Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mailing list debates considered harmful

tech.blog.aknin.name

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–19 of 19 posts

Re: Mailing list debates considered harmful

#11

Post by jrockway »

thunk wrote: post #10
jrockway wrote: post #9

Does the outcome of these debates ever matter? I always think of them as a way to keep the naysayers busy while the contributers actually implement something.

C'mon. I know you're being mildly facetious, but "naysayers" and contributors aren't nearly so cleanly segregated. And debate often leads to important decisions that can't just be coded away.

Most of the time, the long discussions aren't about anything important. Nobody cares how you build your nuclear reactor, but everyone wants to debate the color of the bikeshed.

Re: Mailing list debates considered harmful

#12

Post by thunk »

jrockway wrote: post #11
thunk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C'mon. I know you're being mildly facetious, but "naysayers" and contributors aren't nearly so cleanly segregated. And debate often leads to important decisions that can't just be coded away.

Most of the time, the long discussions aren't about anything important. Nobody cares how you build your nuclear reactor, but everyone wants to debate the color of the bikeshed.

Sometimes they aren't, sometimes they are. Something about babies and bathwater. The ideal online debate platform would algorithmically marginalize bikeshedding.

Re: Mailing list debates considered harmful

#13

Post by pg »

thunk wrote: post #12
jrockway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time, the long discussions aren't about anything important. Nobody cares how you build your nuclear reactor, but everyone wants to debate the color of the bikeshed.

Sometimes they aren't, sometimes they are. Something about babies and bathwater. The ideal online debate platform would algorithmically marginalize bikeshedding.

"The ideal online debate platform would algorithmically marginalize bikeshedding."

That is a great sentence, in both senses.

It's hard to do, though YC does have several features for this, and they seem to work to some extent.

Re: Mailing list debates considered harmful

#14

Post by chromatic »

thunk wrote: post #10
jrockway wrote: post #9

Does the outcome of these debates ever matter? I always think of them as a way to keep the naysayers busy while the contributers actually implement something.

C'mon. I know you're being mildly facetious, but "naysayers" and contributors aren't nearly so cleanly segregated. And debate often leads to important decisions that can't just be coded away.

That's true, but it's easy to see the point at which a long discussion turns unproductive. Unfortunately, that's usually easiest in retrospect.

Re: Mailing list debates considered harmful

#16

Post by teolicy »

philh wrote: post #7
tbrownaw wrote: post #2

From the first couple paragraphs, this sounds like it's mostly a complaint about the existence of bikeshed topics. Which exist in any discussion medium.

Not really. The problem isn't "people are debating trivial things instead of letting shit get done". It's "people are debating all sorts of things, and it's impossible to work out what state each of the separate debates is in".

A good one-line summary of what I meant.

Re: Mailing list debates considered harmful

#19

Post by Tycho »

I think Hacker News has the right idea - show responses in their own threads, use upvoting to push the best stuff to the top, use downvoting to keep everything civil (very important), and give people a chance to edit their comment if they see it getting immediate negative feedback.
Post reply on HN