Users may have flagged this comment because you made a very controversial claim without any support. On Hacker News, the bar for substantiveness is higher in this situation because the site exists for civil, intellectually interesting discussion, and predictable flamewars are precisely opposite.
There's a lot of comments making arguments that were basically discredited decades ago, and people have got tired of having to rebut them every single time and gone straight to the downvoting.
Hacker news voters seem to have got a lot less tolerant of this kind of tired regressive culture war stuff lately. But this article is still on the way to being flagged off the front page. There are certain subjects this site is just not capable of having a mature, informed discussion of.
An off-topic aside: It's interesting watching the up/down votes on my post. As much as Hacker News likes to think of itself as self monitoring the substantiveness of comments, often times it degrades itself to simply trying to silence opposing opinions. How cheap. How little.
My comments might not bear much currency, but the contrarian article that I link is substantive even if you disagree with it. While I don't think you are obliged to upvote my comments if you disagree with them, to down vote them because you oppose me is to merely to attempt to silence discussion rather than ensure that it is a quality discussion.
We have no way to tell if they're being flagged by users or setting off the automated system for detecting flamewars.
One of the problems with the topic is that essentially every Hacker News reader feels as though they're qualified to comment on the topic. This translates into massive nested threads that blow up with people arguing the same points.
I'm not convinced that discussion of these issues on Hacker News does anything to push the ball forward. I have yet to meet the person who changed their position on the subject due to an internet argument.
True enough at it's inception. But a look at the front page will disprove it today. It's just that some perspectives on some topics are more equal than others.
>in comments
There's no debating that re: comments. But it's not relevant to this topic or my comment about the topic (which is high quality, relevant, and tech).
Of course meta comments like these are exactly what are justifiably moderated and removed. You could argue this one was flagged because it might lead to these kind of comment threads, cutting it off before it could start. But it wouldn't start if the flag wasn't confirmed.
lol. you edited your original comment to say you actually agree w/ the piece but flagged it because you said you've seen it elsewhere (but don't provide links).
I guess it was stupid to expect Hacker News to have a discussion about this argument (instead of, once again, evading it) but that's how it goes.
Thx for, atleast, sharing some of your thoughts on this. Usually arguments HN wants to avoid are voted down w/ no reason given.
Not engaging with your claim about what is the "correct answer" to this question asked of another user about something they said, I assume this comment is being downvoted because it blatantly violates the site's community guidelines.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
This is an extremely sparse remark about a controversial issue.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
This is a bad Hacker News comment, as are several others here. They responded to a substantive article with indignant ideological complaints that were guaranteed to derail the thread, and did.
I just love the Hacker News guideline that comments get more thoughtful and substantive as a topic gets more divisive, I think we all benefit a lot from that aspect of this site.
Honestly I only posted my comment to stir deeper public discussion on the topic, while trying to be clear at the end that it's possible but I certainly don't think it's encouraged or any fun at all. I figured it wasn't news to you, but thought the topic worth opening, perhaps news to someone else. Cheers.
Arguments are easy when you can place whatever concepts you like in another's head, but we ask that comments stay civil and substantive on Hacker News.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, but my comment was strictly procedural and divorced from the topic. We ask that community members post civilly and substantively on Hacker News or not at all, because we're here to learn and to gratify our intellectual curiosity. Any substantive discussion of the merit of the original post would include information, which your comment lacked.
We can do without this kind of inflammatory conjecture on Hacker News. The bar for civility and substantiveness goes up when approaching controversial issues. It's not about whichever position you take—it's about being thoughtful enough to afford a reasonable follow-up discussion.
> Hacker News is a high quality forum because it disallows political discussion.
It's interesting that you think so, because this very discussion is extremely political, though perhaps meta-political.
I think Hacker News may be unique in that political discussion can take place in a technical forum.
The main barrier to thoughtful discussion may be the HN points system.
I suspect that many insightful posts are not written due to self-censorship (fear of losing points). It's completely irrational of course, the points are meaningless, but when they are lost it can cause some distress. Nobody likes to lose a game.
Hacker News is comprised primarily of people who do not wish to discuss a variety of viewpoints freely. Any comment that strays from the "party line" is immediately downvoted, usually without response from anyone. The "silent hand" of disapproval shames into submission or obscurity. The ideological purity of the community is preserved at all costs--especially at the cost of intellectual diversity.
I see comment after comment, ones that are completely reasonable and polite, downvoted into grayness because they disagree with the prevailing opinion. Instead of posting a reasonable, polite rebuttal--you know, furthering the pursuit of knowledge and understanding--people anonymously click the "I disapprove" button and censor opposing views. And you and dang don't do a thing about it. The people downvoting comments like that are completely abusing their downvote privilege, but it never stops. Then you revoke myupvoting privilege after I correctively upvote some unfairly downvoted comments. Apparently that's "working as intended" at Hacker News.
Even Slashdot, as far a cry as it is now from its historical golden era, is a bastion of open-mindedness compared to HN.
So why should I waste my time here? You want to have your echo chamber, well hey, it's your site. I can tell when I'm not wanted. And unlike many here, I would not force my views on anyone.
Because Hacker News wants people to stand behind their comments. Lack of accountability is not a desirable feature if you're trying to encourage civilized discussion.
I totally disagree. Your very comment is the proof that even on Hacker news you can have unfounded inflammatory comments that have no substance and no purpose.
Also even if the comment style is much more harsher on reddit, and hence reduces the possibility of civil discussion, I find the number of comments that stand out by themselves as being particularly interesting to be approximately the same on both sites.
And finally the hacker news style of discussion, while much more tame, and often bringing more interesting discussions, can be just as consensual, or even more on certain topics, the person standing out as being the more 'reasonnable' being often the most upvoted, with little regard to the soundness of arguments.
reply