bm98

HN seems to have missed the fact that the "foreclosure over 27 cents" story that has been in the political news lately [1] was caused in part by a bill that was sent for "$.3" instead of "$0.30" [2].

Programmers' failure to properly format currency output has got to be one of the most cringe-inducing practices in our profession, so I thought HN would be interested to see this.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ossie+lofton+foreclosure

[2] http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/36857 (see "13 August 2015" in the timeline)

(edit: grammar)

Dang's comment on HN's self-regulation [1] got me thinking: It's amazing to me that HN actually works. That, the the most part, the best submissions and the best comments do tend to float to the top. I wouldn't expect individuals acting in their own self-interest to bother to spend the time to upvote and downvote and flag things, especially when the feedback from such actions is so minimal. But they do, clearly!

Are there any papers that have studied this phenomenon?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205581