Why is my account -2? No explanation?
I see -1 on a comment from 41 days ago. However, there's no explanation and no accountability --- no one's name is attached to the -1. Where does the other -1 come from?
Is the -1 mean-spirited, political, or out of sheer ignorance and closed-mindedness? Or is it misguided (un)"patriotism"? Without any explanation, there's really no way to tell. It smacks of nastiness.
Not a great introduction to your service. The news is good, but the commenting and moderating seems broken and unaccountable.
Not sure what to say. This is my introduction to HN and YCombinator (which gets a lot of buzz which piques my curiosity but) which seem piss poor at the moment.
By the way, this experience is the first I've had of this kind on the sites I frequent. FYI.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 36.3 ms ] threadYou made 2 comments to a post about disrupting Hollywood. The first was very short and very likely to attract negative votes - HN likes a reasoned argument. But what you may ask of the second comment - well it is Political and politics per se are generally excluded from HN - just picking up one negative vote was pretty good - it could well have been flagged for deletion.
Come back with some well argued contributions on start-ups and software and you will be welcomed by all.
The politics red flag you raise seems appropriate for a technical site like this one (but the topic of the thread was lobbyists and politics). So, daring to defend my comments, they were on-topic for the copyright/lobbyists issue under discussion (and I don't think there really is room for a full disclosure explanation of the comments).
Perhaps I'll have something of value to say on more technical topics, but the anonymous "big brother" introduction was (and frankly still is) a bit chilling, especially considering this site isn't even mass media (AFAIK).
On the "big brother" bit - I think you should understand that HN is not designed specifically to welcome newcomers who are outside the target audience. You are expected to find and read the rules and to work out how everything works - as an instance, there is no "search" facility - you are expected to know how to use Google to search this site.
Anyone who is not comfortable with this is probably not that interested or involved in the subject matter. If you are, then please join in and make a contribution.
[edit] Just noticed the "Search box at the bottom of the comment page - when did that arrive? See - I am just out of date.
Since then however I'd commented pretty well, IMO. In fact in 3 specific cases I'd posted helpful comments. One was to a young person asking for beta testers for his startup (I recommended BetaBait). Two others were bug reports, complete with OS information and browser information. Genuinely useful, I thought.
But then, after the last bug report I posted received no response however someone who put a lot less effort into their response (i.e. "It's not working for me" rather than "It's broken with this error in this browser on this OS with these addons installed") - got a response from the submitter.
That's when I realised my posts were hidden. I wouldn't have been bothered by a ban or a suspension or - hell - being told that my posts were being hidden. However having been tricked into wasting my time was quite upsetting.
Still, I'm back on a new account. Hopefully I won't get downvoted again but we'll see. The quality of news and discussion here is very high so even though I agree with joccam's points about the broken comments system, I will most likely keep coming back.
However, with your observation, I suspect my comment is censored, but I just can't tell. I don't care enough at this point to verify it. (My next comment will explain why.)
Another thing that HN does is slow down your page loads if you have negative karma. Pages can often take between 10-30 seconds to load.
When I posted my question, I was at -2. Then after reading your post, I commented on a technical topic (audio and hearing) which I know a lot about. I still got negative feedback. My viewpoint was too informed for this site, and one or a bunch of high-powered HN toughs started slamming my post(s). If, as you suggest YC/HN locks accounts due to negative points, these guys were locking me out of my account.
Net effect: censorship.
The more I posted, the more I got slammed (I didn't know at the time). So the more resident bullies pick arguments, the more they can pick on you. It's a natural downward spiral.
Net effect: heavy, inexplicable (to victim) censorship. Bullies get jollies.
Bottom line: victims are censored from even supporting their points, bullies get the pulpit free and clear (i.e., they "win", and the readers lose), and bullies get more points to bully (I assume).
That's degenerate and broken for a news site. Just the opposite of what's needed in an open, honest communication channel.
But it's worse than that.
-=-
At first I thought I was locked out for 30 seconds or so as you suggested, and I was able to keep my draft posts open for posting later. But YC/HN lockout proceeded for somewhere between 28 and 36 hours, or well over a DAY. So I lost all three of my posts.
Of course, even though YC/HN knew I was in the middle of posts ("You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."), YC/HN did not save the posts. They destroyed them. By going BACK I was able to recover them, but only as long as my browser (or machine) did not bork and require restarting.
So the effect is chilling. YC/HN goes out of its way to destroy posts. The bullies (I assume) abuse their privileges, but YC/HN enables the nasty behavior and pernicious results (heavily delayed or destroyed posts; incomplete and imbalanced conversations). The posts would be useless now 1. because the thread is old, and 2. because the conversation is too twisted and controlled by the bullies.
So YC/HN promotes more than censorship, banning, and destruction of posts. They promote a culture of bullying and twisted information (at least on bully topics).
And I don't see any levers on my account to undo the damage or counter the bullying (modulo candid post like this one). So, the YC/HN policy promotes ignorance (obstinate attackers), bullying (nasty attackers), and disinformation (the ignorant feed off imbalanced information).
Is that YC/HN intention? No idea, but the site is broken. That I DO know.
So here's what makes the situation even worse: I am largely _guessing_ about what happened, because I really don't know why I was kicked off for over a day. In other words, the effects are not causal related or explained. You have to reverse engineer the mystery man (YC/HN) behind the bullying. And, I assume, the perps of the attack succeed by cutting you out of the conversation --- anonymously. Well, presumably, except for the one dude I replied to who, I believe, instigated the attacks.
Finally (for this post anyway), two more things.
1. I didn't just get cut off from posting as the "You're submitting too fast." message suggested. I do not know how complicated YC/HN disruption algorithm is or what it pertains to (or even if it was just some personal attack by a power-user), but whatever the case, YC/HN kicked me off from even READING http://news.ycombinator.com. AT ALL.
MY INTERNET ADDRESS was completely cut-off. No matter if logged out from YC/HN. No matter if in different browser. No matter if on different computer. NO MATTER WHAT. YC/HN kicked me off even just reading from anywhere, any who, any computer at my internet address. Yikes!
So: READING is VERBOTEN. Your IP Address is VERBOTEN.
Thank you, Gestapo YC/HN! What a nasty, heavy-handed, inexplicable, ridiculous tactic.
Just Insane.
So not only are the YC/HN site attack measures ...
I was trying to figure out what the "avg:" was in profiles. Then I compared a couple, and one bully (bullying someone else this time) had modest avg: while the victim had very high average, but bully has very high "karma" --- which seemed counter-intuitive. Low value posts but high karma? So I wasn't sure what "avg:" was if not post points.
But I believe it is post points. So, for high "karma," bully must post a LOT, but his posts are not well received (even though high "karma" would suggest otherwise). So (guessing) "karma" seems more about quantity (than quality) in bully cases.
Then, since I have negative "karma", I got curious about my own "avg:" since I didn't realize I had one. So I checked.
Apparently when your "karma" is negative, you have no "avg." :-) YC/HN just leaves the value blank. So I am holding steady at -19 YC/HN "karma" and have no "avg: [this space intentionally left blank by YC/HN]"
:-)