> Hacker News is definitely turning into the monoculture Paul Graham said (here on this site) that he wanted to prevent.
It happens to all websites with upvotes and downvotes system for comments. Before Hacker News I've seen it happened to habrahabr.ru (russian website with similar audience, invite-only).
To have been upvoted, you need to say things everyone agrees with. If you are in minority, then you are downvoted. But talented people are in minority. Rich people are in minority. Business owners vs. wage earners are in minority. So, any community with driven-by-majority censorship quickly degrades to a totalitarian sect. A community built to select good ideas, to filter them out of dirt, must encourage outstanding people who are in minority by definition, not discourage them by downvoting.
That's why I'm against downvoting. Upvotes are OK for me, but I don't like the idea of downvotes on HN. They limit my ability to express alternative point of view here. They make me mimic "the grey mass". Probably it's not the system PG intended to build.
It happens to all websites with upvotes and downvotes system for comments. Before Hacker News I've seen it happened to habrahabr.ru (russian website with similar audience, invite-only).
To have been upvoted, you need to say things everyone agrees with. If you are in minority, then you are downvoted. But talented people are in minority. Rich people are in minority. Business owners vs. wage earners are in minority. So, any community with driven-by-majority censorship quickly degrades to a totalitarian sect. A community built to select good ideas, to filter them out of dirt, must encourage outstanding people who are in minority by definition, not discourage them by downvoting.
That's why I'm against downvoting. Upvotes are OK for me, but I don't like the idea of downvotes on HN. They limit my ability to express alternative point of view here. They make me mimic "the grey mass". Probably it's not the system PG intended to build.