Why do you think this is not true? This is something that is quite often discussed and just happened to me.
One comment I made today had one downvote, and I was met with the dreaded “You're positing too much” message, but shortly thereafter someone else upvoted it again to bring it to 1 again, and I could post freely again.
Your opinion seems to be conditioned upon that this is false, but even if it were false, votes simply have a habit of scaring people into saying something others might disagree with. And even Reddit in a less extreme fashion limits one to 1 post per hour on any subreddit where one has negative total karma, which is certainly less extreme, but one can very easily receive negative karma for simply disagreeing and being well within Reddit's rules in how one phrases such disagreement. Simply going to say, r/movies and saying “I disagree, I personally did not like this film at all and thought it was overrated.” too much is all it takes to be limited to one post per hour on r/movies.
> Upvotes, downvotes, etc are all niggling details. The opportunity to enrichment my mind without paying tuition or leaving home etc is extremely valuable to me and has caused me to be thick skinned about a great many things for nearly twelve years now.
Even if these websites did not limit one in any way for being downvoted, they still give visibility based on upvotes, and the psychological effect on others is real, which leads to such places slowly but surely becoming a monoculture which attract more and more users that simply desire an echo-chamber which will lead to more and more users that do not like it, or simply desire a different ech-chamber, to leave.
A real problem I have with r/manga on Reddit is that really only one specific genre is read and discussed there, because all threads about anything else obtain no visibility due to the voting system, the genre is controversial in most other paces, but anyone who criticizes it there is downvoted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26622148
I've been here a lot of years. I was rate limited at one time. I'm not currently.
I framed that very carefully as my opinion and not an assertion of fact.
It's possible to be Dutch and strongly opinionated on HN and in good standing (not rate limited).
Maybe you are right and I'm wrong. It ain't no big thing. I'm not trying to win an argument here. I'm just making conversation and trying to be helpful, which is something of a bad habit of mine and habits die hard.
(Shrug)
You have a good day.
I seriously doubt this is true.
I generally stand by my right to my opinion. I have worked at figuring out how to do that without making every single comment a hill to die on. It's taken time and effort. I used to be a walking, talking train wreck waiting to happen and I still have personal challenges to being me and not being overwhelming amounts of drama for existing.
I don't like drama. Accusations that I say and do things for dramatic effect or similar are inaccurate understandings of who I am and what motivates me.
I view HN as an opportunity for growth. I have had the experience of feeling like "a big fish in a little pond" and I generally gate it.
I enjoyed being here at first because I was a little fish in a big pond and was free to just enjoy the opportunity to engage in meaty discussion. And then that turned into drama and I began trying to figure out why and yadda.
These days, it's less drama than it used to be. I'm still trying to find my sea legs here with no effective role models, but I still prefer to see it first and foremost as an opportunity to engage in meaty discussion and to whatever degree it still serves that function, it's life enhancing.
Upvotes, downvotes, etc are all niggling details. The opportunity to enrichment my mind without paying tuition or leaving home etc is extremely valuable to me and has caused me to be thick skinned about a great many things for nearly twelve years now.