New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
blog.ycombinator.com
New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
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Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#2This is a good step, but I think just the increase in overly political postings vs. tech oriented content has been a major contributor to the negativity.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#3pg's essay on "How to disagree" (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html) also serves as a useful guideline.
grep 'u r a fag' | rm;
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#4I think some examples might be helpful. I would consider a gratuitously negative comment to be some variation of "That's a dumb idea" with no elaboration, or an ad hominem, and such comments are pretty much always downvoted already.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#5Isn't downvoting gratuitous negativity?
And who determines what is and isn't negative? And isn't this question shallow cynicism?
And isn't that policy shallow cynicism for thinking people can't control their own negativity?
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#6This is a horrible idea.
The Panglossianism that will result from this is indicative of the bubble hype which will destroy Silicon Valley, Y-Combinator and Hacker News.
In fact, this is the worst idea I ever heard in my life.
So continues the descent of HN...
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#7This just totally completely sucks!!
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#8One of the most negative habits is in my opinion the failure to read a comment charitably (to make an effort to interpret it in the best possible light). Instead, people often tend to misread or miserunderstand what's being said, only to use the opportunity to write a "correction" based on that false impression. A worse flavor of the same problem is a misunderstanding that is then used to justify outrage or personal annoyance.
That's what I find worthy of being changed, and I will certainly make an effort to read comments more charitably as well.
Overall though, and I realize this is quite anecdotal, rampant negativity - especially about things other members of the community have created - seems to have gotten less common recently.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#9Great change.
I second the request for examples -- "gratuitous" is subjective, and until better moderation tools exist, it would be nice if the community has some standards around who to issue "gentle reminders" to.
It would also be nice to have the guidelines be in a more prominent spot than the bottom of the page -- it's hard to notice them as is.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#10I think some examples might be helpful. I would consider a gratuitously negative comment to be some variation of "That's a dumb idea" with no elaboration, or an ad hominem, and such comments are pretty much always downvoted already.
Exactly. I would help me a lot to understand what they are aiming for, especially because I'm not a native English speaker.