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Comment by erichocean | Hacker News Reader

I do the same on HN (self-censor, constantly) and have come to peace with it. I don't submit over 80% of the HN posts I write, and I immediately delete anything that gets one down vote. Furthermore, if I do post something that gets a down vote, I update my "don't post" probabilities to match, meaning I post even less.

I'd encourage you to try and not feel bad about the situation. It's not your job to provide insight or knowledge to others, or even just plain old participation. If you don't like the response you get, just keep doing what you're doing: don't post. It's their loss.

P.s. If this comment gets down-voted, which my filters tell me is "highly likely", I'll just leave this P.s. comment instead of doing a full delete like I usually do. Hopefully you'll have read it by then. :)

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I on the other hand assume that random downvotes are part of the system and don't worry about them overly much. I also don't check on my post history except to see if there are replies to my comments.

I have been kicked out of online communities for not aligning with the groupthink, but I tend to see that as a positive for me in the long run. If I'm so disliked by a community then I'm not going to force it. I one angered a guy so much he made up some random bullshit about me being a pedo and the mods bought it hook line and sinker. I decided that any place where the mods will ban you and never even respond to or probably even read your appeals is not worth the effort. That said, I don't go looking for fights. I'm not going to register a StormFront account anytime soon because everything I might say on there would just cause arguments and strife.

Be an adult and stand by your opinions. Other people may disagree, but that's life. Sometimes you may even be wrong and change your mind later, but that's also life. The situation may also change and invalidate your old opinion. Most importantly don't be a dick.

The problem is that karma is all-important on this site, and ends up creating different social strata, and a feedback mechanism which is what these other posters are complaining about.

On Reddit, for example, it really doesn't matter if you get a few downvotes. Your post is still visible, and you still have the ability to up or downvote anyone else. You are not a lesser member of the community on that site when you get some downvotes.

On here, you are. The system is explicitly designed to make it an echo chamber. If you have low karma, you can't downvote people, you can't post very much, and there are probably other more subtle ways they punish you for having low karma.

So it's absolutely to your advantage, if you want to be a member of this "community" and actually have your posts seen and commented on so you can participate in useful and interesting discussion, to self-censor.

> "If you have low karma, you can't downvote people"

This is a good thing. It makes it difficult to create a downvote-bot-brigade. It means that only people who have participated in building the community up to a certain degree have the right to act as gatekeepers.

> "you can't post very much"

I'm not aware of any such restriction, except for very-very new accounts.

> "it's absolutely to your advantage ... to self-censor"

In a sense, this is by design. If downvotes don't help people learn what sort of comment is and isn't welcome here, then we'd be overrun with cat pictures. Downvotes are supposed to teach you "this doesn't belong" just like upvotes are supposed to teach you "this is an appreciated comment".

I think it's even OK that occasionally a decent comment will pick up a couple of downvotes because it's slightly disagreeable, poorly written, or just that someone clicked the wrong button on accident -- a few random points of negative won't hurt someone whose contributions are generally positive.

Where it becomes a problem is when well-thought-out, civil, reasonable comments get heavily downvoted. When someone with a contrary opinion can't make any positive progress. I try to make it a point to toss upvotes on comments like that, but perhaps more could be done.

One thought: even if we don't require a comment box for all downvotes, perhaps requiring a comment box for downvoting something beyond a certain level of negative (like, beyond -1) would keep people from piling on mindlessly or needlessly.

If you put even a basic effort into posting quality content and avoid trolling you will have positive karma. This is always true. You may take a hit from time to time, but in the long run your total score will be overwhelmingly positive. This is true of every forum. You only need to worry about karma if you like to start arguments or shitpost.

Let's hope I never accidentally downvote any of your posts then. It happens, and I've seen a few other people apologize for it, when your tapping around on a smartphone and try to hit the upvote button without zooming, or just scrolling. (We should really get that fixed, and add another step for downvoting, or such, seeing that it has such a negative impact on people and can't be taken back.)

> I immediately delete anything that gets one down vote.

That's a problem that's on you to solve, not the HN community. You should stand by your comments instead of just deleting them, and you shouldn't take downvotes as an indication that you should post less.

Why do you give such importance to individual clicks?

I really don't get it. You reward a person whose opinion you disagree with, punish yourself (in a very minor way) and take away any chance that other people will click the other button.

I see up votes as meaning "this comment is worth reading" (not: I agree with this comment). Down votes are the opposite, of course.

I delete comments that are deemed "not worth reading" because it's low cost to do so and improves the overall comment quality, at least for some people.

The simple fact is that mildly negative comments are worth much less than mildly positive comments, so it's almost always a good idea to err on the side of removing negative comments. The potential bad, in this case, far outweighs the potential good.

...I immediately delete anything that gets one down vote.

You're missing out. I regularly have posts that go to -2, -3, etc., which are then upvoted back into positive territory. Here's a fairly recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11332081 (I think that one got downvoted initially for the explicit religious imagery.)

The little mental boost I get from an occasional 'yo-yo' completely counteracts the 0 and -1 votes I get all the time. But mostly, I don't care about internet points. The point is to learn and share.

Which isn't to say that I don't occasionally delete a post, or wish that I had. Another word for "self-censorship" is "judgment".

Reviewing the common nature of the disagreement in replies is also a good way to practice presenting unpopular opinions. There's a lot of pitfalls I've learned to avoid when being tactful

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