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Moreover one can claim "gratuitous positivity" is the bigger danger.
This 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.
I am not so egotistical as to think this policy change was because of me, but I certainly, at times contributed to the fray, especially in political oriented threads. In terms of Show HN, I really think that constructive criticism is helpful, but also encouragement and praise is equally important. We should be rooting for our HN community, not trying to snipe or tear people down. The rest of the world is already really good at that!
I welcome the reminder to seek the best from each other and build each other up as a good mentor would do. No smoke-up-ass platitudes, but certainly we should think of ourselves as part of a huge team out to change the world and do something amazing.
I 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.
Here's a few examples I know of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8938409
One 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…
This 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...
I think the downvote functionality is holding back the utility of HN more than anything else. It is grossly overused and very rarely for guidelines violations like it was designed for. Most people use to show they disagree with a comment. It's an awful experience and is the main fuel in a negative feedback loop that travels with users from thread to thread.
This appears to be prompted (EDIT: related to) by my discussion in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317028 . As I mentioned there, it may be helpful to explicitly differatiate negativity vs. gratuitous negativity in that case. (Most examples of gratuitous negativity I've seen are low effort "this site sucks" comments, which are downvoted for reasons unrelated to negativity, and ad hominem attacks are already cov…
I 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.
Here's a few examples I know of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8938409
Unfortunately, some of the qualities that make a good technical problem solver can also lead to nitpikcing. It feels like trying to find the bugs in an argument. That can be useful, but only when it ties to the core idea rather than some tangential point. Top comments often sound like, "Well, technically, you're wrong on this one unimportant fact you mentioned briefly."
I'm glad HN is taking steps to ensure that feedback is constructive.
Feels like the conflict of interest of a general news forum being run by an investment firm with PR interests is beginning to rear its ugly head.