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But this is not exclusive to HN. Reddit is the same, although in a more leftist way, while HN has more conservatives. But it is funny how each place has its own paranoia and conspiracy theories.
The default position seems to be we're supposed to applaud certain things automatically... anything YC-funded, any attempts to dislodge Flash using js/canvas games that are garbage by post-1980 standards, ridiculous stuff with CSS. Some of the stuff and companies applauded on here are in my opinion really, really weak. There's no downvoting of submissions so you can only express dislike in a comment.
Mere Dislike doesn't explain the top comments that disagree.
It could be that someone who doesn't like a story thinks about how he could disagree with it, and write the comment in the hope that it will stop the story to get up-voted. But that strikes me as a bit convoluted.
Also, a lot of articles that get posted here are technical blog entries whereby someone makes a pronouncement on the positive or negative effects of some technology/methodology. These are fundamentally opinions, and will immediately garner a response from someone who holds a differing opinion.
1) I don't read HN for the stories, I read it for the insight the community brings to a topic. I will often upvote an article that I disagree with, but that still brings up interesting questions. Maybe others do this. 2) Sometimes there is just less to discuss when you agree with a submission, apart from adding your own piece of anecdotal evidence. 3) It's important to challenge ideas and to be able to call bullshit.…
That's exactly what I like and hate about r/programming and r/netsec on reddit. People tends to upvote irrelevant submissions just to see insightful responses. But it's the exact kind of submission made those subreddits eternal septembered. Upbait is the new flamebait and trollbait.
In my opinion, this is because there isn't a downvote button on stories. Because there isn't a downvote button on stories, posting a comment that disagrees with the premise of the story has become the de facto "downvote" button. It's easy karma to get, all you have to do is disagree with the sentiment of the post with barely more detail than "no, I disagree". Then, when people come into the comments to argue that the…
My only question is: you mentioned positive comments, negative comments and people who are conciliatory or funny. Apart from the trollish/provocative stuff that ends up downmodded, what have you left out?
Not sure if it's clear what I am asking. At first it seems like you pretty much included every possible comments. So I was wondering if you could be a little bit more specific. In particular what sort of comments do you _not_ see?
But the end result is that people take a lot more pleasure in showing that they can debunk or argument against something. Saying: "I totally agree" may feel a bit like you are following someone else's thought, and most people here take pride in thinking differently.
I also think patio (HN values cleverness) is another important factor.
"When crossing a one-way street, a normal person looks one way. A good programmer will look both ways. A good tester also looks up."
In my opinion, this is because there isn't a downvote button on stories. Because there isn't a downvote button on stories, posting a comment that disagrees with the premise of the story has become the de facto "downvote" button. It's easy karma to get, all you have to do is disagree with the sentiment of the post with barely more detail than "no, I disagree". Then, when people come into the comments to argue that the…
Interesting perspective. My only question is: you mentioned positive comments, negative comments and people who are conciliatory or funny. Apart from the trollish/provocative stuff that ends up downmodded, what have you left out? Not sure if it's clear what I am asking. At first it seems like you pretty much included every possible comments. So I was wondering if you could be a little bit more specific. In particular…
There are certainly many other types of comments here. There are many informative comments on most HN submissions, they usually carry a slight skew to either support or oppose the submission. There are comments that provide additional context to submissions – those usually do quite well.
The “tribes” metaphor fits pretty well with regards to online communities (including HN). HN as a whole values information, both factual and opinionated – as long as the facts have a solid foundation in reason.
Since the economy of this tribe is powered by knowledge, most of the comments that survive are related to determining the value of any given piece of information. An upvote on a story says that it’s worth something. A comment that disagrees says it’s worth less. There are plenty of comments from people trying to determine what the value of the information is from their perspective.
There are a growing number of meta-comments, especially on submissions of questionable relevance or quality. A comment that says “Hacker News?” calls into question how much the submitter actually belongs here. As with other tribes, a constant state of tribal / endemic warfare is present. Refugees are rarely well accepted into existing communities, HN is no different. The “Eternal September” problem is a nicer way of saying a place is being overrun by refugees. A common insult here is “this isn’t reddit”. On reddit, a common insult is “this isn’t Digg” and on Digg, “this isn’t Fark”. It’s not that there is a hierarchy of quality in a series of sites, comments like that exist to point out that someone’s comment (and by extension the commenter) don’t belong here. Pointing out someone’s “otherness” is a diversionary tactic that has existed long before the internet.
I do find a great deal of humor in the “this isn’t reddit” comments, because reddit has a pretty elegant solution to the fact that humans coalesce into tribes – subreddits. It’s significantly easier to recognize other commenters in a subreddit because there are fewer people to recognize. Many of the people that lament the state of HN often mean that they don’t recognize the people making the submissions and comments. I believe that it’s the state of like-mindedness that people are attracted to; not a state of unified agreement or disagreement on a topic. With a smaller set of contributors, the question of “what has value?” is much clearer, the community can then focus on the merit of any given contribution. As a community grows, the idea of what values are espoused by the community become much more murky and it becomes difficult to assess the worth of any given comment or submission.
This has become much more lengthy than I intended it to be; I suppose I could have just said “there are many types of comments on any site, the ones that tend to do well are the ones that help others accurately assess the value of the topic under discussion”. Of course, my point may have been missed if I had just said that ;)
I gave up on Slashdot back in 1999 because, back then, I was somewhat aware of what was to be biggest drop event for domain names in history. A certain story was a link to a clueless article about the topic, and the comments were dominated by people who knew nothing but sounded authoritative, so they were getting their comments voted up.
Then I thought about it and realized that the information I had was commercially valuable, why the hell would I share it with a bunch of people who couldn't tell right information from wrong information.
The drop event came, our detection system worked, and we grabbed 6000 names that we wanted before anybody else.