On: The New Apple Advantage

[Anechoic]

>Could we possibly, as a community, just agree that a blacklist of Gruber posts is good for us? How would we begin such a discussion?

This submittal is #1 on the front page with 110 net points. I think the community has spoken.

[socratic → Anechoic]

You seem to have missed an earlier part of my comment. Because HN requires very high karma thresholds before enabling downvotes, net points are an extremely asymmetric measure.

However, one possible solution would be to enable downvotes, but only on controversial posts such as Gruber's. That would enable both sides of the community to speak.

How would you feel about such a measure?

EDIT: Controversial might be defined objectively as the ratio of upvotes to flags, or similar. People regularly comment on the fact that they have flagged Gruber's posts, but I presume that moderators currently just ignore such flags because the content isn't offensive, against the rules, and so on. For that matter, it would be interesting to know how many flags are currently on this post.

[Steko → socratic]

How hard is it for you to not click on something you don't want to read?

I see hundreds of posts here every day that I don't click on, some in the top 5. I don't start campaigns to censor these posts, I assume people upvote them because they find value in them. Obviously people find value in Gruber's posts if they are being upvoted.

So here's the suggestion again: don't click on it bro. Problem solved.

[bane → Steko]

It'd be better if something I did want to read was in its place.

[illumin8 → bane]

Yeah, but you still wanted to read it badly enough that you came here to comment 3 posts deep.

It's funny how someone can hate a certain type of article so badly that they will read it and comment about how badly they hate it. I mean, why go to all the effort?

[bane → illumin8]

I know right? It's like every time I see a post to daringfireball, I open it, hoping for some interesting reading -- Gruber is actually a very capable writer. And on occasion I do find something enlightening. But the rest of the time it's like a Rick Roll...with the HN collective pointing at me going, "HA! Got you!". And I guess that's gotten under my skin after a while since I can't understand why these Gruber posts are tolerated, even encouraged in some cases, while links to cats dancing or actual rick rolls are discouraged.

[Steko → bane]

Fact: HN would cease to exist if everything a minority didn't want to see was blacklisted.

[pessimizer → Steko]

Fact: It isn't necessary for a majority to want something for it to make the top slot on HN.

[BlazingFrog → socratic]

> but only on controversial posts such as Gruber's

You do realize that, by definition, "controversial" is a subjective notion, right?