Sorta feel like there needs to be more teeth to this than simply guidelines based.
@SamA what more "severe" approaches did you consider and why did you decide they wouldn't work? This is a difficult challenge.
New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
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Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#32Hah! This is excellent and exactly what I see happening out in the real world. People don't like the unpleasantness and turmoil of disagreeable ideas and people with those ideas, and so the solution is not to burst the comfortable down-pillow bubble of their existence, but to pad it further by "eliminating" "negativity". Even better considering who gets to decide what constitutes "negativity". Fantastic job, guys. Bravo.
Edit: There are some salient points here about downvoting and how it's affected the community, and I am extremely interested in how "to turn more moderation power over to the community" is going to compound the problem of incentivizing positive-only feedback, id est if and how this "community moderation" mechanism will couple with downvoting to make disagreeing even more hazardous.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#33I 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.
I agree, I see so many comments downvoted to oblivion simply because the comment betrays a lack of rockstar ninja coding ability even without being egregiously wrong. Downvoting should be reserved for trolling, bullshit, and objectively wrong information.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#34I suppose adding the guideline can't hurt, because it might at least make people more strongly consider their comments before posting them. Unfortunately, reasonable people can disagree about where the threshold is between appropriate skepticism/criticism and gratuitous negativity. Since "gratuitous" means unjustified or inappropriate, it by definition should be avoided. The trick is figuring out which things are ina…
Right. Trolls aside, everyone thinks their negativity is completely appropriate...
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#35This is great, my only (unconstructive) complain is why you didn't start with this before :)
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#36I 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.
I agree about the downvoting. The harm it's doing has increased in recent months, and it's common to see perfectly reasonable satements of fact (much less opinions) that someone else doesn't like be downvoted. It's discouraging to see when it's not even your comment, and really offputting when it is.
It's gotten to a point that I'm not sure downvoting is a net positive for the community any more.
EDIT- example, this comment was downvoted in less than 2 minutes after it was posted. Did this voting improve the conversation or the community?
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#37One 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…
I think you're right! It's difficult to communicate tone and other 'out of band' stuff through text. This is what Wikipedia's "Assume good faith" guideline is to addresses.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#38I agree that we should try to reduce "this is a stupid idea" comments, but does that include "this doesn't belong on HN" comments?
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#39One 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…
I think you nailed the real problem, which is that people have become so quick to write off anyone who ruffles their feathers at all.
Drew Houston describes the HN feedback he received for Dropbox as all the motivation he needed to keep going. He also explained that he knew it was a hit because of how many people were saying negative things.
Today though, any truly critical comment means you're either a hater or a troll. Every person is either a friend or an enemy. Inside the club or outside the club. You can't sincerely like something, and also be very critical about aspects of it, without instantly transforming into a jealous hater.
Assuming the worst about other people is probably the most negative thing you can do. Everyone is a mixed bag.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#40I 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.
I agree, I see so many comments downvoted to oblivion simply because the comment betrays a lack of rockstar ninja coding ability even without being egregiously wrong. Downvoting should be reserved for trolling, bullshit, and objectively wrong information.
Also - potentially interesting but controversial threads in which the first post is inevitably blotted out into oblivion. This to me is a sure sign that the fade effect of downvoting doesn't work as intended, either to prevent people from making such comments, or to prevent others from engaging them in conversation by making it slightly difficult to read them.