Comment by thomassmith65
3 days ago
Internet comments are not a scarce resource.
Let's say HN is missing out on 20% of potential comments. We still have too many for any one user to read.
3 days ago
Internet comments are not a scarce resource.
Let's say HN is missing out on 20% of potential comments. We still have too many for any one user to read.
The problem is that a bulk of the interesting conversation to be bad is introduced in that 20%.
Hopefully that is an overstatement, but, either way, most social media sites are so nasty and braindead that my attitude to HN is conservative: we should err on the side of leaving the site as it is.
>Internet comments are not a scarce resource.
No, but comments that go against the grain or against the hivemind are. Downvotes and flagging encourage group think more than they weed out 'bad' comments.
It encourages the 80% into group think. Flagging is a signifier that “you should not dare to think that was a good comment. Move on and don’t think for yourself”.
That may sometimes be the case, but the apparent reason for many, many flags here is that the content is unoriginal.
I've flagged plenty of comments that I agreed with on HN because they were dull and hackneyed.
You are doing it wrong. That's where you should downvote, not flag.
Frivolous flagging - as you are doing - could eventually get your account privileges removed.
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>but the apparent reason for many, many flags here is that the content is unoriginal.
Unoriginal to who? What's unoriginal to you might be original to someone else. So your justification for flagging only reinforces the groupthink argument even if you don't realize it.
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It is a vote order forum though. Pretty much any artificial cybernetics will pigeonhole everyone.