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Trolls (2008)

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Re: Trolls (2008)

#131

Post by jbooth »

billjings wrote: post #119
jbooth wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, things used to be rougher, but they also used to actually get something done on occasion. Can you see the current congress accomplishing that?

We're talking about the time period leading up to the Civil War, aren't we?

I thought we were talking about 220 some-odd years of history as a constitutional republic.

Still, until Lincoln was elected and states started seceding, they did manage to pass routine funding bills. So that puts them one ahead of the current bunch of goons.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#132

Post by efsavage »

"The conversations on Reddit were good when it was that small."

When reddit was small, it was full of, and dominated by, crackpots. It was barely even at the level of being entertaining, and I'd hesitate to call it a community at all. Intentional trolls generally don't mess with crackpots, for some reason. I don't know if it's because it's too easy or unsatisfying, but the trolls usually come with mainstreaming.

(There are still lots of crackpots there, but it's gelled to a far more coherent community that is much more fun to incite).

Re: Trolls (2008)

#133

Post by jacques_chester »

3pt14159 wrote: post #109
rjd wrote: post #69

There is a couple more cases which add to the mix. 1) Devils advocate. People that interject with an opposing view, even one they don't believe. I often do this one myself cause another poster to go into deeper description. Often just asking for an deeper response will be ignored, but opposing a view will always bring out an argument. 2) Denial and Righteousness. Essentially nasty fan boys. People who have brought in…

Sort of meta-related (in that I'm disagreeing with your facts, and therefore the judgement changes): I disagree that most hackers are --TJ types. They are more likely to be -NT- with a bend towards INT-. The N is _the_ trait that tends to abstractionism, so it would make little sense for a hacker to be -S-- at all. If you look at the polls here it comes out in spades: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722 The re…

Meyers-Briggs is not a respected test of personality in psychometrics circles; it was invented based on an amateur's reading of Jung's theories of personality.

Insofar as people say a pop personality test describes them, it's likely due to the Forer Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect).

Re: Trolls (2008)

#134

Post by dasil003 »

skybrian wrote: post #122
phzbOx wrote: post #111

There is a difference between trolling, making a funny statement and saying a contrived opinion. On HN, all of these get down-voted equally. Often time, I find something funny, say it as a comment, and get down-voted. It's not a stupid joke or something inappropriate, just a comment that'd make the reader smile. And I know it's hard to judge because I keep saying the score of these comments oscillating (I.e. people u…

Even if they're funny, posts that consist only of a joke generally aren't allowed. They'd be more appropriate for Reddit. Hacker News posts are supposed to have some substance to them. (You're seeing fluctuations because not everyone knows this.)

I'd amend that to say you have to say something really fucking hilarious and you'll do okay. And that's fine, we just can't allow average jokes because otherwise you end up with reedit where a 30-level deep joke thread is at the top of every single post.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#135

Post by aidenn0 »

figgles wrote: post #31
aidenn0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bank account is just an int in a server somewhere, but that doesn't make it unimportant. Obviously my karma isn't important, but that's because it has little effect on my outside of HN. Being bits on a server somewhere doesn't make it unimportant. Similarly, when someone posted a fake obit of Steve Jobs (well before he died), it caused quite an impact despite none of it mattering.

I hope your bank account isn't stored as just an int(!) But seriously, it is a representation of something physical. Money. Money which can in turn be used for other physical things. Reputation "karma" isn't. It /is/ meaningless in this context, because you can never log into HN again and your life will go on. I don't think the argument was "anything digital is pointless."

I read the argument precisely as "anything digital is pointless"

"One of the best things about the 'net is that, frankly, none of this really matters. None of it. It's a big joke. My twitters and my wikis and my posts don't mean anything. They're bits in the stream."

I Really don't see any other way to interpret that. The "bits in the stream" are having an increasingly large amount of impact on the world outside the internet every day, and to pretend otherwise is irresponsible.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#136

Post by angersock »

scott_s wrote: post #116
angersock wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the most openly hostile troll communities (FYAD, /b/, etc.) there is a solid "trust": you will be trolled. This idea of trust is a very strange thing, to me. If I present an argument or point logically and it is accepted, then there is no problem. If I do so and it is rejected logically, there is no problem. If I do so and are assailed with noise and rubbish, then it is usually pretty clear that it's just gar…

The kind of trust I'm talking about is trust in honest discourse. If I don't trust that others on a forum will engage with me honestly, then I am less likely to engage with them honestly. As a consequence, the overall discussion on the forum degrades.

Out of genuine curiosity, how would you define "honest discourse"?

Online forums are, by definition, right there on the 'net along with Google and Wikipedia and other resources, so flat-out misrepresentation of facts seems somewhat difficult. If somebody chooses to be irrational, they are readily identified as such, right? So where does honesty fit in all this?

Re: Trolls (2008)

#137

Post by teej »

interlagos wrote: post #91

I've been hellbanned here on HN on at least three different IP addresses and accounts...that I am aware of. Probably more. In each case nothing I'd ever said would be considered trolling by any rational observer. Here on HN, however, as with most communities where you start to recognize the regulars (tptacek, raganwald, etc), "trolling" is redefined to simply mean "going against the grain". There was one discussion t…

In the last 6 months I've been running an experiment. An experiment to make Hacker News better. Because I felt Hacker News was going to shit in several ways and I felt like I could help.

I couldn't stop naive newbies from making dumb comments, but I could stop fanboyism and groupthink.

I decided that I was going to take a different approach to commenting. In essence, I wanted to be like DHH - highly opinionated, strongly worded, and unafraid to call people out. To ensure comment integrity, I stuck only to topics in which I strongly felt I was in the right.

patio11, joshu, tptacek and pg were some of the people I spoke out against. I made the argument that those people were flat-out wrong. But not just that, I clarified -why- they were wrong in a reasoned way. And that was the key - explaining why. It turns out that people DID care about the truth. People WERE willing to hear out an alternate view and they voted with their upvotes.

I was able to move my karma from 3.5k to 5k and move my average from 7 to 14 per comment. Many of my comments took a very contrarian view to the HN status quo. Many of them were directly targeted at the "HN elite". All of them took their share of downvotes from those who thought my comments didn't add value. But in the end, they were the most successful comments I've ever made.

So don't lose hope! There is a way out of groupthink. But it takes hard work, great communication, and an academic view of persuasion. In the end, I think reasoned and rational discussion is what makes HN great, let's get back to that.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#138

Post by JoshTriplett »

rjd wrote: post #69

There is a couple more cases which add to the mix. 1) Devils advocate. People that interject with an opposing view, even one they don't believe. I often do this one myself cause another poster to go into deeper description. Often just asking for an deeper response will be ignored, but opposing a view will always bring out an argument. 2) Denial and Righteousness. Essentially nasty fan boys. People who have brought in…

> 1) Devils advocate. People that interject with an opposing view, even one they don't believe. I often do this one myself cause another poster to go into deeper description. Often just asking for an deeper response will be ignored, but opposing a view will always bring out an argument.

I find this useful as a means of provoking discussion, but preferably labeled as such if you don't genuinely hold the position you advocate.

> 2) Denial and Righteousness

Many rational people have a low tolerance for irrationality, particularly when they have to deal with it often. Particularly when participating on a technical medium or technical topic, rational people expect rationality, and sometimes react poorly when they don't get it. Rational people should not react badly to corrections supported by evidence. However, rational people react quite badly to irrational "corrections", and I can hardly blame them. Personally, I react to irrationality through detachment: if I can't correct it, I write it off and try to make it have as little impact as possible; fortunately, I rarely encounter situations where I have no choice but to deal with irrationality. However, if you don't include the second half of that (giving up when not worth it), you fall into XKCD's "wrong on the internet" problem (https://www.xkcd.com/386/), and that quickly gets out of hand.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#139

Post by finnw »

joejohnson wrote: post #89
joejohnson wrote: post #82

>> I've thought a lot over the last couple years about the problem of trolls. It's an old one, as old as forums, but we're still just learning what the causes are and how to address them. That's crazy. We still don't know what causes Trolls?

Ah, never mind: this article is 3 years old.

Does that make a significant difference? What have we learned about trolling in the last 3 years that we had not already learned in the previous 15 years?

Re: Trolls (2008)

#140

Post by stfu »

interlagos wrote: post #91

I've been hellbanned here on HN on at least three different IP addresses and accounts...that I am aware of. Probably more. In each case nothing I'd ever said would be considered trolling by any rational observer. Here on HN, however, as with most communities where you start to recognize the regulars (tptacek, raganwald, etc), "trolling" is redefined to simply mean "going against the grain". There was one discussion t…

Steven Colbert might be the best example of how good trolling can lead to very enlightening statements. In an ideal case it could even bring a self-discovery in the form of a Socratian dialogue that illustrates certain "taking things too serious" positions.

Additionally I think one should draw a line between trolling and flaming. Just some "you suck" comments are not making a troll a troll.

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