Comment by jsmthrowaway
9 years ago
> HN traditionally had a "Don't downvote people solely because you disagree with them" policy.
You are confusing HN with Reddit. HN never had such a policy, nor any, for that matter.
pg specifically said before handing over the site that he didn't mind downvoting to disagree. I have seen no movement from new leadership on this; in fact, new leadership have doubled down on some of pg's worse calls. With the graying out of comments added in to the downvote encouragement, effectively that situation encourages you to only offer uncontroversial opinion lest your thoughts become invisible and silenced. It's not a heavy thought exercise to see where allegations of groupthink come from.
That, along with the fact that my account was marked as an instantly-penalized troublemaker at some point and I only found out by emailing many months later even though my email was in my profile all along, is one of the reasons I no longer contribute here. That was a startling discovery, that individuals get marked as troublemakers based upon the opinion of a moderator and, in my case, a single comment. Think about that for a second, and think about all the comments you've ever made, and the fact that HN usernames are part of the YC application process. A lot clicked for me once I stepped back and thought about it.
As I said, don't confuse HN with Reddit. The leadership of Hacker News has a large amount of zeal and actively steers conversation toward arbitrary positivity and civility, including moderation decisions you would find questionable anywhere else. Before appealing to decency and policy when a comment gets downvotes as you have, just remember that. The irony is that HN loves to mock Reddit, but in many ways it is three times the community HN is.
And please don't complain about downvotes. That is specifically discussed here.
Fun fact: I find downvoting to be a completely worthless feature of this site for all of the reasons you've listed and more!
I find it useless to be in possession of the capacity to downvote, as well as the recipient of downvotes from others. This has provoked me to adopt enhanced counter strategies with the full awareness that my behavior is both unorthodox, and contrarian to the culture and preferred/espoused norms/mores of this site as a whole.
In particular, I've noticed that one contrarian comment, which directly contradicts a parent, and indeed violates the typical cultural views of the site as a whole, while remaining on-topic, maintaining valid points, and supporting evidence, receives way more attentive mileage, than any downvote. This is usually because those with vested interests in expressing a typical norm struggle deeply to contradict sound evidence and factual observations.
So, I've stopped maintaining normal accounts, stopped using accounts that have the ability to downvote, stopped downvoting, and instead downvote with words that actually explain my motivations for what would be a downvote, if I were the sort of person to actually resort to petty downvoting.
Instead of pining for the "privilege" of downvoting my peers, I simply unspool evermore single-use accounts and tell people exactly why I disagree with them, point-blank, and never look back, or care about the superficial shade of text coloring my comment, nor the meaningless negative number in a point system on an account that will never be used again.
Downvoters are really only silencing themselves, by refusing to go out on a limb and risk downvotes themselves, rather than express disagreement.
Another key point: My contrarian remarks aren't made in such ways that would result in getting flagged to death or hellbanned. My goal is discussion, not shock value or being incendiary for the sake of receiving negative attention. Some things need to be said, and I'll be happy to oblige if no one else will.