You and I had similar difficulty yesterday vis-a-vis arbitrary downvoting. I was referring to a comment made at me regarding how HN comments are for correcting people who are wrong, and accompanying that is downvotes. Except for when "correction" has nothing to do with the downvote, or none is offered.
It doesn't matter. The conversation at HN is toxic. I've bitched enough. I was just reaching out for commiseration.
I've found that this community is beyond unwelcoming, bordering on toxic. I no longer see the merit in contributing, and furthermore I find that reading these comment threads has become less and less valuable.
I find hn a really to be a really good combination of intelligent, grown up discussion with little name-calling etc.
That said, I think on hn one must be prepared to be corrected, -that's just part of being scientifically minded. As the old saying goes: "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another."
Yeah that's the consensus, and that's what it was meant to be, that's what it once was. However these days, especially in a community where only certain individuals can downvote, they become the only ones to control the discussion. What was supposed to encourage a higher level of discussion has instead created a community that is the exact opposite.
Who cares about my stupid comments, sure, I'm an idiot- I'll agree to that. Unfortunately, I see it happen all the time. The parent of this, for example, was downvoted immediately.
Everyone in this community is prepared to be corrected- the problem is when there's no correction offered. It's a community of suppression, and it's not hard to see.
I agree that there is too many incorrect downvotes given.
I don't think it is a big problem though only that it has been slightly increasing.
(one comment you'd see back in the days when comment scores where displayed was: "sorry for the downvote, -reading hn from a mobile device ". You don't see this comment anymore but I'm not sure if that is because it was easier to detect accidental downvotes back then or because people where more polite.)
There is plenty of disagreement among people who can downvote. And everyone can upvote so bad downvotes should be corrected rapidly by the rest of the community.
Perhaps HN users need to be reminded to upvote things that have been unfairly downvoted? (Although I've seen plenty of examples of corrective upvotes supplied pretty quickly).
I've been blaming my hosting company, getting everyone in their support chain to take a crack at the issue. I always just assumed that gmail was the working side of the problem, not the problem itself.
I haven't used IRC since middle school, back when I was 31337. Way back from the days when there was a leading '3.'
It's great you mention 'being a prick,' because that's what I said out loud as I read your article. I was tickled by the fact that you mentioned it, so I do respect that you know your strengths.
This might work for you, and for the projects you work on, and I think it's not a bad recommendation for positions that need... that kind of stuff.
If people judged me based on my IRC behavior, I would be in big trouble. I'm pretty sure staying off IRC when I moved to a 4-year college was a good choice for me (circa 2000).
That said, experience causing net splits by CTCP flooding #quebec on undernet was helpful for understanding a situation where Erlang/OTP pg2 was flooding itself into oblivion. :)
one of the best programmers i've ever worked with spent his time teaching himself php. he was a bright kid who made a stupid decision, but didnt let that stop him. we worked together for about 2 years and he ended up getting a couple great offers and now balls way, way harder than me. i have so much respect for him.
It's really sad to me how all of us in our industry are getting slapped across the face day in and day out about how unfairly, unequally and unjustly women are treated in our industry and peripheries.
You gents are too smart to still 'not get it.' I'm at the point where I see it as willful ignorance.
> People expressing a fear that minorities are receiving unjust benefits are often racist?
This type of thinking in our industry needs to STOP. There is far too much evidence that women are treated like absolute shit pretty much across the board (don't bother pointing out your handful of CEOs and other execs, if you can't face this fact then you're part of the problem).
If it happens to women, it happens to others.
You sound like you've got some pretty sweet white, male privilege. If you aren't a member of that majority, well they've certainly got you on their side.
And you sound like you can't read - I was arguing the opposite ;) Or rather, I was putting out there the idea that people that whinge about minorities receiving advantages are racist. But as I was aping the intellectually dishonest argumentative technique of the GP, I didn't actually make that claim, I merely suggested that this was a possibility.
For the record, I'm female, and member of a discriminated against minority, that has previously been fired for membership to said minority. And no, I don't think management in that case paused for even a microsecond worrying about potential backlash from firing a member of a minority (they stated quite clearly in the termination letter that this was actually the reason they were firing me - nice). If they were at all concerned about that, they certainly hid it well...
You're getting downvoted because you've misunderstood the original comment. Antimagic seemed to be pointing out that claiming that Munira was still in employment because she was a member of a protected class was quite probably racist. You replied saying that kind of thing needs to stop, because it's mean to women.
The only sane conclusion from this is you've misread antimagic's original comment.
