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Meta is Murder

codinghorror.com

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Re: Meta is Murder

#11

Post by msluyter »

[deleted] wrote: post #8

[deleted]

True, but I think one point the article makes that I find interesting is that people need some avenue for discussion of meta topics. We're naturally driven to justify our actions (there's a good book called "why?" on the pervasiveness of this psychological need.) In the case of HN, we don't just want to flag articles, we want to explain why we think the article is on or off topic. Doing so gets you modded down, yet people seem compelled to do it anyway.

So perhaps some sort of meta-discussion mechanism (a separate page, or the ability to add a comment about why you flagged something, etc...) would be of value? OTOH, the level of discussion is better here than most sites, so perhaps we should leave well enough alone.

Re: Meta is Murder

#12

Post by biotech »

"Generally speaking, I am not a fan of the meta."

Ironic that he should say this, considering that a considerable portion of his communications relate to meta-discussions.

Re: Meta is Murder

#15

Post by GavinB »

mrtron wrote: post #7

I don't think this sort of topic qualifies as Hacker News.

A lot of people cite MetaTalk as a reason that MetaFilter works. If you talk to a regular from the site they'll tell you MetaTalk is key to the success of the site because it's a sort of release valve.

The solution to the "not hacker news" problem isn't to shout people down. You need to give them that release valve. The comments are a symptom of a problem, and it needs to be addressed through the site architecture.

Re: Meta is Murder

#18

Post by acexman »

jrockway wrote: post #9

I think he just wants to ignore any criticism aimed at Stack Overflow. That's the impression I get from his comments on the meta site, anyway. "LALALAL ITS FINE LALALA"

while there is one (annoying) search result that points to www.experts-exchange.com stack overflow is relief.

Re: Meta is Murder

#19

Post by chaqke »

GavinB wrote: post #15
mrtron wrote: post #7

I don't think this sort of topic qualifies as Hacker News.

A lot of people cite MetaTalk as a reason that MetaFilter works. If you talk to a regular from the site they'll tell you MetaTalk is key to the success of the site because it's a sort of release valve. The solution to the "not hacker news" problem isn't to shout people down. You need to give them that release valve. The comments are a symptom of a problem, and it needs to be addressed through the site architecture.

could be handled by directing people to a posting about hacker news, where they could comment to their hearts content (or, hopefully, read historical conclusions to their comment's topic, if one already exists)

Re: Meta is Murder

#20

Post by embeddedradical »

Too much meta is bad, too little meta is also bad. If you live by 'meta murders', you're going to become a braindead doer, instead of a creative and insightful contributor. I believe that to find a good balance of meta in all things, we should simply look at meta-cognition and find balance there, and then extrapolate out.

I recommend checking out this article from Seed Magazine: http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/thinking_meta/ :

Unless we are aware of our tendency to act irrationally in certain situations, then we’ll continue to act irrationally. That much is predictable.Although the mind is full of flaws, we can learn to outsmart them.

I think for an approach to productive use of meta discussion in these tech circles, we should begin by looking at the already existing strategies for utilizing meta-cognition for our benefit - like the ones listed here: http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/metacognition/start.htm

In short, thinking about thinking, thinking about you think, are quite valuable, but do it wrong, do it too much, and you end up driving yourself nuts -- and say crazy things like meta is murder and run away from it....'I will not think, I think too much, will not think...will be braindead zombie not questioning what I'm doing...' -- also, your analysis of your thoughts isn't often that valuable to other people, which I think relates to why we find reading about bloggers telling us how they blog is kind of mmm, boring.

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