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Please read the paper before you comment

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Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#221

Post by breakfastduck »

rglullis wrote: post #214
breakfastduck wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies, I literally can't see that comment - it shows as [Dead]. I agree, there's a market for something that plugs the gap. But if it's not as easy as social media, it won't get the adoption these days.

Dead, really? Maybe it was the lmgtfy link that tripped the modbot. > if it's not as easy as social media, it won't get the adoption these days. I think that is backwards. Starting a blog is as easy as starting a Facebook account. The problem is that a blog does not give you the "engagement" of a social network and therefore can not compete for your attention against the very fine-tuned engagement machines of Faceboo…

Yes you're right, the engagement is the most important part.

It's not the ease of creating the site, it's the ease of directing people to view / subscribe / communicate through & return to it & that is a very difficult problem to solve if you do not simply approach as a standard social network.

I guess to me there's a niche for smaller scale networks, which would suit those with lesser engagement needs. Most people want to comment & subscribe, I'd say that you could cut almost all other social network features and it would work to a degree.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#222

Post by akg_67 »

nabla9 wrote: post #218
cgrealy wrote: post #48

Some years ago, Ars Technica ran a story on guns. https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot... About halfway through a one-page article was this quote. "If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first." Sure enough, there were about 3 pages of comments before someone mentioned bananas. Read the…

I have done several experiments in Reddit. I post a link with a plausible title and credible looking 404 to credible domain with made up url. In a big subreddit you easily get 30 top level comments before first comment says that link does not work or is fake. Discussion goes on and on without pause. People treat the title as a writing prompt. One of the best writing prompts is pseudo-philosophical techno-bro life or…

Readers think of Reddit title as discussion prompts. The combination of subreddit theme and post title can easily start a discussion on “close enough” topic. One of the suggestion for increasing engagement is to disable link posts and only allow text posts.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#223

Post by 52-6F-62 »

skrebbel wrote: post #155
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I heard about that one I think, that's really clever. Honestly comment sections on the internet are a cesspool on the best days, but comment sections under news articles? It makes all the undereducated conspiracists come out the woodworks. A Dutch news site (nu.nl) tried to run a comment section and even something of a social network for a while, but they couldn't maintain them. You can create a comment section,…

> Honestly comment sections on the internet are a cesspool A bit offtopic, but when YouTube first added comments, they quickly got into cesspool territory, exactly like you describe. However, these days, I find myself really enjoying YouTube comments quite often. Is this just me? Am I just watching more happy happy joy joy videos these days or did YT comments go from "the internet's awfulest" to "pretty neat" somehow…

I’ve noticed this in the comments under music more than elsewhere. Anything politics is still awful.

Music is nice and largely even positive—if repetitive (“anyone here listening to [90s band] in 2020??”)

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#224

Post by breakfastduck »

krapp wrote: post #208
breakfastduck wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It scares me how much people on twitter believe that what they see trending on there from the news and other sources is being seen and blown up worldwide when it's not. It's being blown up worldwide ON TWITTER. The vast majority of the world never sees or hears any of it. It causes delusions of grandeur across the userbase.

People believe that off Twitter as well. I've seen commenters here claim that the majority of all human communication and interaction takes place on and is controlled by a few social media silos.

Yes, it's a difficult problem to solve.

The fact twitter has so much political sway in the real world is appalling considering how small the user-bases are relative to populations.

We find ourselves in a position where the media can use twitter to amplify opinion and provide a false sense of majority to implement political pressure.(See cancel culture)

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#225

Post by mrfredward »

krapp wrote: post #189
wittyreference wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the addendum to that rule was “because we will just delete their post anyway.” The lowest value contributions on HN are inevitably those that use a headline to air personal grievances vaguely related to the subject of the post (“Apple releases new cure for diabetes”, top comment: “Let me tell you why I hate the touchbar.”) the second lowest are those that clearly read the headline and ran with it, without read…

I wish Hacker News would remove that rule and replace it with two: 1) Please read the article before you comment. 2) If you haven't read the article, please refrain from commenting. It wouldn't accomplish much, but it will at least prioritize engagement over politeness, as the current rule does. And yes, both of those are the same thing but I feel it's worth mentioning twice.

I believe the reason for that rule is to avoid polluting the thread with "did you even read" type remarks. Starting an argument won't help the thread recover from an uninformed comment.

Nothing in the rules discourages downvoting people who didn't read.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#226

Post by Akronymus »

breakfastduck wrote: post #224
krapp wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People believe that off Twitter as well. I've seen commenters here claim that the majority of all human communication and interaction takes place on and is controlled by a few social media silos.

Yes, it's a difficult problem to solve. The fact twitter has so much political sway in the real world is appalling considering how small the user-bases are relative to populations. We find ourselves in a position where the media can use twitter to amplify opinion and provide a false sense of majority to implement political pressure.(See cancel culture)

Along with that, the beltway bubble, where "reporters" mostly follow each other leads to, quite frankly, bizarre stories along with a unhealthy dose of outright wrong reporting.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#227

Post by pembrook »

samat wrote: post #157
pembrook wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Job ads are universally filled with jargon-y HR copy-pasta bullshit, so I’m sure most people never read them on purpose. Instead of being clever, you’ve simply overestimated the importance of your ad in people’s lives while simultaneously optimizing for inexperienced people who’ve never read a job ad before and don’t know they are BS.

I don’t put PR bullshit in my vacancies and I write a lot of them. I respect my potential hires and expect them to respect me and at least read the damn thing. Unbelievable, right?

Sure, your ads might be the greatest ads ever written. But if you respected your potential hires you’d be mindful of the fact that it’s easy to get job ad fatigue since all the other company ads are filled with bullshit.

Playing king-in-the-castle with people’s lives by rejecting them over some bizarre game where you assume bad intent doesn’t sound like “respect” to me.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#228

Post by FeepingCreature »

breakfastduck wrote: post #209
FeepingCreature wrote: post #143

Yeah I'm gonna go subscribe to the journal for €100 a year before I comment... Right.

It's actually kind of beautiful to see an organic example of the behavior that the article quite rightly criticizes happening on the sharing of said article. Out of interest, how many lines even of the article did you read before you decided to post this? Because it can't be many.

Oyeah, didn't see the sci-hub reference.

It says something about the sad state of affairs that the universally agreed answer here seems to be "yeah just pirate it, nobody cares, everyone does it."

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#229

Post by levosmetalo »

akg_67 wrote: post #222
nabla9 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done several experiments in Reddit. I post a link with a plausible title and credible looking 404 to credible domain with made up url. In a big subreddit you easily get 30 top level comments before first comment says that link does not work or is fake. Discussion goes on and on without pause. People treat the title as a writing prompt. One of the best writing prompts is pseudo-philosophical techno-bro life or…

Readers think of Reddit title as discussion prompts. The combination of subreddit theme and post title can easily start a discussion on “close enough” topic. One of the suggestion for increasing engagement is to disable link posts and only allow text posts.

I see HN in the same way. It happens so often that HN discussion is much better that article itself that I go there first, and RTFA only if the discussion makes me want to read it.

For this article, I tried to read it after reading a few comments, but got bored.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#230

Post by rakoo »

cgrealy wrote: post #48

Some years ago, Ars Technica ran a story on guns. https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot... About halfway through a one-page article was this quote. "If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first." Sure enough, there were about 3 pages of comments before someone mentioned bananas. Read the…

Reminds me of this software that, like all softwares, had a miles long Terms of Use. Buried in the middle the developer said something to the effect of "Contact us at this address and receive USD XX,000".

Most users clicked the "I have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions" and only a handful actually contacted the developer. They did receive the money though.

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