← Back to context

Comment by dmpayton

17 years ago

The rampant down-modding for differing political views on this thread (which has no business being on Hacker News in the first place) is ridiculous.

11 comments

dmpayton

Reply
technoguyrob  17 years ago

It is not ridiculous, since people aren't downmodding to express a difference of opinion about what the person said. They are downmodding to assert they do not want to hear any political opinion on Hacker News, because--as has been said--there are countless other venues for hackers to express and debate political opinion; Hacker News is not one of them.

Notice therefore we see something interesting regarding the HN system. In essence, this is exactly what pg had in mind. Karma is taken away for comments and not just submissions, so that users will adapt to the Hacker News atmosphere. As we have seen from this thread, politics (even "news" like the first ever black general election presidential candidate) is simply not something people are interested in seeing on HN, and if people keep discussing it, they will be downmodded into oblivion, effectively maintaining the current HN mindset (since, presumably, people with negative, or quickly decreasing karma, will not want to continue posting on HN).

The only thing that could break such a system is a vast shift in the mentality of the community (which is not a bad thing since it would still keep the community happy, although it's very unlikely to happen), or a massive influx of new people into the community (which is why pg wants to keep the number of new signups per day low).

  • rms  17 years ago

    Correct analysis, but the downmodders are acting uselessly.

    • technoguyrob  17 years ago

      I disagree. Read my post again, I added two paragraphs. It's very useful behavior, in fact (imho). It preserves the nature of the community quite effectively (albeit at the expensive of causing temporary upset).

  • tokipin  17 years ago

    it feels to me that more assholery has resulted from "HN-vs-not HN" than what would have from a political discussion

    • bct  17 years ago

      Think over the long term.

      If there's enough HN-vs-not-HN assholery over the short term, political topics will show up less often and there will be less need for both kinds of assholery. If political discussions are allowed to run unchecked, assholery remains at a constant level (and HN enters a downward spiral).

      2 replies →

    • edw519  17 years ago

      I agree. I am also amazed that the word "assholery" made it throught the HN spell checker. Wonder what that means.