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diggan • 01/22/2025 • 2 replies • view on HN

> The attraction for people to post on Hacker News is mainly to complain

I mean, I won't admit it openly but something like that yeah. It doesn't help either that the way to show you disagree is by sharing what you disagree with (which is great) but the way you show you agree is by upvoting (which others don't see).

So one comment with three complaints in the replies but 100 upvotes might look like "people wholeheartedly disagree with this person" but in reality, most readers actually agreed. Comments that are just "I agree" are kind of pointless, so I prefer how things are, but useful to not read too much into "X people said Y" on HN.

Replies

ragnese • 01/22/2025

Interesting observation. I agree and upvoted. ;)

EDIT: I'm not being sarcastic, either, BTW. But, I do love the irony of writing a positive reply to your comment.

infogulch • 01/22/2025

It's interesting to consider how the tension in the design choices for HN's discussion board have affected the perceived & actual tenor of the platform:

    1. Votes are not shown, but they affect the rank of posts.
    2. Every post regardless of rank is shown beneath its parent, as in a tree.
    3. Only highly downvoted posts are grayed out or hidden.
    4. The community considers simple agreement to be low value noise.
It doesn't seem like a stretch to guess HN's flavor from a handful of these facts...