warning meta-comment, queasy people that can't handle introspection should stop here

There is a constant meta-discussion on HN, with HN being on top of course, that social news aggregation sites tend to devolve along the following lattice, HN->reddit->digg->4chan. Various signals are referenced that this is happening, typically in the form of people behaving outside of the established site or community guidelines. HN's guidelines for example state that this post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011258 runs counter to the guideline:

>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.

So not only was the post counter to guidelines and very clearly not a topical HN post, it was a repost, just a short while after appearing on reddit's main page. In addition, the title:

> How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room

(while it is the original article title) blows threw at least half of the guidelines for submissions.

I added the meta-comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011258

which was immediately downvoted to something like -5 at one point and all of my subsequent comments, even topically related and without violating any HN guidelines were immediately hammered. Some additional people responded to my meta-comment, all non-trollish, one guy is now +8 and another is enjoying time at 0. This is schizophrenic.

The guidelines for voting on HN (at least at one time but I can't find any such guidelines anymore) clearly state(d) that upvotes should be for comments that create interesting discussions and should not be due to agreement with the poster. The converse should also be true, essentially, downvotes should be for trolls. But since I was meta-commenting, something that has been well documented and relatively cherished on this site as a way of maintaining quality and preventing the typical downtrend of other aggregator sites...my comments shouldn't have been downmodded to begin with. (I can almost guarantee that this comment will reach at least -3 at some point for example).

To make it worse, the downmodders aren't actually providing any interesting commentary either, they don't even post a rebuke or a comment chastising me for violating some imagined HN guideline because they know that they have no grounds to do so and are only downvoting out of malice and disagreement.

So, on the same day that I meta-commented that non-topical-HN posts that show up on reddit and immediately show up on HN right after that and then got my ass handed to me for pointing that out (of course with no commentary), an actual post regarding reddit->HN posting shows up and even offers a technical solution to solve this problem shows up not only on HN in the new bin, but on the front page near the top.

So of course I meta-meta-meta-comment that this is rapidly becoming ridiculous. It's not the slide to reddit that the HN community should be worried about, it's the slide to schizophrenic insanity.

There, so that's the topical explanation since the pithier ones didn't satisfy you.

So as not to just complain about the problem, but to offer solutions:

HN is a news agreegator, but more importantly it tries to drive interesting and informative discussion. I believe that the modding system as is creates an environment where the HN community is slowly moving towards an echo-chamber-like groupthink a la reddit or digg or some other aggregator. The reasons for this are actually relatively few and are largely addressed in guidelines, but otherwise ignored by the community at large:

a. When people post otherwise interesting comments, their mod score is more a function of opinion popularity than a driver of further commentary.

b. When scores for a comment are absurdly high (anything over +10 in my book), it drives people to also post comments that are similar. Since comments with high scores appear to be a function of popularity and not discussion drivers, those are the types of comments we are starting to see, and the responses tend to be not sources of discussion and debate but rather "yeah, that was a popular comment right there" followed by more upmods.

c. When scores for a comment are absurdly low (anything below -3 in my book), it drives people to not want to post. Even if they might otherwise provide an interesting viewpoint that drives further discussion, even discussion in absolute disagreement with the OP.

The result is that the only people who are posting are people that craft comments that fit the group-think popularity metric and are not necessarily drivers of interesting discussion.

I'm not saying HN is there yet, but I'm certainly seeing the same signals I saw on /. and digg and reddit. They each tried to address the problem in different ways. /. uses a karma system where a poster can get a karma score, but also a comment meta-tag "funny, insightful, etc.". This creates relative freedom for people to post a variety of comments that drive completely unique kinds of discussion depending on the meta-tag, it also addresses the severe lack of a sense of humor at HN. digg and reddit, on the other hand, tried to diversify topically, hoping that technical people would hang out in /r/technical and politically minded people would hang out in /r/politics etc.

In general, I'm not terribly satisfied with the commentary /. provides, and I think both digg and reddit's approaches have proven to not work once their respective communities grew too large.

My proposal is that HN institutes the following modding rules:

1. New posts are scored 0. The scoring seems to work this way anyway, so the +1 next to new posts isn't really correct anyway. I don't know off-hand what the algorithm is that determines when a post is counted towards karma, but it's not immediately clear to the user. This also encourages better comments that can earn points by driving discussion.

2. If a person is to be up-modded beyond some small number, say +3, then the new up-modder must post at least some comment. This provides insight into why people might find a particular comment good and worthy of praise. The number of times I've seen a 4 word snarky comment with a mod-score of +43 is far too common. If a comment deserves that many points, it better be so good that people can be bothered to at least say "I agree with that, that's just like the time I...". And write a sentence or two. This also prevents the reddit/digg effect of somebody making a statement they know is popular with the community just to get mod points. I've noticed this starting to happen on HN. It's the unpopular opinions that create the better discussion IMHO -- and these are just the kinds to receive copious down-mods.

3. If a person is to be down-modded below -1, then the down-modder must post a reason for their downvote. This provides insight into why people might find a particular comment poor and worthy of scorn. The number of times I've seen perfectly good, interesting and informative comments (and yes, I'm excluding myself from this) with a score of -11 or something is likewise far too common. If a comment is so poor that a -1 score doesn't clarify to the author that it was a poor comment, then I think the author deserves a reason why. This prevents downvotes on pure disagreement, or for interesting but otherwise unpopular opinions. And large numbers of downvotes will have appropriate commentary as to why that opinion was hit so hard. This prevents the inevitable "why was I downvoted for my perfectly valid commentary?" which the guidelines do admonish. Rather than some nebulous guideline though, I think this should be part of the logic of the site. Futhermore, if a comment is to get a very low score, say less than -10, then it should just be auto-flagged. Anything that poorly scored is likely to be offensive anyways.

4. As a general rule, meta-comments should be allowed and encouraged. This helps HN self-police, and also can provide it's own interesting meta-commentary and meta-discussion. Point of fact, both of my heavily down-modded comments received a number of replies in the form of serious meta-discussion that would have been interesting to flesh out and explore, but the down-mod frenzy drove possible discussion away like a case of bad B.O.. Yet I lost probably a dozen karma points for my troubles.

Rules 2 and 3 in particular are designed to force people to craft comments that drive discussion (which, as I understand it, is the point of HN) and not drive popularity. Combined they also prevent a different kind of social effect, one I like to call the wikipedia effect, that of people that feel it is their god-given right to arbitrate some self-selected rules of the community they inhabit and prevent all newcomers from playing in their playground. More than anything, I think this kind pf pathetic "narcissistic-pseudo-moderator" effect harms a site more than anything else and makes it an unwelcome place for new voices. Guidelines against such behavior are one thing, but simply making that philosophy part of the function of the site I believe would be far more useful.

There, that's my 2cents worth.