Great move! HN is in dire need of this guideline. Someone could post the most amazing new project that they have worked months/years on, and the comments section would inevitably have comments like "this is rubbish, completely unusable, security flaws here and there" etc etc
New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
81–90 of 673 posts
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#82Feels 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.
This isn't a general news forum. The history of this board is not one of general news but items of specific interest and relevance to startups.
You may be describing what the board /should/ be, or what it set out to be, but judging by the threads actually being upvoted by users, you are incorrect. We've seen everything from tech pieces to startup culture threads to general interesting news being upvoted to the main page.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#83Sam Altman's response to all the criticism received on his article "Bubble talk."
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#84One 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…
Why should I try to interpret comments in the best possible light? I could make an effort to interpret them in the worst possible light, too. I have no reason to believe that internet commenters mean well.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#85That's OK, disagreeing with the hivemind (critiques of Google come to mind) gets you downvoted into oblivion anyways.
disagreeing with the hivemind Using terms like "the hivemind" (which doesn't exist) is actually a good example of the thing the new guideline covers!
...What are you doing? Talking about 'the hivemind' isn't under some sort of blanket ban, and you're shutting down a right to a viewpoint simply because you think it's 'too negative'?
This is exactly the kind of thinking that becomes prevalent in the atmosphere towards negativity engendered by HN.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this. Conflating disagreement with downvoting seems to be mixing unrelated concerns. It is currently inconvenient (in karma terms) to hold dissenting opinions.
My experience tends to be that if you can hold a dissenting opinion respectfully, and back up your assertions, HN treats it favorably in the long run. Holding a dissenting opinion without being willing to defend it with awareness of your audience's hostility to your ideas rarely goes over well in any forum, though.
Try saying anything critical about Apple and see if this strategy works out in practice.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#87One 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 tr…
I would like to say though that as someone who occasionally makes things, I do appreciate proper critique and I do like to hear about different view points.
Voicing legitimate and non-pedantic disagreement in a polite manner is to me one of the major features HN offers, simply because it's a collection of interesting people.
Myself, I don't always agree with the majority opinion either. For example, I disagree with Sam's opinion about AGI, and even though that particular comment was received quite badly, I never meant it to be anything else but an invitation to see things from another perspective.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The whole site needs rewriting and modernizing. Considering the audience, it's kind of shocking how stale it is.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#89One 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…
Agreed. This really got on my nerves a few weeks ago and I couldn't resist going meta (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9013259). There's even a Wikipedia article on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#90This is the worst idea ever. I'm generally a pretty negative person for a reason. Negative feedback is necessary for anything to actually get better.
And who or what decides what is "gratuitous". This is a recipe for despotism and censorship.