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Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

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

#441

Post by jedberg »

twelvechairs wrote: post #394
jedberg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That would be an ideal case, but turns out to be extremely difficult at scale.

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

#442

Post by lawnchair_larry »

MartinCron wrote: post #185
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?

There's a way to be negative (right or wrong) without being mean. I think that's the heart of the problem here.

a la pg's "I worry, though, that..."

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

#443

Post by georgemcbay »

lmm wrote: post #423
chris_wot wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure? I can see a correlation between the rise of hell banning and the decline in general quality.

I recently started browsing with dead links active and have noticed a couple of seeming hellbans on people where it really didn't feel warranted to me based on the recent history around where they got hellbanned.

Of course, this forum isn't a public commons so the moderators can ban whoever they want, but there are some cases where it seems fairly arbitrary.

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

#444

Post by phaus »

JohnTh wrote: post #435
phaus wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was that I can't. The study mentioned above claims that people act more honestly when they are reminded of a set of values to which they are supposed to adhere. I was simply stating that while I was in the military (for about a decade), we were constantly reminded of the set of values which we were supposed to follow, yet I saw no signs that such a practice has any effect whatsoever on an individual's behav…

In simple, harsh words, basically you say that teaching of good values has no value. I think that the things are much more complex that that. Perhaps those values from military doesn't have/had any resonance because they weren't, in fact, good? Or, told in a good way? (I'm thinking now that tyranny in teaching generates repulse not acceptance) Also, if we consider that the teaching was correct (both as content and fo…

I said no such thing. The teaching of good values entails quite a bit more than merely repeating a set of values or a specific creed.

While people may or may not like what the military does, most of its creeds/values are for the most part positive things. The Army values for example are Duty, Loyalty, Selfless Service, Respect, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage - pretty generic and not nefarious at all.

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

#445

Post by phaus »

dfc wrote: post #390
phaus wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was that I can't. The study mentioned above claims that people act more honestly when they are reminded of a set of values to which they are supposed to adhere. I was simply stating that while I was in the military (for about a decade), we were constantly reminded of the set of values which we were supposed to follow, yet I saw no signs that such a practice has any effect whatsoever on an individual's behav…

Did you hang out with those people during civilian life? How can you say the various credos had no effect on them if you do not have the same experience without the credos.

I was clearly speaking from my personal experiences and perceptions, which are obviously not intended to be considered the equivalent of a formal scientific study.

But since you asked, why would one have to have experience with that exact group of people prior to coming to a conclusion? I agree that it would be ideal if that was the case, but there are many studies considered to be scientifically valid that use one group of people who come from similar circumstances as a control, while only testing on another group. In my example I suppose the control would have been the people I know from outside the military. As I stated though, my comment was just an anecdote from my personal experiences, not a peer-reviewed, published article intended to expose the author of the other study as a fraud.

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

#446

Post by sigkill »

JohnTh wrote: post #435
phaus wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was that I can't. The study mentioned above claims that people act more honestly when they are reminded of a set of values to which they are supposed to adhere. I was simply stating that while I was in the military (for about a decade), we were constantly reminded of the set of values which we were supposed to follow, yet I saw no signs that such a practice has any effect whatsoever on an individual's behav…

In simple, harsh words, basically you say that teaching of good values has no value. I think that the things are much more complex that that. Perhaps those values from military doesn't have/had any resonance because they weren't, in fact, good? Or, told in a good way? (I'm thinking now that tyranny in teaching generates repulse not acceptance) Also, if we consider that the teaching was correct (both as content and fo…

You make very good points. There could obviously be people who had rose-tinted view of the military only to have it shattered in the first week. That could have easily made them bitter about the whole teaching process.

Secondly, I don't think the ideals help if you don't agree with them. You choose to become an Doctor and remember the Hippocratic oath. Same with Engineers and Lawyers. If you find half way through, that you don't want to be an Engineer or a Doctor, you can always bail out and switch. But with the military, bailing out is completely out of the question.

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

#447

Post by lukifer »

csense wrote: post #275
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…

> Can't we all just act like adults and learn to deal with the negative comments - possibly even learn from the? Do we really need to protected from snarky comments? Being able to function in the face of people making negative comments about you on the Internet is one of the basic survival skills of the 21st century. > People need to start learning to cope with the real world and not expecting 'the system' to protect…

> Being able to function in the face of people making negative comments about you on the Internet is one of the basic survival skills of the 21st century.

While this is true, it does not justify overly negative comments. I'm reminded of hecklers who yell at stand-up comedians that they should be able to deal with heckling if they're on stage; they might be correct, but they're still being a jackass.

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

#448

Post by russell »

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).

Originally a downvote meant that the comment was impolite, stupid humor, or way off topic. If it was incorrect or you disagreed, you were expected to say why. I personally dont like driveby downvotes.

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

#449

Post by lkbm »

dj2stein9 wrote: post #100

This is probably an outcome of the comment engine on this site, it could use some real work. If it worked a little more like Reddit, with upvotes and downvotes, then good, useful comments would bubble to the surface and negative useless comments would get hidden.

I think HackerNews exists largely because Paul Graham saw Reddit NOT working for what he wanted--it was (and is) extremely popular, but was shifting toward a snarky, depth-avoidant population. I'm guilty there--I upvote dozens of pics in a few minutes, while skimming past the insightful articles that take too long to read and evaluate.

It's worth noting, though, that HN does have up and down votes for comments, but only users with moderately high karma can downvote.

This might not work well given relatively quick growth. A small number of people consistently downvoting bad comments may be outvoted by a huge mass of new users who from time to time upvote. Maybe everyone should be able to upvote AND downvote, but experienced users get double weight.

Personally, I think we need something different than minor adjustments to the voting weights/allocations. Slashdot-style moderation? Revamped guidelines? Hard to say what will work and what won't.

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