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Hacker News is depressing

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Re: Hacker News is depressing

#311

Post by mindcrime »

Uchikoma wrote: post #120

Dave is the victim? "They assumed that I was being "egotistical" for thinking that Google ever cared what I thought, and arrogant that I think they should care what I think now." As this might be about me, as I wrote "No, it's typical for your ego." Several years ago I've sent Dave mails with ideas, which one of them he posted without attribution or credit to his blog. With some mistakes I've made included. In an ong…

Google for "Dave Winer" returns a lot of stories that are similar. Before accepting Daves view on this, I wish people would do some research into Dave Winer.

Why? What Dave Winer does elsewhere is irrelevant to the point at hand, which is about HN commenters making personal attacks on people, being rude, and posting low quality comments.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#312

Post by mindcrime »

danilocampos wrote: post #308
mindcrime wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dave's writing was all about him.

So what?

I generally respect and understand what you're saying, but this is a unique case.

I don't see anything unique about this, that justifies personal attacks on anybody (Dave Winer or otherwise). I mean, I get that you see Dave's post as constituting an attack of sorts on Marissa, and that you think playing the vengeance card here is supported. But not everybody saw what he wrote as particularly negative towards Marissa, and many (most) of us got that the real point he was making was contained at the very end of the original post, and were quite content to argue that point.

There's just no need for using HN comments to launch some sort of personal vendetta against Dave Winer (or anybody else) over something in a blog post.

If you have some sort of personal grudge against the man, email him and challenge him to a pistol duel at high-noon, or something. But calling him names, insulting him, mocking his name, etc. on here isn't a positive for anybody.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#313

Post by danilocampos »

mindcrime wrote: post #312
danilocampos wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dave's writing was all about him. So what? I generally respect and understand what you're saying, but this is a unique case. I don't see anything unique about this, that justifies personal attacks on anybody (Dave Winer or otherwise). I mean, I get that you see Dave's post as constituting an attack of sorts on Marissa, and that you think playing the vengeance card here is supported. But not everybody saw what he wrot…

I just think his writing is self-aggrandizing to the detriment of his argument. What's the point of comments on his stories if we can't talk about that?

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#314

Post by egonschiele »

I've noticed the same thing. I wrote this post[1] a month ago. I put a lot of time into it and posted it on /r/haskell. I got some very insightful comments and good discussion. Two days ago it got posted to HN and the comments were very different. Lots of people saying "I don't understand this, this post sucks" but very few responded to me when I asked where they were stumbling so I could fix it[2].

The upshot to all this is, I got way more exposure through HN than through /r/haskell, and a lot of people loved the post. I've gotten some cool emails out of this. So overall, I'd say trolls sure suck but the nice emails make it all worthwhile.

[1] http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5736004

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#315

Post by archagon »

redblacktree wrote: post #207
ionforce wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fix it with heavy-handed moderation that actively punishes curtly written content.

This is true. It works very well for reddit.com/r/AskHistorians. This is, by far, one of the highest-quality sub-reddits on the site, and it's because of active, heavy-handed moderation that enforces a strict rule set. (e.g. no speculation)

Same for Metafilter (though the rule set is much less strict).

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#316

Post by danilocampos »

davewiner wrote: post #301
MartinCron wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The true story isn't anything more than I think your writing would be a whole lot more effective if you weren't so impressed by yourself. Your blog reads like an ongoing hagiography of the sort the North Koreans would write.

While that vanity gets tiring, it's not a crime.

What's maddening is your lack of intellectually honest engagement of critique on that or any other matter. And your position, implied by your comments, that others cannot disagree unless their accomplishments somehow match yours is frankly stomach-turning from the perspective of a hacker culture that's all about upsetting the status quo.

I went on at great length here if that's interesting to you:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5744686

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#317

Post by SCdF »

scott_s wrote: post #193
gwgarry wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sooner people understand that anti-social behaviour is about community and not about rights the better "Anti-social" behavior according to whom and to what extent and for what purpose? For the purpose of feminizing men so that they are more passive and they fit better into your ideals of who people should be? So to fit men who want to be themselves into your little cult of civility? > I still see people confusi…

You're new here, so you may think people are downvoting you for what you're saying. They're really downvoting you for how you say it. We try to put a premium on being civil.

You're right (and it's one of the reasons I enjoy reading HN) but it's kind of ironic in this context, isn't it?

We're all so good at not telling people to STFU and what-not, but we still have enumerable troubles with entire discussions not being derailed into hate-fests, albeit with some uncharacteristically (for an internet discussion) polite language.

Something to think about.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#318

Post by rythie »

Isn't this a general problem with the internet? i.e. the authors of content know exactly what everyone is saying about them.

This isn't a problem with offline or private discussion because authors have no way of knowing what we said.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#319

Post by robomartin »

simonsarris wrote: post #25

This is curious, maybe a little too reactionary[1], but I think we could use the introspection. On the one hand, being argued about is a problem a lot of people would like to have. I spent two years making a large canvas diagramming library and I would have loved for it to have frontpage'd on HN, even if everyone just told me it was terrible. On the other hand, I do think the meanness of programming communities is a…

Have you ever watched the "Big Bang Theory" TV show? There's a reason a character like Sheldon is portrayed in the show: Elements of that character are found in a number of disciplines, including programming. What I am saying is, there are people who are utterly rude and inconsiderate and don't actually know it. They somehow failed to develop human qualities about them. They exist and are very real. I worked with a guy who would wear a badge reading "Asshole " for years. People left him alone. He was very nice, but playing that role got him peace and quiet.

I would venture to guess that most online assholes are socially dysfunctional people.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#320

Post by demachina »

bjhoops1 wrote: post #101
simonsarris wrote: post #25

This is curious, maybe a little too reactionary[1], but I think we could use the introspection. On the one hand, being argued about is a problem a lot of people would like to have. I spent two years making a large canvas diagramming library and I would have loved for it to have frontpage'd on HN, even if everyone just told me it was terrible. On the other hand, I do think the meanness of programming communities is a…

I could not agree more. One factor that I think contributes to the Asshole Ethos common among programmers is this idea that great men of genius cannot be held to the same moral standards as mere mortals. This idea, combined with an inflated sense of self-worth, makes for a host of Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds wannabes, convinced that their special nature absolves them from social norms and responsibility. The Raskol…

On the other hand Dave has a notoriously thin skin. He is very good at criticizing everyone else but he absolutely doesn't take criticism himself. Only time you are going to strike up a conversation with him is if you agree with him on everything. He generally expects everyone to bow to him as the inventor of blogging and RSS and podcasting and whatever, and that means you are supposed to listen to his opinions on everything, agree with him, and see his wisdom and if you dont, YOUR BLOCKED, cut off, dismissed and ignored.

Who knows how that meeting with Marissa Mayer actually went down but there are plenty of people who have been lectured, scolded and demeaned by Dave who have probably wanted to walk out on him so its entirely beleivable that she did and he probably provoked at least some of it.

You would think Dave would, after all these years, realize that if you post stuff on the Internets people are going to flame you for it because A. They disagree B. They troll for fun C. Dave has ticked off so many people over the years they flame him because they are perma-tired of his holier than thou attitude.

No people shouldn't be rude, ever, but they are. Dave is rude all of the time too. Yea you can just like, you know, block the entire Internet and that will stop it, but at what price. I think Dave is mostly pushing for the latter, or at least he wants anyone who doesn't agree with Dave on everything to be blocked permenently from everything.

Dave, if you want, to block everyone on the Internet who disagrees with you, fine, go for it, write your own tools to do it, but don't expect everyone else to do it for you.

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