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

341–350 of 465 posts

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

#341

Post by hkmurakami »

Selfcommit wrote: post #263
pg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll try that too.

Not to deter you from the social standards approach, but I thought the concept of measuring comments was clever. The problem I see is - How do you know if a comment is negative or not? Surely, you can tell, but problematically that might be tough. Maybe swap out the "post comment" button for 2 "commit" buttons 1 that says "Positive" the other that says "negative". (This could be done a myriad of ways, but you get the…

I could see keyword association much like PG's email spam filter working for this.

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

#342

Post by vannevar »

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…

I would agree, the ideal solution would be a self-organizing trust network where higher-quality comments tended to be promoted. I've previously suggested one way to implement such a system here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3473753 .

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

#343

Post by pkghost »

ehsanu1 wrote: post #337
tripzilch wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about "Be kind and constructive." instead?

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

#344

Post by dhimes »

raganwald wrote: post #335
dhimes wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

How the votes get turned into "punishment" will have to be tested and tweaked. I think it is worth a try, because it sets the expectation for what your votes mean be the nature of the button that you are about to press.

You seem to be thinking that this is largely trollish behavior. I suspect, however, that most of it comes from ignorance of the expectations of the community. I'm not sure there is a fix for the trolls. But for noobs that watch reality tv shows and want to come here and be the acerbic judge I think we can stop it by keeping the behavioral expectations in the forefront.

The flaw with the idea isn't what you say. I think it's important to expect decent, reasonable behavior. The flaw is, 'ok, we have two buttons. Now what?'

I would start with having the quality score 'float' the article and pretty much ignore the agree/disagree score in karma metrics. But I would probably keep that a secret.

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

#345

Post by buro9 »

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…

Some thoughts,

Communicate the influencers more... most people follow leaders, and it would help set the tone for new members.

HN's guidelines should be turned into LightBox style documentation. Put it where it matters right next to the input boxes (and in the case of dupe-checking do it by AJAX and communicate it inline).

Guidelines should encourage the positive, and where something is negative then it should be pointed out that they should attack the argument and not the person.

Have a very small set of very clear rules that are enforced transparently, openly and brutally. The lines will only trip up the worst offenders. If you move these lines, only do so because you've listened to the community and they believe the lines are wrong. I use a system on one of my sites in which I track how much a thread is read, and if a post is flagged by more than a certain number of people then I know the community is saying something got through and the rules either aren't being enforced or might not be right.

Mostly: This is not a technical problem. It's a people problem.

There may be some tools you can build to help, but it is people who will use those tools and it is they that make them effective. Even then, there's only so much you can do without fully empowering others.

One ends up realising that a forum is a microcosm of society, and the owner/leader either chooses a form of government in which the citizens will be happiest and yet the aims of the government are achieved, or the owner/leader delays such a decision whilst the population grows and increasingly friction occurs.

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

#346

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#347

Post by lacker »

tptacek wrote: post #270
pg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll try that too.

Also I should be allowed to veto at least one YC applicant per batch.

Given the risk/reward tradeoff for a YC investment, vetos are pretty worthless. Even if you were the most brilliant vetoer ever, there is very little upside for YC.

Instead you should ask to be able to green-light one applicant per batch. That way, it would be possible for your contribution to be very valuable.

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

#348

Post by goggles99 »

If you want hand holding and kudos? Then any public forum on the internet is the wrong place to come (go to your mommy for things like that - not the cruel world in which we live). Stop whining. Either use the criticism of your projects to improve them, moving you toward success or GTFO.

The internet is not a PC or hand-holding place. Most people are not really PC on the inside. They ace PC outwardly face to face because they fear physical confrontation or are afraid of social repercussions (in the real world)

Buck up

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

#349

Post by vannevar »

raganwald wrote: post #335
dhimes wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

True, unfortunately. But the flipside of having more people on the site is that there is no longer any need to ensure that everyone's comments become public on every story. You can afford to be choosier about what actually shows up, you just have to come up with a proper filtering mechanism. I think karma can be adequate, there just needs to be a more effective system of distributing and using it than what HN uses currently.

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

#350

Post by marvin »

Thanks for voicing my thoughts. I agree completely. I never thought I would say this, but here goes: With the careful selection of subreddits i have at Reddit these days, my experience there is more pleasant than Hacker News. There are just so many snide remarks and so much hate in here.

It's the same problem I had with Reddit until I started being very selective with which subreddits I subscribed to. Like PG said, it is a growth problem. But I don't think a similar turnaround operation will be possible here. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Post reply on HN