Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 673 posts

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#51

Post by scott_s »

minimaxir wrote: post #28
Alupis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a few examples I know of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8938409

The first link is a low-quality comment / ad hominem, the second link is off-topic / ad hominem. Both of those were already against the rules.

Indeed. Sam pointed that out in his post:

Sharp readers may point out that the HN guidelines have always excluded those things. That's true. But it's still enough of a problem in HN threads that this is a clarification worth making. We tried it out last year when we released special guidelines for Show HNs. It worked well there, so we're extending it to the whole site.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#52

Post by mwilkison »

I really like Recurse Center's (formerly Hacker School) social rules: https://www.recurse.com/manual#sub-sec-social-rules

They address some non-obvious behaviors that tend to stunt conversation. It'd be nice to see some of those guidelines bleed over into the HN community.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#53

Post by mwfunk »

webwanderings wrote: post #24
Udo wrote: post #8

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…

You are right. I read this somewhere, something along the lines ... that when you disagree with someone, you should first make sure to repeat and restate the arguments of the opponent you disagreeing with, in your own words, before making any of your own arguments.

I've never heard that before, but it's excellent advice. Sometimes I like to come up with the best argument I possibly can against my own beliefs (basically playing devil's advocate with myself) to better understand opposing viewpoints, but this is even better.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#55

Post by maxerickson »

moe wrote: post #45

Random idea: How about an extra pair of vote-buttons to classify a comment as "positive/negative" (karma-neutral)? I often find the karma-system frustratingly one-dimensional. Experiments in that direction are of course a slippery slope, but what place other than a hacker forum could be a better petri dish?

If we have extra buttons, let's have them be toggles like flag/unflag and name them something like "mean", "inane" and "misleading".

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#57

Post by happyscrappy »

maxerickson wrote: post #46
Udo wrote: post #8

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…

The corrections I find the most frustrating are the ones that attempt to frame something that is reasonably a difference of opinion as a black/white, right/wrong issue. A made up example using something that is about as subjective as possible: No, that's wrong, strawberries are awful. (just changing that to "I disagree, ..." gets rid of a lot of the nonsense) There also ends up being a lot of what is essentially squa…

The pedantic bickering is brutal because you cannot collapse threads.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#58

Post by decasteve »

When criticizing a post/article, either commenting about the subject of the article and/or the writer of the article, my rule of thumb is to put myself in their shoes. What if I was the person being written about? Or what if I was the author of the article?

Some comments would (and do) have a negative impact on me. Other more objective comments or advice, though still sometimes hard to take when it is criticism, should be expressed freely.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#59

Post by jseliger »

Udo wrote: post #8

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…

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

I don't even want charitable interpretation necessarily—I just want close reading and reasonably deep understanding of the topic! For example, the top reply to this comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8941152 totally misses the plot.

Looking through my recent comment history, though, I'm impressed at the overall quality of the responses.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#60

Post by dang »

baddox wrote: post #19

I 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…

From the OP:

Negativity isn't the problem--gratuitous negativity is. By that we mean negativity that adds nothing of substance to a comment. This includes all forms of meanness.

That's enough for reasonable people to get the idea. Trying to force precision here would take us down a rabbit hole.

Post reply on HN