Ask HN: Skills learned from participating in HN voting?

[diN0bot]

I find myself thinking before I down-vote. Haha thinking--seriously, though, can internet interactions really teach self-awareness? My first impulse is to down-vote to confer disagreement, or to strategically nudge my own comment higher in comparison. I have never followed this impulse on HN. Instead, I have only down-voted a few times against obviously "mean" comments. I think HN has helped me learn this kind of self-awareness, this ability to pause before being defensive and take the peaceful route.

Why is this? Why do other people refrain from negative voting (for I see many more 1 and 2 point comments than 0 point)? Does comment filtering make this seem like a nicer community than it is? Is it in fact a nice community, maybe because of tit-for-tat or mature participants? Has my more laid back participation or its less technical nature changed the dynamic? Did the delayed down-vote capabilities matter?

To make this more relevant for web startups: Would any small community retain this pleasant culture? Can large communities retain this, too? Is it the overseeing of pg, who is more than a random moderator, that nudges things nicely? Are there hidden filterings and correctings under the covers that keeps things nice on top? Is this culture or UI or circumstance?

Thanks.

[tokenadult]

The culture is definitely important here. I learn how to downvote (to indicate a comment that doesn't contribute to the culture or to the discussion at hand) and when to downvote (when a problematic comment is first posted, rather than piling it on later) from other participants. Now that I've been acculturated, I wouldn't dream of downvoting to indicate disagreement. If I don't have an actual comment to write out to indicate my disagreement, I just let it go. There is good clash of ideas here in lots of threads.

The other thing that keeps downvoting from being too frequent is the karma-dependent ability to flag questionable posts that may violate the guidelines.

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Flagging evidently does draw the attention of some "supermoderators" to the post, and they deal with it according to community standards they have agreed to. That's enough for me.

In general, I say "Good job!" to the people who run this site, who are thinking carefully about how to get both the technical and cultural issues right. Inasmuch as they don't seem to desire to expand the scope of discussion here beyond HACKER news

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

it seems to me that some entrepreneurs could attempt to transfer some of the technology and some of the culture, with appropriate permissions and credit of course, to sites with discussion of other issues. That would be lighting a candle against the current darkness of much online discussion.

[diN0bot → tokenadult]

but how do you learn. there is little meta-discussion of the voting rules.

[rodrigo → diN0bot]

I learn by imitation, sometimes I've felt like adding a great punchline to a discussion, then I question myself if itll add value. Most times it doesnt, so I dont post it.

EDIT I also like that theres not a lot of meta-discussion, it would make feel a little commite-like. This community its a great example of self-regulation without making too much fuss about it.

[tokenadult → diN0bot]

but how do you learn. there is little meta-discussion of the voting rules.

The one or two comments of mine that have been downvoted gave me a lot of clues.

[gravitycop]

Another idea is the prisoner's dilemma. By upvoting more than downvoting, one helps spread a culture of karma generosity that might improve one's own karma score.

[diN0bot → gravitycop]

word. i think you're right that taking the long view is beneficial, especially with a community mature enough or long lasting enough to take the long view.

i once looked into the prisoner's dilemma a while back. there are at least two stable systems (for repeated encounters): tit-for-tat (i'll do what you do); and all defect (i always lie so that i'm never the sucker). the former, which can result in cooperation, yields higher payouts for everyone, while the later, which results in no cooperation, yields lower payouts for everyone. even though an individual can "win" in both scenarios, you win more when others win more. neat, yeah? that's like birds in a flock looking up every once in a while for predators rather than greedily eating steady and always relying on another bird to callout a warning.

[gravitycop]

Why do other people refrain from negative voting

Downvoting is automatically limited to the total number of upvotes a given user has made. If you have made 10 upvotes, and you try to make 11 downvotes, the 11th downvote will not stick. If you then make one more upvote, then a downvote after that would stick.

[eru]

'or to strategically nudge my own comment higher in comparison.'

I have an opposite urge, to upvote other comments. So that my comment seems to deserve more upvotes in comparison.

[diN0bot → eru]

haha. It is true that I tend to upvote comments when they have low points. When they have more than a dozen it seems like the point has already been made.

One thing I've wondered is why these voting systems tend towards accumulation rather than averaging ratings. Or perhaps could use some kind of logarithmic accumulation.