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New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

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Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#201

Post by EdSharkey »

Must comments be soothing and agreeable to be appreciated at all? Is it okay to be caustic if you're also making a good point?

For example, I often say intentionally chaotic things in relation to Microsoft stories because we have a history and this reflects my current impression of that company.

That said, I find a lot of their recent changes, open source contributions, and future plans very agreeable and sometimes amazing and I try to point that out.

So, is it ok to dredge up their past transgressions if I can simultaneously make positive observations regarding MSFT's future?

Even though I tinge towards the negative/chaos, I notice that I can 'score' better with people whenever I put effort into the quality of my writing.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#202

Post by ThrustVectoring »

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.

That reads like some of the mediation or non-violent communication advice I've heard.

The point is that it lets people feel like they've been heard and understood.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#203

Post by tptacek »

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 also like the (related) idea of an Ideological Turing Test:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#204

Post by mreiland »

staunch wrote: post #39
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…

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 think you nailed the real problem, which is that people have become so quick to write off anyone who ruffles their feathers at all.

I'm quick to write off people and I won't apologize for it. I have better things to do with my time than to give everyone the same amount of time and respect.

If HN has decided to be touchy feely than this most certainly isn't the place for me. I prefer actual discourse where bullshit opinions are called out as such.

edit: shit you guys, can't you go with the reading my comment charitably or will you hit that downvote button again, thereby showing your hypocrisy?

I love the internet, I really do.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#205

Post by discreteevent »

danellis wrote: post #88
happyscrappy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering the audience you might be right. I'm not a typical audience member. I read in the evening on a phone with a slow 2.5g connection. For that reason I use opera mini. HN works perfectly on it and the combination of the browser and whatever it is HN does for layout means I can load a HN page faster than anything else on the web. It doesn't seem to matter how many comments there are. So I hope it doesn't change. But you are right. I'm not typical.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#206

Post by Crito »

dman wrote: post #26
dsugarman wrote: post #15

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.

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.

Downvotes not being for disagreement is an absurd redditism. Upvotes are used for agreement, so it is only natural that downvotes are used for disagreement.

PG has stated in the past that downvoting things you disagree with is proper usage on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691

I don't know if 'dang has changed this policy, but if so I haven't heard about it.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#208

Post by SCHiM »

danellis wrote: post #88
happyscrappy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe, the looks of HN have helped protect the community against trolls. Everybody knows internet commenting is crude, rude and awful more often than not. In my opinion HN is a glorious example of an online community done right and I'm not sure we should change the site.

But who knows, maybe it will even be better if it gets a little make-over.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#209

Post by tptacek »

danellis wrote: post #88
happyscrappy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's true if you assume that every feature moves the community forward. But not all of them do; many features regress us. For instance: unlike on Reddit, there's no indication when someone's responded to one of your questions. As a result, very few arguments last more than a few hours here.

I'm particularly leery of collapsible threads, although my understanding is we're about to get them anyways.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#210

Post by dang »

angersock wrote: post #167
dang wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I try to interpret comments in the best possible light? Because doing so contributes to the community and not doing so harms it. When you respond to the strongest interpretation of a comment, you're responding to what's most substantive in it. That raises the signal/noise ratio for everybody, and curiosity is what we're trying to optimize for.

There is a different between the "strongest" interpretation of a comment and the "best possible light". For example, if somebody tells me "Angersock, you can go happily fuck yourself", I'm not going to expect them to be wishing me a rousing and cheerful round of masturbation--that is the "best possible light", but not the "strongest interpretation". Properly handled, assuming the worst of a comment, articulating the…

You're responding to a pretty weak interpretation of what we're talking about here. :) The point is to address the strongest plausible interpretation of what another is saying. It's pretty well-established what the Principle of Charity means [1]. (By the way, you can see from [2] that there's an ongoing discussion about formalizing it for HN.)

I don't think it's a stretch, mutatis mutandis, to take even a comment like "go fuck yourself" charitably. It could, indeed probably mostly does, mean "I'm angry about something unrelated."

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

2. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:dang%20principle%20of%2...

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