"ass" doesn't seem to be that extreme...rude yes...but not that "bad". Didn't see that particular discussion, so might have been worse.
The whole deification of pg by some people on here is pretty weird if you ask me.
Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
11–20 of 64 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#12[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#13I'm a new user, recently came over from Reddit. While I miss some science news and obscure subreddits, the conversation is far better over here. I just couldn't handle another meme.
I'm not sure I have much to add other than "I'll try not to get in the way". Reddit was a drastic example of what happens when a system is inundated with users, and so I'll try and step back and observe the way things are run.
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#14The quality of comments has been declining very gradually for years. There's a lot we already do about it, and probably other techniques that are yet undiscovered. This is somewhat uncharted territory. I'm medium hopeful.
It's not just the comments, I'm more concerned about the submissions. Look at the front page right now, and see how many items are not "Hacker News" even with a very lax definition of "stuff that's interesting specifically to hackers."
For example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3497331
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#15The quality of comments has been declining very gradually for years. There's a lot we already do about it, and probably other techniques that are yet undiscovered. This is somewhat uncharted territory. I'm medium hopeful.
The problem is one I've experienced too on forums I both use and operate. The larger the community grows the less respect people have for each other because there's so little "connection" between them, the more people become "combative" to be heard and the more people feel the need to be more "vicious" with the way that they post. There is no way to limit this beyond restrictions of the people that post and the community size, in an environment with conflicting opinions it's inevitable. It's easier to pass off urine in an ocean than it is in a shot.
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#16The quality of comments has been declining very gradually for years. There's a lot we already do about it, and probably other techniques that are yet undiscovered. This is somewhat uncharted territory. I'm medium hopeful.
Are you willing to share or discuss some of the ways you're quantifying "quality"?
It seems like an extremely difficult problem, and relevant to the problems many of us are trying to solve. I can come up with plenty of simple metrics, but they all fall apart pretty fast, especially if the community quality starts to tank hard. Think of the sheer number of upvotes that most inane meme references get on reddit.
Situations like an inflammatory comment sparking an insightful debate are one of the things that initially seems like a poor quality comment (and it quite likely is), but overall might be a positive thing for the community.
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#17Is something happening to the quality of this community lately? I opened up my username account here 1161 days ago, after lurking once in a while for at least several weeks beforehand. As far as I know, NO ONE has read every Hacker News comment exhaustively for years, although some members of the curating team and some of the high-karma participants may come pretty close to reading most of the most active threads. My…
We read all comments that get sufficiently negative scores. So I have a decent handle on how bad that kind of bad comment is. What worries me more is bad (= mean and/or stupid) comments that actually get upvoted.
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#18The quality of comments has been declining very gradually for years. There's a lot we already do about it, and probably other techniques that are yet undiscovered. This is somewhat uncharted territory. I'm medium hopeful.
The problem is one I've experienced too on forums I both use and operate. The larger the community grows the less respect people have for each other because there's so little "connection" between them, the more people become "combative" to be heard and the more people feel the need to be more "vicious" with the way that they post. There is no way to limit this beyond restrictions of the people that post and the commu…
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#19When I see someone being rude I always point it out and ask them to behave. More often than not people get offended and start defending their "right to be rude". I just hope that enough people do what I do, and the cumulative peer pressure will calm everyone down.
Re: Ask HN: Are the HN forums losing their civility?
#20There should be a karma or seniority threshold for upmodding. And it should be high.
Perhaps a weighting rather than a threshold? However the "ass" comment came from a relatively "senior" member, so it would be an imperfect solution, and may have other unforeseen (by me at least) consequences.
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