231–240 of 673 posts
I've had some people talk some mad shit about intercooler.js and yet, after engaging them a bit, I learned some very useful things.
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.
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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…
Since "you can happily go fuck yourself" is not in fact an argument, the principle of charity does not demand that you interpret it as anything more than a rude interjection. At its strongest, it would require you to assume that the commenter was legitimately upset and deeply invested in the argument, which would perhaps keep you from responding in kind.
I don't think even at its strongest the PoC would require you to assume that the commenter was legitimately upset, only that the commenter was intending to express that they were upset.
The PoC only applies to interpreting what the intended message is, not to conclusions about its justification as would be necessary to support the interpretation that the commenter was legitimately upset.
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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 bullshi…
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.
Perhaps instead of a down arrow the icon is a circle with a slash?
Seriously, it's a slippery slope. "Nothing of substance" is a term that needs more clarification that what that post provides. It seems to suggest that if the criticism is too harsh, then it's no longer substantial. I think there's a better guideline than that.
The best ideas not only can withstand criticism, they get better with criticism. If you examine what's being revealed about Apple and Steve Jobs -- the most successful company in the world right now -- it's not that they avoided criticism. And contrary to rumors it's not that they didn't nurture seemingly "dumb" ideas. Jobs would toss them out there all the time, by his own admission. Nurturing crazy young creative ideas and rigorous critical analysis are both part of Apple's process.
Apple's secret is that the criticism is directed at the idea not the person. That is what defines "nothing of substance": the target of the criticism, not the intensity. If it's about the idea, that's substantial, even if it's harsh. If it becomes personal, then that's truly not adding substance.
You "throw it in the cauldron" and then rigorously debate everything in the pot in a manner divorced from the people who contributed it. That's how you boil it down to the best stuff, not by holding back.
That sounds really interesting. I'm curious what kind of additional moderation capabilities this potentially includes. In particular, personally I'm less interested in the moderation ability to more heavily bury or downvote awful comments or stories, and more interested in the ability to "rescue" something that's been excessively flagged/downvoted.
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.
The first three rules are fine, but the fourth ("No subtle -isms") strikes me as rather hypocritical given the Recurse Center's policy of offering financial support only to favored minorities. They write [1] We want the Recurse Center to be a space with as little bigotry as possible in it. and yet their financial aid policies are explicitly discriminatory [2]: The Recurse Center is free for everyone, and we offer nee…
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That actually came from the original C2 Wiki, although it's been refactored (across sites apparently...it's now on MeatBall) significantly since I first came across it c. 2003: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AssumeGoodFaith I suspect it's a much older idea than that, probably dating back to the Enlightenment. It's closely related to the Principle of Charity, which was coined in 1958 but again, refers to a much older principl…
> That actually came from the original C2 Wiki That's fascinating! Has anyone traced it to its precise origin there? I'd love to see that.
http://web.archive.org/web/20020502092511/http://www.usemod....
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Sometimes it hurts to make sense and that is okay. An example being voted from hell to heaven and back and forth again and again is making your question triggering, meaning being nice is just a command and control like with linux top. I rarely resolve my (social(emotional)) system issues by just id removing and killing task. (Intergenerational traumas as much and as well as intergenerative gramma(r) traumma [sic]. Ae…
What the heck is a fluidic writer doing in this haunt of logic? Wonderful to stumble across your ologies; keep churning, spurning, turning the logos as you see fit, my friend.
=∫∫ Hurting here :/ Neighborhood webwatchers still pitchforking to make odd ends meet, even though we can also log and filter listening memercy with that tool memery, hunting predates and predominates gathering emotional-intelligence memresistors.