Re:Official Hacker News T-Shirt
by mieubrisse on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @06:07PM
(#5365257)
I think the whole point of critique (esp. in this particular case) is to provide feedback. In both my and the OP's mind, the shirt was created with at least some mild hope that people might buy it. Offering what I consider to be a valid suggestion on how to improve sales is not futile. Now, if the shirt was posted with absolutely no expectation of sales then I would agree with your point.
Re:Official Hacker News T-Shirt
by waterlesscloud on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @10:53PM
(#5366512)
I've seen sometimes that my downvote doesn't count (doesn't cause a fairly new comment to go gray, and to be even more certain, doesn't lower the poster's karma).
I've experimented quite a bit with it and have some theories about when it works and when it doesn't, but it's still not completely predictable to me.
Some people will like the shirt and buy it. Some people will not like the shirt, and will not buy and and not make any comment on it. Some people will offer some kind of critique, which is sort of fun but kind of futile (the shirt is made and being sold. It's too late for critique unless you're going to make and sell another batch in future.)
But what to do about the people who don't like the shirt and loudly tell everyone that they don't like the shirt in ways that are not interesting or useful? Do downvotes work for that?
Do you need to give a small group of carefully vetted people a super-downvote button? (This would be based on your knowledge and trust of those people, not on any karma scores). ((I've wanted to start a hoax about the HN secret pages for high karma users. I've resisted because that kind of meta drama can be pretty harmful, and there are other places where it'd be more fun.)