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

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#71

Post by Vivtek » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 3:33 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…

Making Light (http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/) is both civil and open to the non-paying public, and has no registration requirement. So it's possible to do it. In this case, they moderate, and they attract more literate people to start with.

Certainly no "flame war" there has gone any further than you might have over drinks with your friends if you'd had a bad day.

Anonymous posting is very important to me - I don't ever actually use it, but I like to know I could. I really don't like the idea of having to present photo ID to express an opinion.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#72

Post by pacemkr » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 4:03 PM UTC

This is nonsense. I enjoy HN primary for how quickly posts that add no value are down-voted into oblivion. I enjoy it because commenters are generally blunt, measured, and to the point. I could care less about swearing as long as the comment adds value.

Bottom line is, you wrote a story and you didn't like the response you received from the community. It is what it is. If the rest of the world -- not even saying 'the internet' -- was as civil and to the point as HN I'd be one happy man.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#73

Post by lvecsey » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 5:58 PM UTC

Hacker news might need a vector arrow over it. In other words, has the direction of conversation changed from one where "hackers" (those that grok a vast or complete portion of a given system, and can identify and implement a clever tweak) can have vibrant discourse to one where the VC side of the coin has come here to observe, and essentially squash out the dialog in the process? (uncertainty principle involving observation and position)

As the hackers post less they become lurkers observing the commentary of the business folks. Eventually, interest is lost in even that. I recognize a VC professional could be redefined, interpreted, or understood as a hacker operating within the domain of the larger business and financial world, so I give them credit for that.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#74

Post by r0s » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 6:33 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…

These are good points.

I'd like to get philosophical about 'obscenities' for a bit. A mature discussion must include diverse input, or you sacrifice the benefit of a diverse group.

I think it's unproductive to try to sanitize discourse by removing hyperbole or perceived obscenity. Such 'civil' exchanges leave the idea of 'obscene' an open variable, ready to take whatever shape the accuser wishes to vilify. The very concept becomes a censorship device. I think many people see the hypocrisy inherent and intentionally evoke obscenity while maintaining their salient points.(At work in the above example.) This is an attack on the concept of obscenity itself, and the tenuous standards of the civility enforcer.

I'm open to other interpretations, but to me it's like this: Making a discussion PG-13 isn't a sign of maturity, it's the opposite.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#75

Post by smokey_the_bear » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 6:46 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?

A large part of why I chose a pseudonym is because I'm a woman. People react very differently on tech boards to people they think are women.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#76

Post by mkramlich » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 7:06 PM UTC

I experienced directly some uncivility recently on an oil disaster thread. While not pleasant, I expect it when you have a large group of mostly strangers, of varying degrees of maturity, together in an online forum. There will probably always be a few rude juvenile assholes who unleash. It would be nice to see a consistent ban rule in such cases, but I don't expect it either. As with many things in life, the world would be better if each individual would follow something like the Golden Rule.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#77

Post by zackattack » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 7:18 PM UTC

Something I've been working on is editing my posts to remove words like "obviously" and other statements that (subtly) vilify people with whom I disagree.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#78

Post by earl » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 7:40 PM UTC

msuster wrote: post #54

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?

It's funny -- I was reaching for a phrase to describe your post, remembered reading the phrase grinfucker on a blog post linked here, searched, and it's your blog! Small world. It's not quite the phrase I need, but I'd like to repurpose it.

So Mark, the deal is simple -- your post was about grinfucking employees, trying to convince us that a behaving in a way almost exclusively in employers' interests is actually in employees' interests. So, you know, say whatever you want to whoever you want, it's your reputation. But when you get called on it, even in language with naughty words, sack up. And frankly, I responded exactly the way I would in person -- I don't like it when people try to sell me a line.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#79

Post by 10ren » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 9:25 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #23

10ren wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that insults combined with actual arguments are worse than plain insults, because the latter are easy to ignore. The only trolls that ever got to me were the ones that combined them. Also, the guidelines are quite clear on shortening responses ( http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - bottom of frontpage): > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic…

Insults are unfortunate. I thought I was quite clear on that?

I read you as saying that insults are unfortunate, but that insults + actual arguments are better than insults alone. Did you not mean that?

I was saying that insults + actual arguments are worse than insults alone.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

#80

Post by 10ren » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 9:36 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…

Thinking on this further, HN could have flagged the submission, instead of being drawn into attacking it.

There are so many interesting articles on the web, why give their space to an abusive one? If HN has civil standards, shouldn't we ignore articles that fall below those standards?

Any argument that an article makes - even the most subversive and intrinsically inflammatory - can be articulated in a civil manner. And I think these would be extremely intellectually stimulating.