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You can't impress developers

baus.net

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Re: You can't impress developers

#41

Post by kevinflo »

latch wrote: post #12

Took a break from HN (and others) for about 8 months at the end of 2012 and start of 2013. The HN I came back to feels very different. Everyone knows better and is eager to prove it by putting others down. Comments are no longer about the OP, but about how the OP is laughable, let me tell you how to do it . So sad.

I've noticed this as well and I've always felt it had to do with the fact that you cannot downvote comments. Comments systems that allow for only upvoting seem to skew towards surfacing loud comments versus reasonable comments.

The silent reasonable majority (that is less inclined to comment or even vote) needs a way to help curate when things get unbalanced. Think about how you might not end up actually clicking upvote on a comment that is reasonable and that you agree with but how you most definitely would downvote the snide negative comments that top HN comments sections all too frequently.

Re: You can't impress developers

#42

Post by thejteam »

philtar wrote: post #32

I'm impressed by the stuff I see here, all the time. I've only been using HN for a couple of months but I, too, have noticed a decline in the quality of comments. The comments used to be about how amazing the information in the link is, what's so amazing about it, how it can be used, how it can be improved concluded with brownie points for the OP. Now, all I read about is how dumb the post is. Author wrote too much/l…

I think the quality of the comments reflects the average quality of the posts. We can't talk about how amazing the information is if the submitted link is a 3 paragraph blog post. So unfortunately the average commenter becomes the type of person who comments on 3 paragraph blog posts.

Now here's a cool startup idea. A ranking system that takes into account not only community upvotes, but an automated NLP assessment of the quality of writing. Useful for both the submitted posts/articles and for the comments.

Re: You can't impress developers

#43

Post by pron »

kevinflo wrote: post #41
latch wrote: post #12

Took a break from HN (and others) for about 8 months at the end of 2012 and start of 2013. The HN I came back to feels very different. Everyone knows better and is eager to prove it by putting others down. Comments are no longer about the OP, but about how the OP is laughable, let me tell you how to do it . So sad.

I've noticed this as well and I've always felt it had to do with the fact that you cannot downvote comments. Comments systems that allow for only upvoting seem to skew towards surfacing loud comments versus reasonable comments. The silent reasonable majority (that is less inclined to comment or even vote) needs a way to help curate when things get unbalanced. Think about how you might not end up actually clicking upv…

You can downvote comments once you reach a certain karma. 500, I think.

Re: You can't impress developers

#44

Post by testbro »

namank wrote: post #19

Developers are critical thinkers. If the person hasn't evolved enough to account for the notion of being human; or if the context is such that critical thinking implies critiquing without appreciation, you get what the OP is complaining about. HN is definitely the latter since comments in this community are largely reserved for criticism while the appreciation is (usually) limited to upvotes. I want to say it's the n…

> HN is definitely the latter since comments in this community are largely reserved for criticism while the appreciation is (usually) limited to upvotes.

I think this reasoning is fairly sound and possibly hints that HN may be less unfriendly than the comments alone make out.

Anonymity tends to make criticism easier to lob around. I'm in academia and even super-critical reviews tend to be prefaced by apologetic "good points" before the submission gets eviscerated; even then a good reviewer will give constructive feedback. I wonder if we could borrow this approach to commenting to improve the atmosphere?

Re: You can't impress developers

#45

Post by VMG »

DanBC wrote: post #28
cmccabe wrote: post #11

Are the examples given by the author really that worthy of respect? If you write yet another unnecessary Foo to Javascript translator, or over-complicate your code to show off how well you know the dark corners of your chosen language (both examples given by Chris), should people really be impressed? And if people aren't, should they put on a fake smile and pretend to be?

> should people really be impressed? And if people aren't, should they put on a fake smile and pretend to be? Offering a critique doesn't have to be fake smiles, nor does it have to be slagging off. People can ignore posts. Or people can offer calm advice about why something is suboptimal.

Which was exactly what happened in the comments. I haven't read one impolite response.

Re: You can't impress developers

#46

Post by pledg »

cmbaus wrote: post #3

This conversation reminds of the old programmer joke: How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five. One to screw in the light bulb and four to say, "I could have done that."

I could have made this joke much more succinctly in another language.

Re: You can't impress developers

#48

Post by seabee »

kevinflo wrote: post #41
latch wrote: post #12

Took a break from HN (and others) for about 8 months at the end of 2012 and start of 2013. The HN I came back to feels very different. Everyone knows better and is eager to prove it by putting others down. Comments are no longer about the OP, but about how the OP is laughable, let me tell you how to do it . So sad.

I've noticed this as well and I've always felt it had to do with the fact that you cannot downvote comments. Comments systems that allow for only upvoting seem to skew towards surfacing loud comments versus reasonable comments. The silent reasonable majority (that is less inclined to comment or even vote) needs a way to help curate when things get unbalanced. Think about how you might not end up actually clicking upv…

But you can downvote comments, if you have sufficient karma.

So is the problem that the people with the power don't exercise it, or that people don't upvote the reasonable comments in a sufficient ratio to push the bad comments down?

Meta-HN is not my favourite topic but perhaps it's time we had a review to account for how the community has changed since the last one.

Re: You can't impress developers

#50

Post by seabee »

spoiler wrote: post #26
latch wrote: post #12

Took a break from HN (and others) for about 8 months at the end of 2012 and start of 2013. The HN I came back to feels very different. Everyone knows better and is eager to prove it by putting others down. Comments are no longer about the OP, but about how the OP is laughable, let me tell you how to do it . So sad.

Dear person, please lead the following statement as if it were written the most possible respect, humility and grace: Your post is laughable, because we cannot take you seriously, since you ate about 8 months behind the rest of us on terms of evolution. The way you should have done it is by slaughtering a unicorn and drinking its blood out of a hollowed rhino horn, which is also illegal to obtain, so essentially my p…

If all the obnoxious posts were like that we wouldn't have a problem. The problem is with bad comments that are not sufficiently incendiary for people who agree with their thesis to want to downvote them.
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