HN Explorer

Tell HN: Can we please stop down-voting Protagonists?

30 points by whatusername ↗ HN
I was playing with my settings the other day and turned on Show Dead. Most stuff is just spam, occasionally there are some reasonable comments, but I noticed this today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131615 (Matt Mullenweg responding to a comment about Wordpress Security. Sure his comment was light on details -- but it was incredibly relevant to the overall discussion)

In Short: If HN is talking about someone - don't downvote them, even if you think they are wrong. Getting their side of the story is more valuable than showing your displeasure.

7 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 26.8 ms ] thread
kragen
[dead] doesn't mean it was downvoted; it means that a moderator flagged the comment as spam. There seem to be some out-of-control moderators here, who also "dead" discussions of their actions. I imagine my comment, and perhaps your post, may be deaded too.
electromagnetic
> [dead] doesn't mean it was downvoted; it means that a moderator flagged the comment as spam. There seem to be some out-of-control moderators here, who also "dead" discussions of their actions. I imagine my comment, and perhaps your post, may be deaded too.

15 minutes and you're still alive, I'm quoting you so I'll have to be killed too.

jcr
Actually, anyone can flag a comment. Though not all of them are public/known (HN source), there are algorithms in place to take flags and down-votes into consideration to automatically [DEAD] comments as well as submissions.
Locke1689
I'm flagging this post because the entire premise it rests on is shaky at best. Whether it was a random moderator or a whole bunch of people who flagged we may never know but frankly, I don't give a damn.
sorbus
> Sure his comment was light on details -- but it was incredibly relevant to the overall discussion.

The comment in question, in its entirety: "Security is a major issue and it is a top priority for us."

While I agree that there are lots of good comments which are killed for no apparent reason, that's not necessarily the best example you could use. It adds absolutely nothing to the conversation, after all; it's just a sarcastic response to the presence of criticism of wordpress.

whatusername
Except that it was from the founder of Wordpress. A much better response would be to actually get Matt to backup what he says. Ask him to show how the WP team have improved their security in the last 12 months and what they're planning.

And besides -- it was a direct, on-topic response. (He responded to a comment saying that automattic needs to make security a top priority..... by saying that security is a top priority)

I wasn't having a go at the auto-killing of comments (although I agree that there are some more valuable comments killed). My concern was the piling-on against the relevant players in the article/post in question.

pg
That was killed automatically because it was a duplicate comment. But at the same time Matt noticed he'd posted duplicate comments and deleted the other one. This happens occasionally.

This is one of the reasons we ask in the site guidelines that if you have a question about moderation, you email us instead of posting on the site about it. Much if not most of the time these dramatic theories about why stuff got killed are mistaken, and the actual explanation is something mundane like this.