Tempted to quit HN | Hacker News Reader

Tempted to quit HN

5 pointsakkartik9 comments

Perhaps there's a case that the quality of stories on the front page is still good, but the comment threads are definitely decaying.

Today's exhibit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=731486

My comment's not great, but I figured somebody might appreciate an attempt at distilling a slashdot thread. Staying at +1 or +2 would have gone unremarked. But -4? Seriously?

I didn't care enough to respond for the past 16 hours, but some morbid curiosity kept me returning to watch. I think it's a window into the community. It wouldn't have happened a year ago, so PG, stop telling us HN isn't degrading.

View on HN

Perhaps you weren't clear in communicating what exactly you were summarizing? Your comment can be seen as misleading. Also, once a comment is already in the negative, I think it is more likely to be voted down even further, so don't take it as an absolute score. You're reading too much into this.

Also, you're exhibiting quite an immature reaction to being down-voted. Threatening to quit?

> Also, once a comment is already in the negative, I think it is more likely to be voted down even further

Absolutely, group think is pretty popular on internet for and HN is no exception.

As for quitting over being downvoted, I can fully understand if you've never had that happen to you and you feel 'at home' here and something like that happens out of the blue that you feel like quitting. In the end that's a matter of how thick your skin is and what you are getting out of the community.

I think people here in general are focussed on the 'points' a little too much.

I've had worse happen to me, it's the internet. There is some kind of underwater push-and-pull going on here that will change the nature of HN, and probably not in a good way.

Every community seems to have a life-cycle:

- group of closely knit individuals

- extended friends

- common interest

- more mainstream

- 'founders' start leaving because the content quality drops

- still growing but new folks appear faster than they can be brought up to speed wrt to conduct and topics

- start of the decline because the atmosphere is degrading further and further

Pick your phase, I think we're at '5' or beyond now, there has to be some way to reverse the trend.

I had no idea what your comment meant and when they weren't quotes from the people you mentioned, I had no idea what your point was.

Just a sentence like "Here are their various positions" (or anything more) at the top of your comment would have been a way to communicate that without making people feel confused by what point you were making or why they should click around deep in slashdot comments.

I didn't downvote you because you were already below 0, but I would have downvoted from 1 to 0 if I was first to read it. I would have also added a comment like what you received (though less tinged with rudeness).

I think -4 is unfair, but with more viewers, getting a few votes below 0 is easier than it once was even if only a tenth of a percent of voters are slightly more jumpy about downvoting.

Feel free to leave ofc.

Posting a sulky "im leaving" thread definitely wont win you friends though :(

(it's only a bit of karma; the comment was very ambiguous - perhaps people were telling you it was worthless if not explained?)

Bye.

Moderation of comments is not a particularly easy problem... You made a post that apparently the first four people found unhelpful and confusing? I looked through the post and I didn't find it particularly interesting, but then the whole topic isn't very interesting to me.

Why do you care about HN Karma? It has no impact on the value you derive from being part of this community.

As I have had it explained to me by someone else when I asked the very same question: People view the number as part of their self worth. If someone downvotes you, you are suppose to care about the fact that an arbitrary number, which has no real meaning in the greater scope of things, went down. For instance, I am suppose to care when a lot of people come and downvote my response to your question.

The only thing I use karma for is to figure out if I have said something factually incorrect or if I have made someone upset. I only get upset about it if someone starts voting me down, when they merely disagree with what I have to say. Negative scores tend to prevent other people from actively engaging in conversation, even if the downvoted post is well thought out and meant to encourage constructive dialogue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com