A couple weeks ago, I hit 500 points on HackerNews.  Now I can downvote people whose views I don’t like!

I kid, I kid.

I never had a particular need or desire to hit 500.  I mean, it’s just fake Internet points.  I’m actually happier that at one point I had two articles I wrote on HN’s front page.

The ability to downvote is the only benefit of hitting 500 points.  I’m not a huge down-voter, on HN, Reddit, or anywhere really.  Sure, if it’s obvious spam or someone being a harassing idiot.  But if someone is saying something that is simply wrong, misguided, or offensive…so what.  I think downvoting is one of the things that makes Reddit so unpleasant.  I’ve seen over and over where somewhere makes an intelligent comment that is against the grain of the sub’s groupthink and is then down-voted to oblivion.  Heck, I’ve seen threads where someone creates a thread like “who is your least favorite comic book character” and then when someone says they don’t care for a popular character, they’re down-voted!  Absurd.

But once you put that 500-point goal out there…I admit, I chased it a bit.  Or at least was conscious of it.  Particularly once I got in the 400s, I thought “you know, if I make this comment and people don’t like it, I might take a step back!”  Which is silly because so what if I never hit 500.  But you put a goal in front of people, and a certainly psychology like mine will try to achieve it.

How I Got to 500

Note: My HN account is not “raindog308”.  I’ve anonymized this a little by not giving exact numbers, lest someone track me down on HN.

20% of my points came from submissions.  Of those, most were worth 2 or 3 points and didn’t make the front page.  One was worth 25 and one was worth 50.  The first was a bit of clickbait that I found interesting, while the latter was a genuinely obscure bit of hacker lore.  Strangely, I also submitted four other “hacker lore”-type links that only received a vote or two.  I can’t really see any reason why one was more popular than the others.

The other 80% came from comments.

30% of my points (just over 150 points) came from bashing AI.  Making fun of AI, making fun of companies over-investing, criticizing AI-driven layoffs and the narrative around them, snarkily torpedoing some of the grandiose claims, etc.  That is the single largest point source.

Another 5% (50 points) came from making fun of GitHub outages.  I mean, such an easy target.

Of the remaining 45% of points, 20 comments had > 5 points.  There were lots of 2- or 3-upvoted comments.

The ones that were upvoted the most were:

• Sharing non-technical info on subjects I have some expertise on.  For example, specific areas of health care, certain games, old movies, and history.  This was 75 points.
• Sharing technical info.  Tips, advice, my personal experience with different technologies, or questions about something someone said.  25 points was simply being the first person to comment that a code example in a post wouldn’t compile because of an obvious syntax error.
• Making jokes.  That was 50 points.  I can be funny, apparently.

And of course, I was downvoted from time to time.  The most was -5 points.  Of the 8 times I was downvoted:

• Two were jokes that went over readers’ heads and my intent was misinterpreted.  These jokes were not in any way offensive, it’s just that people took them literally when I meant them sarcastically.  If you try to explain, people don’t go back and un-downvote.
• Four were comments that didn’t harmonize with the HN groupthink.  For example, I dared to suggest that not every government green energy initiative was a great idea or that not every nth degree of privacy was something the average user cared about.  Pretty non-controversial, actually, but they were not in keeping with the right way of thinking.
• One was saying that I used Facebook in a limited way that I found enjoyable.  This is true – there are a couple private groups I participate in there and they’re wonderful.  I never just go in and “read my feed”.  I always go directly to one of those two groups.  But any non-condemnatory comment on Facebook is verboten.
• One was a criticism of Emacs.  How dare I!

As it turns out, with minimal power comes zero responsibility, and HN readers – like those on Reddit – routinely downvote people they disagree with.

How You Can Get to 500

If your goal is to become downvote-empowered, here are some tips.

• It pays to be fast.  In one case, I happened to make a comment first that probably every other reader would or could have made.  But since I was the first to make it, I was showered with points.
• Genuinely add value.  If you can point out some technical detail that others haven’t thought of, share a personal experience, or share a tip, this is rewarded.
• Share the obscure.  I’m often surprised by what gets on the front page.  Sometimes random Wikipedia pages or 10-year-old blog posts.  If you read something that you find interesting, perhaps HN’s readers will, too.
• And guess what – submissions can’t be downvoted!  So while a comment might always have a small risk, a submission never does.
• Ask good questions.  Asking good questions is an easy way to get points.  People will upvote good questions, especially if it’s a question they themselves have and they want to see the answer.
• Don’t offend the groupthink.  The average HN reader is very pro-technology, has a privacy fetish, and is sinistrasexual (a term of my own invention for politically left-leaning people, from the Latin prefix “sinistra-” meaning left.  The antonym is dextrosexual).  Posting how much you love Flock cameras or how glad you are that Trump is finally taking a look at science research budgets or how you don’t really care if the government can read your encrypted messages would be point suicide.  Likewise, HN readers hate AI – or at least its threat to their jobs – so taking a swipe or two at our new overlords is welcome.  Etcetera.
• Be patient.  It took me a few months to get to 500.  I think trying to hard will inevitably lead you to trying to “force” comments that end up being downvoted.

…and in the end, it doesn’t really matter.  They’re just fake Internet points.  You don’t get a cash reward and you don’t get to put your point total on your résumé.  All you get to do is to join the gatekeeping inner circle.

raindog308

raindog308 is a longtime community LETizen, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, raindog308 runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, raindog308 has a life-long love of German Shepherd Dogs, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, playing guitar, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.