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Comment by trenning | Hacker News Reader

This is entirely off-topic, but if you're going through and downvoting people for posting their favorite podcasts in a thread like this, you should take a break from here, or the internet for a while, it's not that serious.

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That's one way to view it, certainly.

The other way is that downvotes are a great tool for ensuring high quality discussion, and if the thread is about podcast episodes, then downvoting full podcasts helps keep the thread organized. Downvotes aren't necessarily bad, they may just mean - hey, this doesn't belong as much in this thread, so I'm voting on it to help organize the thread for other readers.

Agreed. I wish everyone who posted an entire podcast would have at least recommended a single impactful episode, especially as a place to start for those of us who haven't listened to the podcast at all.

Many podcasts are now released as a limited series or as seasons, best consumed from start to finish. “13 Minutes to the Moon,” “Man in the Window” and “In the Dark.” Come to mind. No less impactful and would be strange to recommend anything but the entire podcast, particularly since OP suggested full podcasts.

"What's your favorite podcast" is a vastly less interesting and different question to answer. Impactful episodes can even appear in podcasts you generally dislike or don't agree with.

The OP lists two examples of podcasts (not episodes) to open the thread. I think you misunderstood their intention.

or just don’t vote on things you don’t like and you get the same effect

This. As far as I know, on HN downvotes are supposed to be for non-constructive comments and a moderation tool more than a "I disagree" or "I dislike this" button. That is probably why you only get the option to downvote after you gained >1k points.

Although they wrote "episodes" in their title, the OP then listed two podcasts as examples to start the discussion ( Invest Like the Best https://investlikethebest.libsyn.com/ , and FYI https://open.spotify.com/show/0xOdWuktBQKWCv2mlVjizn ). As such, it seems quite a stretch to conclude they want us to limit our responses to specific episodes of podcasts.

HN’s rules seem like they fall in line with positive psychology tenants. In the spirit of HN, downvotes seem like something reserved for mean spirited or inaccurate posts. If everyone downvotes for differences in purely subjective opinion, well, I’d just stick to reddit in that case.

dang and sctb have stated several times that it's OK to downvote for disagreement on HN. On the other hand, on Reddit it goes against Reddiquette (as published by Reddit) to do that - though of course it's very common.

Exactly. "Back in the day" I remember that on HN if your post wasn't a 3 paragraph story with a well-defined point and arguments you would be downvoted into oblivion.

I get your point, that the subject matter here isn't worth downvoting. It's like arguing whether chocolate is better than vanilla.

But I would say that failing to describe a podcast and why you like it (or specific episodes) is poor communication. It would be like a thread about food and someone saying, "Italian cuisine is great. It's delicious." I know nothing from that type of comment about what makes Italian cuisine distinctive and what attributes stand out for the commenter. There are a number of comments like that in this thread.

There's a reason "downvotes" are called "flags" on HN

No they are not. Downvotes and flags are different things, and have different rules about them. (Flags mean "this breaks the rules/needs moderator attention", downvotes are a lot more general "negative sentiment")

EDIT: downvotes probably aren't available to you yet, NilsIRL, I think the karma threshold is higher (500?).

To be fair, though, the flag button is hidden. You have to click on the comment time stamp to find it. Some people seem unaware of this. It appears to be a minor source of confusion around here.

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