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New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

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Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#501

Post by gojah »

dang wrote: post #380
lnanek2 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good point. I'd be much happier if they said the new guidelines is no personal attacks. That's very clear and easy to check. Instead we end up with this slippery slope of certain types of negativity vs. others and all it really means is the mods have a blank check to remove anything they don't like that isn't meaningless happy fun compliments.

As Sam pointed out, gratuitous negativity has always been against the guidelines. Personal attacks are, too, of course. The way this stuff really works out is in practice, so judge it based on what you see actually happening on HN. The intention here is pretty modest: to nudge the community slightly in the hope that the culture will grow a little more aligned with the guidelines. We're not interested in false positiv…

> As Sam pointed out, gratuitous negativity has always been against the guidelines. Personal attacks are, too, of course.

And yet you were okay with letting jacquesm escalate a dispute by adding more personal attacks to a tread after banning somebody.

You're weak tea.

You lack the courage to tell popular, high-karma users when they've also stepped over the line. You're only willing to attack newbies.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#502

Post by brazzledazzle »

mreiland wrote: post #489
brazzledazzle wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you write off people, but not what they say? Since this comment was made in the context of HN, I assume your avenue for determining if you're going to write them off is their posts and comments.

brazzle, please stop. I don't really know why you've chosen to follow me around across multiple sites like this, but I wasn't even the only one trying to talk you down out of your addiction. no good deed ever goes unpunished, eh?

I have no idea what you're talking about, I don't play that video game. What site do you think we had this discussion on?

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#504

Post by JoshTriplett »

protomyth wrote: post #494
JoshTriplett wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really good idea; you shouldn't just be able to restate the opposing argument as a devil's advocate, you should be able to understand all the arguments well enough to make them as effectively as any advocate. And you shouldn't sound like a caricature of that position unless all advocates of that position sound equally ridiculous.

"you shouldn't sound like a caricature of that position unless all advocates of that position sound equally ridiculous" No, you owe it to yourself to make the best possible argument for the other side's position. It might still sound ridiculous in the end, but you really want to nail it and understand the argument. If for no other reason to expand your thinking on your side. Sadly, you probably should also understand…

> No, you owe it to yourself to make the best possible argument for the other side's position. It might still sound ridiculous in the end, but you really want to nail it and understand the argument. If for no other reason to expand your thinking on your side.

I think we're saying the same thing. I was suggesting that in some cases, the arguments really don't hold water at all, and there's no way to make them sound otherwise. In which case, if you're attempting to pass a Turing-like test for sounding like someone advocating that position, you're going to sound equally ridiculous.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#505

Post by josephagoss »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #500

This is just a terrible idea. Will I have this comment flagged for expressing this? A thought experiment. If you and some others are in a car, and it's just driven off a cliff, and as you are falling you say to the other occupants, "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here!" is that gratuitous negativity? No, it's the truth. Most people, in this car, don't want to hear the truth. As they…

Please correct me if I am wrong, but the way I read the OP was that negativity without reason is one part of the issue.

In your case of the car falling off a cliff, perhaps it is gratuitous negativity to say "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here!" but it's not gratuitous negativity to say "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here because this car is falling towards the ground at high speed due to gravity and motion and we're all about to die!"

I think if there is at least some reasoning shown with the negativity, the argument is more clear and others can learn from it.

Again, I could have misunderstood both the OP and your comment, if so I apologize.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#506

Post by brazzledazzle »

danellis wrote: post #311
SCHiM wrote: post #208

Earlier 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…

I'm not sure what made reddit turn so bad (and I mostly mean the default subreddits and the subscribers rather than the site itself) but I hope that some care is taken to avoid it. HN is a breath of fresh air compared to reddit and I would endure a lot of bad UX if it helped keep it that way.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#507

Post by notduncansmith »

castis wrote: post #436
pain wrote: post #382

How does a steel man reflect? How does a steel man reflect about problems? How does a steel man reflect about problem solving? How does a steel man reflect about problem solving if it is broken? How does a steel man reflect about problem solving if it is broken (and hurting to describe (something unsaid (difficult to (just block (list (listen))))? Robo swears robo cares a (alpha proto) race is healthier. Recreating r…

You wouldn't happen to know of a tutorial on how to understand all the things you just said, would you?

I would try reading up on Markov chains.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#508

Post by XorNot »

aptwebapps wrote: post #483
ademarre wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people often tend to misread or miserunderstand what's being said This is like the phenomenon examined in this 2005 paper: Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?[1] From the abstract: > Without the benefit of paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation, it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over electronic mail. [...] this limitation is often underappreciated, su…

Another factor, although probably less prominent, is responsiveness. Back when I used to code on a MUD I noticed that conversations on one of the messages boards were much more likely to heat up than chat sessions. Just being able to react and clarify things from one sentence to the next makes a big difference. I suppose it's possible there's also some sort of face-to-face feel with chat that encourages sympathetic r…

I'd say social cues are important. When you write in text you're really speaking in the tone and voice of someone's mind - which means their current emotional state, perception of the writer etc.

The only reliable way I've found to make text only social interaction work is basically to be what feels like overly nice. Which manages to average out to a casual conversation in the real world - I think. I mean who knows?

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#509

Post by danellis »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #506
danellis wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure what made reddit turn so bad (and I mostly mean the default subreddits and the subscribers rather than the site itself) but I hope that some care is taken to avoid it. HN is a breath of fresh air compared to reddit and I would endure a lot of bad UX if it helped keep it that way.

> I'm not sure what made reddit turn so bad

Popularity, I guess. It became a very general interest site that covers a wide range of interests, and therefore appeals to an equally wide range of visitors -- including those with, shall we say, poor taste and etiquette. HN, on the other hand, is largely centered around the working programmer, a group of people who, for the most part, are looking for something interesting rather than memetic jibber jabber.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#510

Post by [deleted] »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #506
danellis wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure what made reddit turn so bad (and I mostly mean the default subreddits and the subscribers rather than the site itself) but I hope that some care is taken to avoid it. HN is a breath of fresh air compared to reddit and I would endure a lot of bad UX if it helped keep it that way.

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