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Comment by plugnburn | Hacker News Reader

I honestly think the entire idea of downvoting available only for selected users creates a mass conciousness manipulation tool. When some "authority" decides what's good and what's bad.

Why can't I use the downvote button? It either must be available to everyone, or not available at all.

And if you, HN founders, are afraid that newcomers can be smarter than you, then remove the ability to downvote altogether. Whoever dislikes a post, can just ignore it.

P.S. The entire user rating system here contradicts the resource name. Hackers do not believe in karma.

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I honestly think the entire idea of downvoting available only for selected users creates a mass conciousness manipulation tool.

Downvoting is available to anyone who has 500 karma points or more and is not for the selected few. That ability has to be earned so to speak..

Do you realize that you just said, in essence, that you have to be popular in order to dissent? That's like saying only celebrities should be allowed to voice their opinion.

You can post a dissenting comment with 0 points. You just can't contribute a silent, negative assessment of a comment until you have 500 points.

I'm not sure it takes popularity to make comments that average upvotes either (I would attribute my thousands of fake points more to persistence than to popularity...).

I find it comical that the number is 500. It used to be much lower (Google searches show that).

HN keeps raising the bar in order to limit the # of people who can downvote. I would be genuinely interested to know what % of users that actually is.

The only way to get a large number of upvotes is to be lucky enough to post something at just the right time, or to make a comment on a controversial topic that most of the HN audience will agree with. Be careful, though, that you make the right political statement, though, because otherwise you will get downvoted and lose karma.

The story for most of us, though, is that we're just a second-class citizen here at HN.

in essence, that you have to be popular in order to dissent?

No, I am not saying that. And if I understand the dissent correctly being used in the sentence thus, hold or express opinions that are at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially expressed, you are already doing that to my post as an example and you didn't have to be popular to express such an opinion.:)

Incorrect.

Voting is a form of expression, and a comment has much less weight than a downvote in terms of ranking.

The only way to be able to express that type of opinion is by complying with the masses long enough to hoard enough karma. So, yes, only the "popular" people get that power.

< you have to be popular in order to dissent?>

Reaching a karma threshold does not signify popularity, but it can indicate that the user has somewhat of a track record of likely being able to engage in civil, informed commentary.

So again, is this Hacker News or Karma-Jerkin-Conformist News?

It seems that in order to "earn" that "ability" one has to praise Lisp, Rust and Haskell and publicly hate JS. Isn't that mass conciousness manipulation?

The selected few or a crowd thinking the same thought - what's the actual difference? The only difference is that in the second case all fresh and independent ideas get downvoted much faster.

Any karma-based resource suffers from this plague.

Ochlocracy at its worst.

There's no actual challenge in getting upvotes, the two easiest ways are: * make smart well-thought-out well-backed-up posts * submit interesting links

In the main the karma and downvoting works pretty well here. It's one of the few places it does.

If something has had enough downvotes to go invisible it's nearly always because offensive, smartass, or spam.

The problem with downvote for everyone, including sock puppet accounts, is it becomes Reddit: "I disagree, have a downvote"

> If something has had enough downvotes to go invisible it's nearly always because offensive, smartass, or spam.

Why does someone has more right than me to decide what's offensive, smartass or spam? Either leave that to the administration, or give that to everyone.

> The problem with downvote for everyone, including sock puppet accounts, is it becomes Reddit: "I disagree, have a downvote"

YMMV but I'm experiencing absolutely the same here.

Btw, when I agree, I upvote. Why can't I downvote when I disagree?

> Why does someone has more right than me to decide what's offensive, smartass or spam? Either leave that to the administration, or give that to everyone.

Exactly my point. "Karma Privilege"

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