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Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

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Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#121

Post by The_Colonel »

z3c0 wrote: post #112
karmakaze wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most subreddits I visit are low volume and haven't noticed much difference in behaviour other than acceptability of short funny replies. What do you mean about the format, isn't it the same as HN (OP link/text and comments)? I do recall a comment/thread saying how HN comments/behaviour was starting to resemble Reddit, so there may be something to that (though I'd chalk it up to becoming more popular/mainstream) .

HN only works because of supplemental rules and heavy moderation, which both look very different on Reddit. Even if a subreddit reaches a good set of rules, enforcement is usually poor, due both to mods being volunteers and a generally negative view towards moderation (can you imagine "Mods are gay" flying on HN?) Any moments of "lightning-in-a-bottle" can certainly result in memorable periods where a subreddit truly…

> Any moments of "lightning-in-a-bottle" can certainly result in memorable periods where a subreddit truly adds value to one's life, and that can make the whole website hard to give up.

I would mention /r/credibledefense as a counter example. It was a niche subreddit before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in the aftermath got popular, but still managed to keep its quality.

But I agree with your general point, it's not a huge problem for me, though. Some subreddits get popular and thus bad, some new subreddits get created. Reddit's relative anarchy is its saving grace, communities can split/fork, but still stay within reddit platform.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#122

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

rat9988 wrote: post #106
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a videogame subreddit that frequently downvotes comments from top tier players. It has gotten to the point where most good players will no longer engage with reddit because of the extreme hostility and incompetence. Top tier players aren't always going to be right about everything, but the things for which they often get downvotes are absurd.

Just name the subreddit, otherwise we can't do much with your comment.

Well, in this case I'm referring to the Heroes of the Storm subreddit, but I'm sure it's applicable to other games as well.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#123

Post by staindk »

LunarAurora wrote: post #4

IMO The best way to encourage this is through better (default) notifications. Or, this solution, for a platform with (tens) of thousands of users like HN, seems to automatically bring the specter of flame war (and intrusion and what else ?) Is there a middle ground? I don't know. Edit : Daily/Weeky email (=slower) updates ? As for old threads getting bumped, I think this is here equivalent to reposting the link (or r…

Took me a while to realise there are no "your comment has been replied to!" type notifications on HN. Seemed weird to me.

I know there are a couple third-party services that you can sign up on to monitor that for you (they email you when someone replies to you, AFAIK), but I opted to just go with the flow and hit my "threads" link every now and then to see if someone has replied to something.

Agreed - built-in, opt-in HN notifs (or easy-to-opt-out) would be good to help with what OP is asking about, IMO.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#124

Post by gus_massa »

college_physics wrote: post #82

This points to a more general problem with all online discussion forums: The signal to noise varies (and may on occasionally be zero) but in the end all the signal is lost / buried deep into some archive (like tears in rain if you want to be melodramatic about it). Think about those millions of people, interacting for billions of hours online over almost two decades now. What is there to show for it at the end of the…

I used to post a link to the previous thread and sometimes copy a short version of the best[1] comment if I remember it debunk or enhance the article.

Lately [2] I had no enough time to look up, and usually dang post a link before I see the repost.

[1] Best in my opinion. Usually the top one, but sometimes the second one, or a mix of a comment and a reply.

[2] In the last few years...

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#125

Post by miiiiiike »

ilyt wrote: post #100
miiiiiike wrote: post #94

I refuse to even add comments to my new projects. I can't imagine running HN. If I had to run HN and also had to deal with 1-n week long flame wars I would delete the database, backups, and repo. The worst part of the modern internet is how often we have to come into contact with commenters and moderators. No, I don't want to click on a monkey emoji to declare your Discord's constitution legally binding.

...yet here you are

Your point? My point is that HN is fine the way it is.

Plus, it has far fewer people posting one line non-comments than other places...

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#127

Post by tsol »

avemg wrote: post #67
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…

As Raylan Givens once said: If you ran into an asshole in the morning, well, you ran into an asshole. Keep running into assholes all day, you're the asshole. I've been on reddit since before subreddits existed and I've never been banned. Now I'm sure you've had your run-ins with some unhinged mods now and then but to be banned 100 times, you should probably take an honest look at your own behavior.

>As Raylan Givens once said: If you ran into an asshole in the morning, well, you ran into an asshole. Keep running into assholes all day, you're the asshole.

Has this person never been around a group of assholes for more than a few hours at a time? Some places are toxic and attract toxic personalities. Reddit is one of those places(the internet as a whole, really)

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#128

Post by tsol »

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #87
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 perfectly captures my frustration with Reddit. I can't stand it these days. It's been eye opening to read about technical subjects on Reddit that I personally know a lot about only to see heaps of confidently spewed misinformation in the comments. Makes me question the validity of everything I read where I'm not very knowledgeable. I'm very grateful HN is a lot more thoughtful and open to questioning.

I'll fact check comments I read at random sometimes when I question their validity. A few years ago, I feel as though reddit was an amazing places for all sorts of niche information from diverse places. There was some misinfo definitely, but for the most part it seemed as though information was posted for the sake of sharing information. Now I find it's not nearly as trustworthy, and people almost always have an agenda

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#129

Post by mancerayder »

Tycho wrote: post #72
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.”

I just invented one:

"Redditsplain"

v. "To make confident, even angry assertions about facts without a strong backing, but in a literary and well-reasoned style. To make bold statements about a subject where one is still a dilettante."

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#130

Post by marojejian »

lolinder wrote: post #24
O__________O wrote: post #6

To me, feels like more pressing issue would be to increase the ease of tagging, grouping, filtering, ranking, etc. Specifically, if you see existing coverage of a topic, it’s easy enough to revive it if you’re aware of how HN handles duplicate detection, but there’s no way to enforce users having to vote on comments with fresh eyes, hide comments that don’t have significant new sub-comments, discover significant new…

YC and dang's approach to HN seems to be more or less this: "Somehow we stumbled upon a system that really works. We don't know why it does, but it does, and so we don't want to change things too much too fast lest we break it." And honestly, I love that approach. In my time on HN features have rolled out slowly, and you can tell that they were selected very carefully as being important quality of life improvements t…

This may be true. But I think the greater value of HN is in fact the community: the set of people who use it and the norms that have emerged, more than the features. I think encouraging more "slow" conversation would improve this community, and it would not be too risky to test out more default comments notification.

I use HN replies (and RSS)... but very few others do, so the the change of getting a reply to this comment is low, even though I got here within a day.

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