
Ask HN: Do HN's karma system penalize dissent? - ainiriand
When comenting and sending opinions you often get penalized when your opinions are not aligned with the majority. Is this an unconscious censorship system? Are we holding ourselves from opinions that can cause confrontation just to not get downvotes?
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brudgers
A while back I decided to treat downvotes as editorial feedback -- to treat
downvotes as a measure of how well I, as an author, connected with my readers
as an audience. Maybe I wasn't clear in saying what I was trying to say, maybe
I was technically wrong, maybe what I said was just stupid or unproductive or
mean [but to be clear there's never been a maybe about a fuck-you-go-ahead-
and-downvote-me-post, I just kinda' stopped making them].

Anyway, I started editing my posts to make them clearer or correct facts or
add supporting details when those things would make them better. Then I
started deleting my posts when they flat out sucked. And then I got better at
realizing a was going to suck as I was writing it and so I got in the habit of
putting down the shovel when my writing was digging a hole and letting it go.

While I was learning all this I still visited parts of the internet where
being an asshole is not only accepted, but often a high form of enterainment,
i.e. I just wasn't an asshole on Hacker News. Anyway, as I came to believe
[perhaps mistakenly] that my writing was improving, I found that writing to
tell people that they are wrong on the internet [see xkcd386] less pleasurable
than writing readers actually like to read.

It's "karma" and HN's karma system tends over time to disincentivize bad
behavior in the context of HN. Explicitly seeking confrontation, is probably
to a first approximation one of those.

[0]:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_o...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg)

[1]:
[http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

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AnimalMuppet
My impression is that you can dissent from the majority (at least on technical
subjects) _as long as you have something informative to say_. If you're going
to say "Haskell is a lousy language", that's not informative. If you're going
to say "Haskell doesn't work well in situations where you really need X, and
such environments exist, for example in Y", then you're giving actual
information, and are (usually) not downvoted.

I must say, however, that it seems to me that this is less true than it was a
year ago. It's still mostly true, but it feels to me like we're starting to
lose some of what makes HN such a worthwhile place.

~~~
ainiriand
I agree 100% in what you say. But there are many articles that do not fall
purely under technological subjects. There are a lot of information about
Apple that causes controversy. If you want to state a position in this matter
you are going to get downvotes unless you please everyone reading. You can't
critizice Steve Jobs saying that the real genius behind Apple was Wozniak and
the designer of the iPod. This is just and example. Another example would be
critizice the FBI or CIA politics or USA foreign relations. Do you understand
my line of thought?

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mbrock
I rarely see well-written comments downvoted to the point where you could talk
about censorship. It doesn't seem like necessarily a problem to incentivize
people with controversial opinions to use wit, politeness, or humor to make
their points.

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LoneWolf
I would say it may depend on the person, at least in my case I say whatever I
think and believe without caring if I get downvoted or not, of course if you
care a lot about that little number in the upper right corner then yes it is
more likely that you hold your opinion back to avoid see it lower. Still I
would say most people do not care about it.

~~~
ainiriand
When that number allows access to certain features or capabilities that you
want, then it becomes important.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
What features are those? As far as I know all you get are: * upvotes at 15 or
so * downvotes at 500 * maybe flagging comes in somewhere?

If it's the former, 15 points is a pretty low bar to meet (and I say this as
someone who has posted their share of heterodox opinions, and outright
shitposts). If it's the latter, aren't you being a little hypocritical in
wanting those, given that you posted this thread?

~~~
ainiriand
Well, I think that trying to get there (500) is going to take a big amount of
politically correct comments. I don't know how much the people in HN want that
utility, but conflicting with someone can garantee you a quite few downvotes.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Have you considered trying to make good solid technical posts about any of a
variety of topics.

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muzani
Some things are deeply emotional and will attract downvotes no matter how
intelligent the group is. E.g. religion, politics, gender issues.

