Tell HN: A Recent Rise in Downvoting | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: A Recent Rise in Downvoting

70 pointslionhearted100 comments

It seems like there's been a noticeable increase of downvoting neutral, non-inflammatory comments lately. Here's some screenshots of examples from the Android thread:

http://awesomescreenshot.com/0622hpufe

http://awesomescreenshot.com/0042hpvac

http://awesomescreenshot.com/0d92hpw67

The first one is an okay, not great comment in the beginning, but then has an interesting note at the end. The second comment is gracious and friendly with some disagreement and stating his experience. The third is slightly stupid, but downvoted into oblivion stupid? I don't think so.

There was also a professor of computer science commenting that he was going to show this article to his students as part of why he thinks Android is going to be a big deal, and he was getting downvoted too.

I mean, these are unemotional comments about technology. This isn't politics or regulation or anything that makes people want to kick dirt around. I've noticed a couple of my civil, sourced, uncontroversial comments on normal topics sometimes get a quick down to 0 lately too before coming back up. I don't know what's prompting the change in behavior, but it seems different that this is happening in threads that are not really controversial at all. The screenshots I posted don't seem like the kind of thing that'd get hit in the past. Changing demographics of some sort?

View on HN

I think it's to do with the iPhone. I noticed this a long time ago on HN: any comment that could be interpreted as negative towards the iPhone was downvoted. Like you, I couldn't understand it at first, but eventually concluded it was because of things like describing the iPhone as "underpowered" (compared to a desktop), even in a neutral, factual, discussing-the-engineering sense.

My solution is to avoid iPhone-related threads or to not take them seriously, and to not comment in them (or if I must, to stress the iPhone positives explicitly). No, it's not a great solution.

EDIT as predicted, this post got a downvote.

I think you're onto something with that though. I also think it's probably much wider than just iPhone related. It's probably the good old cults all up in arms.

/My personal experience/ from posting a comment with some again personal experience on linux laptops and why I though you didn't need a Mac to run linux got me downvoted to the negatives in a matter of minutes. I try and be fair, and I made myself clear that it was in fact an experience based opinion of mine, but alas.

Surely I'm "just grumpy about it", but I really feel people were being unnecessarily flamy. I invite anyone to click through my username and judge for themselves.

Lessons learned - there is a surprisingly large cultist segment on HN that will downvote opinions simply because they don't like them.

In every large group of people there will be a few that can't adapt to the tone and level of the conversation around them.

Usually these people will go away again. On HN the only way they can express their negative attitude (once they've received enough upvotes for snarky comments) is by hitting the downvote button.

Normally the situation corrects itself, for the few cases where it doesn't the advice is to simply ignore it, most old hands will highlight a downvoted comment anyway just to see what it says. Come back in two weeks to the same comment and it will be sitting at '1' or higher.

Possibly it's time for PG to raise the downvote karma cap, make it a fraction of the alltime high for any comment so that the cap scales as the site grows without manual adjustment.

I’m not even sure whether that whole downvote thing always works as intended. I will often ignore (old) comments with no up- or downvotes but I will at least quickly skim those who received downvotes.

Nearly all comments with no karma, positive or negative, are just not very interesting or insightful. That’s not always true of comments with downvotes. It’s easy enough to sort out the lunatics and trolls and it’s just nice to vote a reasonable comment up that was downvoted for no good reason.

Basing the downvote karma cap on fraction of alltime high seems slightly wrong. There is too much history in that number. Five years from now, that number will have five more years of increasing, making it that much harder for smart new members to break the barrier.

Better might be to base it on some function of votes. Maybe a fraction of the number of votes cast over the last n-months.

I assume people here generally wouldn't hack the algorithm to get a downvote arrow. If they do, it might be best to make it a function of not just the recent voting volume, but the average of the voter as well as the recency of the parent. At that point, the right cap might be +inf.

You can't have a thread about Apple (or people competing with Apple) without expecting a few comments to get downvoted, it's just the nature of the audience those threads attract.

That was my reaction as well. At first I thought the examples were going to be a few random, unrelated comments, but instead they were all anti-Apple comments. No matter how high-minded your community is, you have to expect this kind of behavior from Apple fanboys. But it certainly doesn't mean the community as a whole is rotting.

I suffered with this. Comment anything you disagree about Apple and it gets downvoted immediately.

That's because Apple threads are religion threads.

btw, you have a nice website.

I would add to the list of religious issues posts about Microsoft and its related technologies, posts about Zed Shaw, just to name a few... touchy subjects.

Most of the time I say something negative about Microsoft I append a "burn, karma, burn" to it because I know I'll take a beating.

If you're getting downvoted on HN for criticizing Microsoft, you might want to take a serious second look at those comments. Oh btw, I took a look at them and if anything you're getting off easy.

Votes, either up or down, are an expression of perceived value to the user. If I write something and you extend the time and effort to read it, then you will have an opinion of its merit based on your experience.

Did I waste your time and effort?

Did I make your time and effort worthwhile?

A contrary point of view is can be very valuable when presented well, even if you happen to disagree. On the other hand, if one regurgitates an already well known, and hence stale, point according to the opinion of the given reader, reading will be a waste of time and effort from their perspective. Of course, the next person to come along may not know the point is tired and stale, and their perspective is the opposite.

There is another important aspect of investment applicable to both the reader and the writer; you must sell your investment. If you bought an Apple product, and you found someone factually stating the mistakes Apple made in the NVRAM of a particular machine, you are naturally inclined to protect the value of your investment since you have an intrinsic need to justify your purchase, both to yourself and to everyone else. In more common terms, you're looking at "fanboyism" or even "advertisement," and it takes a very clear and careful mind to both know and disable your bias.

Equally, when writing you are attempting to sell your words as worthwhile to the reader by some means (insight, humor, expertise, shock, horror, ...). The more interesting question is why you even bothered to write? Did you do it for karma? Did you have some unknown internal need to refute a point of contention? Did you want "respect"? Were you trying to "help"? Were you looking for something more exciting to do? Were you frustrated? Were you fascinated?

Whether clearly admitted or not, there is a motive for every single post and submission on HN.

Knowingly or not, today you seem to be selling your lament on being down-voted --with the hope of it happening less-- by bringing it to the attention of HN readers. Why did you write it? Why do you care about a few bits in a database? Why do you believe down-votes are a bad thing?

Personally, I enjoy the feedback of getting down-voted. It's the only way I'll know that I wasted your time and mine.

Why didn't you upvote any of these? Your screenshots show comments for which you haven't yet voted. The first two (as of right now) are currently sitting at zero, and with your upvotes they would be fairly sitting at one.

I think that we can agree that the larger the community, the more likely that we'll see random downvotes. However, any unfairly-downvoted comments will generally be fixed by the rest of the community over time. The question is whether the comment scores fairly represent the comment in the long-term. I think that a score of 1 is fair for the first two, and if you had upvoted, that's where they would be.

I don't think there's currently a downvoting issue; the community is handling it quite well, and unfair votes are corrected quickly. There are some edge cases where some comments with a low number of views (such as those in a story with few votes, or in a story with a large number of comments) might unfairly get stuck at 0 or -1, but it's somewhat rare. If 1-2% of comments are unfairly sitting at zero or -1, I don't think it's a big deal.

I disagree with you about the 3rd comment. The last pair of sentences is pure flamebait, which is why it's being downvoted.

When I see this, I routinely up-vote the comment, as well as add a reply pointing out that the comment was legitimate. (and this generally scores me several cheap karma points on my reply :) )

I think that there's a "leaky abstraction" problem in up- and down-voting. The intent of voting (afaik) is to show meritorious comments, so other readers can find the most insightful writing. But it's also taken to indicating agreement or disagreement. Even the most insightful, well-researched comment may get down-voted by people who dislike its sentiment; while (less frequently) vapid comments that add nothing to the discussion get up-votes.

Maybe he did and they were sitting at -1, or even lower.

You can see the up/down arrows in the screenshots, which indicates that he was not only logged in (because of the existence of the down arrow), but hadn't yet voted.

Ok, how would he have to show they were at -X if he had pushed them up again. That's what the screenshots were for.

No point in contaminating his 'evidence'.

Really, you're reading a lot in to very little.

Argue the case of the downvotes, not the man behind the criticism, of course he could have upvoted them, but he still can, can't he ?

I'm not trying to criticize the OP. My point was that downvoting isn't a problem if people are pushing them up again. If a comment is sitting at zero and you are capable of pushing it to +1, then there isn't a problem yet, assuming the comment deserves to be at +1 (and in my opinion, +1 is a fair score for the first two).

In other words, it's not worth complaining about downvotes until good comments are getting stuck in negative territory and you can't do anything about it. When that happens, I think that this is a discussion worth having. I don't think we're there yet.

Argue the case of the downvotes

I did, in my 2nd and 3rd paragraphs (the majority of what I wrote).

Maybe he took the screenshots before voting.

I agree. And where it gets really nasty is when posts get downvoted without there being a single reply. That's just not worthy of intelligent human beings.

I never downvote because I think it is not the right way of expressing disagreement in a debate. I have words for that. Upvoting is sufficient as a tool for filtering large numbers of comments.

clickable http://awesomescreenshot.com/0622hpufe

http://awesomescreenshot.com/0042hpvac

http://awesomescreenshot.com/0d92hpw67

it's probably better to just block all new users from downvoting. This way you teach the new users for 3-4 months, and they get ingrained not to go look for the downvote button every time they read a comment they disagree with.

New users are blocked from downvoting until they pass a certain karma threshold.

yes but a karma threshhold can be reached in a few weeks if not days. So it's not long enough for someone to get used to the idea that this isn't reddit

I think the solution to this is to have no Karma on submitted stories.

If karma comes only from useful comments then I'd posit that the user will be more invested in discusion and not as likely to down vote others.

I agree. One thing that bothers me about the karma on stories system is that an extremely popular story gets you an absurd amount of karma. But the thing about extremely popular stories is that they would have been posted by someone else if you didn't post them. So it's really a huge reward for simply being quicker then other users. On the other hand, and obscure story that get's on the board for a few hours, and that no one else would have posted gets much less points.

Perhaps stories that make the front page for X amount of time should earn a standard rate of karma for the submitter. Or even just a limit, say you can't get more then 10 karma on a submission.

not really, since that will put a lot of emphasis on comments, so downvoting someone would hurt them even more

I don't see your argument.

My point is if you remove karma for submitted stories you only get people who earned the right to downvote via well thought out comments.

My hypothesis is that these are the type of people who are more likely to counter a point they disagree with, with a well thought out comment, rather than a downvote, as that's how they got the karma they have to begin with.

Doesn't every comment start with 1 point, though? People trying to game the system could still do so simply by commenting a lot (maybe on older, less visible submissions that won't get them down-votes). Maybe every comment should start at 0 points?

I believe you don't actually earn a point until someone upvotes you away from that default 1.

I've been member for almost 2 years and still haven't reached the karma threshold. it's simply more difficult to build up karma on specialized site such as hackernews

reddit is general purpose, you can collect points merely by posting pictures of kitties or nsfw.

not really, just submit like 5 techcrunch posts, and you are pretty much guaranteed 200 points, just from the people who also submit techcrunch stuff hoping to be the first. And since these end up in upvotes, you are pretty much guaranteed frontpage.

Try gaining karma from well thought out comments rather than posting stories. I think you'll find that's how most of the respected names on this site do it.

Karma rewards extrinsic behaviour, there's no reward for just logging in and reading stories on HN.

I think that explains why some are members for 2 years, comfortable in reading the content on the site and contributing rather rarely when they have something insightful to say, while others are able to reach the threshold for down-voting in short periods of time without fully understanding the community or reading the guidelines.

If you get lucky with a couple story posts, yes. If you're strictly commenting you've got a while.

Yea maybe that is it, 200 karma from comments for downvote privilege.

That's how it is right now.

I like how there's plenty of examples of down voting and not discussing the reason on this thread.

I'm assuming you got down voted because it's just a flat karma value (I guess 200?) to allow down votes. They meant that your karma from submissions shouldn't count because it's trivially obtained.

Edit: Thanks for down voting this.

I reached it with my first post, i think. maybe it should be a function of community karma distribution, eg only the top 80% can downvote.

I still can't downvote. Not that I mind--if I can't, then random passerby can't either.

Social conscience++

I thought HN already did that. When my account was fresh, i could not find the down button for a long time. I believe there was karma threshold i had to cross before I could start down voting, habit I have since mitigated in favour of letting neutral comments untouched.

It already works like that. The solution would seem to be to increase the karma cap on downvoting.

And maybe more radically, block all new users from upvoting.

Say HN gets an influx of new users who typically upvote inflammatory or LOL-evoking one-liners. If they all upvote each other, they all get karma, and the community starts to shift towards that behavior (because that's what earns you karma, and karma is supposed to be indicative of your contribution to the community).

I know I lurked here for about 6-8 months before creating an account and that time period allowed me to appreciate HN's community and what was and was not acceptable. Of course new members could still post comments and submit articles -- they just wouldn't have the ability to decide the community ethos.

The threshold for down-voting likely hasn't been changed since the community has grown. It should be fixed so that down-voting is granted to a top % of the community, rather than anybody with karma greater than x (which can be achieved with a few story submissions)

I upvoted this because I'm for any change which can help fix the downvote problem, which I think negatively impacts a healthy commenting community. However, my preferred solution would be slightly different. I would rather have no karma awarded for story submissions. I can understand offering some form of thanks for story submission initially, when a site is just beginning, but I think HN is large enough that great topics would be submitted without karma awarded (this might even help submission quality). This way karma is only awarded for commenting, and even new people to the site can make it to the moderator point threshold. For current members whose karma points already include story submissions I'd add in an account age requirement to retain moderator status.

In my philosophy 101 class in college I don't recall any epistemological theorem suggesting that comments that are downvoted are less impressive or correct than comments that get upvoted. Don't use your karma to prop up your ego. Upvote and downvote others liberally, and try not to care too much if you yourself get downvoted as long as you're right.

A quick hypothesis. For every comment, assume one reader downvotes if he disagrees in every 1000, and every reader can read 20 random comments per story.

There are more people around with 200+ karma than a year ago. If increase in number of comments do not match the increase in people with 200+ karma, there will be more downvotes.

And, we don't read comments random. They're displayed top to bottom with already upvoted ones on top, If people usually try to avoid disagreeing with the majority, mid to bottom comments (usually latecomer comments) will receive more and more downvotes.

I quite like StackOverflow's solution to this problem: You can only downvote if upvotes >= constant * downvotes, that is, if you have made a few times more upvotes than downvotes. Clearly, if you can't find at least two comments you like for each comment you want to downvote, you're not really trying.

Doesn't it skyrocket point inflation in the long run with even the most stupid comments getting points?

If a downvote did cost, say, 1 karma point, the downvoter could feel compelled to make an insighful comment on why the downvote if, for no other reason than to recover the point.

Interesting idea, but that would reduce even legitimate downvoting. Not everyone can get a karma point out of adding even more explanation to why some idiotic -4 comment is idiotic.

I think that you're imagining a problem where there isn't one.

Examples 1 & 2: Never attribute to malice that which can adequately explained by stupidity. (These comments only have one or two downvotes, which can be easily explained by someone clicking on the wrong button. This happens to me often when I'm browsing from my iPhone)

Example 3: This is actually a useless "me too!" comment, and deserves all the downvotes it got.

It would be good to if more people when they down vote something that wasn't obviously stupid reply with what they disagree with. Seems to happen a first bit I'll notice something get a down vote first, then be up voted.

It would improve the conversation if people replied rather than just hitting the down vote button.

I prefer having a few downvoted comments to a protracted iPhone vs Android (or whatever the topic is) debate every time it comes up. Better SNR.

I almost never downvote. If I care enough to disagree I'll take the time to explain why and otherwise I just move on.

Please stop polluting HN with navel-gazing meta-discussions like this. I wish I could downvote this submission.

Maybe it's time for another site for meta-discussions, just like stackoverflow.com has meta.stackoverflow.com.

Even though your account is older than a year and you are a regular and great contributor, I suspect this might be an effect related to the "HN is turning into reddit" mentioned in the guidelines.

As your interaction and familiarity with the community changes, so does your perception of it, in particular of the flaws it has.

One thing that is great about HN compared to other social news sites is the high information content of the discussions, and I think this is maintained better by downvoting a comment you disagree with, especially if topic is one that has been discussed a million times here and elsewhere, like is the iPhone awesome or not. Maybe the downvoters just want to show they disagree without polluting the thread by rehashing all the same arguments again.

I am not saying HN is turning into reddit. But I can say confidently that this phenomenon did not happen when I joined. It's a symptom of having more users.

I've been here roughly as long as you have. It seems to happen in waves, and definitely depends on the subject matter. Knee-jerk voting and comments in threads about the iPhone? You betcha. About compiler implementation? Not so much. ("LL(1), fool!" "SSA all the way!")

On HN, it's a given that every few months a new "Oh no! We're turning into Reddit!" thread cycle happens. Worrying about that is in HN's genes. After a couple years, though, I'd say the site's immune system has been reasonably successful.

I think we've succeeded in not turning into Reddit, but we certainly have changed. Not only do I see move downvotes, I see many more upvotes. And, again, that's a symptom of having more users.

I noticed this a couple of months ago.

I would post something like "hey, you know f=ma" (a statement of fact in a non-hot-topic conversation that advanced the discussion) and see it get downvotes almost instantly. Then later the score would pop back up.

What can I tell you, Lionhearted? The board has gone to shit.

I think the problem is that, in any group of people, 1% are probably not going to like you (for arbitrary reasons) or have some emtional hangup about any random piece of information. But most of the time it's a passive dislike. Only about 1% of that number would take any direct action against you (like downvoting an innocuous comment)

However when the daily numbers creep up past 40 or 50K, that 1% of 1% becomes a big enough number to start seeing some kindergarten voting games going on. Nothing much you can do about it -- simply a property of the numbers involved. We probably all do it, but because it's only a 1 in 10K experience, it's so extremely rare in ourselves that we don't even notice it.

" Nothing much you can do about it -- simply a property of the numbers involved. "

In my opinion there was a time when Slashdot coped quite well with their randomly assigned mod points and metamoderation. Then their UI became unusable, so I cannot tell how it works now.

As of two-three years ago Slashdot moderation guaranteed that "In Soviet Russia" jokes were always +5 Funny, anything with Linux in it were +5 Interesting and a post with a Beowulf cluster plug was both Funny and Informative.

Meta-moderation was supposed to cure that, but it didn't make much difference. So, no, overall it did not work. Submissions were good, but discussions sucked.

Judging from your nick here, and slashdot allowing anonymous comments, I'm guessing you didn't have a user account on slashdot. I say that because you had to do was give 'funny' posts a -10, which would preclude you from seeing so-called funny posts. Though far from perfect, still consider the /. moderation system the gold standard for commenting and have yet to see anything come close. (Also, +1 funny mod got you no karma)

Slashdot ID 3xxxxx, first post - Sep '01... but thanks for the info ;)

I have a four digit Slashdot UID. Those features didn't exist in the beginning. I have mine set to default settings, with "show only posts with a score of 5" on.

Tends to keep out most of the usual Slashdot bullshit without requiring me to take Slashdot out of my RSS reader altogether.

To be honest, sometimes I see downvoting as a compliment. It just shows me how stupid other people are.

It just shows the differences in views. Even something that is so obvious, logical, rational to you can be so ridiculous and downright stupid to others. But it will be healthy for discussion if they say why they downvote. It is like passing judgement without explaining your judgement. You don't win minds or opinions over from the downvoted person and the downvoter doesn't understand the other guy's point of view as well.

I downvote comments that don't add anything of value to the discussion. Why would I want to comment on something like that? By the very nature of commenting, I'm only doing the same thing the downvoted comment is doing: adding a post that adds nothing to the conversation.

Voting should have nothing to do with whether you agree with a comment or not. It should be indicative of the value of the comment to the discussion of the topic at hand.

Doesn't it make you angry when sometimes you don't even get to read those "stupid" opinions? I don't care about my karma score but I do care about someone virtually coming up to me, slapping me in the face, and then leaving without a word.

If downvote is like a slap in the face for you then you are taking it much much too serious. And thank's for calling me not being worthy to be intelligent human being.

Update: I will downvote anyone with such stupidly patronizing and passive-aggressive attitude like "if you downvote me (or anyone else) then you are stupid or not worthy". Anyone is free to downvote my comments for any reason they like: be it disagreement, not liking the tone of it, or me being factually wrong. I'd appreciate the correcting comment in the latter case though, but by no means the lack of such I would consider an insult or "slap in the face". I don't think there is any problem with downvoting on HN, but I guess there are problems with some egos.

Look, you can call this a problem with my ego or whatever. I happen to think that there are certain minimum standards of politeness that should be upheld online as well as offline. And for me that includes using words to explain any disagreement instead of just acting in some ambiguous way that can be interpreted as hostile.

You seem to think that downvotes deal with disagreement, or that you should even downvote soemthing you disagree with. Instead, downvoting should exist for comments that provide no value to the discussion of the topic. If you're getting downvoted with no discuss on it, maybe you should reconsider the value of the comment, and see if it really helps spur discussion.

The way a comment is phrased is part of this. Coming off like a rude jerk isn't going to help your cause any. I don't downvote things I disagree with, but I will vote down people who aren't helping create a worthwhile discussion.

Should I respond to these? No, I don't think so. What am I going to say? "You're being a jerk, down vote!" doesn't add anything to the conversation either and would deserve a downvote as well.

You can disagree with this approach, but if you downvote someone and then respond, your saying one of two things:

Your comment instigated further discussion on my part, but I don't want other people to read it, so I will downvote simply because I disagree.

Or...

Your comment isn't helping to further the discussion of this topic, but I'm going to respond anyways by telling and as a result create a comment that also doesn't advance the discussion.

I understand what you're saying, but the problem is that a vast and growing majority of downvotes cannot possibly be interpreted as "this doesn't contribute anything". Votes are being used like they would be used in an election. I'm for or against this. And that's just not good enough in my view.

Does this apply to upvoting too? Is upvoting without the comment also the slap in the face?

No, because there is a sensible default interpretation of an upvote, which would be to repeat the statement. There is no such default interpretation of a downvote and that's why a downvote needs an explanation if none has been given so far. A downvote implies a different opinion and I want to know what that opinion is.

Downvoting isn't a slap in my face, but downvoting without telling me why is.

[Edit: You're right that I phrased my parent comment badly]

And by the way, I did not call you "not being worthy to be intelligent human being". Quite the contrary. I implied that you are in fact an intelligent human being and that such behaviour is not worthy of you.

I have no problem with the donvoting my comments not so favourable for Apple in thread which attracts Apple fanboys.

It is a little sad that no one of the downwoters had anything to say to correct my view.

But can you elaborate a little why do you find my comment stupid? It is genuine question.

edit: comment link added http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1798461

Why your comment is stupid? Because it is stupid. Would you elaborate more about those Android tablets and netbooks? What models are there in the wild, how much do they cost, how do they sell? How are sales numbers of iPhone and iPad? Slowing down? Game is over? What game? Android is the winner? What did it won exactly? And who are the losers? Apple? They are going to announce financial results soon, I guess we will see how much did Apple "lose".

No, I will not elaborate. But you can read my other comments in thread in question.

Market for devices below Apple price point is big enough to feed many companies and software vendors.

What game? Apple will not monopolise mobile computing. Phones, tablets, netbooks and other, not yet invented, products. The more solutions on the market the better for the consumer. You and me too.

This not so good for software vendors beacuse of market fragementation, but the cat is out of the bag.

Apple financial results are the least concern of mine. Yours too, I suppose. But Aplle financially will be fine, their marketing is outstanding.

> No, I will not elaborate. But you can read my other > comments in thread in question.

So those devices don't exist yet, ok. Not sure how will you know the price points then, so far Android phones are not that much cheaper than iPhone.

> What game? Apple will not monopolise mobile computing

I was not aware that Apple was in the game of monopolizing mobile computing…

> But Aplle financially will be fine, their marketing is outstanding.

Their products are outstanding too. No marketing would help if your product is crap. And Apple does not have the biggest marketing budget, by the way. MS markegint budget for Vista was as large as Apple's for all products.

> No marketing would help if your product is crap.

So many counterexamples to that, I don't even know where to start.

Your comment was an Android Fanboy equivalent to the iPhone Fanboy posts. Some of the points are over-extended, the conclusion doesn't really match the support. It's all a 'belief' thing, which is what iPhone people do and get downvoted for as well.

> But can you elaborate a little why do you find my comment stupid? It is genuine question.

No disrespect intended. I meant that this was a little over the top: "It looks like the game is over. The winner is Android." I upvoted you from -4 though to... well, it still shows as -4. But yeah, I don't think downvoting-to-oblivion was called for.

Ok. I agree it can be viewed like this.

The main thing for me is that there is really big change at the doors. Fundamental one.

The first comment is let down by a silly closing sentence 'a year from now Android will easily match any fit and finish of the iPhone'. Really? Since you have no idea what the iPhone will look like a year from now let alone Android, this is a vacuous statement.

The second should certainly not have been downvoted.

The third comes across as silly platform contention derived FUD and adds nothing to the debate.

I made a comment in a thread the other week suggesting that Wired's UK editor was hurting his ability to cover Facebook by not using the service, and it was downvoted, and I couldn't figure out why:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1726192

Granted, it was a little bombastic and was written in a sarcastic way, but there was a good point in there and it was actually upvoted significantly before someone else made a response criticizing what I said.

I didn't understand why it was downvoted. As someone in the journalism field, I found it to be surprising that he could continue to make good points in articles about Facebook without using the service.

The snark was uncalled for; you could have made your point without attacking the man directly. And, in fact, you do so in the second half of your comment -- which means the first half was doubly unnecessary.

I have noticed this too. Previously, I could pretty much tell (and mostly agree with) which comments would get downvoted. Nowadays it's more or less become a crap shoot, which is a damned shame. Is there some way to take downvote privileges away from indiscriminate downvoters? I wouldn't even mind relinquishing my downvote rights as a (hopefully) false positive of that filtering process.

I wish I could forfeit my ability to downvote permanently. It's kind of a downer to have the feeling in the back of your mind that you can or should police HN to rid it of "undesirable" comments.

The worst thing that could happen to a board is to become a bias confirmation chamber, alas it's inevitable.

I am relatively new on HN. so, does it really mean that it only takes group of 5-6 people to manipulate HN news/comments any ways they want? shocking, considering HN's influence.

For years and years, grumpiness and flame wars have tended to break out and be more common during certain parts of the year (like fall/holidays) on a number of forums I have spent time in. I have no way of knowing what is going on generally in the world that might be impacting this microcosm, but I am slower than I used to be to jump to conclusions that it's something going on "in this particular forum" (whichever forum is being discussed) rather than something going on out in the world that is, coincidentally, impacting lots of members of a particular forum and thereby impacting the forum, but not rooted in forum dynamics specifically.

Don't take karma systems too seriously.

There are some (many?) psychopaths here that literally live off cheating karma by posting BS that best fits crowd mentality at any particular moment.

Trolls gaming the system are usually trolls gaming the system, not psychopaths.

Would you look at that though, no downvotes in this here thread.

I'm by no means a tinfoil hat guy. But I've felt like this place has had Apple employee users since around the release of iPad, mucking things up. I know Apple has done such "PR" in the past. I guess a more likely explanation is just that there are a lot of crazed fan boys out there, but I can't help being suspicious. I think most HN users with enough karma to down vote know better then to down vote based on opinion.

I really hate saying so because I simply detest conspiracy theories.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com