You can pretend that people vote based on value of the article, whether it should appear lower or higher on the page, etc. But you're just fooling yourself.
So the karma system rewards people who make the most people feel the best. You can call that cleverness, schmoozing, politics, or bullshit. Because of this, it promotes people thinking of like mind, not necessarily interesting things. It's "let's say happy, slightly interesting things to each other about information that doesn't challenge our worldview"
This site has taught me not to downvote with emotion.
I pretty much think "how many votes should this have? how great is the comment?" and I upvote or downvote it based on how incorrect their current rating is.
Lately I find myself upvoting a lot of comments I don't agree with simply because people have downvoted them into oblivion just for having a different opinion.
I'll do that too. I'm much more lenient towards people with good opinions here than I am anywhere else.
Even so, sometimes I'm tired and in a bad mood and I'll read somebody making a long, utterly wrong point and I'll downvote it instead of responding. Nobody's entirely innocent.
One of the primary reasons I come here is to learn new things.
A lot of this learning comes from people I initially disagree with, but that have good arguments or insights. And I upvote them, even if I don't agree.
One of the critical factors in an aggregation site (or in a consulting relationship for that matter) is the ability for participants to step outside the norms. To disagree.
HN has a better record of this than say, reddit. That's why I stay here. There's some opportunity for people with radically different opinions to meet and share. To the extent that the board supports that, I'm a big fan.
But to the OPs point, you can say the same thing different ways and get different results. It's not about information. It's about emotional impact.
So you end up doing this little dance whenever you'd like to correct somebody. There are lots of tactics, but it all boils down to presenting information to somebody they're not going to like in a format that's easily digestible.
To some degree, that's just being civil -- treating people like you would if you were talking to them at a bar. But that's time intensive and most times I know I don't think it's worth the effort. Folks will argue with you ad infinitum anyway, and that's best-case. So you stick to short, catchy, terse comments that mix in a little information goodness. People upvote the comment thinking it's the information, but it's really the emotional impact of the message. It's the presentation, stupid. The content is not nearly as important.
Comments
People vote their emotion. Can't change it.
You can pretend that people vote based on value of the article, whether it should appear lower or higher on the page, etc. But you're just fooling yourself.
So the karma system rewards people who make the most people feel the best. You can call that cleverness, schmoozing, politics, or bullshit. Because of this, it promotes people thinking of like mind, not necessarily interesting things. It's "let's say happy, slightly interesting things to each other about information that doesn't challenge our worldview"
Known bug.
This site has taught me not to downvote with emotion.
I pretty much think "how many votes should this have? how great is the comment?" and I upvote or downvote it based on how incorrect their current rating is.
Lately I find myself upvoting a lot of comments I don't agree with simply because people have downvoted them into oblivion just for having a different opinion.
I'll do that too. I'm much more lenient towards people with good opinions here than I am anywhere else.
Even so, sometimes I'm tired and in a bad mood and I'll read somebody making a long, utterly wrong point and I'll downvote it instead of responding. Nobody's entirely innocent.
One of the primary reasons I come here is to learn new things.
A lot of this learning comes from people I initially disagree with, but that have good arguments or insights. And I upvote them, even if I don't agree.
One of the critical factors in an aggregation site (or in a consulting relationship for that matter) is the ability for participants to step outside the norms. To disagree.
HN has a better record of this than say, reddit. That's why I stay here. There's some opportunity for people with radically different opinions to meet and share. To the extent that the board supports that, I'm a big fan.
But to the OPs point, you can say the same thing different ways and get different results. It's not about information. It's about emotional impact.
So you end up doing this little dance whenever you'd like to correct somebody. There are lots of tactics, but it all boils down to presenting information to somebody they're not going to like in a format that's easily digestible.
To some degree, that's just being civil -- treating people like you would if you were talking to them at a bar. But that's time intensive and most times I know I don't think it's worth the effort. Folks will argue with you ad infinitum anyway, and that's best-case. So you stick to short, catchy, terse comments that mix in a little information goodness. People upvote the comment thinking it's the information, but it's really the emotional impact of the message. It's the presentation, stupid. The content is not nearly as important.