

Ask PG: Something wrong with HN? - ComputerGuru

I've noticed (past week or so) that comments that are at -4 still have a downvote arrow. They can be downvoted, they remain at minus 4, and (to the best of my knowledge) the poster actually loses karma even though the cap is -4.
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swombat
This has been an intentional change that happened at least a couple of months
ago. The idea is to discourage smart-ass remarks by punishing them more
harshly, but also to discourage piling onto a downvote frienzy by not
displaying the extraordinarily low vote count.

I'm not convinced that works, since the post still goes lighter, so you can
tell how badly it's been downvoted, but that's the intention.

~~~
philk
To be honest I hadn't noticed a problem with too many smart-ass remarks before
the change. Everyone makes poor decisions from time to time and punishing them
more harshly seems unnecessary.

~~~
jrockway
"punish"? As far as I know, you can't cash in karma for money or women. So I
am not sure what you lose when you get downvoted to minus a billion.

~~~
mahmud
I know you're on a comedic roll, but "women" are not objects to be earned,
owned and traded as prizes.

Please mind your language.

~~~
ellyagg
Whether your parent's comment constitutes inappropriate objectification of
women or instead your comment constitutes an insufficient sense of humor, that
debate could fill volumes. Now is not the time for that.

Please stop moralizing.

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Zev
I don't know the exact details (or, this may be all there is to it), but, I've
seen a few people mention that votes below -4 are still counted, but the total
will never be _shown_ anything lower. IIRC, someone compared it to the
(in)famous orange dot experiment.

~~~
tlrobinson
Correct, I believe that behavior is in place to discourage people from piling
on lots of down votes.

~~~
coderdude
Which I don't know how effective that is. There are a lot of people who don't
mind "topping them off" at 5, only to become the 30th person to down-vote
them.

~~~
robryan
Yeah I assumed that the limit was -5 without thinking about it to much. Some
people have put something stupid in really popular threads and lost a stack.

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elblanco
Correct, I've noticed it as well. For example this comment

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432322>

lost me something like 10 karma. There's another one of mine similar.

It was pretty awesome to have my average comment karma go from ~4 to <2 in
like 2 weeks due to 2 "-4" comments that the community disagreed with.

 _sigh_

~~~
AndrewDucker
The comment you linked to would not have been downvoted particularly because
people disagreed with it, but because it didn't really add anything to the
discussion. A reply like that doesn't really produce good discussion, and a
lot of people on Hacker News try to discourage that.

~~~
elblanco
At the time there was lots of handwaving, but nobody was bringing forward the
obvious, when somebody owes you north of six figures, you sue them. Not sure
why that didn't contribute anything, but that's what most rational adults do
in that situation. It certainly wasn't part of the thread until then.

In my experience, a two word response containing an obvious course of action
that everybody is overlooking like that would have either been downvoted to
-4+ or upvoted to 30. It's a crap shoot.

Not sure how suing somebody who owes you that kind of money requires a long
exposition to explain. The subsequent comment asking for alternatives was
upvoted into positive territory that same day it was posted, without adding
anything else and with no responses in the form of alternatives.

 _edit_

similar, newer comments <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432131>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432131>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432612>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432133> were not similarly downvoted
(and a couple were actually upvoted) yet add no more to the discussion than
mine (since they came after my comment and recommend the same thing, by
definition, they do not add anything "new") and probably should have just been
responses to my original comment in the form of adding specificity or methods.

It's not the downvotes per se that I mind. People can feel free to disagree
that a lawsuit is a bad course of action when somebody owes you $126,000. I
think they are wrong, but whatever. It's not like any of the 10 people who hit
the little down arrow could be bothered to type "I disagree with this
because...". But that people continued to downvote long after my suggestion
hit -4 shows that allowing downvotes after hitting -4 doesn't work. At that
point, I'm just being targeted. Particularly when essentially the same
comments were untouched or upvoted. If the thread hadn't moved off the front
page rather quickly I'm sure I would have taken more hits.

Okay HN community! I got it! I should have provided half a dozen words telling
them to sue instead of 3! Clearly that's the community standard as the linked
comments demonstrate.

I now realize I'm now edw519 or patio11, where every 3 word comment gets half
a dozen upvotes. Perhaps I should put some numbers next to my handle?

~~~
philwelch
"At the time there was lots of handwaving, but nobody was bringing forward the
obvious, when somebody owes you north of six figures, you sue them. Not sure
why that didn't contribute anything, but that's what most rational adults do
in that situation. It certainly wasn't part of the thread until then."

I'm consistently amused at how people who get their comments downvoted
complain about the downvoting by rephrasing the point they were trying to make
in order to make it clearer and more articulate. I do it, too. The joke is
that if the original post expressed your point as clearly as the complaint
post, we wouldn't get downvoted in the first place.

Writing for human consumption is a frustrating and inexact task. You might
sound like a complete asshole without meaning to. I, in particular, often have
that problem.

~~~
elblanco
Usually if nobody understands it after the first two tries, I just say it
louder, then slower, then louder and slower.

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philk
Rather interestingly I just noticed a rather extreme example.

This comment had lost its author 75 points of karma by the time I made this
post and still shows up as -4:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444511>

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ck2
Since there's a chance PG will look at this thread and my email has been
ignored, if you or a mod could restore my _ck_ account I'd be grateful (and
disable this one, I don't care about lost "karma").

I still have no idea why the _ck_ account was disabled in the first place.

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georgieporgie
My thoughts on 'karma' or simple up/down rating systems:

A few years ago, I discovered a site called Reddit. After awhile, I realized
there were comments on the site, and began reading them. While a few added to
my enjoyment and understanding of the articles, I have to admit that what
really attracted me were the pun threads.

Well, I thought I would attempt this interesting variety of interaction. I
began to post my thoughts on subjects. I was surprised to see that my well
thought-out comments were getting downvoted. Sometimes quite strongly.

Hmm... I reexamined my arguments and how I conveyed them. I experimented with
different ways of expressing myself. However, most of the time when I made a
comment which I thought was a bit insightful, I would see negative karma.

Finally, I changed my approach. Instead of thinking about a subject and
writing what I thought of it, I instead peppered the site with knee-jerk,
humorous comments.

My greatest success, by the way, was a one-line "your mom" joke which earned
me something like 270 karma for a couple of seconds' work.

I found the worst problem to be in the subreddits. As I quickly learned,
subreddits are inhabited by people who want their views validated. Even
correcting dangerous misconceptions around basic physics would get harsh
downvotes. Meanwhile, comments which perpetuated the status quo of ignorance
were celebrated.

Up/down community rating does not provide any sort of legitimacy to posters.
It only provides popularity. As one who doesn't take political advice from
movie stars (for example), I find it appalling that this system is spreading.

As for the specifics of downvoting repeatedly, this is simple lynch mob
mentality. A -1 rating has just as much power to say, "we don't like the way
you express yourself," as a -10 rating. The only thing that -10 adds is a
reflection of groupthink and people venting angst.

------
noelchurchill
Test it: Down vote this post as much as possible.

~~~
noelchurchill
And up vote this one to balance the karma

