Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by PebblesHD | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

PebblesHD

hear fucking hear

EDIT: Ahh yes, downvoted for agreeing. Fantastic guys!

View on HN

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378403 as off-topic.

To clarify, you probably got downvoted because it doesn't contribute anything. We have upvotes for agreement.

Fair enough, perhaps upvotes should be visible. Thanks

I think it's a deliberate choice on HN to not have it because it promotes hive-mind behavior/opinions. You can see your own comment's points for kicks though.

Comment rankings used to be visible, but were removed. I have a feeling there's a discussion in the archives somewhere about the reasoning.

Under that assumption, upvote should not be a way to voice agreement, as that implies that downvote is disagreement. But downvote leads to graying-out and disappearance, which is just perfect to induce the hive mind.

And yes, downvoting into oblivion articulate comments not at all devoid of content really has become endemic here, and many (though certainly not all) of those I read anyway were obviously downvoted for disagreement, often political. The result is a strong hive mind at HN. (I've seen seen that opinion on HN voiced outside of HN more than once.)

> downvoting into oblivion articulate comments not at all devoid of content really has become endemic here, and many (though certainly not all) of those I read anyway were obviously downvoted for disagreement, often political

Maybe I'm biased, but I personally had the opposite feeling, the majority of the comments I see grayed out are usually somehow aggressive/salty rants that don't really try to bring anything useful to the thread, and the few other ones are comments with technical details that are plain wrong.

I probably unconsciously undercount "legitimate" grey-outs, so... maybe. Still, you really can't have all three of these: (1) Votes to register (dis-)agreement and (2) very prominent visual effect of downvotes, yet (3) no hivemind induction.

I'm not lobbying for changes. The whole up/downvote business is really hard, maybe there's no better way. Just thought people here might be interested in the fact that HN has been getting somewhat of a hivemind reputation, lately.

I think it's a childish and nonacademic worldview if you think the only value in another post is if you agree or not.

Are they asking thought provoking questions or contributing new information or insights, or is it a me-too comment? The latter does not really contribute to the conversation.

"We have upvotes for agreement" is not exclusive - it doesn't mean "only use upvote for agreement".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com