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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

> Well, in accordance with tradition I will now lay my thoughts down and be down-voted into oblivion for it.

I downvoted you because of your snooty "ugh, I'm going to be downvoted just for posting my opinions" crap. Either post your comment and join the discussion or don't. Don't beg for upvotes.

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I genuinely apologize. I love the HN comments and I wouldn't want to muddy them with stuff that people find distracting. In my defense, I was simply referring to the fact that whenever I voice this opinion anywhere on the internet it is not taken well because of the amount of enthusiasm in the VR community. I was not begging for upvotes. I will try to do this less often.

I know what you mean. Every time I say "the visual quality is really much worse than you'd expect" people downvote me to hell. But those pixels remain very very chunky.

It's a small distinction but I think he's actually saying don't downvote if you disagree, not asking for upvotes.

For another point of view, I personally appreciate the heads up that the opinion being voiced is believed to be unpopular so I can be careful to ensure conclusions I draw are informed ones since there are a variety of easy to make fallacies associated with unintentional groupthink.

I also read it that way, but "What I'm about to say will be controversial, but bear with me for a second..." is probably a better alternative.

I think nowadays all the different types of disclaimers are all the same, and how receptive audiences are just depends on whether the audience read something similar or not 10 pages ago. It's weird.

Sure, but ironically a different kind of unintentional groupthink happens in this case. Some people read "I'm going to be downvoted" and...consciously or not...want to upvote it.

How could we tell if such a disclaimer results in more upvotes or merely fewer downvotes?

And the beatings will continue until morale improves.

literally reddit

It's in the guidelines:

> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted.

his post was thoughtful and interesting and calling him out on a minor rule violation is not.

It's not a matter of it being a rule violation. It's a shitty, pretentious tactic.

Ignoring "minor rule violations" is how major rule violations start slipping through. Internet communities are only as good as the vigilance of the members allows.

Strict enforcement of the rules can kill internet communities. We are not robots. We make mistakes. We can consider context. We can forgive. We can consider the spirit of the law as well as the letter.

These 'rules' are not black-and-white orders handed down from on high. They are guidelines shared with us. We are free to disagree with these rules, to follow or ignore the rules, to enforce the rules or not, and to face the consequences of those decisions. We are thinking and reasoning beings associating freely.

The question shouldn't be, "Was a rule violated?" The question should be, "Does enforcing this rule in this instance help achieve our goal?" In this case, I believe I could make a compelling argument for both sides; but I am not convinced that thinking in absolutes will achieve our shared goal.

you are not a Haskell developer, are you?

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