Yet every time we hear about a protest or other action by employees to make their employer behave in an ethical way the prevailing opinion on this site is that work isn't the place to have those discussions, and that people who do should expect to be fired.
That's because HN isn't a single hive mind. People have differing opinions about this stuff. Some of us are pro-labor, and some pro-management. I find the latter type of person kind of gross, but... both kinds exist here.
"Prevailing opinion" is very hard to determine, so I wouldn't be so quick to label one or the other as the default or majority.
In a site where people upvote and downvote it's really not that hard to judge the prevailing opinion. It's the one at the top of the site, as opposed to the greyed out comments which were downvoted to death.
At least some readers will vote based on how an argument is made as well as what that argument is.
I somewhat frequently downvote comments I'd otherwise agree with if they violate various of the HN guidelines. The principle goal of HN is not truth, fairness, or justice, however admirable those may be (and I rate those highly myself), but intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. See: <https://hackertimes.com/item?id=13108404>.
There are definitely times I feel that HN's guidelines should take a back-seat to truth / fairness / justice, though those are comparatively rare.[1] But I understand why the values are as they are, even if I don't necessarily share in degree dang's apparent belief that HN rides on the bleeding knife's edge of sliding into chaos.[2]
HN contains multitudes. Trust that there are those I disagree with quite strongly. I've found a few things that seem to help:
- Voting and flagging can moderate, in all sense of the word, flagrantly extreme or antagonistic discussion. If you think someone is truly violating HN guidelines, both in terms of how they're saying it as well as their overall site activity, most especially ideological battle,[3] email the mods at hn@ycombinator.com. They really do respond, though they don't always agree, of course.
- It's often more helpful to write a top-level comment which lays out the strongest version of your own argument rather than try to duke it out deep within a thread (where few will see your comments). Remember that yours is always the last comment on a discussion when you submit it ... but so was anyone else's. I've often found that my own attempts to steer conversation back to what I suspect are more productive tracks are at least modestly successful, not just in terms of votes, but often in terms of a productive following discussion whether or not it's in agreement with my own views.
- Rather than write from an aggrieved perspective, or to attack others, it's helpful to write effectively as if you'd already won the argument overwhelmingly. That is, you don't have to cast all HN into a single hive mind, or denigrate your opponents' or their views, but just make your own case. I've had several of my own best-received comments come from this approach.
Finally: making blanket assertions about what HN does or doesn't do is highly fraught if you've not systematically looked at actual behaviours. I've done my own poking at the platform (about a year ago now) looking at front-page activity,[4] and the results were ... surprising.
2. I'm not finding a good specific reference to that thought, but in searching for it I did come up with an excellent and long essay by dang which explains his moderation rationale ... which broadly read gives some vaguely corresponding insights: <https://hackertimes.com/item?id=23308098>
Notably: [The] non-siloed nature of HN causes a deep misunderstanding. Because of the shock I mentioned—the shock of discovering that your neighbor is an enemy, i.e. someone whose views are hostile when you thought you were surrounded by peers—it can feel like HN is a worse community than the others. When I read what people write about HN on other sites, I frequently encounter narration of this experience. ... This is a misunderstanding because it misses a more important truth. The remarkable thing about HN, when it comes to social issues, is not that ugly and offensive comments appear here, though certainly they do. It's that we're all able to stay in one room without destroying it. ... It's easy to miss because of these conflicts, but the important thing about HN is that it remains a single community—one which somehow has managed to withstand the forces that blow the rest of the internet apart.
IMO there’s a difference between, say someone protesting over the moral issue of birth control being covered in the health plan vs illegally dumping dangerous chemicals.
> the prevailing opinion on this site is that work isn't the place to have those discussions, and that people who do should expect to be fired.
I think this often repeated myth of the HN hive mind¹ is both wrong and harmful². Yes, there are several people on these discussions who fit into the mould you describe, but there are also many who think that position is crazy and dehumanising and say so.
Literally every time I see someone on HN complaining the website has a prevailing opinion, I could think of counter-examples. I think we (people) may have a tendency to focus on the negative opinions that boil our blood and become blind to the voices in support.
¹ Not your words, but it encompasses the sentiment.
² It perpetuates a stereotype and prevents people with different views from joining the site or its discussion, narrowing the amount of differing views.
> I don’t think you’re being fair, and I do think this often repeated myth of the HN hive mind¹
I think it's totally fair to call the top comment (most upvoted) the "prevailing opinion".
That said, I suspect it's a side-effect of HN's voting ethos (don't down vote because you disagree, which is lopsided because its opposite - people upvoting because they agree - happens disproportionately, generally the comment that activates the most would-be voters wins, unemotional comments that confirm boring old truths rarely do, unlike the incendiary ones about how $GROUP is ruining the tech workplace.
I would disagree. As a counterexample, if there are two contradictory comments with high upvotes, the one that is most upvoted isn't necessarily the prevailing opinion.
I disagree with you - close to 100% of people who open the comments will read the top comment. Less than 100% will read the next highest top-level comment - the reply/rebuttal to the top comment gets more eyeballs than the #2 top-level comment.
There are some comment threads I close after reading only part of the first thread, for various reasons.
Right, and that's part of the problem -- the top comment usually has a lot of replies, and so the 2nd-top comment isn't seen as much. So even people who might agree with the 2nd-top comment a lot more than the top comment might not even see it, and not upvote it.
(And especially if you see the top comment, and disagree with it vehemently, you might dig through the replies to that comment and start posting rebuttals. You might get tired of the topic before you get down to the 2nd-top comment, and leave the submission or the site entirely.)
Being the top comment is self-reinforcing, even if other comments actually do reflect the majority opinion better. I don't think we can say that the top comment is the majority/prevailing opinion. That's just the opinion that, due to lucky/random circumstances, got the most initial views and upvotes by people who agree, which then feedback-looped itself into staying the top comment.
> I don't think we can say that the top comment is the majority/prevailing opinion
I just realized were using different meanings of prevail - you (and likely gp) are using it as a synonym for majority/widespread, I was using it as a synonym for victorious or overcoming competing top-level opinions. Re-reading gps comment, the majority interpretation is clearly the ine they intended, but ai feel its self evident that the most-voted comment had the most people agreeing with it.
> you (and likely gp) are using it as a synonym for majority/widespread
I was, yes, hence the “hive mind” reference.
> but ai feel its self evident that the most-voted comment had the most people agreeing with it.
Maybe, but you can only say that for that specific submission at the specific point in time you looked at it, it can’t be extrapolated to the “prevailing opinion on this site”. The time at which one looks at a thread makes all the difference. I’ve seen stories explode to the front page, then get flagged, then unflagged, the top comments being replaced with the previous opposite opinion.
> I think it's totally fair to call the top comment (most upvoted) the "prevailing opinion".
I don't think that's fair at all. Moderation/voting isn't a perfect reflection of a site's tastes. HN's seems to be better than most at reflecting that, but sometimes a post gets popular long-term because it got popular initially, and sometimes that's just luck of the draw.
> don't down vote because you disagree
This is repeated a lot, but isn't true or correct. A lot of people do downvote because they disagree (myself included, though I try not to downvote when I disagree but also think it's a substantive, thought-provoking comment), and there's a comment from pg from many years ago (can't seem to find it) where he says that's a perfectly acceptable reason to downvote.
