Ask HN: Why recent post “What do you hate most about HN?” downvoted to oblivion?

[sv12l]

Referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18184725

Was it because word 'hate' is too strong for HN to take? I thought HN is quite a mature community to take these kind of questions. It could've seen as a way of improving itself, but instead it's moved out of HN/Ask HN home page quickly, didn't even stay 9 hrs in 'Ask HN' page when posts older than 2 days are still floating.

[kazinator]

It wasn't; submissions can't be downvoted. It's sitting at +32 as I write this.

[sp332]

Submissions that hit 40 comments before they hit 40 upvotes are heavily penalized in the rankings.

[smt88]

The wording was pointlessly presumptive. Many HN users likely hate nothing about it -- hence they're still using it.

A better formulation would've been something like, "What one change would improve HN most?"

But even then, the topic has been beaten to death. If you don't like HN, it's easy to access the data to create your own UI. Many others have already.

[Thetawaves]

That implies the UI is the problem - and that is likely not the case. Upper management and community dynamics are the larger issues - and cannot be fixed by simply reskinning the data.

[kazinator]

"What do you like least about HN?"