Ask HN: The voting system is broken | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: The voting system is broken

4 pointsdools7 comments

There is a thread on here at the moment "tell us your naughty stories" or something.

There are two stories at the bottom both with -4 points.

One of them is some hideous and possibly illegal description of the torture and rape of a 12 year old girl.

The other is the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but in terms of the "punishment fitting the crime" there is something going awry here.

I've been voted down a few times recently for things that suggest to me that the predominant population of HN are utterly humourless.

I can't vote people down (possibly I don't have enough karma) but I know that Paul Graham is basically on here 24/7 - Paul: do you really want to build a community where people are afraid to express themselves humourously?

Humour is the foundation of human character. Where is the love?

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In my limited time here on HN I've formed a model of how it works. In my experience of HN, humor with information is almost invariably upvoted. Humor without information is almost invariably ignored or downvoted. In short, people don't come here to be entertained, they come here to learn and to share. Pure entertainment does not fit the culture. Useful information in an entertaining package is always appreciated.

Your comments that HN is populated by the humorless is none of humorful, useful, or informative. It's just a moan. Hence it gets downvoted.

Vile comments such as the ones you reference are downvoted because people don't know how to flag comments. Submissions can be flagged with one click, but comments need two. First click on "link", then click on "flag".

There are now many, many people here on HN who don't know how things work, and these sorts of things simply aren't known to them. It's not that the voting system is broken (for this reason at least) it's because people don't use the mechanisms available.

Vile comments such as the ones you reference are downvoted because people don't know how to flag comments.

It's been a long time since the karma thresholds mattered to me at all, so I may be misremembering this; but isn't there a range where people can downvote but can't yet flag?

You're right - I've just checked. If your karma is insufficient then the "flag" option doesn't appear on comments (after clicking "link")

Good call.

I wonder if the thresholds are the same. If they are then by the time people can downvote such an item they should both downvote and flag it.

Actually, this comment hasn't been downvoted. However I now see that the "fresh prince" theme song was actually a "wrapper" around another hideous pornographic story. Sorry for mentioning it.

In short, people don't come here to be entertained, they come here to learn and to share

I go everywhere to be entertained, learn and share. Humour is an inextricable part of humanity and if you're not humourous, you're in-human.

I find your response to my comment that HN is no populated by the humourless not humourful, not useful and not informative.

Yet I still can't downvote your comment.

Oh well, at least I can see the humour in it.

Well, perhaps I just didn't make my point well enough, but perhaps I should just quote Samuel Johnson:

  > 'I have found you an argument: but I am
  > not obliged to find you an understanding.'

My experience is that comments that are informative and useful don't get downvoted. Comments that contain purely a witty remark or humorous aside do get downvoted.

But those rare comments that are informative and humorous get upvoted lots. The conclusion I've come to, and the model I work with, is that people here appreciate humor as much as anyone else, but that humor alone is discouraged.

Take that as you will. It's an empirical observation, and it makes excellent predictions.

And you can't downvote me firstly because it's a reply to you, and additionally because you haven't been here long enough and participated enough to earn the karma to exceed the threshold. Generally the karma is correlated with gaining experience of how things work - the karma threshold is there to prevent people from downvoting and flagging inappropriately before they've had the chance to learn how the owner wants things to work around there.

Sometimes it's not enough.

how the owner wants things to work around there

bingo.

> "vile and almost certainly illegal description"

Lighten up. Move on. Stop being offended by words. Downmod it or upmod it if you care. Move on.

If you get offended by words the internet isn't the place for you.

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