
Ask HN: What is going on with downvotes (lately)? - dogma1138
I Know that this might be a contentious issue but I&#x27;ve seen this happening too much recently where factually correct comments are downvoted to the point of a flag kill without any discussion.<p>Some of them may &quot;violate&quot; the rules of courteous discourse or be antagonistic, but often they are not, they are simply correct factual statement with merit to the discussion and for some reason they are killed pretty quickly.<p>What brought this up is this comment https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12625479 in a recent thread https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12623738 and I while on many other occasions I could some how convince myself of a reason for for the downvotes I could not find a reason for why anyone would downvote this one other than a few intentionall but misguided or even unintentional downvotes and a herd mentalitly then taking over to &quot;clean up&quot; the thread.<p>If anyone is wondering the poster is 100% correct, you can buy lab and machine shop equipment on the cheap, these can be bought at a penny on the dollar rates and sometimes even for &quot;free&quot;&#x2F;Tip as the sellers just need some one to take it off their hands.<p>A lot of sellers are also clueless about what is being sold, it&#x27;s not hard to find listing of &quot;misc equipment HP&quot; and see 5,000$+ worth of old HP electronic testing equipment going for only few 100&#x27;s $ on some lot on Ebay or a local listing (bankruptcy&#x2F;disposal auctions are quite a commonplace to find those).<p>It&#x27;s not hard to find machine shop gear like Lathes, Press Drills and other heavy duty stuff that while might be old is still functional and fit for purpose for pretty much the transport costs.<p>I don&#x27;t know if this actually &quot;qualifies&quot; for &quot;Ask HN&quot; but I just felt that this needs some discussion, while HN isn&#x27;t reddit it has evolved into a discussion community and as a community there needs to be an internal discussion when something appears to be wrong.
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gus_massa
The comment is [dead] not [flagged]. I guess that some automatic system killed
it. The previous comment of the same user is also [dead]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625432)
, and some of the previous comments have many downvotes. My guess is that one
of the previous comments triggered some filter that autokill all the newer
comments.

For this kind of questions it's better to ask the mods hn@ycombinator.com ,
they usually answers very soon by email, and the threads sometimes are
unnoticed.

Meanwhile, I vouched the latest comment, and now it's undead. But for a
permanent solution contact the mods.

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internaut
I've seen this too. I find myself frequently highlighting comments to read
them. Usually they are not trolls, which is a signal something is going wrong.

My guess is that the hivemind is becoming too strong, strong and filled with
sensitive animals. Any hint of disagreement or negativity attracts censure and
this has the potential to kill the forum. There has to be a middle ground for
any sort of constructive debate.

My sincere belief is that geeks aren't likely to be like this, I suspect we
typically have a higher pain threshold and it is another cohort that are
responsible for a more touchy-feely atmosphere.

Perhaps there should be some kind of fizz-buzz test? Like a capcha for
emotion!

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brudgers
The |vouch| link next to dead comments allows people with sufficient karma to
correct what they feel is unjust.

The |contact| link at the bottom of most pages allows anyone to bring issues
to the attention of Hacker News moderators. They tend to be responsive.

