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Hacker News is depressing

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Re: Hacker News is depressing

#301

Post by davewiner »

MartinCron wrote: post #244
danilocampos wrote: post #88

As a top-voted dissenting opinion on Dave's piece yesterday, I find myself compelled to chime in. > I honestly don't care what the HN trolls, and the people who upvote them, supposedly "think" about me. If that's true, why 750 words on the subject? The issue I take with Dave Winer is that he seems to feel as though his accomplishments or contributions somehow elevate his words beyond criticism. I will say again what…

It feels like you're creating this false dichotomy between worship and destruction. The fact that some other people on the Internet may afford Dave Winer more respect than you think he deserves is not a problem that needs to be solved. Even if it were a problem that needed to be solved, the "I'm gonna take him down a peg" approach creates an entirely new, bigger problem.

I'd love to hear the true story behind why this guy has such a thing for me. As far as I know we've never met. Something is bothering him. It sure as hell isn't this blog post. Not enough there to make such a big deal about.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#302

Post by davewiner »

One thing I've learned from years online when you think you're hearing a tone in someone's post, unless you want to be a fool, you should check it out with the other person because you're probably not getting it.

Writing doesn't convey tone like speech does. I might be very happy yet you hear someone that is unhappy. This is pure projection.

That is, of course, if you're interested in responding to reality, as opposed to having some other motive.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#304

Post by mindcrime »

danilocampos wrote: post #88

As a top-voted dissenting opinion on Dave's piece yesterday, I find myself compelled to chime in. > I honestly don't care what the HN trolls, and the people who upvote them, supposedly "think" about me. If that's true, why 750 words on the subject? The issue I take with Dave Winer is that he seems to feel as though his accomplishments or contributions somehow elevate his words beyond criticism. I will say again what…

As someone who downvoted your post yesterday, I'll chime in and say:

Attack the argument, not the person.

The post you made comes off, to me, as an attack on Dave Winer - the person - not a disagreement with a point he made in his article. There just isn't any need for personal attacks here. If you disagree with the point he was getting at, you could have said so, and made your argument for why you disagree, without attacking Dave personally.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#305

Post by bch »

itsybitsycoder wrote: post #275
bch wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question -- is it conceivable that the work is never "fixed" on some physical medium? Years ago, I thought "internet law" was a silly concept -- but as in the case above, the letter of the law might not be enough to support the spirit of the law.

Hard drives are a physical medium. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fixed_in_a_tangible_medium_of...

But is memcached on RAM?

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#306

Post by MartinCron »

davewiner wrote: post #300
MartinCron wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another person's transgressions doesn't absolve you from being civil in response. That's what civilization means . It's not always easy, but it's an ideal we should hold ourselves to if we want our community to be a place worth spending time.

What transgressions? It was just a story! You guys are amazing to me, how you can inflate something as simple as a story into this monumental thing. I wrote the piece in 15 minutes. You're spending 48 hours debating every nuance of something that means nothing. Totally bizarre.

Sorry Dave, this is bigger than just you :)

I care about being a part of a community that doesn't let the escalation of (real and perceived) slights debase the overall conversation. That's what I'm talking about. You spent 15 minutes on a story, I've spent the last few years trying to be a constructive part of this community.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#307

Post by vxNsr »

brymaster wrote: post #72
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…

> Honestly I feel like the only option is to just stop accepting new members at a certain point Huh? So what's the cut off date then? I noticed your account was only created 86 days ago. Making a forum an invite-only clubhouse doesn't improve discussion.

I recognise that I might be cut, that's a risk I'm willing to take if it means a more informed and positive environment.

I actually only started commenting then, I'd been a lurker for awhile longer, but that's not the point... I don't have much to add so maybe I should be removed from discussions until I can add more, I've only posted like 5 stories none of which I had anything to do with - I'd just found them.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#308

Post by danilocampos »

mindcrime wrote: post #304
danilocampos wrote: post #88

As a top-voted dissenting opinion on Dave's piece yesterday, I find myself compelled to chime in. > I honestly don't care what the HN trolls, and the people who upvote them, supposedly "think" about me. If that's true, why 750 words on the subject? The issue I take with Dave Winer is that he seems to feel as though his accomplishments or contributions somehow elevate his words beyond criticism. I will say again what…

As someone who downvoted your post yesterday, I'll chime in and say: Attack the argument, not the person. The post you made comes off, to me, as an attack on Dave Winer - the person - not a disagreement with a point he made in his article. There just isn't any need for personal attacks here. If you disagree with the point he was getting at, you could have said so, and made your argument for why you disagree, without…

Dave's writing was all about him. I generally respect and understand what you're saying, but this is a unique case. He sought to elevate himself above Mayer by painting her in an unflattering light – timed to coincide with a moment of her prominence. That's tedious.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#309

Post by medecau »

angersock wrote: post #286
pg wrote: post #195

I'm not sure what he's proposing. If he means let site owners specify that people not be able to submit their sites to HN, I've actually daydreamed occasionally about doing that myself for paulgraham.com. But it might not work in practice, because determined submitters would just mirror the text elsewhere and submit that. He's right though that Twitter has a big advantage in that it's easy to ignore jerks. It might b…

Following, perhaps, but not blocking. One of the nice things that HN affords is that it doesn't really support filter bubbles--at least until mods or the community downvotes you to oblivion. Thus, there's a good chance that people at least get exposed to ideas they might otherwise ignore. Hell, I can think of several posts where I've strongly disagreed with somebody else, only to be in jovial agreement or discussion…

You don't block the people you disagree with. You block the jerks, the obvious trolls, the negative shit aka noise.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#310

Post by vxNsr »

krapp wrote: post #241
brymaster wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree but wouldn't it be nice if we could keep it changing for the better? Locking a forum down doesn't change anything. It seems like you're just wanting to censor dissent.

And of course, it wouldn't censor dissent, it would just prevent new people from dissenting. Unless you follow it up with a constant shifting of the line in the sand between the "acceptable community" and "unacceptable community", perhaps by deleting the accounts of anyone as old as, or newer than, anyone within the circle who voices an unpopular enough opinion. Or have every thread be invite only, or set to only all…

You're all missing the point, if you look a little further down I clarify what I mean by the internet in Ender's Game.

But maybe we could have two levels one where all the spam and hate can happen and no one will care... and the other where only people who can show they have a track record of adding meaningfully to the discussion are allowed to post, while everyone can view.

Or some other thing... but don't you guys understand that the way things are moving now is untenable? Even you guys just bashed my idea and offered nothing constructive, what's the point of that? I can completely understand that the first few ideas that we have over this aren't gonna be the best, but we have to have more and open the lines to discussion if we wanna keep the community from going to the dogs, no?

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