One thing I've noticed is that when people are new one of the first things they complain about is the voting system. I've seen a lot of green names recently, so there probably needs to be some concerted effort to educate users on what they're voting for rather than redefining the system.
I would tend to agree. Learning to be part of a community should be the a goal of a new user. But the community should feel some obligation here too.
My initial experience here was I made a couple of comments which I thought were helpful and instantly had a -7 karma. Ten minutes into my experience and I was an outsider. That is a bit discouraging for a someone who has been coming to HN for years and finally decided to make an account.
Perhaps this is why people complain about the voting system. This does give the sense that you need to conform in order to be accepted.
I just had a look at your comment history. These are (of course) just my own opinions ...
You appear to have mostly commented on 'controversial' topics - you are more likely to be downvoted (and maybe also upvoted) in such discussions compared to more technical topics.
Also, you had multiple typos/errors - this always makes me think that you did not spend so much time and thought on your posts. Why are we spending time reading something that you did not spend time proof-reading?
When I consider posting, I usually ask myself - 'does my comment really add value to the discussion (or, in this case, sub-discussion)?' If not, then probably I ought to just keep reading. Heaven forbid that one writes comments just to get some points!
Yeah that's a known hurdle you will have to overcome. Observing this community and participating in it are two different ball games. There's a lot of unsaid rules to discussion here and they vary person to person, but they are within bounds consistent.
