But what if that's the only thing keeping comments on HN any good? If you post something that isn't genuinely interesting or insightful the best case is that you get ignored and the worst case is that you get shadow banned. This means that everyone hovers over the submit button and second guesses whether what they're posting is any good. I know that I've probably aborted about 1/3rd of all my comments and I think that's a good thing.

>second guesses whether what they're posting is any good.

A much more accurate portrayal is everyone second guessing whether or not their comment will please the HN group-think. People don't filter themselves when they think their idea is stupid, they filter themselves when they think their idea will be unpopular.

Agreed - but the whole idea of upvotes is based on the idea that a popular comment = a good comment. The entire foundation of the system falls apart if you dispute that and the upvote system becomes the wrong choice.

I think in practice that 'popular comment = good comment' works well enough that it seems to beat all competing systems for internet commenting so there must be some kind of truth in the statement. Maybe it has a low enough false positive rate to make a small false negative rate acceptable?

Exactly.

But perhaps this is the problem of moderating comments on a binary scale of "good" and "bad".

A comment judgement/rating system that is more nuanced will not only help the readers to choose from but also help the commenting user to understand why his comments are being downvoted. Examples of nuanced downvote reasons may include:

Possibly ... 1. Non-sequitur 2. Racist/Bigotted/Sexist 3. Gratuitous Profanity ... etc

If we really want to get clinical about this, we can simply use this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

This of course is only for the downvote.

I personally would be interested in seeing whether, over time, my comments (and therefore my thinking) have been victim to certain patterns of thinking that I haven't noticed in myself.

> Possibly ... 1. Non-sequitur 2. Racist/Bigotted/Sexist 3. Gratuitous Profanity ... etc

> If we really want to get clinical about this, we can simply use this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

That struck me as somewhat non-parallel. Racism, sexism, bigotry, and profanity aren't fallacies.

Racism/Sexism/Bigotry can end up in logical fallacy territory pretty easily. "If women were unsuited for tech careers, there would be few of them in tech; there are few women in tech, therefore women are unsuited for tech careers" is a logical fallacy that I see around here pretty often. "Sexism" is just easier to remember than "Affirming the consequent".

But calling the problem there "sexism" has two major negative effects: it can lead you to believe that correct sexist arguments are flawed by their sexism, and it can lead you to accept affirming-the-consequent type arguments that aren't sexist. If something's wrong, you don't want to slam it for orthogonal traits, you want to slam it for the things that make it wrong.

It's a good point. I've spent time responding to a comment and decided to abandon because the HN community will soon correct me if I'm being biased or saying things without any real source to back it up.

I don't worry so much about being up voted or down voted (but I dig getting karma points as I know I'm giving someone else some value). I do however care about end up in a disagreement with someone else that turns into a superiority match. I personally don't want to be that person.

I agree with you.

But I also say comment away. Just try to be positive and constructive.

I say a lot here and I try to be insightful. Just as many of my comments are never voted on as are voted up. I only have a tiny handful of comments with 0 or negative score, and most of those were on the snider side of the spectrum. I try not to do that in the first place, but everyone makes mistakes.

On the other hand, I'm sometimes surprised how many upvotes I've gotten on comments that I thought might contradict HN groupthink.

I think the existing system works fine. I worry that the commentary is about to actually decrease in value and timeliness.

My votes and comments have been disabled. I don't know when or why it happened. I cannot go to anyone for advice or repair. I have become persona non grata and I have no idea why. There is no way to fix it.

Your optimism shadows an extremely difficult reality.

Of course there's a way to fix it: send an email, as the guidelines say.

Your comments have evidently not been disabled!

Thank you for the information. I'm not a heavy HN user; I didn't know there was an email address to send to.

I'd say 'scared' might be too strong a characterization? I have a slight wariness and a slight trepidation, which is completely absent when I post on (say) /. (which I rarely do any more but you know).

I've learnt that comments with 'meat' are valued and comments that have _positive_ things to say are valued. Negative comments and glib comments are downvoted here. Even if the negative comments have a point they are downvoted.

Don't feel like an outsider, if you have something to say, say it. For instance, this post of yours was articulate and informative. I'm not sure I'm in a position to agree with your last statement, I'd say we should have a trial run and have some sort of feedback mechanism up to and including abandoning the scheme if there's enough consensus.

> I try to save my comments for when it's something really important.

Your approach is sound and honorable, but please do not silence yourself out of fear. By doing so you encourage a groupthink behavior on this forum.

The entire structure of this forum encourages groupthink. Look at shadow bans, their entire purpose is to permanently silence someone that speaks against the crowd without even letting him/her know and without providing any means of appeal.

Even though the content of the submissions of this site brings me back day after day, to pretend the comment section provides any reasonable environment for meaningful discourse is laughable. Why the suppression of certain view points and people via shadow bans is acceptable to most people is something I've never quite grasped.

Shadowbans/hellbans are meant to silence trolls, not unpopular views. They sometimes hit people with unpopular views, which is a problem that needs to be sorted out, but their purpose is not to enforce groupthink, merely civility.

I think what he's saying, though, is that to many people here the expression of "unpopular views" or any sort of criticism is always and directly synonymous with "trolling". This holds true for them even when what's said is completely valid, completely with merit, and expressed in a perfectly reasonable manner.

Just try saying "my favorite language is _" and you'll see what he's saying. I tried that once, on a thread about favorite languages I added a comment saying, I use these languages for these things, thinking I might get some good advice and I got downvoted. I was respectful about how I phrased it but I still got people ticked at me.

that's precisely how I feel about HN. Many times I wanted to express controversial opinions in a respectful way, but I am too scared to get downvoted. I ended up being just a reader and spending less and less time on HN. Too bad for a site supposedly for hackers (the real meaning of the term).

hueving, it's true that there is an arguable attitude in the forum, but even under this assumption, to say that the comments section [...] is laughable is unfair.

It's certainly true that has downsides, but everything has.

It has at least one interesing upside though: one can learn to formulate opinions in a thoughtful, informed, and overall solid way. This is extremely valuable, and very importantly, it's entirely up to the user.

Groupthink is omnipresent; you just can't avoid it. But I've personally noticed one thing; most of the times, opinions which are against the establishment are respected and in best case admired, if they are solid and carry interesting/unexpected/creative information. I'm not talking about HN here.

So one can perfectly thrive here (and don't get me wrong, I don't endorse craving for upvotes) while still being non-conformant to the groupthink, everywhere. I'm pretty much "anti-technology" in some perspectives, but my account still survives pretty well, and so can yours.

I feel the same way about joining new online communities. Humans have highly evolved social instincts that make no sense in the world of the internet. Just tell yourself you are functionally anonymous and post anyways.