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Hacker News is depressing

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Re: Hacker News is depressing

#371

Post by krapp »

MortenK wrote: post #277
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…

Could be interesting to test a "block user" feature where enough blocks within a time span results in a temp or permanent ban. An inability of new accounts to post for a couple of days, might also curb the drive-by behavior.

My favorite implementation of this would be simply you have a list of users whose posts you never see. Like selective hellbanning -- it doesn't affect anything other than what you yourself percieve when logged in, but it also doesn't stop them from being able to communicate with everyone else.

I don't think there's any reason to necessarily link it to banning or something, though. Just make it like a per-account killfile. in fact maybe you could even add regexes to filter out phrases or urls as well.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#372

Post by fredsanford »

doorhammer wrote: post #287
gosu wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that people should be talking more about this. As an older student who hangs out on IRC a lot, I see two phenomena: - People get initiated into programmer culture pretty young, before they learn to stop being pretentious. They really like how meritocratic programmer culture is, but they get carried away with it the same way that people who say "gays should go to hell" or "the weak have no place in society" ge…

This is what keeps me from getting more involved in a lot of online discussions. As it stands, I code mostly as a fun thing I like to do (I work it into my day job where I can). It's something I really enjoy. I've got a shelf full of books and an interest in the esoteric. I'll like casually reading about lambda calculus and taking long walks on the beach, but when I run into something I can't figure out, I have a pro…

Take this for what it's worth, maybe nothing...

A fair number of the people in these communities that offer help are doing so to help those of us who have questions.

They can be annoying, abrasive and downright rude. If you are polite and persist most of the time you will get your answer. I went through this in the late '80s on the C/C++ forums on FIDOnet and RIME/RelayNet. I managed to persist (and get pissed off a number of times) and get most of my answers. To this day I see people from FIDOnet and RIME/RelayNet still answering questions on web forums, StackOverflow etc. Jerry Coffin is one of them and the man is a saint. Bob Stout of Snippets fame has been around forever as well. The advice I read from Joseph Carnage on RIME was some of the most valuable ever and has a lot to do with how well I turned out as a developer.

I guess what I'm getting to here is to grow some thicker skin and try not to take it all so personally. A fair number of the guys answering the questions have seen the same questions a million times and gone to the trouble to write the FAQs for C and C++ and are presumably tired of answering the same old questions. Put yourself in their place and see if your perspective changes.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#373

Post by TA3423 »

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.

>I wrote the piece in 15 minutes. You're spending 48 hours debating every nuance of something that means nothing.

I've seen better defenses from trolls on 4chan.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#374

Post by dinkumthinkum »

medecau wrote: post #309
angersock wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never use such features unless it is really trolling, in which case I expect the flagging system to solve the problem or anti-spam techniques. I don't really like I need protection from people's thoughts, not saying people who want such features do but it's not my thing.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#375

Post by dinkumthinkum »

FreeBird wrote: post #70
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…

That's nothing. Check these comments, anywhere else you would get summarily fired for emails like this. http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-supp... "Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's your issue..." What if that email was to a female kernel dev? What if a whizkid reads the kernel dev mailing…

I understand what you're saying but you are making the classic "protect the kiddies" argument and I'm not sure I can accept your position. I'd rather not live in such a world. Linus' mailing list is different from an email at work.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#376

Post by duaneb »

itsybitsycoder wrote: post #220
duaneb wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linking is not a privilege. If you put your stuff out on the internet you can't choose who gets to discuss it. I don't approve of HN's conduct at all, it's one of the things I detest about internet communities, and HN, though the best of them, is no exception. But asking HN to change because someone was offended by the most predictable behavior is silly.

As jgrahamc mentioned, you can choose to block incoming traffic with HN as the referrer (although this is not foolproof for a number of reasons); you do not have the right to download other people's content without restriction. Also, you do not have the right to have your discussion hosted on HN; if pg chose to, he would be well within his own rights to implement a feature like this.

> Also, you do not have the right to have your discussion hosted on HN; if pg chose to, he would be well within his own rights to implement a feature like this.

I agree; I wasn't taking a stance on whether or not HN should do so. I was simply pointing out the irony of a blogger protesting about being linked.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#377

Post by winter_blue »

winter_blue wrote: post #321
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…

Alan Cox, once considered second-in-command after Linus; left Linux development after receiving criticism from Torvalds. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox

Not to mention, it was for a very similar reason that Linus exploded on Alan -- kernel changes breaking user space applications.

Honestly though, looking at the discussion, I have to admit that some of these userland apps did do wildly ridiculous stuff that sorta almost relied on certain kernel "flaws" -- so IMO they deserve to be broken (perhaps?)

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#378

Post by doorhammer »

fredsanford wrote: post #372
doorhammer wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what keeps me from getting more involved in a lot of online discussions. As it stands, I code mostly as a fun thing I like to do (I work it into my day job where I can). It's something I really enjoy. I've got a shelf full of books and an interest in the esoteric. I'll like casually reading about lambda calculus and taking long walks on the beach, but when I run into something I can't figure out, I have a pro…

Take this for what it's worth, maybe nothing... A fair number of the people in these communities that offer help are doing so to help those of us who have questions. They can be annoying, abrasive and downright rude. If you are polite and persist most of the time you will get your answer. I went through this in the late '80s on the C/C++ forums on FIDOnet and RIME/RelayNet. I managed to persist (and get pissed off a…

I don't think your response is worth nothing, and I do understand a lot of the reasons why people would low on patience. I also don't think it's always unwarranted to be terse about things. People ask the same questions and people ask silly questions, or they ask questions that lead someone to believe they haven't even tried to find a response, and that they're just trying to be spoon fed. I think those are all totally valid complaints. I don't think anyone with a job worth doing gets out of asking questions they think are absurd to have ever been asked in the first place.

For me, I don't think taking something personally is what is exhausting. I have my own propensity for verbal sparring and for trying to find the psychological upper hand. Once I get into it, I don't care about conversation or communication, just about feeling like I was the most strategic combatant. It turns into drawn out verbal warfare, and it's draining for me to resist the urge to get into those fights when I get a condescending response. I realize that places most (or a lot) of the blame on me, for the exhaustion, but there it is.

It helps a lot that there are places like Stack Overflow and that the web is just so damned big and accessible, these days. I can almost always find an answer on my own, so it's not usually worth investing in a forum to get answers.

The downside is I miss out on community and getting to know prolific figures or interacting with other programmers as much as I could, and that's definitely my loss.

I also miss out on the large number of generally decent folk, which sucks, and it's a big reason I've tried to make a few more comments on HN that I used to, in areas where I think I have something to say. Most of the time it's worth trying to open up the line of communication. I just try to balance risk versus reward.

Basically, I think I'm pretty capable of tolerating the negative responses that can pop up, but is it worth enduring them for what I would get out of it? In my current context, I'm not sure.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#379

Post by Uchikoma »

mindcrime wrote: post #311
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.

1. See my other comment on why I think this is relevant. 2. Dave makes it look like the thread was full of personal attacks and HN is awful. Re-reading the thread, this is surely not the case.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#380

Post by vxNsr »

brymaster wrote: post #370
vxNsr wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just because you might think what you're adding (or anyone for that matter) is meaningful doesn't mean everyone else does. I don't know how long you've been lurking on HN before registering, but your account isn't very old and you're suggesting that everything has gone to shit, people should be hellbanned and the forum should be invite-only. To be honest it's just a matter of perspective and these meta discussions ar…

I've been a reader for about a year... and frankly the tone of comments has changed drastically since then. At the time I felt like I had nothing to add and thus didn't create an account, when I finally did create an account I almost immediately got into a political flame war with someone (remember the elections were coming up then) and got hellbanned, I stayed quiet for a while after that, and then created another account this time vowing to not comment unless I felt what I was saying was something other's would find useful and interesting. In addition I attempted to stay away from politics as it gets heated quickly (I kinda failed on that front when the NYT published that op-ed from the Gitmo Terrorist).

All this to say that people will abuse their power more as accountability nears zero. If we can figure out a way to keep everything open and still provide a good environment I'm all for it, and some people here have provided a groundwork, and I think it's great!

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