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Hacker News is depressing

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Re: Hacker News is depressing

#11

Post by vxNsr »

Yikes, pg is not gonna be happy.

Honestly I feel like the only option is to just stop accepting new members at a certain point, because above a certain tolerance it stops being a community and becomes a city. CIP: I'm in a rural town for a couple days and everytime I walk outside everyone I pass says "Hi" or "Good Afternoon," the first time that happened I was kinda surprised I tried to figure out if I knew that person from somewhere, because where I come from (Chicago) strangers on the street ignore you, they don't wish you a good day and smile...

There's the whole "you can't know more than 150 people" study [1]. Which I think is very apt here, obviously we have to scale that idea (as anything less than like 5000 people means it doesn't exist when it comes to the web) but it might be a good idea to stop accepting new members or cut the community into chunks, if you wanna keep things from getting worse...

Finally, I've begun to really like OSC's version of the internet as presented in Ender's Game, at least when it comes to having real discussions.

[1]http://bit.ly/10iAy6P

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#12

Post by Udo »

I'm very sorry it has come this far.

It's easy to forget we have a tendency to make remarks about people online that we would never bring up in a personal conversation. I'm not excluding myself here, I too feel I'm sometimes harsher online than offline - and it sadly also happened in the Dave Winer thread yesterday. People can come across in a certain way through their writing that we would never attribute to them if we met them face to face - yet that's all we have to go on in most cases.

Keeping these difficulties in mind that are inherent to all online communities, I think this article is a damning statement about our discussion style here specifically. It's important to acknowledge that most commenters on HN do not behave that way, but some do and they are very loud. To make matters worse, "good" people sometimes overshoot their target because something in a news item or an article pushes their buttons, leading to a disproportionate response.

All in all I think HN has a lot to offer. I said it before, but it bears repeating: I come here to have insightful discussions with clever people who sometimes disagree with me. HN is the only community that does this for me, because I feel there are many like-minded hackers present who have a lot of value to contribute through both their work and their opinions.

At the same time I believe we should take a long hard look at these other instances where we're simply not at our best. Again, this includes myself specifically.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#14

Post by jimmyjazz14 »

I don't know about depressing but the amount of drama on HN seems on the rise lately and I don't find it all that entertaining or interesting. I guess this old tune is played out but, I remember a time when things where better.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#16

Post by pavel_lishin »

vxNsr wrote: post #11

Yikes, pg is not gonna be happy. Honestly I feel like the only option is to just stop accepting new members at a certain point, because above a certain tolerance it stops being a community and becomes a city. CIP: I'm in a rural town for a couple days and everytime I walk outside everyone I pass says "Hi" or "Good Afternoon," the first time that happened I was kinda surprised I tried to figure out if I knew that pers…

> Finally, I've begun to really like OSC's version of the internet as presented in Ender's Game, at least when it comes to having real discussions.

The only things I remember about it is that a) there were effectively several 'internets', and you had to pay to access each one, and b) the Wiggin kids had to have accounts created for them by their parents, who could presumably vouch for them, and would be tied to a real identity.

But later on, (spoiler alert for a 30 year old book folks, Jesus dies at the end) they have totally self-funded anonymous accounts, which doesn't make sense in light of point b.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#17

Post by lquist »

I subscribe to the Hacker News feed, which does not include comments. It's very useful stuff. So the links themselves are good.

To each his own: My HN reading favors comments over links by at least an order of magnitude.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#18

Post by WalterSear »

GHFigs wrote: post #3

Compare: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-ope...

A tale of two butthurts.

Online discourse is not in the best shape. That said, despite wanting to feel bad for both authors, the stench of their misplaced entitlement prevents me.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#19

Post by danso »

I respect Dave but he has to realize, experienced as he is at blogging, that...this is the Internet, where no one knows you're a dog...or even an Internet pioneer. And he's done his fair share of rush-to-judgment posting...my first knowledge of him was during the whole Suggested Users List spat, in which he accused organizations, such as the NYT, of participating in payola: http://scripting.com/stories/2009/03/12/whyItsTimeToBreakOut...

The Internet is no different or less immune to abusive discussion than every other form of human communication...but at least it's one in which it's possible for any participant, big or small, to improve the discussion, and so keeping scripting.com (assuming that he considers his writing there to be overall helpful) off of HN would be a disservice.

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