But now Bitcoin haters will have nothing to say!
New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
361–370 of 673 posts
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#362One 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…
Yup. Not just comments, always trying to find the alleged negative aspects of everything and clinging only onto that, without so much as acknowledging other possibilities. This is the reason I stopped reading HN as much, just as I stopped reading comments everywhere else on the internet. I don't want to tiptoe through arguments trying to preventively push aside all possible misinterpretations or people trying to put…
I don't mind the negativity on HN and sometimes it's even helpful if I can avoid getting upset, but the negative comments on Amazon really make it hard to decide what to buy.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#363Great 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
People saying it is useless are useful, however, because you can see why it is useless to them and either accept it isn't part of your target market or change the product to include them. People just saying great things when they aren't allowed to be negative is kind of meaningless and unhelpful.
> People saying it is useless are useful, however, because you can see why it is useless to them
No, people saying why it is useless (which is grounded, not gratuitous, negativity at worst) are useful for that reason. People merely saying that it is useless are not useful.
> People just saying great things when they aren't allowed to be negative is kind of meaningless and unhelpful.
A community guideline against gratuitous negativity cannot reasonably be expected to result in "people saying great things when they aren't allowed to be negative" because people are still allowed to be negative, and, in any case, people saying positive things with explanations are just as useful as people saying negative things with explanations.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
very few arguments last more than a few hours here.
Very few posts last more than a few hours here :)
There have been times where I've gone to bed, then checked HN in the morning, and some huge issue or release has happened, there's a quality thread with hundreds of comments, and it's largely inactive because everyone's had their say already, so they're not checking for new stuff.
I'm not supporting reply alerts as I also think they'll do more harm than good, just noting that posts come and go pretty quickly.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#365One 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.
Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that the debate concerns a non-subjective question, so it has a right answer, only it is unknown which it is.
The best outcome for HN is if we as a community converge on the right answer.
Now if someone brings argues poorly, but for the right answer, and then someone comes along and crushes the poor argument. Then the counter-arguer "wins" and succeeds in humiliating the "opponent". But the the wrong answer wins, and that is bad for the community
If on the other hand, someone comes along, reinforces the poor argument, and then brings a weak counterargument, then that gives the right answer a better chance of winning.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#366I find the broadness of this guideline really worrisome and likely to exacerbate bad traits HN has developed. It's going to be extremely easy, I invite you to watch for this, to broadly apply it to whatever is against the prevailing groupthink, and selectively exclude the prevailing groupthink. For example, "shallow cynicism" about favorites like Wikileaks will be mercilessly punished, as already happens by downvote, but by contrast "shallow cynicism" about enemies like the US Government is de rigueur here, so pointing out that it is shallow cynicism will be mercilessly punished - now with additional reinforcement from staff due to the "negativity" guideline.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
You missed my point, have a good day.
Then let's discuss what I missed, perhaps I did misunderstand you. Let's start again from this, do you agree with the golden rule? What does it mean to you? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule
You're not going to get anywhere by throwing discussion questions at him like this is a school exercise.
You missed his point and he's gone.
Edit: Oh, don't mind me, I'm just dwelling on how you seem to be in some starry-eyed optimistic we're-all-in-this-together quest to "further understanding" in a pit of petty verbal combat.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think features can benefit the individual without damaging the community. For example, AJAX enabled replies would leave me in the place I was reading, rather than taking me back to the top of the page, requiring me to hit 'back' twice after every comment. It would be nice if the 'next' link always worked too, instead of just throwing an error if you're browsing too slowly. Email replies are covered by HN Notify, wh…
"It would be nice to have a simple Reddit-style red envelope, though, rather than clicking my username, then 'Comments' to see if I've had replies."
I agree that a notification of replies would be useful. Small tip, instead of clicking your username then clicking on comments, which is something I did for a long time too, just click on the threads link at the top of the page. Takes you to the same content, but in one click rather than two.
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
A related issue is people downvoting comments that they haven't properly comprehended. Instead of asking "why do you think x" or "do you mean x" they just downvote the comment. Sometimes it happens with controversial comments, even when the controversial comment is based on facts. Sometimes going against HN groupthink (e.g. saying something bad about libertarianism) results in downvotes. EDIT: I'm surprised that I go…
> EDIT: I'm surprised that I got a downvote on this comment. I think that illustrates the problem. I think it illustrates the problem with "sometimes UI elements get clicked without intent" and "HN has no way to undo up/downvotes". In fact, I can say that with authority, since I was the one who made the accidental click.
This seems not to be the only reason:
There seems to be a consistent tendency that some people downvote comments not because the comments are wrong but because accepting the comment would undermine their position/opinion. See anything that touches into google/apple/feminism
Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are threads where expressing a well formed, well reasoned, well supported but contrary opinion runs the risk of downvotes to greyness. The root of the problem is inevitably that the topic of the thread is a poor fit for HN at that particular point in time [and perhaps always]. A symptom of the problem is that such threads tempt so many people to express their opinion for the sake of expressing it. I get lured i…
What about topics that are important and relevant to HN but invoke a polarised opinion on HN? My concerns can be summarized into a single question - If HN had existed historically with the rules as they exist currently, would Georg Cantor have thrived in it?
> If HN had existed historically with the rules as they exist currently, would Georg Cantor have thrived in it?
I doubt it. Unconventional ideas that are orders of magnitude less radical than Cantor's get reduced to convention and dismissed all the time on HN. It's dismaying. But it is what human beings do, and especially what human beings in groups do. HN can't change that by proclaiming rules. Maybe we can mitigate it a little, such as by asking people to avoid gratuitous negativity.