111–120 of 206 posts
My stuff has been on the front page twice, and I'm a left wing, big government Canadian. Some people can be a little cranky, we're computer guys ffs, but I think the discourse here is pretty civil and open minded.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see an issue with that. There are other venues for discussing certain things. This isn't to say that these topics are bad, just that at the time, they really don't belong here.
But the principle feels odd to me. Flags appear to be more powerful than upvotes. So a minority of users can remove stories the majority wants to see.
Too many users are unable to make the distinction between agreeing with a story or feeling its interesting, and correctly evaluating its worth further examination and discussion. On the other hand the flaggers are pretty good at detecting stuff where the discussion will be useless.
Example: "Obama is the best president". Well that's going to get upvotes from people who like 'bama and want to tell everyone even though no one wants to hear it, who hate 'bama and want to tell everyone even though no one wants to hear it, people who think they should be more politically active so they don't personally care but in a misguided way think they're doing a public service by upvoting something thats widely agreed as a public good even though it isn't, and people who just like to watch the world burn... But lets face it, the comments are going to be garbage sloganeering at absolute best from both sides, so it get flagged as it should be.
Here's a live example from HN new which I don't think is going to make it under the above criteria:
"Ask HN: How are social media user habits changing?"
Is there anything actually useful to comment about this that hasn't been hashed to death already or is just an anecdote or bragging about how I deleted my facebook in 2009 so I'm more 'leet than the guys who deleted in 2010?
I theorize a meta poll of "is there anything interesting to talk about in social media that hasn't been talked about?" would probably come up 95% against. Maybe the poll comments would actually contain something interesting, maybe even from the 5% who think there might exist something interesting but may or may not be able to enumerate it, but I don't expect that to happen.
I'm curious how many people who have the ability to upvote or flag stories actually do so. For my part, I'm very conservative: - I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions. - I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through…
- I flag stories only if it seems like the story is abusive, not just off-topic (e.g., overly self-promotional, complete noise, etc). This happens very rarely. - I don't usually upvote stories. I only do so if I have a very immediate "holy shit this is amazing!" reaction to it. - I upvote comments frequently, particularly if it's a good, well-argued point done in good style (i.e., more factual than rhetoric). I downv…
I don't blame you, but I find it especially sad, because sexism in tech is one area that actually needs more meaningful nuanced discussion. Not to be too elitist, but if we can't have this conversation, who can?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech. You know, I've noticed a lot of the 'superstar commenters' on HN have polar opposite views from each other on a lot of these touchy issues. So, it's sad to see that what ensues out of smart people disagreeing is a plain refusal to talk about these very things. Why does it have to…
> Why are some of the most respected and the smartest commenters on this site unwilling to have an intellectually honest debate? Unwilling? No, HN is more than willing to have a good debate. The issue is that with some particular topics, HN is unable . HN is not a perfect platform for intelligent discussion. It is unable to handle certain types discussions and the only effective mechanism it has to keep those discuss…
Agreed, it's actually just impossible to have a non-polarized discussion if people identify too strongly with one of the poles. This isn't unique to HN, we essentially live in a bipolar society. Even if you present a middle ground, someone identifying with either pole will assume you are identifying with the opposite pole, because they see that part of the world in black and white.
Nevertheless, these discussions are good for clarifying your understanding of the world, just try not to expect much in the way of respect, appreciation, agreement, or understanding.
Stories that discuss the difficulties faced by minorities in our field are summarily disappeared. Really? I've tended to notice the opposite: new ones are constantly appearing, they get lots of comments, inspire heated debates and most sentiments are sympathetic, sometimes to an almost unhealthy and postmodern degree.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those stories are barely more than gossip and belong on mainstream news sites. It doesn't look like they were generating much of interest in the comments either, just the usual go-my-team rhetoric and unfocused outrage in a random direction.
I guess we will never know how the conversation could have developed since the stories were killed prematurely. Do you think the comments section of other types of HN stories are held to the same standard? Or do you think the promptness with which these stories are flagged has something to do with their subject matter?
I tend to have a lot of respect for pg, and found his apology for what happened in that thread to be admirable. Whether or not preventing discussion of the issue on HN is positive or negative...I have very complex feelings on the issue, and see valid arguments on both sides.
What I do not have mixed feelings about, however, is that these issues need to be put front and center, so that people in our industry a) know they exist b) know how common they are c) are inspired to make personal effort to fix it. I would hope that pg agrees.
If he does, why not make such stories, when they set off the flamewar detector, maintain their ranking, but disable comments? That way, the issue is still raised, and people are still alerted to it, but it prevents the (some believe) "unproductive" discussion.
Flamewars != disagreements. Discouraging flamewars (namecalling, counterproductive arguing that devolves into ad hominem and unrelated attacks) doesn't mean it kills stories that generate disagreement and discussion. I've had many a disagreement in HN threads, been convinced that my original stance was wrong, and (I believe) convinced others that their original stance was wrong (or incomplete, or to change something…
Reasoned disagreement is obviously easier to deal with than emotional attacks, but topics that incite emotional responses are arguably the most important ones to keep visible - they expose the most contentious points of disagreement in a community. It's certainly true that these angry discussions contain little of value in themselves, but the fact that they exist is valuable. A better compromise would be to limit fur…
The site is this way because this way works; it's not like there aren't dozens of other sites with different policies out there on the internet. And yet for some reason we prefer to come here.