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To my fellow Hacker News contributors

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#61

Post by spaghetti »

joshklein wrote: post #53

My sense is that the threads of discussion raganwald mentions have increased since losing the comment karma score. The absence of a number next to each comment has made it impossible for me to instantly filter what's worth reading and what isn't. When I see a long thread of comments responding to a low karma comment, I know it's a debate I can probably ignore. The last poll pg ran asking if people wanted karma totals…

Would be cool to A/B test the comment scores. All HN readers would see identical frontpage. Half of HN readers would see comment threads with scores. Other half of readers would see comment threads without scores. After a day or so the most active/interesting threads would be compared. How did threads with comment scores evolve vs. threads without comment scores?

The results could be interesting. My opinion is that comment scores should be absent (like the current state). I think they lead to snow-balling effects. Lazy readers just go with the group's opinion instead of forming their own.

Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#62

Post by gilgad13 »

rlvesco7 wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #14

We are all going to nod our heads to this post, but as 'raganwald knows, nothing is going to change as a result. The inoculations against tribalism and tribal drama are cultural. Whatever vaccine HN had against this, it's worn off. My take is, flag these topics off the site. Cut them off like a gangrenous limb. We want to keep the leg, but even more, we want our heart to keep beating. But then, a vocal subset of HN u…

"We're not going to fix this problem. I'm also fine with that." Just thinking out loud here in terms of potential ways to stem this although perhaps this is futile. What if HN had a checkbox for ad-hominem and/or off-topic comments? Check boxing a comment as an ad hominem would add to your "ad hominem" score (separate from karma). Likewise for off-topic. This wouldn't stop a person from posting ad hominem or off-topi…

So basically implement a system like Slashdot?

I think that the vaccine HN had was size. Just like a modern republic vs. ancient Athens, HN has grown to the point where the obvious answer just doesn't seem to work. I think that Slashdot has already had to deal with these growing pains, and HN(and reddit) chose to ignore /.'s problems and pick the obvious solution. Unfortunately the behavior of mobs/tribalism tears this choice down.

Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#63

Post by GeneTraylor »

MrMan wrote: post #57

HN members' opinions of themselves are inflated and entertaining. I really enjoy the stream of sometimes-interesting links posted on the front page. I also get a kick out of the navel-gazing, the smug self-congratulations, the herding, the tempests in various teapots, while kettles are black. The content contributors think the site is about them, while it is really about maintaining a halo effect for a startup incuba…

>>> MrMan 14 minutes ago | link | parent | flag

HN members' opinions of themselves are inflated and entertaining. I really enjoy the stream of sometimes-interesting links posted on the front page. I also get a kick out of the navel-gazing, the smug self-congratulations, the herding, the tempests in various teapots, while kettles are black. The content contributors think the site is about them, while it is really about maintaining a halo effect for a startup incubator. I don't mean to be condescending, but you do know that you just proved his point, right?

Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#64

Post by tptacek »

gilgad13 wrote: post #62
rlvesco7 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We're not going to fix this problem. I'm also fine with that." Just thinking out loud here in terms of potential ways to stem this although perhaps this is futile. What if HN had a checkbox for ad-hominem and/or off-topic comments? Check boxing a comment as an ad hominem would add to your "ad hominem" score (separate from karma). Likewise for off-topic. This wouldn't stop a person from posting ad hominem or off-topi…

So basically implement a system like Slashdot? I think that the vaccine HN had was size. Just like a modern republic vs. ancient Athens, HN has grown to the point where the obvious answer just doesn't seem to work. I think that Slashdot has already had to deal with these growing pains, and HN(and reddit) chose to ignore /.'s problems and pick the obvious solution. Unfortunately the behavior of mobs/tribalism tears th…

Which limiting yourself to a set of must-read users and not consuming all of HN might not be a replacement for that vaccine, but it sure helps keep the plague rats at bay.

Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#65

Post by tptacek »

redler wrote: post #59
grandalf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that you write this b/c I hadn't read any of those threads myself. I have a filter where I don't often read the comments on stories from major media that make it to HN. There's rarely anything much to discuss and you're absolutely right that I do not care what anyone on HN thinks of Steve Jobs. As a side note, I'm happy about the removal of point visibility on comments... but I wonder if perhaps increased…

I think you're spot-on. This has to be a part of it. Whatever its issues, the visible point system was a way for readers to interact with the site in a way that produced a response for all to see. Whether this encouraged herd behavior or changed the shape of discussions in an unfavorable way is another issue. Comment-dimming notwithstanding, that feedback has been removed. There's a class of reader whose desire for a…

I think you guys are falling in love with a clever narrative about voting and comments and socialization and aren't remembering all the pointless and objectively stupid arguments we were having about transient down and up fluctuations in comment scores when we could see them all.

Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#66

Post by jshen »

joshklein wrote: post #53

My sense is that the threads of discussion raganwald mentions have increased since losing the comment karma score. The absence of a number next to each comment has made it impossible for me to instantly filter what's worth reading and what isn't. When I see a long thread of comments responding to a low karma comment, I know it's a debate I can probably ignore. The last poll pg ran asking if people wanted karma totals…

I'm having a similar thought, there may be a UI fix for such things. While I dislike reddit, one of the features I miss is the 'collapse thread' - sign. Once I realize a thread is unlikely to contain useful info, I collapse the whole thing and move on to the next thread.

On HN, i have to scroll past the rest of the thread and do visual/mental work to figure out where it ends.

Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#67

Post by dasil003 »

neutronicus wrote: post #50

I downvote any comment containing the word "fanboy", and I encourage my fellow readers to do the same.

I'm voting you up.

"Fanboy" is the most destructive meme to rational discourse ever to emerge on the Internet. In a single word we reduce any debate to YouTube-style mudslinging. The concept of "fanboy" has some limited utility in that people do clearly blind themselves to flaws in products (or ideologies!) in order to avoid cognitive dissonance and protect their own identity, but any tiny value in expressing this concept is overwhelmed by the destructive nature of its use in discourse. The fact is everyone has blind spots, and "fanboy" is just shorthand for "your opinion is meaningless noise, but I'm going to respond to it anyway with my own meta noise." Furthermore, the word is most often used by people who are equally as irrational as the one they are accusing.

Downvoting any comment calling someone else a "fanboy" is a good idea, and I think one concrete action that can help HN if only in a small way.

Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#69

Post by philh »

chollida1 wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #14

We are all going to nod our heads to this post, but as 'raganwald knows, nothing is going to change as a result. The inoculations against tribalism and tribal drama are cultural. Whatever vaccine HN had against this, it's worn off. My take is, flag these topics off the site. Cut them off like a gangrenous limb. We want to keep the leg, but even more, we want our heart to keep beating. But then, a vocal subset of HN u…

> My take is, flag these topics off the site. I'd like to do this. I tried doing it a while ago on the new tab. I spent 20 minutes each day flagging off topic posts. I didn't mind doing this as it was my way of making the community better. Sadly the flag link seems to have gone away:(

> Sadly the flag link seems to have gone away

You have more karma than me, and I can see it.

Speculation: it may have been taken away for "abuse", either automatically or by an editor who disagreed with too many of your flags.

Re: To my fellow Hacker News contributors

#70

Post by plainOldText »

"But here's the thing. It's a big world. Like a democracy, you have to go along with where everybody goes."

I don't agree with how this sentence is formulated. Most of the time I haven't personally really liked to go in the same direction as everybody else. It's just boring. Most of the time I prefer to take a path that hasn't been walked by anyone else and discover something new for myself.

Of course, in the context of the article the sentence is to be regarded narrower and the point is illustrating is to have a HN Community that's organized and follows some rules.Which I agree with. But the way it's formulated illustrates this mindset that in this big world we should all embrace whatever the crowd likes, which IMHO is just wrong.

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