This is great. I hope the community rally around this and make it happen.
New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
281–290 of 673 posts
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That is gratuitously negative because you are not contributing anything to the conversation except your opinion. That doesn't explain at all why something would be "gratuitously negative". I can contribute my opinion that the sky is blue and provide no evidence or arguments. But if I only say "The sky is blue," and nothing else, then it doesn't look like I'm being "gratuitously negative".
My apologies. The question was asking if this statement was "gratuitously negative" or just "regular negative", so I thought we could take its negativity for granted. I would tend to agree with the original commenter that "horrible" is a negative word, and with you that "blue" is not. I hope that clears it up.
It's fine. I was being overly-pedantic. :)
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#283One 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…
Sadly it's spawned by the rampant ignorance most intellectual people face on a daily basis. This creates a cynicism and impulsive reaction to "check off" that perspective without vetting it further. This will be a good case study in guidelines that defy human behavior. It is tendency for many to go against this policy, which is why it was begat. Interesting how Y Combinator is wanting to thwart group think I welcome the spike.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
(For me) the kicker in your response was: than to give everyone the same amount of time and respect Who then, is worth of your time and/or respect? What is your criteria? Fine by me to have your opinion. But at least be able to back it up with some substance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ017D_JOPY&t=3m15s But I honestly fall into the other camp that believes respect should be given freely. BUT that lasts until you open your mouth and say something stupid. I've had "discussions" with people about whether or not MAtz Ruby had a GIL. You don't get my respect for holding that opinion and I have better things to do with my time than worry about your feelings. There's a cl…
You're setting up a huge strawman. The new guideline is not asking you to suffer fools. It's to give people the benefit of the doubt, because in online conversation, there is dramatically more room for interpretation than in face-to-face conversation.
HN doesn't have a problem with listening to knowledgeable people and speaking the blunt truth. It does, however, have a problem with civility, and addressing that by asking people to be a bit nicer does not merit a sky-is-falling response that straightforward honesty is going to be chucked out the window. Frankly, given the personality type here, there is no slippery slope anywhere in sight.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#285I 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.
One thing I like about stackexchange is how downvoting has a cost. I'd like to see downvoting on HN cost the person doing the voting at least 1 karma, maybe 2, maybe even 5 or 10.
yea, that's a good idea.
I would back this idea.
It would prevent people from hunting down someone, and downvoting all of the posts without penalty just because they didn't like them.
Though I'm not sure how much of a problem that is here.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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'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. Well, if a comment/post doesn't deserve your respect, why do you take time to reply to it to begin with? I always oppose to non tech savvy people saying "there are horrible things on the internet" that those are sorted out by themselves : what is bad is ignor…
I didn't say comment or post I said people.
See, this is why people get dismissed, because they do things like quote me and then attack something I never said.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#287Wow, this post has some hard core moralizing in it. The whole concept that a mean comment is going to prevent the next AirBnB. That may be the case, but it's unfalsifiable and straight up passing more judgement. I can do without that, personally. I mean, you seriously won't let Linus Torvalds post on HN?
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#288> Negativity isn't the problem--gratuitous negativity is. Is it just regular negative of me to say statements like that one are horrible, or it is gratuitously negative? Am I being a critical thinker when I say that, whenever I hear people make statement like that one, they are usually weaseling into some businessey doublespeak that roughly translates into "people like me can be negative, people like you cannot, but…
> Is it just regular negative of me to say statements like that one are horrible, or it is gratuitously negative? That is gratuitously negative because you are not contributing anything to the conversation except your opinion. While everyone tends to think their own opinion is an incredibly valuable gift to the world, the world rarely receives it as such. > Am I being a critical thinker when I say that, whenever I he…
First and foremost, I would like to have a friendly laugh at you deriding opinions, then following it up with a long post of your opinions.
But I don't have any criticism of what you said simply because it is your opinion. In fact, I (and many HNers) value the opinions of others (critical or otherwise), especially those of people who are especially intelligent or experienced. If opinions were worthless, the world would be stagnant. Great companies and great science has been done utilizing nothing more than opinions (one great scientist used his opinion that "God does not play dice with the universe" to drive his research).
Secondly, the quote I took can very reasonably be taken as the most important statement Sam made, and a statement on which the rest of his article depends on. I didn't infer motivation, though I did use anecdotes from my life experience (i.e. the empirical evidence you accuse me of lacking) to inform the way in which I interpret statements that follow the "morally speaking, x is good, but excessive x is bad" logical structure (which, no shit "[bad adjective] x is bad" is virtually a tautology).
And I'm sorry, but I have no clue what your last sentence has to do with anything. Sam presented zero examples of posts that are "gratuitously" negative, let alone numbers that support that this gratuitous negativity is rampant. Nevertheless, I do believe him that there is more ill-natured criticism than is ideal (mostly because every single community, online or otherwise, has this characteristic). Just his opinion that there is too much of the wrong type of criticism, and some information that he will be doing something about it. I offered another opinion that some others seem to share.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#289One 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
Your posting of this a little while back has caused me to think to myself "Geez, 'Principle of charity' would be useful here" over and over and over since you originally posted that. Really useful name to put to a concept like that. So. Thanks!
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#290While on this subject, I would like to see less downvoting for comments you don't agree with but are otherwise ok. Downvoting should be reserved for factually incorrect comments, trolling, meanness and other undesirable properties, not for a difference of opinion.