply
1) This community takes itself far too seriously.
2) The kerning is too damn small, and so are the vote arrows. Why is a forum, whose purpose is to be read, so difficult to read at length?
3) I, an idiot who has contributed nothing of value either to society or to this community, have more karma than Alan Kay[0], proving that karma doesn't measure anything worthwhile and should be done away with.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=alankay1
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|7 years ago|reply
Suppose HN had this simple feature: an editable field associated with your account where you could drop in a piece of CSS. When you're logged in, HN spits out that piece of CSS into the web page, just for you.
[+] [-] yasp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kisstheblade|7 years ago|reply
The comments when all comments seem to be concentrated in a couple of threads rehashing the same issues.
All stories concerning the housing problem in SF. Nobody cares, move on, it's just a city. Yes I know there must be a disproportional amount of SF residents in this forum, but nobody still cares about your housing problems :)
[+] [-] jdeisenberg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acconrad|7 years ago|reply
But I think the crux of the issue is I just don't get how certain low-quality stuff makes the front-page and a lot of high-quality stuff from new gets missed.
I've actually created an RSS feed that grabs anything in New that has gotten at least 1 upvote. It's a lot of content but at least it is going beyond what is displayed on the front page.
[+] [-] masonic|7 years ago|reply
People who don't look beyond the front pages (news or newest) are missing a lot.
[+] [-] BenoitP|7 years ago|reply
If HN were to release the votes dataset to trustworthy AI/ML partners, wonders could be extracted from that. I'm sure I'd be way less interested in what the mob wants to hear about, compared to what is upvoted by antirez, pron, chrisseaton, BrendanEich, just to name a few.
PageRank could be run on that to identify articles that are low noise but key to people at the edge; as well as ALS for a personalized selection.
[+] [-] prairiedock|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masonic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JeanMarcS|7 years ago|reply
Not ideal, but it helps me.
[+] [-] criddell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephenr|7 years ago|reply