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Hacker News is a social echo chamber

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Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#171

Post by simias »

kutakbash wrote: post #135
simias wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that some people are not as thoughtful as you are when it comes to up/downvotes. The terrible "downvote because I disagree" is not as bad as in other forums but it's definitely on the rise. When people use the voting system to express an opinion instead of judging the quality of the comment itself it kills the quality of the discussion very very quickly in my experience. The people who don't ta…

Voting system is a great cleaning mechanism (akin to current in a pond), something that keeps mediocre submissions and poor comments out of sight. If this feature is rationed (eg flow of the current is weakened), comments and posts ought to be rationed as well, otherwise HN gets overwhelmed with poor input.

It means the votes will be more meaningful. Unless the ratio of votes/comments gets really really low it wouldn't be much of an issue I think. This can even be tuned dynamically.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#172

Post by 10098 »

MartianObserver wrote: post #153
DougWebb wrote: post #37

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…

Yep, let's ignore the main issues raised by the post and have a meta discussion instead. - Leftist orthodoxy (Keynesian good/Austrian bad, etc.) - Disappearing dissenters (HeckBanning, NegVotesToOblivion) - Apple the Immaculate (and Saint Jobs the Perfect) - All startups are equal (but YC's are more equaler than others) Please HeckBan this and prove the points made about HN's accoustics and whatnot. Whatever you do,…

It's hell, not heck. What is this, preschool?

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#173

Post by brymaster »

MartinCron wrote: post #166
brymaster wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that none of the smart hackers here have 'innovated' an open discussion forum yet. Everyone knows of the problems with moderation and hellbanning, everyone knows that this forum isn't a democracy and yet, here we all are.

Why do you assume that democracy is the right model for discussion? Even with the problems of moderation and hellbanning, the system here is better than something purely open. I've seen pure open discussions, and I don't want to have anything to do with them.

Disagree with your thoughts on the system being better. Check some of the comments in the article and you might understand why.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#174

Post by jlgreco »

znowi wrote: post #131

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…

> Abundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion is a good evidence of a groupthink environment.

It is evidence of nothing more than somebody wanting to make a poorly considered comment without the negative ramifications associated with typing before you think. HN loves people who are willing to be contrarian. The 'leaders' list is absolutely littered with people who spend most of their time disagreeing with the bulk of the site. They get upvoted, not downvoted, because they express their disagreement well.

Throwaway commenters typically get downvoted not because they are going against the grain but because they make very low quality comments.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#175

Post by Kronopath »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #116
jlgreco wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The issue is that with some particular topics, HN is unable. 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 th…

> Agreed, it's actually just impossible to have a non-polarized discussion if people identify too strongly with one of the poles.

This is a good time to bring up one of my favourite Paul Graham essays, "Keep Your Identity Small".

http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Religion, politics, professional sexism, all these are topics that infringe on people's identities, causing a strong gut reaction that leads to terrible discussions. Even programming languages can end up in a similar category, if you have too many people that identify as a "C++ programmer" or a "Pythonista", or a "Lisper", which leads to the oft-seen programming language flame war.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#176

Post by petercooper »

selmnoo wrote: post #88
potatolicious wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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'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?

Because after the tenth time it's discussed and turns into a verbal food fight, many people intuitively realize that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#177

Post by foobarbazqux »

mikeash wrote: post #159
foobarbazqux wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

While that certainly makes it a bad place for the sexism discussion, that certainly does not make it a good place for technical discussions!

Sure, whenever there's a massive imbalance between the genders, it's going to be less productive than when there's a balance. It also doesn't help much if the sexism discussion occurs among a group of 95% females - which is typically what happens.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#178

Post by angularly »

danielweber wrote: post #57
DougWebb wrote: post #37

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 heard about a guy getting hellbanned for flagging all but one of the "Steve Jobs is dead" stories on the day Steve Jobs died. Each time my finger hovers over the "flag" button I wonder ". . . is this really worth the hassle?" Then I close the tab and go off somewhere else. (I've flagged probably 10 things total.) EDIT : jlgreco corrects me. The guy I was thinking of was flag-banned, not hell-banned.

I guess I was flag-banned. I can't see the flag link anywhere, and I seem to remember it was there before. Must be that one post recently where I expressed a libertarian political view :)

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#179

Post by crusso »

mseebach wrote: post #164
crusso wrote: post #130

The whole argument of the article is a non-starter: Building a social echo chamber risks marginalising us from the rest of society, gradually becoming ignored and irrelevant as our self-reinforcing opinions drift ever further away from the mainstream I don't consume movies, books, music, food, web sites, or much of anything else because they're "mainstream". I do so because they have a high degree of quality that hol…

Yes, I agree. "Echo-chamber" and "bubble" are features. Having a informative and effective discussion at a high level, and having opinions moved, predicates a high degree of common ground. Effectively challenging somebody's worldview doesn't begin with "everything you consider true is false, now listen to me" as is sometimes the preferred method of radicals. Being bombarded with information and viewpoints you conside…

Some people just aren't comfortable dealing with reality since reality is an echo chamber that reinforces successful survival behaviors.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#180

Post by moocowduckquack »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #116
jlgreco wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The issue is that with some particular topics, HN is unable. 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 th…

reminds me of Crocker's rules - http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html
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