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Comment by hndamien | Hacker News Reader

This is exacerbated by the down-voting and flagging asymmetry by established members. I understand how it makes sense to weight those that successfully contribute more to have greater power since they (by some metric) are the community since they were here first and have successfully contributed more. However, it does create the effect that a dissenting viewpoint, if unpopular among those with power, can be effectively squashed. Exhibit A: A very cordial and constructive conversation that was flagged and buried. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17139934

Reddit has a different weighting on this stuff and as a result you get a different culture, and these even differ between sub-reddits, but have the signature of a different weighting system, and a greater ability for sock puppeting. I don't think one is better or worse, just that these trade offs are there and have to happen.

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My guess is your comment (not the thread) was flagged because it contained a string of logical fallacies. Edit: This is not intended as a flame just an observation. You're free to disagree. Specifically straw man, false equivalency, conclusion doesn't follow.

Well, maybe. I obviously don't agree and would love to be corrected - hence the point of discussion. You need to see the parent comments to to get the full context of the comment. I'm probably taking a few poetic liberties in the groupings but thats not inflammatory.

It's not the only example though. In my comment history you will see another set of discussions that are essentially the same (but a few months apart) where I'm arguing that autopilot doesn't imply self driving. One was a discussion which seemed balanced by votes (I probably lost). The other descended into users calling me a "smug pedant" and a lot of bullying, about -35 karma (and ultimately my first banning). I was pretty disillusioned by the experience and couldn't really work out what was so different, and why I was banned for defending my point of view despite the other peoples behaviours.

I would never have interpreted your comment as a flame btw - such is the nature of robust discussion, but I appreciate you pointing it out. I think too often people take an intellectual assault on an idea as a personal assault. They are different, and I welcome them despite the pride I lose hopefully learning a lesson. I'm always genuinely grateful of the time a commenter takes to put me in my place, but usually it is just "pedant" and down vote.

If your topic touches YC's vulnerable underbelly in any way, they are very happy to ban you. Other sites are much less temperamental, but a good chunk of that is YC's benefactors have many skeletons in the closet.

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