Comment by incoming1211 2 days ago
The problem is HN is mainly left leaning so its difficult to have discussion at times as dang and the community will shut it down quickly as differing opinions are not welcome even if its factual.
(chances are people will downvote without comment or scream "ThAtS nOt TrUe")
(Love how HN proved my comment as correct)
Yeah, as someone who has criticized the mod team, saying you are biased is just laughable. You go out of your way to be as unbiased and user-oriented as possible. My biggest criticism is procedural, Dan and friends are doing good work.
> HN is mainly left leaning
This is largely an illusion, as can be seen by the number of people complaining in the other direction about how wacko libertarians or MAGA or whatever dominate on here.
What you're actually observing is that HN is one of the more diverse public spaces you participate in and there's no personalized algorithm that filters the content to only show what you want. When your exposure to left-leaning content goes from <10% on an algorithmic feed to ~50% on HN, it feels like being overrun.
Just know that it feels just as overwhelming to the left-leaning people on here, and they will jump to the same interpretation in the opposite direction.
That's why you have to earn down vote and flagging privileges here. It's still abused, I agree.
It's not left leaning, it's establishment leaning. But that's only regarding politics and social issues.
Sure but I'm not even talking politics! My comment itself was barely a criticism of HN and, yeah, downvotes don't matter - but it's exactly what I am talking about. Any push against that coziness/bubble is not tolerated.
I do think it's OK for some forums - if the community agrees - to say certain topics (like politics) are off limits.
I don't really think it's ok for a community to say discussion about what should be discussed is off limits... or being critical of policies, the bubble, etc...
> My comment itself was barely a criticism of HN
Your comment is (a) off-topic and (b) smacks of a complaint about not getting enough up-votes. Neither of these areas are looked upon positively in HN. If this style of comment is your modus operandi, it may explain why your work is not well-received, and in short it has nothing to do with the popularity of your opinions.
No, I am just describing your comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43559544
It's not off topic, as it's discussing moderation and the culture of the forum in a post about moderation & replying to someone discussing the culture, and I said nothing about upvotes. It is two strawmen without discussing any of the substance of my comments.
> (chances are people will downvote without comment or scream "ThAtS nOt TrUe")
> (Love how HN proved my comment as correct)
Please don't do this here. It's against the site guidelines (see the bottom: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), which guarantees downvotes, and then the combination of help-help-I'm-being-repressed and I-told-you-so is annoying to pretty much everyone.
As for "left leaning", see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 (Feb 2021). The specific examples are old now but there is an endless fresh supply from each tap.