zlacker

I think this is a side effect of self-moderation. By making everyone in the community (over a certain threshold of participation) a mini-mod you turn rules enforcement into a popularity contest. Valid, interesting, yet unpopular points get suppressed. Rules violations that are popular get ignored, and sometimes even lauded.

There is no reason, based on the HN guidelines, that the referenced post should have been downvoted, let alone flagged. Whoever did so abused their power to make such decisions.

>>vonmol+(OP)
I agree with what you said, but my presumption has been that the HN status quo would generally be receptive to the argument that u/paulmd made, or at least, not offended/angered enough to flag it. Especially it being so well-written, and in response to someone whose argument was entirely speculative or based on emotional appeal, and who didn't bother using basic capitalization or punctuation.

It's even more surprising since HN had the "vouch" feature since before Dec. 2016 [0]. My best guess is that people might have reflexively downvoted/flagged upon seeing the opening sentence of "Black people are measurably less likely to own a car or have a bank account".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11589410

>>vonmol+(OP)
There's a counterbalancing option to downvotes and flags - you can "vouch" comments. Enough people using it[0] can make the software unkill a comment provisionally, though doing this puts your own reputation and vouching rights at stake, since according to [0], vouched comments are eventually reviewed manually.

--

[0] - Not sure what's the power of a vouch relative to a flag or a downvote, but my impression is that it's stronger.

[1] - https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/

>>danso+D1
Might have been bad timing, too. I don't know how many people vouch for comments; I do so when appropriate, but every now and then I discover comments I would have vouched for had I seen the thread when it was live.

>>TeMPOr+E1
Yes, and I use both when I feel it's appropriate. However, it's still fundamentally a popularity contest rather than guidelines enforcement. If enough people simply don't like what a post has to say it will stay grey/dead.

I'm coming to the opinion that downvoting should not grey out posts, or that there should be some number of downvotes (greater than 1) required before it starts. It should be harder to suppress constructive, on-topic posts just because a bunch of people don't like the point.

>>vonmol+(OP)
Yet, it happens all the time. For this example, the most likely explanation is the down-voters read the first two words and wrongly concluded that the remaining 1000 were going to be a racist rant. Within milliseconds they made the decision to downvote and move on.

This "drive by down-voting" happens regularly here. I've had comments downvoted within seconds of posting--clearly the voters could not have had time to read the entire text. They see a few key words that trigger them, hit the arrow, and move on to the next job. Unfortunately, there's no way in JavaScript to tell whether someone's actually read the thing they're down-voting, so we get these knee-jerk keyword-based brigades.

To test this, sometimes I'll write something where the first sentence is provocative, but the rest is (I hope) a solid, nuanced argument. Usually it's at -1 or -2 within a minute, and then over the next few hours slowly crawls back up to +2 or +3 as people actually read it.

>>ryandr+3x
>To test this, sometimes I'll write something where the first sentence is provocative, but the rest is (I hope) a solid, nuanced argument. Usually it's at -1 or -2 within a minute, and then over the next few hours slowly crawls back up to +2 or +3 as people actually read it.

I cannot but confirm this behaviour.

Also I noticed that (my guess is that there is some form of subliminal self-defense reflex by some categories) there are a few themes (not political, not social) that seem to attract downvotes.