Roughly, the number of upvotes on their posts minus the number of downvotes. These don't match up exactly. Some votes are dropped by anti-abuse software."
You can’t get downvotes without posting. And unless your account is under two weeks old (green username) someone would have to go out of their way (deliberately check your profile) to know if you’re a newcomer.
Looking at your account and the greyness of its posts, all downvotes might have come from the same comment¹. Because you don’t have a lot of posts, it made a dent. I see no reason to believe that was due to you being new (which you’re technically not; your account is three months old).
You’re likely making too many comments/edits too close to each other, which could be misconstrued for spam. Nothing to it, just wait a bit between posts.
Nonetheless, others reading your comments won’t know if your account is three months or three years old unless they deliberately go into your profile. In other words, it takes effort to identify newcomers. In addition, downvoting is only possible during the first 24h since a comment was made.
> How can you see the downvotes come from the comment?
Downvoted comments become a lighter colour. That was the only grey comment in your account.
HN is new comer friendly in the sense that making an account is very low friction and the community culture does not discriminate against new users.
The community culture tends to discourage behaviors that are ubiquitous elsewhere on the internet and there is a correlation between new users and the ordinary internet behaviors the HN community tends to discourage.
The tendency of HN community culture to encourage things that are not ordinary behaviors on the internet is a way in which new users are often successful.
I think a healthy way to understand downvotes is as feedback on the quality of my writing. Maybe I wasn't clear. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was saying something stupid, useless, mean-spirited, etc. I think that view has improved my writing.
Ok you just proved to be not friendly to newcomers. I asked and you are not friendly. I did not insult anybody. This here is eben worse than twitter and you do exactly what you said would make a difference.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 59.5 ms ] threadRoughly, the number of upvotes on their posts minus the number of downvotes. These don't match up exactly. Some votes are dropped by anti-abuse software."
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downvo...
Looking at your account and the greyness of its posts, all downvotes might have come from the same comment¹. Because you don’t have a lot of posts, it made a dent. I see no reason to believe that was due to you being new (which you’re technically not; your account is three months old).
¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35770958
But someone may have downvoted the comment you made there.
Nonetheless, others reading your comments won’t know if your account is three months or three years old unless they deliberately go into your profile. In other words, it takes effort to identify newcomers. In addition, downvoting is only possible during the first 24h since a comment was made.
> How can you see the downvotes come from the comment?
Downvoted comments become a lighter colour. That was the only grey comment in your account.
The community culture tends to discourage behaviors that are ubiquitous elsewhere on the internet and there is a correlation between new users and the ordinary internet behaviors the HN community tends to discourage.
The tendency of HN community culture to encourage things that are not ordinary behaviors on the internet is a way in which new users are often successful.
I think a healthy way to understand downvotes is as feedback on the quality of my writing. Maybe I wasn't clear. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was saying something stupid, useless, mean-spirited, etc. I think that view has improved my writing.
Your mileage may vary.
Some people find that a feature, not a bug.
Others don’t, of course. HN culture is not focused on discouraging new users, but it is not for everyone.
It’s even in the guidelines.