Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News.. • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 3:33 AM UTC

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…

What about consistently downvoted decent comments? Voting is anonymous, which isn't bad. But if you got people to explain why they downvoted, then that would help.

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

#392

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 3:46 AM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #291

hnriot wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think the problem is so much negativity as it is tone . I think HN is still a very civil place (relative to many other communities), but anyone can see that hostile jabs are gradually getting more popular, and hostile jabs are, for whatever reason, an infectious meme and when you are seeing a lot of them, it takes a lot of restraint to keep from tossing them in yourself. A particular example of a recent top-v…

I have a sneaking suspicion it was my comment. If it wasn't, then you've made me think very hard about what I wrote (it was a mock email). It was pretty harsh, and now I think of it the tone was unwarranted. I thought it was amusing at the time and held truth to power, but now I think it was a dick move.

I can't remove the comment now, but I can consider making my criticism more constructive and positive. With the email, my concerns were legitimate, but I could have just expressed what those concerns were, not satirized the original email.

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

#393

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 3:49 AM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #171

georgemcbay wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, it seems like having the value tied to the voter's karma would make more sense, since someone here from the beginning with little karma says very little about their contributions or judgement. On the other hand, either of these solutions seems destined to increase the inevitable echo-chamber herd mentality groupthink that already tries to creep into any community.

Wasn't Digg killed by "power users" with all the power? I worry this might happen here too.

I don't think so. HN has been hell banning for some time, often quite unjustly, but the general quality hasn't been affected by it.

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

#394

Post by twelvechairs » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 3:50 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #142

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…

One possible solution (that you might already be doing) is to make the value of the vote proportional to how long the user has been a member, especially down-votes. That solves the problem of more recent arrivals not having the same qualities as the original members. To be very clear so as to prevent conspiracy theories, this is something that we never did on reddit because we didn't want to put that much power into…

My thought is that each registered user should be able to choose their own weighting of comments (from age-of-membership, average-karma-per-post, combinations of upvotes and downvotes, etc). Would this not make HN much more vibrant and allow a broader-range of discussion within the same thread?

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

#395

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 3:57 AM UTC

rexreed wrote: post #388

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 just getting rid of this upvote / downvote point system? I have to say, when I first joined, I didn't get it. Now I do. It's a competition. But not one that seems to improve the quality of the posts or comments. One that improves ... not sure what. So is it valuable? Remember the BBS forums and forums of old days when you didn't have points and rankings? Yeah. The forums often degenerated there too. Points…

I don't agree with this comment, but ironically someone voted him down and neatly highlighted the problem. Why did they downvoted the post? It is a constructive suggestion, and has its merits. That it got downvoted is pretty much what is wrong! It might not be a snarky response, but it's still a nasty way to criticise!

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

#396

Post by larrys » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 4:07 AM UTC

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.

You of course are allowed to joke because more people know who you are and allow it (so your comments aren't greyed down for everyone to see). (I've noticed this a few times at least). So now the poor puppy of a newbie user thinks it's ok to tell a joke (because he doesn't know who you are) or be funny and then BAM he gets slapped with a newspaper full of downvotes and runs away yelping all confused with his tail between his legs. What happened what did I do so wrong?

Now personally I'd rather be able to tell jokes on HN than be able to veto. But then again I'd have to sift through the bad jokes that other's tell.

In any community like this it takes some time to learn the rules. I'm sure there are quite a few people who don't necessarily know who "pg" is for that matter.

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

#397

Post by Evbn » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 4:12 AM UTC

sigkill wrote: post #298

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…

Your experiment matches Dan Ariely's experiment very well. In his book, "Predictably Irrational" when people are made to remember the ten commandments or even the thought of ten commandments, or any such honesty pledge, their dishonesty level drops drastically. One of these days, I'm going to make a chapterwise summary of that book so that I can remember the experiments and behaviours at a glance.

There was someone who knew that before Dan Ariely: every priest of the past two thousand years, who led a congregation on daily prayers or confession.

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

#398

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 4:14 AM UTC

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #276

phpnode wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You personify the problem, this kind of valueless snark is not welcome here.

As the OP was suggesting, I'm just trying to provide my feedback in a more pleasant way. On the other hand, your feedback seems to be rather harsh and all negative. Unless you were trying to be ironic. In which case I say brilliant!

ORLY?

You:

* implied the possibly they might not be a human (perhaps a bot?)

* used exceedingly formal language in an informal setting, fully knowing this appears like you are talking down to someone

* noted they made a typo - the "valueless" part mentioned

* say it is with "deep regret" that you noted that typo - I doubt you had any regret whatsoever

In short, your comment does highlight the issues fairly well.

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

#399

Post by larrys » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 4:15 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #364

DanBC wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN does have up votes, down votes, and a third flag option. You have to view an individual comment to get the flag option. I'm not sure what the down votes are for. "This comment does not belong on HN", maybe. I have no idea what the flag is for. "This content is so bad it needs to be removed, not just hidden", perhaps. I agree with your post though! I'd be wary about having too many options for marking posts.

Currently downvotes are simply "I disagree" (causing plenty of good comments to pile at the bottom, side-by-side with spam/hate/douchebaggery).

"Currently downvotes are simply "I disagree" "

My observation is that downvotes also signify comments that have one of more errors of fact. Of course "fact" is also open to interpretation and not absolute.

You could say "you can only be President for two terms of 4 years each" but someone could dispute that because Roosevelt was President for longer or because in their country that is not the case. Etc.

A downvote because of inaccuracy without a comment isn't very helpful of course.

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

#400

Post by Evbn » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 4:18 AM UTC

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."

The obvious fix for that is to have slashdot style moderation where you have a single vote to assign to one of many categories: offtopic, flame bait, funny. Insightful, etc.