It's hard to read contextualization or to infer what we refer to as vocal inflections through writing; I am as guilty as anyone of the occasional "posting while drinking" (which I've noticed does tend to make my writing seem a little bit more hostile than intended); however, some attempts at humor here just end up falling pretty flat.
While we're geeking out, I'd be more interested in some kind of karma/comment metric than absolute karma.
Should we publicize a list of people who voted for the Canadian Lobster Party, because they obviously did it out of spite and should be punished for their lack of patriotism? Or do the benefits of anonymous voting (or modding, in this instance) outweigh the costs of people who don't take the rules seriously?
There's a little society going on here at HN. If you feel compelled to punish people who stray from the "true path" here, it's probably just a reflection of your greater worldview.
And in a final attempt to be downmodded, let me quote scripture: "He who is true in a little, is true in much; he who is false in small things, is false in great." Luke 16:10
Edit: Typo
Should we publicize a list of people who voted for the Canadian Lobster Party
Hey, if the numbers were interesting, why not? I'm INTP; I love looking for patterns in things, especially numbers. Social media is almost like poker in that it has a psychology issue.
But that said, I don't really downmod people very often (inadvertently sometimes, since the up and downmod arrows are so close together). My upmod/downmod ratio is probably something like 79 to 1. I'm curious about others'.
Yeah, sometimes certain people irk me, but usually do I respond to them before downmodding. And I usually attempt to befriend them after an apology, or at least an attempt for a truce on a subject we might disagree about. But some people are just vindictive, or extreme cynics.
As a result of this, I have a lot of one or two-point comments. This doesn't bother me; I'm not here to karma whore. I like the articles and the discussions, and tend to lurk most of the time anyway, posting only in spurts.
P.S. Why did you say that you're "attempting to be downmodded"?
I grow weary of HN's Singaporean (overly sanitized) approach to geek discussion. Geeks suffer enough from intellectual narcissism without trying to constitutionalize it. Thankfully there's enough brain candy on the site to compensate.
And people, let's go light on the hacker this and hacker that. We all get it. We're all keen to learn and explore. But... was Michael Jackson a hacker? Geebus. Labels are overrated.
God Bless the USA, but there's something distinctly American about coming up with a subtly differentiated product and then hyping it as the total opposite of what came just before it. Yeah, I mean HN / Reddit / Slashdot.
P.S.: I made the remark about being downmodded because I assumed my gentle admonishment would be unpopular, plus I noticed that almost without fail it happens when people quote the Bible.
Well, a name is just a variable. If that variable can be correlated to a group status of another value within a social network, it can reveal patterns about social dynamics and even things about viral distribution of certain prominent ideas / memes / buzz-worthy topics.
It is interesting how, for example, the Google zeitgeist works, or the "trending topics" on Twitter. There are big pipes and there are small pipes, but in the oligopoly of mainstream media, it is only a select few who control the flow of data.
P.S. By "mainstream media," I mean the conglomerates who control the major networks of NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, and the other free airwaves that don't require a cable subscription payment every month.