it's really disgusting to see people quietly being blacklisted.

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1 point by kami8844 0 minutes ago | link [dead]

I had to do some web scraping for an application that I recently wrote and only when my app's performance started to rely on the results provided by the various search engines out there, I started to fully appreciate how good Google is. It's just no comparison; in edge cases and unconventional searches (where it really matters) Google completely creams the competition. While Bing came closest to providing search results as accurate as Googles it still wasn't at any comparable level, so all in all I agree with your point.

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I agree that the system is quite a bit too trigger-happy. Being shadowbanned is a pretty shitty spot to be in and I don't think 9 downvotes over 4 comments qualify for such harsh punishment.

Personally I'd say that depends. If you have a positive comment history then no you sholdn't be banned for a small run of comments that the community finds unhelpful to the conversation.

If all of your first comments are downvoted then I suggest you make a new account and wait until you have something positive to say.

Note that positive doesn't mean affirming groupthink, or karma whoring (which is hard here but looks possible) but adding to the conversation. An opposing opinion well expressed often won't win a lot of upvotes but it usually gets more ups than downs.

Note: the following unexpectedly turned into a bit of a rant, with a dose of whining thrown in:

Many of us "old-timers" think that downvoting without giving a reason is mostly bad form (the exception is for a rude or obnoxious comment). I've personally noticed an increase in this behavior.

I believe that doing so decreases the user experience. I've had plenty of disagreements over the years and have almost always learned something from them (even if it just required me to do a bit of soul-searching). Posts would be painstakingly composed (one of the big complaints we had was that the post-page timed out while we were composing- so we had to result in using a separate editor to compose, then click "reply" and copy-and-paste.

But now-- why bother? I've been around a while. I'm on my second (third?) career. Not a hacker extraordinaire by any means, but I'm well educated technically and have maintained my involvement with a broad array of interests (I like to learn new things). I've seen some things, and I'm willing to share- and even be challenged in my own conclusions about them.

But when I make a post that the "average HN-er" (age 25, so I hear) may not think is very smart and I immediately get downvoted with no reason given, it sends a signal that HN has changed in a very dramatic way.

The site is far less valuable than it used to be.

I know what you're talking about but it doesn't apply to comments. The only thing that automatically adds up and downvotes to comments is what they call 'fuzzy comment karma' which is to prevent bots from figuring out too quickly that they have been shadow-banned, since to them it looks like they are getting 2 downvotes here and 3 upvotes over there.

The system has been active longer than the post was old and it's just and example, if you read through comment threads back then and now, you will notice the difference without having to rely on karmic metrics.

Oh, yes, completely agree. It not the karma scoring that hurts, but rather than no discussion is considered acceptable.

it is best to simply accept downvotes without explanation as background noise

Sadly, yes.

WRT Reddit what I've heard on the site is that they have an obfuscation system that adds downvotes and hides the current voting position. It would be impossible thus to see that a story had 91 upvotes and no downs as apparent downvotes are automatically added. It's supposed to be part of the system to prevent people from gaming karma scores.

That's simply not true. There are plenty of examples of people getting downvoted for having a contrary viewpoint. Groupthink is alive and well on HN.

(I'm ambivalent about the stealth-blacklisting thing. It's probably the right thing to do with genuinely abusive users. It might be the right thing with people genuinely incapable of contributing much. But I've seen too many cases where someone's comments are all being auto-deaded -- invisibly to them, AIUI -- with no obvious reason why they should deserve it.)

Really? Sorry, but that sounds like a terrible idea. HN is already insular enough, we don't need to start demanding newcomers pass a test before we let them comment.

Comment: LOL

Is this an acceptable comment?

Right now people are used to that being an acceptable comment on the rest of the internet. These people currently get hellbanned on HN because other people downvote these comments. It's not a test for testing whether the people are acceptable on HN, it's method of teaching customs and a test for whether people have read the guidelines.

It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and it's the last thing this community needs.

What do you think the likes of a Matt Cutts would do if they were trying to sign up for HN and the site forced them to say whether "LOL" was an appropriate comment before allowing them to post? It's insulting and arrogant and will drive away the kind of people we want posting here. All that for a "problem" that is invisible the vast majority of the time.

On the other hand the system is clearly broken now.

> The karma metric is pretty transparent. You learn very quickly which comments are and are not appreciated. Dropping a friendly comment to someone you see who hasn't caught on yet works, as well.

This is not the case as it is currently implemented. If one of your first comments gets downvoted you get hellbanned. There is no chance to learn from your mistakes. Dropping a friendly comment doesn't work either because you cannot respond to hellbanned people. Do you have showdead on? Try it and you'll probably see that about half of the hellbanned people still posting invisible comments are legitimate. For example you will find 3 of those people commenting on this post, two of them having no idea that nobody is reading their comments.

For example look at http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bshock

This guy has been banned for 2 downvoted comments and has been posting legitimate but invisible comments for over a year. You can clearly see the learning effects: his first couple of comments are not HN quality. Unfortunately by the time he got accustomed to HN he had been silenced.

In isolation, I can't entirely disagree the downvotes, but it seems to me that the system ought to be more tolerant of people that screw up their first couple posts as long as they were honest contributions (as opposed to spam).

Perhaps the ban should be triggered a lot more heavily on flags than downvotes up to a certain number of posts.

A karma based ban that makes some sense for people that are consistently bad. But it seems to me that the current ban code doesn't give newcomers enough chance to change based on the feedback they've been given. New users don't have a buffer to fall back on if they make one or two bad posts, and ought to be given more leeway. As long as people are flagging correctly, that should take care of obvious trolls or spam.

If so, don't give too much weight to new reporters for flagging.

I feel like the results are essentially the same and I never recall having trouble finding what I'm looking for in Bing. Though I suppose one huge omission is the date filter. I use that a lot on Google and certainly miss it sometimes on Bing.

Most importantly, Google was essentially stagnant for years until Bing came along. Since then they've really upped their game. They cloned Bing image search. They took the context summary in Bing that I loved from the beginning and one-upped it. And I've seen more natural answers in Google to match what Bing set to do from day one.

I use and support Bing and you should too. What Bing did to Google is like what Firefox did to IE. It reminded them that they should be innovating still!

While Bing came closest to providing search results as accurate as Googles it still wasn't at any comparable level, so all in all I agree with your point.