> @moderators: have I earned the automatic downvote? Whatever I post shows zero points as soon as it is posted.
Hacker News tends to be pretty good about people not just downvoting posts because they disagree with them. However, that goes out the window when the discussion gets political.
I'd be really interested in seeing the numbers for upvotes and downvotes on political topics vs other topics. I wouldn't be surprised if you could train a classifier to spot political articles based on this distribution.
Down voting is a very blunt tool. Enough down votes can hide a comment. This means you aren't just saying "I disagree" but "this is so wrong no one should read it." It has its place but there's a reason you don't get to do it until your account has received enough upvotes.
Hacker News tends to be pretty good about people not just downvoting posts because they disagree with them. However, that goes out the window when the discussion gets political.
I'd be really interested in seeing the numbers for upvotes and downvotes on political topics vs other topics. I wouldn't be surprised if you could train a classifier to spot political articles based on this distribution.