HN isn't perfect, but it isn't that bad. I've seen countless fora degenerate over the years. This one seems to be in check for now.
I see the voting system as one of the problems. More accurately, the obvious emotional or fanboi voting trends along some topics. Blind down-voting, as I see it, is a problem. If you down-vote you ought to be required to provide an explanation, otherwise, don't. Topics such as many subjects surrounding Apple draw in people who will mercilessly down-vote well reasoned comments simply because they happen to be anti-Apple. The same applies to the occasional political discussion in which anything that isn't aligned with liberal thinking is castigated.
The biggest problem I see with this is that it does not promote intelligent contrasting posts. Those with different opinions either leave (or stop posting) or fall-in with the crowd and choose to become part of the collective. If one was after collecting points and accolades all you have to do on HN is be all over anything that relates to Apple and talk like a Liberal. That's the formula. Oh, yes, you also have to be 100% pro FOSS.
The fact that it is so easy to define is kind of sad. Then again, maybe that's what the YC guys wanted HN to be. If that's the case, there are no issues. If the idea behind HN was to bring together pro-Apple, pro-FOSS, politically Liberal hackers, then there's nothing to fix.
If, on the other hand, if HN is intended to promote diversity of thought along a wide range of subjects of interest to hackers and entrepreneurs, the voting system needs to reflect this.
"If you down-vote you ought to be required to provide an explanation"
Here is an idea:
- require downvoters to provide that explanation.
- Use some simple automated method (e.g. run the text typed through a language recognizer, and see whether it thinks it is English) to prevent simple key-banging as a response.
- by default, do not show the explanations, but do show a 'has downvotes' indicator and a 'show downvotes' control (could be a single UI element)
- when showing downvotes to a user, do not show author names.
- allow users to flag downvotes as inappropriate.
- let the powers that be manually check flagged downvotes (hopefully, there aren't many), and take appropriate action against either the downvoter or the flagger, or both.
I see the voting system as one of the problems. More accurately, the obvious emotional or fanboi voting trends along some topics. Blind down-voting, as I see it, is a problem. If you down-vote you ought to be required to provide an explanation, otherwise, don't. Topics such as many subjects surrounding Apple draw in people who will mercilessly down-vote well reasoned comments simply because they happen to be anti-Apple. The same applies to the occasional political discussion in which anything that isn't aligned with liberal thinking is castigated.
The biggest problem I see with this is that it does not promote intelligent contrasting posts. Those with different opinions either leave (or stop posting) or fall-in with the crowd and choose to become part of the collective. If one was after collecting points and accolades all you have to do on HN is be all over anything that relates to Apple and talk like a Liberal. That's the formula. Oh, yes, you also have to be 100% pro FOSS.
The fact that it is so easy to define is kind of sad. Then again, maybe that's what the YC guys wanted HN to be. If that's the case, there are no issues. If the idea behind HN was to bring together pro-Apple, pro-FOSS, politically Liberal hackers, then there's nothing to fix.
If, on the other hand, if HN is intended to promote diversity of thought along a wide range of subjects of interest to hackers and entrepreneurs, the voting system needs to reflect this.