

Tell HN: Good comments get voted down regularly - andrewtbham

I recently had a comment down voted and i was very surprised, because i know about the topic.<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2557647<p>here is another example of an accurate, interesting comment, from the same thread by someone else that was downvoted.<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2557599<p>1) I encourage more people to cut on showdead and judge for yourself.<p>2) I think there needs to be more accountability in downvoting.  they need to state a reason or show us who it was... or something.  i suspect people have ulterior motives for downvoting.<p>Edit: My comment has been voted up since I posted.
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brudgers
Specifically neither of your example posts demonstrates knowledge of the topic
because you provide only a basic answer unsupported by relevant details,
rationales or examples.

Whenever you believe that your comments contained insightful and relevant
contributions to the discussion, consider the downvotes as a response to your
choice of language, a lack of logical continuity, poor writing mechanics, or a
general failure to make your point clearly and in keeping with the HN
community's expectations.

In other words, consider downvotes of your good ideas as constructive feedback
and edit your work to be consistent with community goals.

------
rlmw
Your second example includes 'M$' which is a rather childish and antagonistic
way to abbreviate. The tone of the first comment seems to be a little immature
as well.

I'm not trying to have a go at you personally, but I've found HN to be a
community that generally values mature behaviour, and rewards/discourages with
karma.

~~~
andrewtbham
i appreciate the feedback, and that does makes some sense.

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zerohp
Neither of these are good comments. They aren't interesting or insightful.
They are also written in a childish manner that is not normally accepted on
this site or in the professional hacker community (except perhaps on IRC).

In my opinion, down voting works just fine and complaining about it usually
makes the author look even worse than the original comments may have.

~~~
andrewtbham
I agree, M$ is immature and antagonistic.

I don't understand how the other part of the comment is not interesting.
Plenty of fish, is as far as I know, the only good example of a consumer
startup that has huge traction (besides Microsoft's own sites). I think that's
interesting and would be interested to know if there are any more, which might
have come up if the thread wasn't downvoted.

Actually my comment was later upvoted. I'm not complaining, so much as trying
to understand.

------
tokenadult
I defer to the site founder on all issues of site governance. I have found HN
largely to be a worthwhile website for my 911 days as a registered user, and
my interest is mostly to make sure that the site founder and the members of
his volunteer editor ("curator") team

<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

continue to enjoy the site and find it useful for themselves. They are doing a
good job, and I want them to have incentive to keep up the good work.

When pg wrote his recent post "Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696>

He wrote, "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean
and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted."

That's still the key issue. Anything that results in lower scores for mean,
dumb, or other bad comments is something helpful to all readers of HN.

It looks like you have received an explanation from a couple of other
participants about why the comments you asked about, as posted, can look
either mean or dumb (or both) even if they are factually correct. That is the
art of posting here, to post with correct information, a civil tone, and
thoughtful use of language. It's kind of other participants to suggest some
ways to improve those posts. Usually people just downvote (or upvote) to
indicate their judgment of post quality. It happens that I didn't read that
thread originally at all, so I am still digesting the context of the comments
you asked about.

