To participate in HN, you basically want to be sure to point out any logical fallacies, missing citations, and any possible reference to Godwin's Law, the Streisand effect, or the Dunning–Kruger effect.
How to Participate in Hacker News
101–110 of 126 posts
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#102Here's another suggestion: flag sparingly. A lot of long-time HN'ers are frustrated at the "flag patrols" -- people of one group who don't like such-and-such author and flag them and their submissions. I've heard several people complain to me about having normal articles flagged and I've done my share of complaining. Don't be the guy who takes out your personal grudges in the form of flagging. Let the votes work. The…
Daniel, I know you mean well, but your suggestion of "flag sparingly" is only useful some of the time, and there is code in place to handle those who flag excessively. As always, there's more to it than meets the eye. There is a great deal of "secret sauce" running on HN, and to prevent adversaries from abusing HN for their own gain, PG deliberately does not publicly divulge how a lot of things work. [1] You would ne…
This is my third account here. My last started posting [dead] last week. I'd very much like to know how one goes from positive karma to censored. Was it too many posts on the SOPA thread? That was the last set of posts before I went [dead]. I made like 10 posts, not a single one was downvoted, and a couple were upvoted 10 or more times. This was an issue I felt strongly about. Fair enough: my opinion may not merit such prolific posting - but how about blocking me from posting on that one article?
I'm attempting to view this positively: my goal is to learn how to communicate effectively here, and clearly I'm doing something wrong. It would genuinely help if I knew what that was.
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Daniel, I know you mean well, but your suggestion of "flag sparingly" is only useful some of the time, and there is code in place to handle those who flag excessively. As always, there's more to it than meets the eye. There is a great deal of "secret sauce" running on HN, and to prevent adversaries from abusing HN for their own gain, PG deliberately does not publicly divulge how a lot of things work. [1] You would ne…
This is my third account here. My last started posting [dead] last week. I'd very much like to know how one goes from positive karma to censored. Was it too many posts on the SOPA thread? That was the last set of posts before I went [dead]. I made like 10 posts, not a single one was downvoted, and a couple were upvoted 10 or more times. This was an issue I felt strongly about. Fair enough: my opinion may not merit su…
I think general advice would be not to put too much heart into it. Brain, yes. (But spare the sarcasm.)
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#104I've been a long time lurker here. I lurked for several months before creating an account and then I lurked quite a bit longer before participating. Groups of intelligent people are intimidating at first but please don't hold back if you have something to add to a discussion. New voices are incredibly important for preventing groups from merely becoming echochambers for established members. I especially agree with th…
Not a total lurker here, but I have mainly 2 reasons why I don't participate as much as I probably would/could/should...
1. Time. A discussion typically only lasts one day, and after that its mostly silent. Alongside my job, I simply can't find enough spare "thinking-time" to really write a thoughtful comment in that time frame. I feel that my comments would be more of a knee-jerk reaction than a real addition of value.
2. Language. My mother tongue ist german, not english. While I've been told that my english is quite reasonable, I still feel insecure in it, especially when I read incredibly well-spoken comments. And I do regularly make some mistakes, especially in grammar, and I don't like making mistakes in public (I guess nobody does). And of course, it takes longer to write a comment - see #1...
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm generally happy lurking, and I can lurk with the best of them (see 4 years / 35 karma :-)) To be honest I just don't have the time to comment often and karma (in a HN sense) means nothing to me. My way of giving back to the community happens more in real life (aka meatspace, though I hate that term),more recently it's the connections I've made through HN and iOS meetups here in Tokyo that are the most valuable to…
I hope this isn't too off-topic, but would you be willing to describe the iOS scene in Tokyo? I always love hearing about what programming habits and techniques are popular in different countries. Would you say the community there embraces a fast-release philosophy or are they more like the big name devs (Square Enix)? Are any frameworks popular? Is iOS development big? What would you say is the most popular language…
Well my world is nearly 100% iOS and the iOS community I meetup with is probably a 5:1 foreigner:japanese ratio, so I'm not sure how their preferences translate to the native community.
-Some of the guys work for big companies and others in little startups doing contract work on the side.
-I don't know anyone serious about iOS development that hasn't invested 100% in learning obj-c.
-I haven't noticed any popular frameworks mentioned.
As for how popular iOS development is I'm not sure, probably less popular than Android (Android handsets are really common). If you are asking in terms of work possibilities, I get offered at least one or two jobs every HN meetup I attend.
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#106Here's another suggestion: flag sparingly. A lot of long-time HN'ers are frustrated at the "flag patrols" -- people of one group who don't like such-and-such author and flag them and their submissions. I've heard several people complain to me about having normal articles flagged and I've done my share of complaining. Don't be the guy who takes out your personal grudges in the form of flagging. Let the votes work. The…
I've heard several people complain to me about having normal articles flagged How do you know an article is flagged (aside from someone posting a snark about how they flagged)? Does the OP of an article get notified?
It goes from #4 on the front page to #243 or something equally ridiculous.
Depending on how old the article is, the flag can either drop it by hundreds of places, or at least 10 places for a couple of flags. I have done some testing (a while ago), and found that having 2 people flag one of my articles when it had 40/50 points dropped it by 10 places in the next 5 minutes. Unflagging it restored the original position.
Newer articles with fewer points get a much more dramatic effect, however, as far as I can tell.
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've asked some "pointed questions" and been downvoted. What I learned from this is that while some discussion threads are about questioning and learning, others are about something else... I'm not sure what exactly... Hearing what you want to hear? Maybe someone else can provide some insight.
If your "pointed question" doesn't sound nice enough, the community will punish you for it. There are also a couple sacred cows that you would be well-advised against questioning.
Is there a list somewhere? We could learn a lot about our silent assumptions and possible limitations arising from it.
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#1082. Participate! I often participate, but when I don't it's usually for a simple reason: downvotes sting. This is so important that I would add it as a corollary to "9. Be nice": 9a. Use downvotes sparingly. I and my poor primate brain will thank you.
the lack of a "red envelope" is offputting too - i very definitely find myself participating more in fora with comment reply notifications. unless i've just missed it altogether, all hn has is the rather clunky process of scanning your comment page to see if anything has garnered a new reply.
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Daniel, I know you mean well, but your suggestion of "flag sparingly" is only useful some of the time, and there is code in place to handle those who flag excessively. As always, there's more to it than meets the eye. There is a great deal of "secret sauce" running on HN, and to prevent adversaries from abusing HN for their own gain, PG deliberately does not publicly divulge how a lot of things work. [1] You would ne…
This is my third account here. My last started posting [dead] last week. I'd very much like to know how one goes from positive karma to censored. Was it too many posts on the SOPA thread? That was the last set of posts before I went [dead]. I made like 10 posts, not a single one was downvoted, and a couple were upvoted 10 or more times. This was an issue I felt strongly about. Fair enough: my opinion may not merit su…
Though I have studied HN a lot, I am not a moderator and I do not have
access to the actual code running on HN. The "basic" code behind HN
(NEWS.YC) is publicly available in the ARC language distribution, but PG
is running a modified version here. Without source code or moderator
access, along with my well publicized lack of mind reading skills, I
simply cannot tell you why your account was "hellbanned" (i.e. all posts
from the account are immediately marked "[dead]").
Even if you're a long time user with substantial karma and "show dead" enabled in your profile, there are times when you're still unable to see posts from some "hellbanned" users. With this said, even if I knew which SOPA thread you're talking about, and what user-name you were using, I might not be able to see said problematic posts. You are essentially asking me for blind speculation.
The best I can tell you from blind speculation is you probably let your emotions get the better of you in the discussion, others decided you were acting like an ass, and they flagged your comments. Since you admit to "feeling strongly" about the topic, you were most likely pushing your opinion, and hence, your agenda... --And others pushed back. The other thing to realize is, in highly political and divisive topics there are most likely groups/rings at work trying to suppress the most vocal (or acerbic) posters. As far as I know, there is no such thing as "perfect" ring detection since differentiating it from group-think would be very problematic. If you've read any of PG's code, or any of his coding books (OnLisp, ANSI Common Lisp), you'll agree he's pretty darn good at coding, but even for him, "perfect" ring detection is probably beyond feasible.
So, with blind speculation, you've got three possibilities:
1.) You added a bit too much spice to your comments.
2.) You were on the wrong side of a voting/flagging ring.
3.) You were on the wrong side of consensus / group-think (i.e. you have an uncommon and contentious opinion).
Just because you could see up-votes on your comments does not mean you can see the 'flags' they have received, so you're basing your evaluation on incomplete information.
The last possibility is clearly stated in the HN Guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
Sure, SOPA intersects with tech and hacking, and even PG himself got in on the action by taking a stand on it, but none the less, it's still politics. You pushed heavily on comparisons to Nazi Germany (see "Godwin's Law") and voiced strong advocacy of Ron Paul. You might want to note that one rather prolific HN poster described Ron Paul as a "Mendacious Kook," so your opinion is not universally accepted and promoting your opinion is essentially pushing a political agenda. The result, of course, is the same "Ron Paul Spam" problems seen on Reddit. This is not Reddit. Here on HN, there is no way to compartmentalize topics (i.e. "sub-reddits") to prevent political pressure over-load.
You may have been up-voted by those who share your political views, but you were also most likely flagged for voicing those views here. If you want to discuss general politics, HN is the wrong place to do it.
My hunch is that you've been banned twice for going political in a place were it's clearly against the guidelines.
And no, just because you see PG occasionally breaking his own guidelines does not give you, or anyone, license to turn this place into yet another political forum. Hacker (nee Startup) News is his party, and the rest of us are just guests here.
On the bright side, if you study both the NEWS.YC source code and posts made by PG regarding his modifications to the HN version, you'll notice he has a rather consistent habit of using time as a factor in a lot of his calculations. If you got yourself banned for some reason, the ban may or may not be permanent. I suggest that you give your old account another try in a couple of weeks. Though I'm too tired to dig up a reference for you, I do remember reading something about bans being time limited in much the same way that there's a timer to prevent/slow-down replies for the sake of preventing flame wars. I could be mistaken, but none the less, I'm remembering something about this.
Looking at your posts under the 'ldar15' account shows none of them currently marked as '[dead]' so it seems as if your ban timed-out. I don't have total recall, so until someone posts a link to a post by PG stating that not all bans are permanent, the only safe bet is to consider your un-banning as just a coincidence. ;)
For notes, there has been one, and only one, time when I was actually concerned about a down-vote I received. I was interacting directly with PG, and quickly got down-voted. Since my reply to him would show up in his "Threads" page, and the down-vote occurred so quickly, I was unnecessarily concerned the down-vote came from PG --the guy nice enough to provide this site to me any everyone else. In that case, I just sent PG a polite email to make sure I hadn't stepped on any toes. It wasn't him, and it wasn't a big deal to him, but contacting him privately was the most polite way I could think of handling it.
Lastly, there is a known degree of randomness in voting, and there are known problems with up/down link placement on some devices (particularly mobile devices with touch screens). Though I have had moments where I wondered, "Why (the expletive) am I being down-voted?" often, it's not as big of a deal as it seems. Sometimes I communicate poorly. Sometimes I fail to be perfectly clear. Sometimes I get things wrong. Sometimes I'm a bit too spicy in my replies. But sometimes, people just click the wrong button by mistake. It happens to everyone. Learning from mistakes is good, but being overly concerned about it is a waste of time.
Re: How to Participate in Hacker News
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not only (or even primarily) about linking your real identity to your HN account; it's about having a track record on HN itself. I don't care if you're from Seattle or India, or if you're a young guy or an old lady; I care that you're the same person who posted that real interesting post three months ago about certain subject, or with whom I've had some interesting discussion about this or that, and who has a ce…
That is a really valid point. I am not a creditable source when posting from this accoutn. The words coming from here can only be trusted as words without weight. No more, no less. As an aside, I was not the person I was three months ago. Neither was anybody else on here. Part of my world view is that nobody is ever the same person as I remember them as. Rationale: a.) my impression of a person on the internet is inh…
To b.)
Developement of skills is mostly unidirectional. If you're a master of Python 12 today and you're not having an accident you won't be a total novice next year. Experiences you have made will (hopefully) be remembered next year (and I may want to question you about them), and maybe you will remember the people you had a conversation with. Yes, people change, but more than traces of the past remain nevertheless.