Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 465 posts

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#331

Post by jack-r-abbit »

brianto2010 wrote: post #174
dustingetz wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe the new kids don't know any better? can we crowd-educate them as to acceptable comments? stackoverflow has used strict categorization of "reasons for flagging post" to great success in influencing how the crowd moderates. "-1, poor tone" "-1, offtopic" "-1, factually incorrect"

That's a neat idea. -1 doesn't mean much without a comment explaining why. I do have a concern, though. If this system is implemented, doesn't that mean that the "new kids" will also have access to this system and may use it to exasperate HN's "new kids" problem? What about modifying the existing HN guidelines to include comments and promote the guidelines more? For example, cite a downvote with an appropriate quote…

If the current rule applies that says you don't get to down-vote until you reach N karma, the "new kids" don't really get to do much. I for one would value a system that forced a down-vote to be accompanied by some sort of explanation of why. I suppose at less than a year old I am still a "new kid" so I will say in my infancy (a few months old) I had a comment down-voted for reasons that were not obvious to me. I was polite. I didn't say anything negative. Yet I was down voted. When I commented on begin down voted and inquired why, that too was down-voted. Some one was kind enough to explain to me that my original comment was "a generic compliment" and basically useless. It was a pleasant compliment (something the OP seems to be advocating here)... yet still garnered down votes. Ironic, huh?

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#332

Post by pknerd »

pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

How about giving an option to OP to judge which comment is being helpful for him one way or other. If a member is constantly being penalized by OP for giving negative/useless comment then revoke voting rights.

Stackoverflow model could also work.

My 2 Cents.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#333

Post by dhimes »

arethuza wrote: post #218
sbierwagen wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thread from 847 days ago full of people being mean and negative about Groupon: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1288116 Today, Groupon stock is worthless, and the company is doomed. Should the people in that thread be penalized for being right, but mean?

Those comments are mean? I can see they are skeptical, but I would hardly describe them as "mean".

I agree with you. Maybe I'm part of the problem, but I actually see nothing wrong with those comments.

Now, if that were a 'Show HN' post I could see where people may want the comments to offer constructive feedback, but that thread seems like a matter-of-fact discussion of the business model of the business.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#334

Post by downandout »

pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

Good. Something needs to be done. Every time I click on a link about a start up or a new site, I see the negative feedback and I cringe at the thought of putting anything I do on here only to reach an inevitable fate that could permanently damage the reputation of the project during its launch phase.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#335

Post by raganwald »

dhimes wrote: post #329
pg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll try that too.

I'm going to resubmit an idea that has been brought up before (it's not mine- it may be yours, in fact): two buttons for voting. One for agreement/disagreement and one as a rating specifically for quality of the comment. In the "old days," there was more-or-less agreement that the vote was for quality of comment -- feedback about the value of the participant to the community -- and agreement/disagreement was voiced (…

"Cool, now there're two ways for me to punish someone I don't like." The flaw, if you want to call it that, with this suggestion is that it is a mechanism based on the idea that people are decent, reasonable, and well-informed. Which is not a bad thing, but it is not well suited to fixing a problem caused be people behaving indecently, unreasonably, and/or with little experience being "Good HN Citizens."

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#336

Post by jarrettcoggin »

pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

Are people banned/ghosted here? I'm assuming so, because that's how most forums work, but I'm not sure since this seems to be custom built.

While I don't think that HN has hit this level yet, one solution that I've read about involved people who trolled or posted general nastiness. When people had reached a certain threshold or pissed off the wrong high-level mod, they got "ghosted". What this meant was that people who were "alive" or considered "living" could see "living" contributors' posts, but could not see "ghost" posts. Ghosts, however, could see other ghosts' posts, so they could, for what it was worth, writhe in their own debauchery and piss each other off, but not the pleasant and constructive members. I thought it was an interesting solution and apparently it worked very well.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#337

Post by ehsanu1 »

tripzilch wrote: post #220
tptacek wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you'd consider investing less time in technical countermeasures to dumbness (all of them are gameable, and the brand of dumbness you're fighting is not at all incompatible with an intuitive talent for that gamesmanship) and more time into just setting better community norms. It is hard to imagine that the site guidelines you write years and years and years ago when this place was tiny are, intact and without c…

Having used to be mod/admin on a rather busy and strife-filled SMF-forum the past 6-7 years, I can confirm that this works surprisingly well. I say "surprisingly" because, like a lot of tech hackers, I often think about a technical solution before I think about the simple social one. But I've noticed time and time again just how much effect the simplest changes in user-interface can have on the entire "mood" of a com…

This makes a lot of sense, and is worth experimenting. The comment/reply box should have some simple placeholder text, along the lines of: Don't be a dick.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#338

Post by flatline3 »

hnriot wrote: post #162
pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

Sometimes saying an idea is pointless is positive feedback, there are a lot of people here that 'launch a startup' which basically means some half-assed website that does something utterly pointless and then expect the community to be like some kind of benevolent uncle and pat them on the back and say what an awesome idea and execution. Many many ideas really are pointless and negative criticism is very much a part o…

YC relies on a constant flow of grist for the VC mill.

If YC News doesn't encourage budding entrepreneurs to throw themselves at long-shots, and into the VC startup culture, then it doesn't serve pg's interests.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#339

Post by TillE »

hooande wrote: post #287

Can someone provide an example of an online community that has an appropriately positive attitude? Hacker News is the most civil, useful and intelligent conversation on the internet, period. HN is easily two standard deviations less cruel or petty than any other discussion site you could name. The rest of the internet makes us look like Miss Manners. I'm sorry that people weren't supportive of your personal projects,…

Gotta agree with this. Most of the really bad comments I've seen on HN wind up downvoted to light grey. Here, negative feedback directly to a creator is almost always constructive, even if you don't like the tone.

It's still the best you're going to get on any public forum I'm aware of.

> TechCrunch comments?

And those have real Facebook identities attached to everyone. I'm amazed at the things people will say even when it has their name on it and will be out there forever.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#340

Post by JEVLON »

wololo wrote: post #322
pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

A couple questions: 1. Why not assign karma by running something like pagerank over the vote graph? I think giving overwhelming weight to high karma old-timers would make HN more like them, which would be an improvement, right? 2. What about assigning karma not by your comments, but by the responses to them? I figure karma-from-replies would shift the conversation to "what should we be asking about this", whereas kar…

(2) probably would not work. Commenters could troll, and then the community replying in disagreement would up-vote their comment.

Here are my ideas: (A)Not showing someone their karma score ever, unless it is negative.

(B)Leaving a line between the comment field and the reply button saying, "Stay constructive."

(C)That line of text could link to the guidelines.

(D)Detect if someone says 'idiot' and then change the line to, "You said 'idiot', do you still want to post?"

Post reply on HN