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Comment by andrewtbham | Hacker News Reader

why in the fuck was this voted down?? I want a fucking answer. I am sick of this site... Mark my fucking words... I am good at discerning fake news from stuff that shows promise. This is not a 5G tower theory of the disease... this is promising insight that points toward the truth. I am going to link back to this comment and this downvote as the problem with social media. there are too many ignorant stupid self righteous people that think they're doing the right thing.. and they are fools. fuck you hacker news

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Obviously you can't post like this here. Note that your original comment has since been upvoted.

I'm going to put this down to your going on tilt (it happens to almost everyone), but please don't do it again. We all get downvoted. It stings, and it sucks not to necessarily know why, but it happens to everyone and it's the way HN works.

Over time, if your comments are consistently getting downvoted, you should reflect on what might be wrong with them. I looked through your recent account history and it doesn't seem so hard to figure out. In one case, you posted a comment which got a lot of upvotes, but then you pasted it in two other places in the thread and got downvoted for that. Another case was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21983017 which is obviously a bad comment for HN. If one is to judge by these examples, it looks like downvoting is functioning ok.

Incidentally, the user who downvoted your comment upthread is a working doctor. (I hope it's ok for me to say that as long as I don't leak the name.) They are also a fine, scrupulous HN user, so they probably did that for a good reason. You may be disappointed that they didn't give you a substantive reply, but there's no obligation to do that on HN. Sometimes people don't want to get into an argument; sometimes they have their hands full with other things; sometimes they just don't have the energy. It takes a lot of time and energy to think through and type out a substantive comment, especially on a divisive topic where the chance of being misunderstood or attacked is quite high.

Ask him why he downvoted me. I'm really curious what guideline he thinks I violated.

Hi, I downvoted your post. I think `dang hit the nail on the head in re: why I didn't reply (don't really want to argue since arguing on this topic has occupied more of my recent HN activity than I really like; and I'm busy doing other things).

I certainly don't think your original post violated HN policy by any means, but that isn't the threshold for downvoting on HN as far as I understand.

I downvoted because the material in question isn't inline with how the majority of us are thinking about this disease. It creates a false controversy. To be fair, much of what he's describing is the pathophysiology of diffuse alveolar damage (the correlate of ARDS), but simultaneously he's saying it's not ARDS. Even in this video he seemingly felt compelled to walk back his high altitude pulmonary edema comments from a prior video.

I am not going to be replying further in this thread, but since things got off the rails a bit and my downvote was a part of that, I did want to try to explain my views of the content.

> the material in question isn't inline with how the majority of us are thinking about this disease.

That may be true. But that is what makes this important. The current protocols aren't working. This guy is a doctor on the front lines. Gattinoni, whom he references, is an expert in ventilation. This is not a crackpot conspiracy like 5G towers and I'm sick of seeing it dismissed like it is.

I have watched all his videos and I have never seem him say it is HAPE. My recollection is he said it was similar to HAPE.

He... nor Dr. Gattanoni are asserting that it doesn't meet the criteria for ARDS, but rather that it's not typical ARDS.

Gattanoni states:

However, the patients with Covid-19 pneumonia, fulfilling the Berlin criteria of ARDS, present an atypical form of the syndrome. Indeed, the primary characteristics we are observing (confirmed by colleagues in other hospitals), is the dissociation between their relatively well preserved lung mechanics and the severity of hypoxemia.

Downvotes don't have to be because of guideline violations.

Well... that is my complaint about hacker news is that people frequently downvoted stories and comments that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" and don't violate any other guidelines. And they are never held accountable.

I am not referring to my own history. I often read downvoted comments and sometimes upvote them.

If people could indicate a reason for the downvote, it would probably help the whole situation.

The fact that this guy is a doctor... does not help your case. It makes it worse... if this were another lay person that downvoted cuz they thought it was off-topic, I would be ok with that.... But it sounds like this is another doctor, that disagrees with the doctor I linked to.

You might have a mistaken idea of how HN works, which is maybe why you've been finding it frustrating. On HN, it has always been ok to downvote a comment because one disagrees with it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Sure that's controversial, but the controversy is perennial. People have been making exactly the same arguments about it for a dozen years now, and that's just on HN—the debate goes back well before that. Different takes are possible. HN has its take. It's stable, we're not going to change it, and in my opinion it works relatively well. Moreover, the problems with it are not the problems that the users who post complaints about it are complaining about.

Are these comments from pg in 2008 the main source that downvoting signals disagreement? If so, I would suggest you document it somewhere more prominent. Perhaps you could add guidelines on downvoting.

When more is known about covid-19 I plan to come back to this thread and see who was right. If Dr Cameron Kyle-Sidell was wrong, totally off-base, on the wrong track... then maybe you're right... maybe this system does work "relatively well"

Even if there was a more prominently stated, formal policy about when downvotes are appropriate, it would make no material difference; the overwhelming majority of downvote-inclined people will downvote any comment that gives them a negative feeling.

That said, some of the best comments are ones that carry an argument that most people would disagree with, but are worded persuasively and/or informatively enough that they attract upvotes. It's difficult to achieve but well worth aiming for.

Outside of encouraging that, I'm not sure what else dang is meant to do. Discussion platforms that try to enforce policies like requiring explanations for any downvotes don't seem to have substantially better quality discussions.

I agree the other cases I know why I got downvoted. This case is less clear.

thanks for writing this out. Good bot!

Yeah the HN userbase can be extremely frustrating to deal with. Your comments will be flagged and you'll likely get some admin telling you to read the HN guidelines as though it means anything or matters.

But I want you to know that someone else on this site sees the bullshit within the community that exasperated you so much. The HN crowd will upvoted BS posts and downvote substantial discussion on basically a random whim. The admins are known to very insulting label good posts as things such as "tedious ideological boilerplate" or "political flame bait" when they personally don't like what was posted. The userbase treats upvotes and downvotes exactly the way they're used on Reddit. This place is basically just nerd Reddit.

Unfortunately your claim about the virginity of the userbase is both unnecessary (and guaranteed to find the wrath of the powers here) and most likely wrong because the folks here really do make money.

You gotta play the game by their rules or they grey you out. Use those coding skills we all supposedly have to make a new platform and make it better so you can steal away the part of HNs userbase whose worth a damn. That's likely the only way to "fight da powah" since you're obviously very unhappy about this whole ordeal...

I have thought quite a bit about how to make a better more credible site.... It would be quite a challenge.

One feature that would be useful on hacker news, would be to indicate which guideline you're violating when you downvote.

I have always bit my tongue on here.. I went to Startup School 2012. So I have tried to keep my cool because I thought it might lead to some opportunity.

But this site is so bad at this point. I really don't care anymore. I might lose my karma or get kicked off but I frankly do not care...

I have read the guidelines. and I defy someone on here to give me a good reason to downvote the original comment.

My guess, though I have not downvoted, is because it’s off topic. This isn’t a general coronavirus thread. The discussion is about the article posted. Why not submit that link independently?

@dcow I agree off topic is a possible explanation... however... The link is to one of the sources for the video and the article.

I did submit it as a separate link and it's got no traction.

My concern is this... there is a lot of fake news... like the 5G tower theory which is absurd. But there are also legit people out there trying to figure out this problem. They are being dumped into the same bucket... by well meaning social media moderators.

I suspected it was downvoted because people think they're doing the right thing... stopping the spread of wild theories or disinformation.

Respectfully, I think you’ve described your exact problem. I watched 30 seconds of the video. I wouldn’t call it a wild theory or disinformation. But I also don't find it particularly relevant or insightful. So I don’t think your assumption that this site is full of idiots who are downvoting you to try and stop the spread of _fake_ fake news (god I hate that term) is accurate. You’re simply using a popular thread to try and get visibility which, I’m sure, you believe is warranted because you find the video compelling. However this is not a strategy that’s generally acceptable on HN. You posted the link. People haven't found it interesting enough to upvote on its own merit. HN is not a virus fighting machine. Don’t pretend that posing some under-informed (based on the discussion here) doctor on vimeo talking about his hypothesis would have had any impact on anything had it _just_ been more favorably received... In other words, don't fret it. HN comment threads (social media as you put it) are not going to cure a pandemic.

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