Ask HN: Do you get addicted to your HN votes like normal people do to Instagram?
I just realised I totally do.
But it does irk me slightly when someone will -1 a comment without an explanation/response. I don't mind an active counter-view (heck, I may learn I was wrong!), it is the silent dismissal I cannot stand (and often seems knee-jerky when you criticize a sacred cow company/product).
But like all complaints like this, I am a giant hypocrite and have downvoted comments without responding.
Is there a service to get push notifications for HN responses?
I've found the easiest way to do that is to click on your username on the front page, and then click on the comments link. Any replies to your comments will show up there. It's easier to check if you don't make a lot of new comments in different comment threads.
What would be nice is if sites like HN and Reddit would offer a preview pane of the overall comment thread structure with all comments collapsed and had a visual indicator about which subthread contains new comments since the last time you checked. Then it would be much easier to find newer comments and join the conversation.
That's part of the reason why threads on usenet would be active for months, but threads on Reddit and Hackernews aren't active for more than a few days.
The Hacker News Comments Owl browser plugin does something like this[0], I highly recommend it.
Similarly to Reddit, hn karma seems to be a lot about timing. Getting in on a thread early and getting some quick votes yielded far more karma for me than anything else.
I wouldn't necessarily say that larger comments are overly ignored (especially in the hn community); the time it takes to formulate and research them, combined with the delayed upvotes due to reading time, probably scews the average karma enough already.
"I ate nothing for 1 hour and this is what happened" "I bought $200,000 worth of bananas and now I'm broke (and sad, lost in an island full of monkeys barely scraping by)" "You won't believe this happened" "Do this one trick (and waste 10 min of your time)" "I almost got killed"
I'm sure you even encountered fancier ones, but these are what came off the top of my head.
How to get people hooked on our site long enough and make them watch ads? That's YouTube for you. HN is quite different and thank goodness it is.
I wish HN introduced a new method to disagree. A counter-argument type comment, which when upvoted, will downvote the parent comments.
Further, my comments that have gotten the largest uptick, are uniformely silly offhand comments of no merit. It's enough to teach me, they aren't meaningful.
The emotional reaction is stronger when the points upvoted/downvoted are close to my personal values are well taken.
Like when I comment about being critical and unbiased about anything, about constant improvements, and people upvotes, it is really satisfying. Vice versa, especially silent downvotes where you "cant see the enemy".
But when I talk about the trivial things, votes don't mean much.
Obviously just my personal opinion.
This isn't gram obviously, which I nuked because it wasn't serving a business or personal branding purpose for sometime, but I will slip back in for a vintage car restoration.
If someone cares about votes, they'll be a slave to them and:
- worry more what other people think of them that writing, doing, or creating
- they'll censor themselves about something they feel strongly about and regret it
- they'll do something incredibly stupid for attention and regret it, such as jumping on top of a moving freight train. Don't. Or get pulled over by 4 UFOs for doing a buck 40 (mph, that's 225 kph). Don't do that either. Or drop a cover over their motorcycle license plate and outrun the cops from a highway on city streets. Don't do that either. Or have insanely hot sex at work in the back stairwell just before the lunch rush. You get the idea. You don't need social media for the best things in life; some things are best not shared but lifecasting is cool too.
- Don't become a trained monkey performer unless it's a determined career path.
On HN, express yourself with reason and evidence, and let the chips fall where they may. On gram, it's different because it's about displaying moments, creations, and art publicly and let the critics do whatever the heck they're going to do; it's a museum or a show-and-tell where folks have probably had some champagne already and also cyberdisinhibitionism, so feedback needs some big ass grains of salt.
Meditate on being more like Peter in Office Space after hypnosis and be awesome. Votes are for other people. Take it only as feedback after the fact, not before. Risk being booed on-stage.
Peace, out
1. Have I clearly gotten my ideas across? Am I reaching people?
2. Am I even right?
Fluctuations in votes helps answer #1, and responses help to answer #1 and #2
3. Am I adding value to this community?
Which should show up as a decent overall score.
I don’t find HN karma addictive at all, just informative. I do get a bit Pavlovian refreshing looking for new stories, and when I notice I’m doing that I make a point of walking away and focusing on something else.
You can check by going to your profile and clicking comments.