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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Why don't you vouch for them? Vouching is a way for users to rescue [dead] comments that shouldn't be [dead]. Click on the timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. (There's a small karma threshold for such links to appear.)

Comments can be [dead] for many reasons, including software (which doesn't get everything right) or the account being banned (which doesn't mean that every post is bad—indeed, some users start posting good comments only once we've banned them). So there are plenty of good comments that need to be rescued, which is why we introduced vouching in the first place. It works well when users use it.

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Hey dang, thanks for the info. I always assumed I couldn't vouch as I didn't see an obvious "vouch" link next to dead comments. Now that I know I need to click on the timestamp I'll investigate this. I'm still not sure if I have enough karma to vouch, but I'll check it out.

EDIT: just checked a few dead links. It seems I do have the ability to vouch. I'll try to use it responsibly!

Quick question if I can. Have I triggered some evil spammer bit in the system somehow, as I haven't been able to vouch for a while - it no longer rescues anything. Or did it change to need more than one vote?

Thanks.

Yes, you vouched for too many comments that break the site guidelines, such as personal attacks and flamewars. When an account does that, we eventually notice and take vouching rights away. The feature is for rescuing good comments that are in the spirit of the site, not comments that violate it.

We're always happy to restore privileges if people give us reason to believe that they've had a change of heart and want to use HN as intended in the future.

Well my first reaction to that is one of amazed disbelief. Personal attacks and flamewars are usually bleeding obvious, and equally easy to avoid.

With it having been there a while, I can't think of any specific comments one way or another, but was and have always intended to use it to rescue (typically) a comment making a good point to the discussion, or the question I'd be interested in an answer to as well.

So I can't imagine how I crossed whatever line. I generally agree wth the tone of moderation here, and degree of leeway usually given. I think my comment history would bear out in tone and style that I'm using as intended, and I don't recall ever having had a mod pick up any of my comments. :p I disagree with the odd rare one - this is hard to generalise without going away to dig for examples - usually where it seems to get a slap on the wrist for a reasonable, or historically accurate point within the flow of a discussion where the complaint of nationalistic or whatever seems a bit of a stretch.

Case in point, the guy posting links that seemed to be reliably going on every climate related topic - I'd have said nowt for one or two, but had seen enough, like on every related post I'd read in a couple of days, that I thought it would have been missed by mods and worth a mention. Others trigger much sooner than I.

Make of that as you will. :)

Maybe you and dang have a different ability to recognize sarcasm. Sometimes this is really difficult. Looking at comment history can often help you figure out if something is sarcasm or not.

There can also be words that some people find offensive. Not everybody agrees on the words that qualify.

That's also possible, being British I had sarcasm and detection built in at birth. We usually just call it chatting as most conversations get liberally laced with it here. :)

Decades on the net has been an interesting education that some, for some reason especially American, don't recognise sarcasm without the helpful /s. I learnt to pull my punches online on that score years ago. On the [vouch] front I'm not hugely bothered as it doesn't really detract from using HN, more surprised as I don't generally trigger moderator interest anywhere I've been since BBS days.

I'm sure dang will respond in due course as to whether I rate forgiveness or not.

Edit: I should add that I would think it highly unlikely I'd have resurrected comments heavy with sarcasm, I've been well aware for years it doesn't fly around here.

> "Maybe you and dang have a different ability to recognize sarcasm."

Sarcasm and snark rarely improve the quality and direction of a discussion, which is why at least snark is explicitly mentioned in the guidelines. Whether or not one recognizes something as sarcasm is orthogonal to whether a comment overall appropriate and constructive for the forum, and the latter is an overriding concern.

> "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You might think the comment is "overall appropriate and constructive for the forum" because you don't realize that it is sarcasm. The intended meaning is completely different from what you imagine it to be.

The opposite can also happen, particularly when somebody has a belief system very different from your own. You might wrongly assume that the comment is sarcasm, when in fact it is thoughtful and substantive.

That's hilariously Orwellian. I mean, I mostly like the mod atmosphere here. But removing user privileges, not for posting bad comments, but for silently and secretly suggesting that you reconsider some specific bad comments?

It's honestly confusing that you're telling us this at all.

It's not (just) a "secret suggestion", it automatically makes stuff visible again (with probably some ranking involved behind the scenes). And it's been announced from the beginning as something that'll be turned off for users that keep using it on comments the mods rather would them not do so.

I've been a regular HN user for six years and this is the first I've ever heard of it, so "announced" may be a bit of a strong term.

Announced as in "it was described as such in the blog post that announced the Vouch feature": https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/

That's of course not to say that it's widely known, many details of HN are not well-documented, only mentioned occasionally.

Exactly. It shouldn't be this hard to learn about all the features of the HN commenting system, especially given how minimalist it is.

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