

Ask HN: Has the HN Community changed for the worse? - wuliwong

Increasingly I have felt a hesitation to post my thoughts on HN as it seems that more often now than in the past my comments are down-voted because of a disagreement with my opinion rather than a reflection on the quality or &quot;rudeness&quot; of my comment&#x27;s content. Sometimes I can be rude, and down-votes are not unexpected in those cases of course.<p>Some possible reasons for this are:<p>1. I&#x27;ve become more sensitive.
2. The quality of my comments have gone down.
3. More people are using the down-vote privilege to express simple disagreement.<p>Of course, this is not a complete list.<p>#1 is unlikely, I am doubtful that my personality has changed much over 3 years. #2 is possible, as I get more comfortable on HN I am more likely to post poorly thought out or emotional comments. My theory behind how #3 could be the reason is that the type of user that is gaining the down-vote privilege is changing.<p>Regardless if this is real or imagined I am certainly feeling this way and wondering if others feel this way. A key point is that this is not the way I felt about HN initially. I&#x27;ve been on HN for about 3 years, this negative sentiment has been growing for roughly the last year.<p>If the reason for the change is #3, what could be a solution? I really love the site and would hate to wind up not using it. One idea I had was for more visibility given to the down-votee. Up-voting affects the placement of a comment on the page (i think?) and ticks the little score counter but down-voting can completely remove a comment or at least make it harder to read. Down-voting is a more powerful action (vs up-voting) and it is an ability only given to a limited number of users. It might be time to try to implement some sort of repercussion for &quot;misusing&quot; this ability or to redefine what proper use of this ability is. I have not thought this through from a product perspective at all, I think the first step is just to see if others feel this way or I am imagining it.
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minimaxir
A few months ago, I did a statistical analysis of all the HN comments and
found that the quantity of comments in increasing while the quality of
comments is slightly decreasing: [http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-
about-comments/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/)

Although, after going through your comment history, most of the comments
you've been downvoted on have been downvoted for ad-hominem attacks, which is
a fair response. (e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815489))

~~~
sfsylvester
Out of genuine curiosity, is there a site whose community's comment quality is
actually increasing?

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Someone1234
I've raised the same concerns before, but PG's opinion on the topic is that
the downvote arrow is there to indicate disagreement and if people want to
kneejerk downvote something, they're right to do so.

This is the opposite of Reddit where, in theory, the downvote is not meant to
be used to indicate disagreement but rather low quality comments (not that
that works at all).

The problem is that both HN and Reddit hide comments that get too downvoted
(dead/hidden respectively). And also re-ordered to the bottom (further
hidden). That means that getting downvoted has a real consequence, so
unpopular opinions are pushed out of HN's dialog and the site becomes a
uniculture (just like Reddit).

Then HN has flag kills which are like "super downvotes." I've seen a lot of
perfectly reasonable comments flag killed for no real reason (just turn on
dead in your settings). In particular when they're flying in the face of the
site's culture/popular opinion.

In an ideal world people who run these sites need to sit down and make up
their minds, for real, if downvotes are for disagreement OR to flag "bad"
comments. If they're just for disagreement then stop hiding/killing low rated
comments, that makes no sense...

Also the karma score on your profile (and unlocking functionality) is a
massive hornets nest that has many of the same issues described above.

Ultimately the point of the downvote and the punishment/rewards on the site
are completely at odds with one another. People just haven't thought it
through at all, unless their ultimate goal is to wind up with some kind of
uniculture.

~~~
minimaxir
> _Then HN has flag kills which are like "super downvotes." I've seen a lot of
> perfectly reasonable comments flag killed for no real reason (just turn on
> dead in your settings). In particular when they're flying in the face of the
> site's culture/popular opinion._

[dead] comments are different from [flagkilled] comments. [dead] comments are
usually from accounts that have been hellbanned.

I've very, very rarely seen a comment get flagkilled.

~~~
brudgers
Flagkilled comments are probably rare because flagging a comment is not an
obvious option and the down vote overlaps the reasons a comment might be
flagged.

------
brudgers
The only interpretation that is worth having is #2 because it leads to better
writing.

[My Standard Answer]

Take downvotes as editorial feedback. Perhaps your point wasn't clearly made
and backed up with examples, references and sound rationales. Perhaps your
tone was inappropriate in terms of the larger community.

Realize that even if you make your point clearly and with reasoned support, it
may be directed at the wrong audience and that also prevents a comment from
being well written and is something that can be improved.

It also explains why #3 isn't a valid approach. Yes there are more people with
the downvote. That's just a fact about the audience [nevermind that there are
even more people with the upvote to offset them when a comment is well
written].

Looking at your two recent net negative comments. Both are poor quality.

Some tips:

    
    
       + When making a first comment, the word "argue" 
         should be considered a bit of a red flag. "As
         I understand your argument" is about the only
         thing that consistently turns out well.
    
       + Use "you" with caution.
     

As a final word, I try to recognize when I am firing something off in angry
response to _Another Stupid Thing on the Internet™_. I often let myself
complete the thought even though it's low quality by my standards.

Then I often delete my comment. It hits my average karma, but it makes me a
better writer, I think.

~~~
wuliwong
I'm not sure why an interpretation which would lead to a better HN wouldn't
also be worth having?

I just flat out disagree with your analysis of my first two "net negative"
comments. But I doubt anything would be more boring to read than the two
people discussing the quality of a couple of comments.

~~~
brudgers
More good content including thoughtful and informative comments is what Will
make HN better. Complaints about internet points don't. Despite drive by
disagreement being in the better half of the set of all internet comments, it
doesn't usually meet the norms for good comments on HN.

~~~
wuliwong
What I'm driving at is a product level change. I think some of the product
changes like the addition of "Show HN" did come from grassroots requests from
the users.

I could be mistaken but I see that given a certain product the quality of
writing form the users is going to be relatively constant. There could be some
influx of users (from some marketing, PR or viral effect) that changes the
landscape but I don't expect anything like this to occur in HN in the near
future. Therefore, I think to change the quality of comments the product needs
some level of change. The product change would either have to change the
motivations for the current users or attract other users who write higher
quality comments.

I also thing you undersell the "internet points". Without some sort of karma
system you would likely have something like 4Chan or the comments in Youtube.
Further, reducing my statements down to a squabble about "internet points" is
reductionist and inaccurate. The larger effect is that down-votes can
literally remove a comment.

All in all, I think the current mechanics support passive aggressive
interactions between users and penalize overt disagreements. I think most
people would agree that the former isn't a good thing but the latter is where
I would imagine there are widely differing viewpoints.

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bjourne
Yes, there is a fair amount of drive-by-downvoting. I sometimes comment on the
political topics so I expect some down voting. Lord knows I have enough
internet points as it is. :)

But it bugs me a lot when someone writes a detailed comment in a thread about
a programming language (e.g Erlang) about its flaws (eg. poor Windows support)
and its get down voted to light gray even if the content of the post is
completely factual.

Such comments takes a long time to write (much longer than just writing your
opinion on some political topic), so when people are down voted for that they
become less likely to write such informative, technical comments.

Which is a problem for me because I read them with interest and I don't want
people to stop writing them because of to much down voting.

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brd
I'd agree that down-voting has become more prevalent and is unfortunately
often used to show disagreement. I think one problem is that HN is likely
acquiring a lot of redditors where votes in general are not nearly as
meaningful (especially down-votes).

Reddit is, in my opinion, a place mostly for fluff (humor, pop culture
content, etc) while HN is a place we seek out for information and discussion.
Disagreement only down-votes definitely suppress discussion so I'm all for
seeing HN experiment with curbing down-vote usage.

I could see "controversial down-votes" being an interesting method for
identifying people abusing their down-vote privilege. If a comment gets a mix
of up-votes and down-votes its likely that the down-votes are disagreement
driven so that could be an easy place to start.

edit: To emphasize the point, this comment has been down-voted at least once

~~~
brudgers
Downvoting for disagreement is beneficial because it often stands in as proxy
for an inflamed response. A down vote might be better for the community than a
flame war or accusations of trolling or wasting energy trying to convince
people that they are wrong.

There are times when the community is better for point->counterpoint and times
when it isn't. When I suspect it won't be after I have written what I am
inclined to write, I down vote. It's often the best among my alternatives
after avoiding threads likely to produce crap comments, trolling, and
everything I can find elsewhere on the internet.

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kazinator
Obviously, the downvote count on your posting cannot be caused by you having
become more sensitive. Only if that sensitivity is reflected in some posting
behavior: like editing your posting to complain about downvotes or whatever.

~~~
wuliwong
Good point. #1 was obviously wrong, I guess I just put it there to give more
meat to the post.

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jordsmi
IMO every community has changed for the worse.

Nothing is as good as it was last year, and as sites grow they fill with
people who act different than the past members.

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DanBC
If anything less people downvote to disagree. There's a subset of users who
strongly disagree with downvote to disagree.

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probinso
It was better next year

