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Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

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Re: Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

#61

Post by warren_s »

Towle_ wrote: post #21

This is one of several diseases in HackerNews. There's a whole spectrum of ways to disagree, all of which have value in the right situation. Here, a good portion of that spectrum has been lobbed off in the name of niceness and nothing more. Is it worth it? Decide for yourself. I say nay. Bonus disease: PG worship. Don't get me wrong, he's a brilliant guy; we're all here (directly or indirectly) because of him. But it…

I agree about the PG-worship or whatever you want to call it.

I preferred to absent myself from here for a while after it got real bad (to the point of the first article commonly being a 2-3 year old essay that had bubbled to the top AGAIN), simply because I felt fundamentally outside of the norm here - I rarely agree with anything PG says in its entirety. Paul is a thoughtful enough person that I've never felt that it would upset him if I disagreed here, but I would imagine there would be a lot of people keen to argue with me until I was blue in the face about it.

An opinion is an opinion however, and we're all entitled to our own - I take downvotes not as a personal attack, but simply an expression of disagreement, be it with your opinion OR the way you express it.

Re: Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

#62

Post by jdietrich »

I can only speak of my own personal approach to commenting. I evaluate my own comments by one metric - whether I think my comment will make HN a smarter, more interesting place. I see HN comments less as a forum for chit-chat and more as a venue for a series of short essays on the topic of the original post. I try to avoid making comments of the sort that are satisfying to post but that I would not be interested in reading. If I don't think I'm being reasonably insightful, I don't bother. For every comment I post, there are usually one or two comments on other items that I decided weren't good enough to post.

It seems to me that HN is relatively neutral in terms of your opinion; People here seem to avoid the vice of downvoting based simply on a difference of opinion, at least in my experience. The community generally seems to award karma based on how thoughtful and carefully-constructed your comments are. I have one one occasion been downvoted into oblivion for politely and carefully expressing an opinion that is generally morally unpalatable, but someone came to my defence and I eventually ended up with a small amount of positive karma for the comment.

I think the easiest rule of thumb is to try and be the opposite of cable news. The calmer and more dispassionate your tone, the more detailed and precise you are in your reasoning, the more carefully you reference reliable sources, the better your chances of being strongly upvoted.

Re: Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

#63

Post by gord »

I mostly agree.

I think we need to accept some false positives [such as foul language] in order to preserve a reasonable level of freedom of speech on HN.

Here I mean freedom of speech in the weak form, ie. that you stop posting something you truly believe, because of fear it will attract down-votes.

Useful ideas/opinions that occur in the long tail may offend some people - but I think HN is too uniform and PC without them.

Re: Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

#66

Post by btilly »

lkrubner wrote: post #52
btilly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with the drive by anonymous poster to your blog, but I do agree with the downvotes you got below http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1821175 . (And no, I was not the downvoter.) The open question was how big of a stick the government should wield, and your response was to implicitly ask whether the other person believed in capitalism, and if not then should we go with communism? This is a straw man comp…

No where did I bring communism or capitalism into the conversation. And, mind you, I am not critical of the anonymous poster on my blog - everyone has a right to be critical. But it did make me think twice about whether Hacker News is the right place for me to invest my time.

No where did I bring communism or capitalism into the conversation.

Really? From http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1821175 I find:

Do you feel that economies where the bulk of economic activity is organized via free actors engage in voluntary exchange tend to be more dynamic than economies where the government plays the major role in organizing economic activity?

What are you talking about if not capitalism? Then you go on to say:

If not, on what basis would you justify allowing the existence of non-governmental economic activity?

That sure as heck looks like a reference to something that famously happens in communism.

And both were straw men when referring to the parent comment. Which in effect boiled down to saying that it was possible that it could be easier to discourage gaming the system by providing bigger punishments for bad behavior than it is to do it by providing bigger incentives for not gaming the system.

Which actually seems like a good point to me. Increasing punishment would mean punishing CEOs that all agree have done something wrong, possibly with prison. Providing counter incentives means what? Do we give them more money than they would have made gaming the system as a thank you for not having gamed it? I for one would find that hard to swallow, and I doubt I'm alone!

Returning to the main thread of this conversation, it is up to each of us to decide how to spend our time. If you're not getting value (enjoyment, learning, reputation etc) for energy spent here or anywhere else, you shouldn't do it. If you are, you should continue to do it, and maybe should do it more. I can't make the decision for you. But that anonymous poster struck me as out of line, and doesn't seem to me to be the norm for this community.

Re: Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

#67

Post by jay_kyburz »

troutwine wrote: post #40
DjDarkman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be alone in this, but I like expressing my thoughts/feelings, as a matter of fact, most of the time I want to make it really clear that what I say is just my the way I see it. Do I go a little bit too far with it? Maybe.

I grew up in a blunt, German family. Very straight forward, often crude. I am, as a result, one to speak my mind. Effective criticism is best delivered from a high position: hyperbole and mistakes like "my the way I" debase an otherwise salient point. A good insult is like a fine, dry wine; it is bitter and refined. You come across in your comment history as a dullard, enamored of his own ability to shout at crowds.

I'm picturing Dwight Schrute as I read this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Schrute

Re: Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

#68

Post by robryan »

akadien wrote: post #37

Dude, it's karma points on HN. A number on a server somewhere that has no bearing whatsoever on your real life. Have some perspective.

I don't think its so much the points into themselves, I know an overall count worries me very little. It's the negative feedback you get from having something voted down, which isn't to bad if someone replies and explains why they disagree or why the argument isn't well formed, doesn't add anything ect.

It's when you have a comment the represents your opinion and you think it's well written, but it still has been voted down for unknown reasons with no replies in can play on your mind. It's like your telling someone something, they tell you they disagree and the conversations ends there.

Re: Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

#69

Post by moxiemk1 »

paulnelligan wrote: post #27

y'know a few downvotes are not the end of the world either. The most downvotes I've ever seen anyone get never exceeds 4. I've seen hundreds of upvotes for some submissions. So if you're worried about the karma, just post something interesting. Guaranteed you'll get your karma back AND still have the freedom to criticize something if you feel the need.

The site wont display downvotes in excess of 4. That way, no comments are publicly downvoted into oblivion, but they do continue to lose karma.

Re: Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

#70

Post by justin_vanw »

You can say quite negative stuff, but it is much harder to get away with trolling outright.

My diatribe against django: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1490415

Me telling some digg engineer that the plan to switch to cassandra was retarded, way back in '09: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813967

Calling the content of a submitted article 'crap': http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=772693

I guess I might get away with negativity without being modded into oblivion, my secret is that my posts have some sort of information content.

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