<story><title>The silent majority of experts (2012)</title><url>https://prog21.dadgum.com/143.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maxk42</author><text>I think about this constantly while reading Hacker News.  So many articles and comments by people whose level of enthusiasm doesn&amp;#x27;t match their experience.  Try to voice a comment that goes against the flow of that enthusiasm and you&amp;#x27;ll be downvoted to oblivion, even if you speak with more experience and context than the masses.  I&amp;#x27;m horrified by some of the stuff I see here and feel like it&amp;#x27;s often useless to speak out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fleddr</author><text>Horrified is a bit strong, but you have a point. There&amp;#x27;s a few themes that are strongly popular or unpopular by some type of community consensus. In those cases, it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to matter what you have to say as minds are already made up.&lt;p&gt;Another interesting effect I experienced is regarding expert credibility.&lt;p&gt;When I found this place, I was impressed. I figured the world&amp;#x27;s top engineers are posting. I see them writing about very advanced topics I know little about. Comments are well written, and combined this creates trust.&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s been incidents. I&amp;#x27;m the type of person that has an extremely deep level of knowledge in about 2 or 3 very niche topics that frankly normally nobody cares about. I know that sounds pretentious, but for the sake of argument, let&amp;#x27;s accept it for now.&lt;p&gt;By chance, very infrequently, an article and discussion may be about those extremely niche topics. And now things are falling apart. As before, seemingly insightful professional-level comments are written. The problem is, 70% of them are wrong. I&amp;#x27;m not talking &amp;quot;different opinion&amp;quot;, I mean factually wrong, that&amp;#x27;s not how this works, and you seem to have no idea what you&amp;#x27;re talking about.&lt;p&gt;I imagine to the outsider not in the niche reading along: interesting expert discussion. Just as I was reading about all those topics I know little about.&lt;p&gt;This raises the obvious question: when I read impressive comments regarding topics I know little about, how many are actually trustworthy and accurate expertise versus how many are just well written made up nonsense?&lt;p&gt;This question hits me hard because it kind of forces you to become skeptical and cynical by default, which I don&amp;#x27;t want to be.</text></comment>
<story><title>The silent majority of experts (2012)</title><url>https://prog21.dadgum.com/143.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maxk42</author><text>I think about this constantly while reading Hacker News.  So many articles and comments by people whose level of enthusiasm doesn&amp;#x27;t match their experience.  Try to voice a comment that goes against the flow of that enthusiasm and you&amp;#x27;ll be downvoted to oblivion, even if you speak with more experience and context than the masses.  I&amp;#x27;m horrified by some of the stuff I see here and feel like it&amp;#x27;s often useless to speak out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>d23</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve become a lot more willing to burn my karma on here as of late.  Not because I want to, per se, but what&amp;#x27;s the point of getting it if you can&amp;#x27;t spend it occasionally when you really have something you need to say?</text></comment>