> people can respond to response to a flagged comment just fine, and can agree with each other about how horrible the flagged person is or what else they probably advocate for, and all that stuff
Can people actually do that? I have rarely, if ever, seen this on Hacker News, and I feel like anything like this would be a good way to be downvoted or flagged yourself.
> I wouldn't terribly mind "writing for the showdead community exclusively".
You're not alone: there are a number of people who do this already.
> But I know that I upvoted comments that I found reasonable, and unfairly greyed out. So either I was manually selected for that, without any precedent or any communication, or there's an algorithm that blindly removes voting from people who don't agree with the herd enough.
I wonder if this was supposed to be a nudge to use the "vouch" feature instead? Even if it was, it wasn't a particularly good one. Maybe the moderators could tell you why you can't vote if you emailed them?
We're doing it right now, the top level parent comment was dead before I made my first reply to you.
> Maybe the moderators could tell you why you can't vote if you emailed them?
HN could also have a feature that allows mods to communicate with users. I'm not going to use my main email anyway, and making a throwaway email for that is no more "community-like" -- it's just a hoop I don't see any reason for jumping through. Being transparent about moderating, and discussing such things in the open rather than behind closed doors, is a courtesy so basic for my sensibilities I won't beg for it from those who don't give it freely.
HN is regularly being updated and improved. The ability to vouch for dead comments wasn’t here 10 years ago. Undoing accidental downvotes wasn’t possible. Moderation was much less active back then too, and it shows, detaching comment threads/moderating titles have been two great additions keeping the quality of discussion high even though this place has hundred times the amount of active users as ten years ago (I’m guessing)
HN has been growing at the same rate for many years. There was an initial spike and since then it's been linear, with up and down swings along the way.
I've been showdead forever; apparently I'm supposed to genuflect to one of the mods and beg forgiveness for some slight and I can't quite lower myself to do that on this forum. I apparently can comment, flag, etc., though I don't know who can see it or to what effect. Enough people upvote and/or comment on what I say that it's equivalent to (and somewhat satisfying) be "writing for the showdead community exclusively". Never touched the vouch. YMMV.
Your account isn't penalized in any way. It was banned at one point, but we unbanned it when it was mostly posting good comments. We try to do that as much as we can.
Can people actually do that? I have rarely, if ever, seen this on Hacker News, and I feel like anything like this would be a good way to be downvoted or flagged yourself.
> I wouldn't terribly mind "writing for the showdead community exclusively".
You're not alone: there are a number of people who do this already.
> But I know that I upvoted comments that I found reasonable, and unfairly greyed out. So either I was manually selected for that, without any precedent or any communication, or there's an algorithm that blindly removes voting from people who don't agree with the herd enough.
I wonder if this was supposed to be a nudge to use the "vouch" feature instead? Even if it was, it wasn't a particularly good one. Maybe the moderators could tell you why you can't vote if you emailed them?