Popular == karmic, on here. So controversial is, you have a high ratio of
spectacularly downvoted comments, but you're still popular, in other words, you still have a high amount of karma. Someone more experienced in statistics than I am at the moment can come up with a good metric for calculating "most controversial (yet still popular)".<p>I find this interesting because I know that karma causes me, anyway, to be cautious in the opinions I voice, since the downvotes are painful to me. I am interested to see people who are brave enough to not give a s%%t about getting downvoted but are still popular overall.<p>I'm interested in diversity of opinions, not echo chambers, and people who can combine having their own unique point of view that doesn't follow the crowd, as well as still pleasing the crowd a lot of the time are very interesting to me right now.
I disagree with many things that tptacek has to say, but I rarely downvote him. Indeed his remarks seem to be a source of much debate and I find that commendable. In my view, downvoting should not be used to indicate disagreement, but to maintain the relatively high signal to noise ratio this forum enjoys. I reserve downvotes for ambit claims that are patently false, personal abuse, offensive language, wilfully begging the question, excessively sloppy or lazy reasoning, pretending to expertise, or simply being a pig-headed asshole about something. Having myself been guilty of these things from time to time, particular this latter, I feel comfortable suggesting that the majority of this community's members appear to apply a similar standard.
> I'm interested in diversity of opinions, not echo chambers, and people who can combine having their own unique point of view that doesn't follow the crowd, as well as still pleasing the crowd a lot of the time are very interesting to me right now.<p>I disagree. It's an overused defence: voicing idiotic opinions is "having a unique point of view"; being rude and domineering is "having an outspoken and blunt demeanour". Your opinions should stand on facts, not your I-don't-give-a-shit attitude. The difference should come from your interpretation of them. Respecting so-called controversial figures leads only to a downward spiral where we encourage bad behaviour.<p>Hacker news, in my experience, respects different opinions if they carry any weight. A thread on Uber has both who attack and defend Travis Kalanick. Controversial opinions, unfortunately, often means saying groundless shit and later, defending them with "I-am-a-contrarian" attitude.
One way to calculate this would be to use this controversy formula (<a href="https://math.stackexchange.com/a/318510/10887" rel="nofollow">https://math.stackexchange.com/a/318510/10887</a>) on all comments of a user whose total karma exceeds a certain threshold, say 1000, and then add up those controversy scores.<p>The problems is that the HackerNews API (<a href="https://github.com/HackerNews/API" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/HackerNews/API</a>) only provides a total score for a comment, instead of up and down votes, so you'd have to modify your controversy formula to use an appropriate measure of dispersion instead (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_dispersion" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_dispersion</a>).<p>I'm not a statistician myself, so I can't help further.
What do you want to do with this information ?<p>Getting downvoted in HN is not very hard. You can mention how Bill Gates is trying to buy a stairway to heaven or that Rust should replace C and you'll get spanked. If you express personnal opinions enough times on a website full of intellectuals you are bound to displease regularly unless you have nothing interesting to say.<p>It's a good thing. You can't be right all the time. You can't agree all the time. Actually, quite often you won't.<p>But to be downvoted spectacularly, it's quite easy: promote religion, or borderline sexist/racism allusions and you're it. Doesn't matter if you are right or not.<p>On the other end you can be pretty much who you want to be. I mean I worked in porn and had only one snarky remark about it during the last years.
Several years ago, I started treating downvotes as feedback on what I wrote. Maybe I was not clear in stating my view. Maybe I did not sufficiently back my view up with examples, facts or rationales. Maybe what I wrote was just plain wrong. Maybe what I wrote didn't add anything to the conversation.<p>The practice of <i>editing</i> [and deleting] of my comments seems to have made my writing better. Writing for myself is easier than writing for an audience. And writing for an audience that expects me to give a shit is harder than writing for the audience that admires people for pretending to not give a shit. And no doubt, this thread illustrates -- as if the rest of the internet did not already provide overwhelming evidence -- that there is a large audience for writing that pretends not to give a shit.<p>Flame warriors and trolls are the original internet crowd. Not giving a shit is not a unique point of view. It's the default content of all the little internet boxes into which people can type. It's good that downvotes hurt because the solution is writing something better.<p>Good luck.
Comment voting is a form of mob rule that only serves to make the average person more comfortable while obstructing change.<p>In my opinion they need to be replaced with something more decentralized that puts each individual user in control of what kind of comments they want to see and makes them each decide individually.<p>Imagine if people who everybody disagreed with always got censored? We'd have all sorts of situations where everybody would suffer until things like basic hygiene for physicians were discovered. Oh wait, that already happened and you can read about it here - <a href="http://www.medicaldaily.com/mad-scientist-6-scientists-who-were-dismissed-crazy-only-be-proven-right-years-later-362010" rel="nofollow">http://www.medicaldaily.com/mad-scientist-6-scientists-who-w...</a><p>Online systems are so much more fluid than real-life and we have a good opportunity to change the way things are done, but unfortunately the biggest sites for conversation all follow the same brain-dead upvote/downvote system. I hope that one day we'll have a better system which at least lets individuals choose their own moderator or moderation style.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mjg59" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mjg59</a> is a good one: a talented developer with strong views of free software, personal freedom and social justice. I can easily see individuals furiously upvoting and downvoting him on a single day.<p>(Not everything he says triggers these reactions, but it's entertaining when it does.)
I would throw a vote in for Joshua Stein, person who started <a href="https://lobste.rs" rel="nofollow">https://lobste.rs</a>.<p><pre><code> > I was a frequent reader and contributor to Hacker News since 2007,
> but got hellbanned[1] in 2012 for complaining about the mystery-
> moderators constantly changing submission titles for the worse.
</code></pre>
[1] - <a href="https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/" rel="nofollow">https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...</a>
Since I got the pattern of downvoting, I am bored.<p>I thought first they were smart and it was funny to understand what wwould made you upvoted/downvoted.<p>Then I understood it was plain propaganda/censorship whether you were taking an opinion refuting the godliness and virtues of VC/startup/entrepreneur.<p>HN is the modern pravda except it is liberal instead of being sovietic.<p>Same shit
Funny — I scrolled to the bottom and saw two comments citing two names that popped in my mind after reading the title: 'yummyfajitas, and 'michaelochurch.<p>There are other people who are "topically controversial", e.g. people who have a background in HFT getting downvoted on every HFT thread, and so on.