Two things feed into the echo-chamber pattern, and both are chilling effects. One can be easily augmented and the other cannot.
The first is the voluntary tendency people have about providing their IRL identities. For some this is largely optional, for others, less so, for example when a celebrity is participating as themselves. Real identities means there's some skin in the game for at least some people, requiring a heavier hand in moderation. This part can only be augmented so much, and requires individual users to self censor, disengage, and conceal their own identities when posting an unpopular sentiment. Humans being what they are, this reality will never go away.
The other is the karma system, and this can be changed. And karma really is an unnatural ranking value, since one can pick up on inconsistencies after enough lurking. Whether it should change (or be changed) is arguable. If it's as harsh as it seems, and the effects are that chilling, it may just be an expression of actual human behavior. In which case, it's an early warning alarm, and an analog for what goes down in face-to-face meetings, but remains unspoken. We may not like echo-chambers, but they take shape in the real world too, in which case every social circle carries a shelf life that can probably be quantified by the manner in which this feedback loop widens and deafens its participants by jamming all signal with a noise that drowns out everything else.
I'd hope that last part isn't true (being slightly depressing as it is), and that tweaking the numeric validation could tune the ambient personality of the community's behavior, such that it doesn't drift into irrelevance. It sounds easy enough, but maybe poor execution would warp and deny certain aspects of reality, to produce yet another fiction with unintended consequences.
I could make up reasons that would seem to bolster my merit, but the reality is that my replies were throttled under another account, lol.
Anyway, I've stopped karma-whoring. And even though I possess the capacity for downvoting under other accounts, I do not use that power.
Admittedly, it means I no longer play into the ranking algorithms, and I can't feed into any persona reputation, but the power to freely disagree, and to add voice to other people's (otherwise silent) downvotes, or contradict downvotes when I feel they're wrong, is the more valuable feature any forum can offer.
Maybe it fulfills other needs and my glandular, gutteral response to people who "are wrong on the internet" overrides the ego of being preened and revered by the community, but the way I see it someone needs to fill this niche. HN has a serious echo-chamber problem, and the prevailing wind needs some yelling into.
What's misunderstood is your concept of the HN downvote.
It is neither rational, nor fair, nor explained. It materializes from thin air, lands on anyone that awakens a even but pang of discomfort in another user, and smears all words irrevocably, and dispassionately.
You might catch a downvote for being vague. You might catch a downvote for mispelling. You might catch a downvote for trying to be funny, and succeeding, but because you've offended the faceless humorless. Even an obsequeous comment will be downvoted for spinelessness.
Few honest comments actually work on HN. Almost all HN comments need to be slippery, many require a fecetious concilliatory bent.
You really can't win when commenting. Not anywhere. Someone out there will find a reason to slam you.
The first is the voluntary tendency people have about providing their IRL identities. For some this is largely optional, for others, less so, for example when a celebrity is participating as themselves. Real identities means there's some skin in the game for at least some people, requiring a heavier hand in moderation. This part can only be augmented so much, and requires individual users to self censor, disengage, and conceal their own identities when posting an unpopular sentiment. Humans being what they are, this reality will never go away.
The other is the karma system, and this can be changed. And karma really is an unnatural ranking value, since one can pick up on inconsistencies after enough lurking. Whether it should change (or be changed) is arguable. If it's as harsh as it seems, and the effects are that chilling, it may just be an expression of actual human behavior. In which case, it's an early warning alarm, and an analog for what goes down in face-to-face meetings, but remains unspoken. We may not like echo-chambers, but they take shape in the real world too, in which case every social circle carries a shelf life that can probably be quantified by the manner in which this feedback loop widens and deafens its participants by jamming all signal with a noise that drowns out everything else.
I'd hope that last part isn't true (being slightly depressing as it is), and that tweaking the numeric validation could tune the ambient personality of the community's behavior, such that it doesn't drift into irrelevance. It sounds easy enough, but maybe poor execution would warp and deny certain aspects of reality, to produce yet another fiction with unintended consequences.
Anyway, I'm just gonna keep doing whatever.