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Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

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Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#221

Post by loceng »

pvg wrote: post #167
loceng wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I'm surprised that dang didn't touch on to mention downvotes as an even more rapid "contrarian dynamic" mechanism; wouldn't it be nice if downvotes had a little more friction, effort required for the action - like qualitative text from the downvoter as to why a comment is being downvoted to then allow OP the opportunity to clarify or expand on their comment - "to be more reflective and therefore bette…

This has been discussed many times and it's not a good idea - it adds friction to the discussion , more than anything else. The threads would be full of pointless meta. The fundamental problem is that getting downvoted feels kinda bad - nobody ever asks for explanatory notes on upvotes. It's reasonable to wonder whether getting downvoted feels, say, too bad too soon and if there are UI ways to address that. But it's…

That's the whole point - adding friction. It also sounds like you'd be a fan of a parenting style where a child is punished but not told why. It's odd that you feel downvoting should be seen as punishment and not a mechanism for disagreement.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#222

Post by loceng »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #176
loceng wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's no witnessing or critique/scrutiny by the community possible then I don't think there will be the pressure necessary for quality comments to be made - and leaving a moderator to privately review them would likely have more comments left toward the spectrum of "this guy's an idiot" then toward side of constructive or useful criticism.

Hmm, what about being able to see a list of downvotes and explanations on a user’s profile? With maybe some minimum karma before you can see that on someone else’s profile? So there is potential scrutiny by the community, but not in a way that disrupts the original discussion?

Why would it be disrupting conversation and not simply inherent to it? Top replies will still be at top.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#223

Post by meretext »

jl2718 wrote: post #89
ananthrk wrote: post #41

The legendary "Putnam" one, of course: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

Okay, so, what do we think about TarSnap? Dude was obviously a genius, and spent his time on backups instead of solving millennium problems. I say that with the greatest respect. Is this entrepreneurship thing a trap?

It's a trap if it's not for you, not what you want to do, not your interests. Whose business is it to solve millennium problems? Certainly not yours to decide for others. I think he does with his life what he chooses, and you do with yours what you choose. What are you doing with your life? I don't think you intended to be arrogant here, but the premise is that someone who has talent is required or expected to solve the world's problems. Not so. I think it's none of your business what someone else does with their life, anymore than it's mine to judge what you've done with yours or expect you to fulfill society's or the world's expectations. And the dude is still a genius, not was.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#224

Post by pvg »

loceng wrote: post #221
pvg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been discussed many times and it's not a good idea - it adds friction to the discussion , more than anything else. The threads would be full of pointless meta. The fundamental problem is that getting downvoted feels kinda bad - nobody ever asks for explanatory notes on upvotes. It's reasonable to wonder whether getting downvoted feels, say, too bad too soon and if there are UI ways to address that. But it's…

That's the whole point - adding friction. It also sounds like you'd be a fan of a parenting style where a child is punished but not told why. It's odd that you feel downvoting should be seen as punishment and not a mechanism for disagreement.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#225

Post by jessaustin »

loceng wrote: post #221
pvg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been discussed many times and it's not a good idea - it adds friction to the discussion , more than anything else. The threads would be full of pointless meta. The fundamental problem is that getting downvoted feels kinda bad - nobody ever asks for explanatory notes on upvotes. It's reasonable to wonder whether getting downvoted feels, say, too bad too soon and if there are UI ways to address that. But it's…

That's the whole point - adding friction. It also sounds like you'd be a fan of a parenting style where a child is punished but not told why. It's odd that you feel downvoting should be seen as punishment and not a mechanism for disagreement.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#226

Post by kqr »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #144
kqr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Head injuries are more common in cars than bicycles. Before someone tells me I "must" wear a helmet when cycling, I want to see them strap on a helmet when entering a car.

I’ve been hit by a car three times when cycling (only when cycling on an e-bike, car-drivers seem to have difficulty assessing the different speeds involved). The last time, and the time that persuaded me to give up the e-bike resulted in [this]( https://0x0000ff.uk/imgs/hit-by-car.png ). That top impact is my head, smashing the windscreen. The lower impact is my arm (broken in two places). The side of the car was my…

That sounds like an awful experience. From the picture, it looks like the crumple zones on the car yielded very kindly to your momentum as well, which is incredibly fortunate. I'm glad you got out of it alive, if with some serious scratches and dings.

I'm convinced anyone who would be wearing a helmet when driving a car, and narrowly escaping death in a similar way (e.g. a racing driver who is kept alive by their helmet?) would argue much the same way in favour of helmets when driving cars. It's just more rare because we don't wear helmets when driving cars.

What do you think of that line of reasoning?

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#228

Post by dang »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #134
dgellow wrote: post #60

"The contrarian dynamic" by dang, from around a month ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215601 > The "contrarian dynamic" is that HN threads (and internet comments generally) are largely propelled by people making objections. Cunningham's Law touches on this [1]. The objections come in waves. In the earliest stage of a thread, they tend to be rapid negative reactions to the article. It's not that these are…

This is a poor model of Hacker News comment phenomena. It requires all this extra complexity in the theory (comment “waves” and “triggered” reactions, highly generic stereotypes of whether a responder is reflective and thoughtful, and whether this correlates with moderate opinions). From an Occam’s Razor point of view, this is a very poor theory, and I’d even go further and suggest it indicates unfair bias on the mod…

You're making it sound more complicated than it is. The idea is simple: users like to make objections.

Since users like to make objections, the initial comments tend to object to the article/title (because there's nothing else to object to yet), and later comments object to existing comments. Poof, "waves".

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#229

Post by dang »

alain94040 wrote: post #175
loceng wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I'm surprised that dang didn't touch on to mention downvotes as an even more rapid "contrarian dynamic" mechanism; wouldn't it be nice if downvotes had a little more friction, effort required for the action - like qualitative text from the downvoter as to why a comment is being downvoted to then allow OP the opportunity to clarify or expand on their comment - "to be more reflective and therefore bette…

What about this: to to downvote, you need to also specify a keyword as to why you are downvoting. It's a text field (not a pull down). Whatever you enter, will not be visible to anyone except to the person who wrote the comment you are downvoting. Adds just enough friction to reduce downvotes a bit, provides information to the person being downvoted (no more "why all the hate?" comments), and doesn't pollute the expe…

This assumes that it would be good to reduce downvotes. I'm not convinced that's true. We need those white blood cells.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#230

Post by ycombinete »

superice wrote: post #90
ycombinete wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should though

There is ~250 cycling related traffic deaths per year in the Netherlands. Some 60 of those are e-bike related. Normalized per capita that is well above the EU average, but you shouldn't forget that we cycle a lot in the Netherlands, which means that per cycled kilometer, cycling in the Netherlands is still ridiculously safe even without helmets. It has been argued that forcing people to wear a helmet in law will redu…

I think our point of view is very different. Coming from a country where almost no-one cycles as a mode of transport, I view it entirely individualistically. I understand that the imperative 'should', has a far wider (even political) connotation in the context of the Netherlands.

To be clear, I wouldn’t suggest forcing people to wear helmets, by law. My thinking is simple: it is safer to wear a helmet when cycling. Therefore one _should_ wear a helmet when cycling. It’s about as easy to wear a bike helmet as it it to wear a surgical mask.

On the subject of helmets, I don’t think deaths per year is the right statistic. I’d be more interested in head injuries per year. Not all serious head injuries cause death, and not all deaths are caused by head injuries.

I do understand your point. That in a safe cycling space like The Netherlands, the risk is low enough that The safety provided by a helmet is very rarely used.

There’s a good chance that I will be living in the Netherlands in a year or so. I wonder if I’ll wear a helmet or not? (probably not). I’ve cycled a lot in my life, both on and off-road. As a child I never wore a helmet, cycling around the neighbourhood; but as an adult I always have.

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