I hate Hacker News (rant)

2 points by XxFurCornxX 10 years ago | 5 comments

OK. I am very, very angry. I haven't joined HN that long ago, but I HATE it.

When I saw HN, I thought it'd be a good website to join. And it was OK at first. And I was excited to submit my first post. I have done a few comments, and now after seeing what I think is karma, I became angry. I am under -1 karma per comment. I read something about HN, and said NOTHING about downvotes. When I joined, I also knew nothing about upvotes, but I loved that there were no downvotes. I HATE getting downvotes. I also hate getting hate comments, which I don't know whether I have had or not. I don't know whether posts (that are not comments) like this get downvotes. I am still reading HN, but this is my last post. I quit.

viraptor 10 years ago |

None of your comments brought anything new to the discussion so they were downvoted. If you agree with something, just vote for it, don't comment "agreed". That's not how HN works. If you can't handle the fact that your comments get downvoted, this may be something for you to work on - it's life, whether you hate it or not, someone will disagree with you one day.

brudgers 10 years ago |

A while back, I decided that if I got a downvote on a comment, I'd accept it as evidence that my comment was not well written or it did not add anything to the discussion or that I didn't clearly communicate my idea.

Based on that assumption, I started editing my comments to make them better. Then, I sometimes I would delete my comments. Both have been useful to me in trying to write better comments.

Good luck.

mindcrime 10 years ago |

HN culture discourages comments that say nothing more than "I agree". If you're going to reply, try to add something substantive to the conversation. Add new facts / information, add perspective based on your own experiences, add a dissenting opinion, but the key is to add something that moves the conversation along. Simply saying "I agree" or "this sucks" just isn't the kind of comment that gets upvoted here.

As for posts... a LOT of posts get submitted here and many never get an upvote. Don't take it personally, sometimes it's just bad luck / timing. Maybe you submit a cool post at the exact same time somebody posts about "controversial new thing that Apple or Tesla or Google did" and everybody is too busy commenting on that discussion to look at your post. This stuff happens.

At the end of the day, it's just a message board. Nothing worth getting that worked up over, IMO.

kup0 10 years ago |

This usually means your comments didn't do anything to contribute to the story or link. HN values comments that are substantive. This isn't Reddit.

Taking it personally doesn't help anything. If I get downvotes I usually just take that to mean that what I said wasn't helpful or was unnecessarily snarky or mean. I make those mistakes sometimes (especially originally being a Redditor, where that's the norm)

HN's karma system and general atmosphere has made me better at commenting in general, so I think I've gained something from it.

The HN atmosphere is markedly different from other similar sites. If it's not a fit for you, maybe something else out there will be. It's okay to quit HN.

In fact, I'm curious if I should delete this post even, because it seems like many of the other posts say nearly the exact same thing. I suppose I'll leave it and get the karma (positive or negative) I deserve for it :)

DrScump 10 years ago |

If you joined in the last 15 days, you can get a full refund.