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Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#211

Post by krapp »

eevilspock wrote: post #106
eevilspock wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. W…

Silent downvotes right on schedule! I think civil and honest discussion would be better served without the anonymous down-votes. One can still retain privacy with a pseudonym. I find it ironic that Hacker News is not Hackable! The most important thing about HN, its ranking algorithm and reputation system (karma), is closed and not hackable in any way. I know HN wishes it could come up with a better algorithm, and eve…

I wonder whether any of the Hacker News staff contributes back to the Arc Forum project?

Hacker News may be Arc's most successful implementation (may not be, I don't know) but it does seem as if there's potential being wasted in keeping it a black box.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#212

Post by curiousgal »

creshal wrote: post #25
gunn wrote: post #17

I've been wondering: would it be practical to build a reddit/HN like system where the comments you see are by authors you've upvoted before, or authors they've upvoted before? This way everyone can comment, and the low effort jokes etc. can still exist but you personally only see them if that's what you enjoy. Currently we give every comment a single universal score. It's hard to come up with a simple set of rules th…

> I've been wondering: would it be practical to build a reddit/HN like system where the comments you see are by authors you've upvoted before, or authors they've upvoted before? Only showing upvoted authors would only reinforce your personal echo chamber, see also: Tumblr. Only showing downvoted authors would, going by my Reddit voting statistic, expose me to 95% dick jokes and 5% authors that have valid points I dis…

>see also: Tumblr.

And Facebook.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#213

Post by curried_haskell »

mozumder wrote: post #69
eloy wrote: post #13

I'd say Reddit. There are some heavy moderated subreddits for insightful discussions, like reddit.com/r/truereddit. Because Reddit has a voting system like HN, quality content is being upvoted and shown as first. If you search you can probably find some more subreddits with less general content. And HN is of course a really great website for such discussions, with a lot of highly intelligent people that post quite le…

The problem with places like Reddit is that they rely on users to moderate. The obvious problem with that is now stories are filtered based on populist mass appeal, instead of insightful or expert appeal. Populist content is very different from expert content. Clickbait headline is populist content. A peer-reviewed journal headline is expert content. Which one do you think is going to be upvoted in a place like Reddi…

And the moderators are basically dictators over their sub. We believe so much in democracy that we practice it almost nowhere.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#214

Post by marcosdumay »

mywittyname wrote: post #115
cheriot wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit.com/r/askhistorians is a goldmine. I love sitting in the cheap seats for some of the discussions there.

On the flip-side, their high standards make it difficult to contribute to the conversation.

They don't complain about good questions. Just about bad answers.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#215

Post by adiabatty »

oAlbe wrote: post #209
smsm42 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's challenging and there's challenging. If you're starting discussion with "you're amoral white male so here shut up and listen I'll tell you what you have to do to redeem your sorry existence" (I'm not saying you do, it's just an example - but not too far from what I've seen done in other places) - it's a challenge all right, but not one that would lead to a good discussion. Also, experience suggests there are…

> Not every debate is good. True. But why can't we just let not-good debates die on their own, instead of not giving them a chance at all?

People want to get in the last word. It takes some level of self-restraint to let people be wrong on the Internet, especially if they're wrong in a way that is plausible and/or popular.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#216

Post by uola »

flexie wrote: post #102
eevilspock wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. W…

I agree. I think most people come here for a business / political angle on tech, not just for tech itself. I also often notice that the best discussions disappear really fast here.

I think (hope) people come here to procrastinate as it is a perfect fit. The groundhog day of Internet forums where every day things reset so you can reiterate your opinion like nothing happened.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#217

Post by curried_haskell »

sergiotapia wrote: post #183
pyre wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick. Like Reddit where /r/TheDonald is consistently at the top of /r/all, and stories about terrorism on /r/WorldNews devolve into xenophobic rants that stop just short of containing phrases like "the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim?" That's not too "left leaning" to me.

No. Reddit modified their algorithm weeks ago to remove /r/the_donald from the frontpage. Before it routinely made it due to the sheer number of upvotes and users engaged. They 'tweaked' their algorithm to allow more "diversity"; their words not mine. Also /r/worldnews is HEAVILY censored to remove any criticism against islam in particular. If you see it it's probably because they missed a spot.

Same with /r/news, to the extent that major breaking stories have to be reported on AskReddit. It's really disgusting.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#218

Post by turc1656 »

lintiness wrote: post #145
pyre wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick. Like Reddit where /r/TheDonald is consistently at the top of /r/all, and stories about terrorism on /r/WorldNews devolve into xenophobic rants that stop just short of containing phrases like "the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim?" That's not too "left leaning" to me.

anecdotal garbage. i glance at r/all once or twice a day and the number of threads from /thedonald making an appearance is dwarfed by those from /news and /politics -- both groups that banish even thoughtful "right leaning" comments to the basement. at least with /thedonald, you know there's a political bent. the other groups pretend to be "objective".

Because of this, I virtually never comment on anything on the internet. I am genuinely disgusted at the comments on most sites and want no part of it. It is not just a waste of time, it can also rot your soul. Besides the small handful of posts here on HackerNews, I honestly cannot remember the last time I wrote anything online at all.

I suggest all of you do the same. You might find you are much better off, like I did. To be clear - by all means READ blogs and sites and stay informed. Just steer clear of the comments section. Vote at the ballot box and with your wallet. Not with your keyboard.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#219

Post by selimthegrim »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #124
FT_intern wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by D&D do you mean dungeons and dragons?

debate/discussion

They did rename it AD&D: Advanced Debate and Discussion in one of their April Fool's binges a while back.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#220

Post by turc1656 »

lintiness wrote: post #145
pyre wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick. Like Reddit where /r/TheDonald is consistently at the top of /r/all, and stories about terrorism on /r/WorldNews devolve into xenophobic rants that stop just short of containing phrases like "the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim?" That's not too "left leaning" to me.

anecdotal garbage. i glance at r/all once or twice a day and the number of threads from /thedonald making an appearance is dwarfed by those from /news and /politics -- both groups that banish even thoughtful "right leaning" comments to the basement. at least with /thedonald, you know there's a political bent. the other groups pretend to be "objective".

A bit more - what you wrote is exactly the typical case I have seen almost exclusively across the spectrum for many boards/sites. And Reddit in particular is especially guilty of this. It shouldn't really surprise anyone, though, given that Silicon Valley leans hard to the left - they are in charge of some of these non-media owned discussion sites like Reddit. Just look at the recent case of Facebook hiding conservative news from the feed. Of course they claim it was a few "rogue employees". Sure, I believe that.

And as for discussions on Reddit or news websites, the typical tactic I see over and over is as soon as anyone who is in the minority viewpoint is starting to make any sort of sense, commenters whip out the laundry list of go-to techniques for intellectually dishonest attacks - name-calling, stereotyping, questioning motives, questioning knowledge/expertise/credentials, using incorrect assumptions and false premises, straw man attacks, claiming facts are just opinions, use of weasel words, or (my personal favorite) the claim of having "rights" that are not in fact rights at all (surprisingly common). None of these crap tactics address either incorrect facts or incorrect logic, which are the only two things that should matter.

It's amazing to me how ugly things have become. And it's not just politics. Go to virtually ANY youtube video with more than a few thousand views and read the comments. There are an inordinate amount of hateful/angry posts, even for the most subjective things like music. And somehow anything related to news devolves into a political debate.

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