Comment by shanelja | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shanelja | Hacker News Reader

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I'm actually really sorry, but I didn't understand your comment, I'm not sure if it's too early or I lack the intelligence but I've been reading it again and again for the past 5 minutes and I can't seem to get my head around it, so I can't adequately comment on.

~ After seeing it has been rewritten slightly ~

Thanks for the response and I agree, one of the good things about this site is that everyone comes here equal, very rarely do I see any kind of elitism between the users, with the exception of the occasional PHP vs Ruby(oR) rant.

I wasn't putting down Paul for the sake of putting him down, it wasn't my intention to come across as pretentious or seeming to push morals on people and I acknowledge a comment above stating that Paul could simply have been terse in his response, I do however still assert my original comment, I believe that he could have brought a lot more to the table than he did when he posted, I nearly always think carefully about my comments before I make them.

HN is exemplary in this regard, it has quite possibly the best quality of commenting I have found so far and I hope it continues this way for a long time to come, I'm relatively new to this site, only having been on this account for 3 months now, but in that time I have been a daily user (probably reading 50+ articles per day and commenting upon several) and as such I feel it is my responsibility to help the quality of this site remain at the same level, if I feel a post does little to aid or engage with someone who requires help, it is my duty to mention it, regardless of if the persons name is green or if the persons name is PG.

Also, my karma is like a yo-yo after posting on this thread, I'm literally seeing it jump up or down after every page refresh.

He's actually defending you. He's saying you shouldn't have to write a paragraph long preamble to explain why you're second guessing PG.

Personally, I think you're way off-base. PG obviously can't elaborate on the voting ring detector or give further detail because to do so would lessen its effectiveness. I wasn't expecting the OP to even get a response.

Plus PG is always succinct.

Is not so off-base, it was kind of rude because he didn't say "The submission set off the voting ring detector", he literally said "You set off the voting ring detector" wish can be read as an accusation even if that was not what Mr. Graham had in mind.

I'm not defending his disapproval of PG's response.

Just alluding to the larger point he -- somewhat tangentially -- hit on, which is quite true.

The herdism part.

HNers incapable of presenting their own take -- worthy of some import -- often resolve to aligning with the closest agreeable opinion and / or down-voting opinions that are farther afar from them.

The problem with this is that often enough their own opinion -- if they actually took the time to properly form it -- is really not proximate to either of the viewpoints. Not even by a long shot.

They just want to express for the sake of expression.

And the least demanding form of expression is a vote, whether in favor or out of favor. PG agrees with this sentiment in one of his earlier posts concerning fine tuning the HN experience.

Herdism is bad. It gives you the Reddit quagmire.

Weak-willed people align with either of two equidistant opinions because they sense that some measure of expression of their will is more valuable than none at all.

Weak-willed people also have the established-majority bias. When given a choice of two clear 'candidates' whose strengths ( vote tallies ) are clear for everyone to see, they are easily lured into siding with the trouncing candidate irrespective of the degree of concurrence of their opinions.

If we are to have a vibrant community, this kind of behavior (as well as those agents) should be actively repelled.

Don't feed the trolls. See:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4804437

> I'm not defending his disapproval of PG's response.

Whenever you see a sentence like this on an online forum, you know the conversation has gone off the rails.

This comment gave me a slight giggle, which is good as I'm just about to start my day.

It has largely gone off topic, which is also, largely my fault and it's a shame that the original topic has been overshadowed by this instead of actual useful responses for the original poster which wasn't in any way my intention.

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