Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#51

Post by sarvenna » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:17 PM UTC

thirdstation wrote: post #38

tom_ilsinszki wrote: post #27

"Make all users post under real names that you verify". Advantages: * Better comment quality: verified users would think twice if they wanted a curse words to show up when someone googled their name. * Connectivity: If you like someone's reasoning and thinking, it would be easier to check out more about what they do online (accomplishments, blogs, twitter, etc). Disadvantages, anyone?

1) The Internet never forgets. If you post something regretful in a fit of rage you can never take it back. You are not the same person you were ten years ago (even if you have the same name). Do you want to be judged today on how that person behaved back then? It is naive to think you won't be judged so. 2) There are some really batsh*t-crazy people in the world. I prefer to be somewhat isolated from them. 3) How do…

#3 is what always confuses me about the argument that switching to real names would in and of itself make flames and trolling less common.

That said, I don't think this is necessarily something where solid evidence matters. It seems to me that requiring real names is much more about making bloggers and journalists who consistently have their real names attached to postings feel more on an even footing with their commentariat. See, for example, this post on crosscut where Ted Van Dyk argues that he feels more comfortable with a critic that has a real name attached: http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/19530/Should-online-commen... Is that about categorical differences in comment quality, or personal comfort within a newsroom?

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#52

Post by swombat » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:22 PM UTC

looprecur wrote: post #20

marilyn wrote: post #6

The civility on HN is unparallelled. This community, with pg's guidance has done an amazing job of fostering a thoughtful community for intelligent discussion. Suster's arguments all focus around one particular discussion in which emotions ran a little higher than usual, and are not, in my opinion, representative of the community as a whole. As for Suster's suggestions, the first one would be a mistake. There are man…

I agree. Hacker News has a lot great people on it. Karma, however, is a joke because accounts are regularly nuked for no good reason, which necessitates starting over at zero. Hellbanning spammers and outright trolls makes sense. Hellbanning good posters who make one annoying comment is ridiculous. If you don't like what someone has to say, disagree with him. (This is also why I don't like downvoting without a reply;…

I've made a prodigious amount of comments, and I'm sure some of them were quite stupid, and yet my account hasn't been banned. So have most of the people on the leaderboard. I guess it's not "one annoying comment", but a) how bad the comment is, and b) how much contribution that user had made in the past.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#53

Post by thirdstation » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:32 PM UTC

tom_ilsinszki wrote: post #50

steveklabnik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Disadvantages, anyone? There are certain things that I'd like to comment on at times, but don't, because I post under my real name. I hold some controversial opinions on things, but I refuse to have them permanently associated with my name on the internet in an easily abusable way. Any statement can be taken out of context. For example, I thought long and hard before making this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/…

See your point (btw I liked the comment you posted about your gf; I feel the same way). Okay then, there should be an option to mask your identity as anonymous, if you're not totally comfortable with a subject and post it like that. But those who would comment under their (real) name could get a higher priority for that given comment. EDIT: an algorithm to verify identity (far from perfect and not necessarily for HN)…

I look at privacy as a zero-sum game.

Under your scheme, I can elect to comment pseudo-anonymously but, I'm not really anonymous. I've given my anonymity to HN (and the OP indirectly).

If I give something away I want to feel equally compensated. I wouldn't in this case.

I'm not opposed to using real names but, reject being compelled to do so.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#54

Post by msuster » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:33 PM UTC

philk wrote: post #32

I'm not sure that I can agree. 1) The blog post of yours which attracted such vitriol was entitled "Never Hire Job Hoppers. Never. They Make Terrible Employees"; you aren't using a conciliatory tone and it seems unfair to expect one in response. 2) Practically all the comments I read on here are more civil than I see elsewhere on the web. 3) In pw0ncakes original post there were a lot of measured statements (for inst…

I wrote the first post. The title was too extreme. I acknowledged that and apologized for it. I agree that many of the comments were fair and said so in this post. This isn't my first post to get FU's. I can live with that. I still wonder whether my suggestions may help?

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#55

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:40 PM UTC

marilyn wrote: post #6

The civility on HN is unparallelled. This community, with pg's guidance has done an amazing job of fostering a thoughtful community for intelligent discussion. Suster's arguments all focus around one particular discussion in which emotions ran a little higher than usual, and are not, in my opinion, representative of the community as a whole. As for Suster's suggestions, the first one would be a mistake. There are man…

[deleted]

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#56

Post by msuster » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:40 PM UTC

marilyn wrote: post #6

The civility on HN is unparallelled. This community, with pg's guidance has done an amazing job of fostering a thoughtful community for intelligent discussion. Suster's arguments all focus around one particular discussion in which emotions ran a little higher than usual, and are not, in my opinion, representative of the community as a whole. As for Suster's suggestions, the first one would be a mistake. There are man…

Point 1, hadn't considered that. Makes sense. Quora has real names for everything with a "carve out" to post anonymously

Point 2, why wouldn't anybody be able to "flag" a comment as inappropriate. That doesn't get rid of it, it just flags for a community person to check it?

re: it being one particular discussion - that may be. I think it's happened to me a couple of times. So I asked others and they told me that they found the same thing. That prompted me to try and move the discussion forward.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#57

Post by msuster » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:45 PM UTC

10ren wrote: post #8

1. If you are writing self-admittedly inflammatory material, and you get inflammatory responses, you should try stopping doing that and see what happens before suggesting changes in HN. People are mirrors. 2. You can flag inappropriate comments (click on their link or parent link for the flag link to appear). [ EDIT maybe there's a karma threshold to see the flag link.] I think swearing and meanness is very rare on H…

I normally avoid being inflammatory. I wrote my original post too quickly and late at night. I agree it wasn't well worded and accepted (almost) all criticisms. I don't think that forgives people saying FU or similar. There is a difference between attacking and crossing the line with epithets.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#58

Post by msuster » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:49 PM UTC

CodeMage wrote: post #49

Dear Mr. Suster, While I personally don't condone obscenities, insults and ad hominems in a discussion, I couldn't help notice that most of the time HN audience downvotes comments according to their signal/noise ratio, which means that we're willing to tolerate even occasional obscenities for the sakes of a valuable contribution. In the first example you pointed to, pw0ncakes actually made a rather valuable contribut…

Vojislav,

Thank you. Well written and fair points. I was expecting negative comments and wrote "let 'er rip" as a way to add some levity. But you're right that it doesn't achieve what I'm after. I will change it.

Mark

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#59

Post by omgsean » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:51 PM UTC

tom_ilsinszki wrote: post #27

"Make all users post under real names that you verify". Advantages: * Better comment quality: verified users would think twice if they wanted a curse words to show up when someone googled their name. * Connectivity: If you like someone's reasoning and thinking, it would be easier to check out more about what they do online (accomplishments, blogs, twitter, etc). Disadvantages, anyone?

Not that it's hard to find out how I am based on my username, but I might hold back on posting my opinions on controversial matters if they were going to be sitting right next to my real name.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#60

Post by msuster » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 2:51 PM UTC

alttab wrote: post #43

Had the author of the article had responses that did not bruise his ego because of what people on the internet said to him - he would be writing an article about how awesome Hacker News was. Posting another article explaining how you would change HN to your own benefit is adolescent behavior. Maybe, just maybe , the OP didn't have the correct view point. These types of people hop from job to job because everyone at t…

OK. I accept that. And the truth is that I really did value the push back that I got. I only felt it was over the top when invective language was used and personal emails were sent.