141–150 of 206 posts
I agree.
"The original story linked to a review of peer-reviewed scientific research." I believe the credit we assign to peer reviewed scientific, mathematical, or engineering papers shouldn't be anywhere near the same weight we assign to peer reviewed social science papers. I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct. My…
I think your second sentence reads the opposite of what you mean!
Especially after pg's response to the blog post about sexual assault at CodeMash, I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments? 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…
The output of the flamewar detector isn't binary.
This may also have the side effect of allowing for some opinions to be shared, without being mired in flame-y back and forth. (And, importantly, still allows the story to stay more visible)
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A "controversial discussion" is what happens here when we start discussing, say, the merits of different memory management schemes. People entering a conversation in disagreement, presenting opposing views, considering other views carefully, and then writing civil and constructive rebuttals to those opposing views that further the discussion. Not a religious war, a technical discussion that involves disagreement. Tha…
Honest question, how often do people go on to downvote comments and flag threads when discussing memory management schemes?
Downvoted? Probably more often than you would guess; many people downvote for disagreement just as they upvote for agreement.
As an example: Go (language) is a popular but quite controversial topic here. It is pretty easy to get downvoted in discussions on the merits of the language, but those discussions don't get flagged off the site and flamewars are rare (if present at all).
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- 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…
There are some topics that show up on HN frequently, but the discussion is incredibly poor every single time. I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech. 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…
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Not arguing that the discussion is particularly useful, but clearly it is still desired among a large enough subset of HN readers that such stories get voted to the front page and commented on. -- pg has a very known bias against "political discussions". I would argue that all discussions are political, and anyone that can say with a straight face that they "don't like politics" doesn't realize how political that sta…
I'm genuinely curious, what is political about, say, a discussion between two fellow students clarifying a point of theory that they just learned? Or on the other end of the spectrum, a discussion between friends about the weather? I can easily agree that many discussions are political, maybe even most . But all ? I don't see it.
Abundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion is a good evidence of a groupthink environment. People either afraid to lose karma or be scrutinized or otherwise upset the mods. I can often see people opening their comments with a hefty preamble, which goal is to justify the following controversial opinion, in hopes that it will not bring or at least lessen the wrath of the mob. And of cou…
The funny thing is that HN is the ultimate in technical austerity. The only thing it really has going for it is the influence of PG and the moderators... yet there are those who call out those things as being a problem.
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There are some topics that show up on HN frequently, but the discussion is incredibly poor every single time. I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech. 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…
Why would HN be a particularly good venue for that conversation? There are a lot of smart people here, but a lot of the factors that make HN a good place for technical discussions make it a horrible place for softer discussions like those about sexism.
Such as being 5% female.
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I think your second sentence reads the opposite of what you mean!
I kind of thought the same thing, but then again he didn't mention the direction of the disparity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some topics that show up on HN frequently, but the discussion is incredibly poor every single time. I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech. 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…
Why would HN be a particularly good venue for that conversation? There are a lot of smart people here, but a lot of the factors that make HN a good place for technical discussions make it a horrible place for softer discussions like those about sexism.