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Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

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Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#71

Post by akiselev »

thadt wrote: post #38

I get the sentiment. Many times I've been trawling the Internet for commentary on a topic when I come across a fantastic HN discussion from years ago and wish I could ask a question, or make a comment in that conversation today. However, our gating factor is time and attention - we only have a fixed amount. I suspect that what makes many HN discussion valuable is that the few top discussions draw most of the focus of…

> you don't get those spontaneous interactions where someone makes a comment about a decision made in a 30 year old piece of software powering half the Internet, and the guy that wrote said software responds with the rational for why he made that decision at the time.

Perhaps less glamorous but one of my favorite HN moments is a recent link to the wikipedia article on Grandma Gatewood [1] where someone asks “Any of her descendants here on HN? She had 11 and it's been more than half a century now…”. Minutes later…

> Hi! I’m her great-great granddaughter. I actually met the thru-hiker mentioned in the comment above, Dixie, in October 21 and we still keep in touch!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321521

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#72

Post by Tycho »

mancerayder wrote: post #53

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

I use the word Reddit as a pejorative.

“I stopped watching after the second season. The writing had become so reddit.”

“The steak itself was good but this sauce is a bit reddit.”

“Rose Street is a good night out but Raeburn Place is completely reddit.”

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#73

Post by PragmaticPulp »

mancerayder wrote: post #53

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

> There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex)

I had to unsubscribe from that sub. In the past you could find some potentially interesting conversations with knowledgeable responses if you sifted through the noise. Lately, the general vibe has become uncomfortably welcoming of incel-adjacent topics or exploring weird alternative medicine ideas. The general vibe is that "normie" stuff is bad, contrarian takes are default good, and "rationalists" are the only ones who see the world for how it really is. The contrarian superiority is becoming vaguely reminiscent of conspiracy theorist circles. Everything is written in pseudo-intellectual style that makes it feel extra truthy, despite being recycled content from other domains.

I finally unsubscribed after a series of posts where posters wrote at length about their frustrations with dating, blaming their failures on women and women's behaviors as if women were a foreign species. The straw that broke the camel's back was when someone complained about taking women out on dates and not receiving sex in return for their effort, which I assumed would have been readily downvoted and dismissed. Instead, it was upvoted (100+ votes) and most of the upvoted comments agreed with the OP's take. When weird incel ideology becomes front and center accepted in a community, I'm out.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#74

Post by gojomo »

mancerayder wrote: post #56
1983054105 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rant: I was banned from Reddit once again yesterday (for the 100th time) because of my harassing behavior. The comment that caused this was about "daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies." I'm dumbfounded about who would have reported this, and who confirmed that this was harassment. Reddit may be fine for very specific subs, but overall it's a real mess where power hungry mods have fun without…

>daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies. I've said far more hostile things out loud about Agile at my workplace to senior management.

...and this tiny fragment from the self-report of one aggrieved party is quite possibly far less hostile than whatever full comments/history actually triggered a "100th time" subreddit ban.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#75

Post by karaterobot »

I think the posts on HN are often good, and it's typical to find at least a couple insightful or informed top-level comments about them. But after that, replies to those comments, and then the replies to those replies, typically don't add much value. I have my theories about why that happens, but in any case I doubt the site would benefit from leaning in to one of its weaker aspects.

I think you might respond that improving the site's discussion features would improve the quality of the discussion. But I am skeptical that would happen: it feels like an engineering approach rather than a community approach. The best discussion sites on the internet have worked consistently because of the crowd they attract, and the pressure moderators apply, not because they had a certain feature set.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#76

Post by PragmaticPulp »

1983054105 wrote: post #55
mancerayder wrote: post #53

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

Rant: I was banned from Reddit once again yesterday (for the 100th time) because of my harassing behavior. The comment that caused this was about "daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies." I'm dumbfounded about who would have reported this, and who confirmed that this was harassment. Reddit may be fine for very specific subs, but overall it's a real mess where power hungry mods have fun without…

> Rant: I was banned from Reddit once again yesterday (for the 100th time) because of my harassing behavior.

Did a moderator ban you from a subreddit?

Or did Reddit ban your account?

Some subreddits have trigger-happy mods that will ban people for everything from the wrong tone to simply holding the wrong opinion. Subreddits like the Lex Fridman sub are famous for banning anyone who posts comments that aren't in total glowing agreement with Lex Fridman, for example.

But getting banned from Reddit, the platform, is a rare occurrence. If you're getting repeatedly banned from Reddit (not just individual subreddits) then you really should step back and take a look at how you're writing your comments.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#77

Post by bhaak »

1983054105 wrote: post #55
mancerayder wrote: post #53

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

Rant: I was banned from Reddit once again yesterday (for the 100th time) because of my harassing behavior. The comment that caused this was about "daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies." I'm dumbfounded about who would have reported this, and who confirmed that this was harassment. Reddit may be fine for very specific subs, but overall it's a real mess where power hungry mods have fun without…

Banned from Reddit alltogether, banned from a subreddit, or banned by Reddit because you were previously banned on this subreddit and were ban evading?

There are so many possible reasons for being banned in a subreddit.

Mods on Reddit are pretty free to do what they want. There are guidelines by Reddit but they are nothing more than suggestions and unless the mods of a subreddit are racists, they won't do anything. Sometimes not even then look how long it took for /r/TheDonald to being banned.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#78

Post by mancerayder »

chrismarlow9 wrote: post #65
mancerayder wrote: post #53

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

This wasn't always the case. I've used Reddit since the Digg days and in the earlier days it was long form comments with sources and the vote system was actually used as a "this is true" signal instead of an "I don't agree with this". The thing that killed it in my opinion was the layout change to embed media directly in Facebook style. Sure there's always old.reddit.com , but the problem is that because of the defau…

I was thinking that HN shows only the writer what the 'value' of the post is (number of upvotes). In Reddit, most subs seem to show that number to the whole world.

So if this comment had 100 upvotes, and another one 20, you're the winner, everyone can see it. I speculate it at the minimum encourages subconscious behavior of trying to game votes upwards, and also biases people that it's a good comment. Because your brain will process "100" before reading a paragraph of words.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#79

Post by hutzlibu »

1983054105 wrote: post #55
mancerayder wrote: post #53

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

Rant: I was banned from Reddit once again yesterday (for the 100th time) because of my harassing behavior. The comment that caused this was about "daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies." I'm dumbfounded about who would have reported this, and who confirmed that this was harassment. Reddit may be fine for very specific subs, but overall it's a real mess where power hungry mods have fun without…

"The comment that caused this was about "daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies.""

Ok, but what was your comment?

And next question, would you have phrased that comment around here in the same way?

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#80

Post by buildbot »

mancerayder wrote: post #53

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

It’s not really different here… Just recently, with the ballon stuff, sooooo many commenters were super confident how hard it would be to get up there and shoot down a ballon, how a missile would not work, etc. Like, unless you are all in the air force, you have no clue. I did not, and that’s okay, and I just didn’t say anything.
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