New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity • Hacker News Board

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#581

Post by zrail » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 12:37 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #545

vitd wrote: post #490

I think I agree with the spirit of this guideline, but I have serious doubts that it can work. Here's why: I joined HN a year or two ago. I didn't go back and read any posts written before I joined. Anyone joining after today will have no idea that this is the way things are supposed to be. Further, I suspect (though I hope I'm wrong) that a rule like this could end up causing the same issues that people here complai…

> I think I agree with the spirit of this guideline, but I have serious doubts that it can work. Let's see. HN is experimental, and this is just another experiment. If it works, it will be because community members help shift the culture in a higher-quality direction. That, by the way, is also how newcomers find out about these things. Rules don't communicate themselves, but culture does.

Putting the rules on the comment page might help, though. Not just a link, either, but the whole set of guidelines, along with a statement to the effect that, by posting, you agree to abide by the guidelines. A constant reminder that this is a community with certain expectations of it's members.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#582

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 12:40 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #319

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 would like downvoting to require an explanation. It could be a single-line text box with the label "Explain why". If you're serious about downvoting, it's no trouble to type in a short explanation such as "incorrect", "not funny", "obvious troll", "unnecessarily rude". (Those seem to be some typical reasons for downvotes.) And if you're not quite sure why you're downvoting, having to explain would certainly serve a…

[deleted]

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#583

Post by frostmatthew » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 12:43 PM UTC

washadjeffmad wrote: post #428

frostmatthew wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm particularly leery of collapsible threads May I ask why? As someone who considers that the one change/improvement I'd like to see on HN I'm curious what there is to be leery of that I may not have considered.

Because this isn't like reddit where the most upvoted comments are elevated in otherwise collapsed threads. I've only read some of the most insightful and interesting comments and discussions on HN buried most of the way down the page because they were available for me to see despite their lack of being voted on. On HN, popularity isn't valuable, the ideas are, and non-precollapsed threads support that.

> Because this isn't like reddit where the most upvoted comments are elevated in otherwise collapsed threads.

HN supporting collapsible threads doesn't mean automatically collapsing threads.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#584

Post by krapp » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 1:01 PM UTC

washadjeffmad wrote: post #428

frostmatthew wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm particularly leery of collapsible threads May I ask why? As someone who considers that the one change/improvement I'd like to see on HN I'm curious what there is to be leery of that I may not have considered.

Because this isn't like reddit where the most upvoted comments are elevated in otherwise collapsed threads. I've only read some of the most insightful and interesting comments and discussions on HN buried most of the way down the page because they were available for me to see despite their lack of being voted on. On HN, popularity isn't valuable, the ideas are, and non-precollapsed threads support that.

That concern could easily be remedied by having thread collapsing be an optional setting in your account. I personally think having every thread collapse after a certain depth would make it much easier to tell which threads are probably worth looking deeper into.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#585

Post by krapp » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 1:14 PM UTC

ptaipale wrote: post #573

krapp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolls exist on HN, I assure you. They're not scared off by the simplicity of the layout.

They exist but they are not that many. The spartan layout might be one reason.

There might be a correlation, but I doubt it's a strong one. Maybe there just aren't that many unique accounts here, and this isn't a particularly mainstream site. There are reasons to be turned off of Hacker News that go beyond the layout.

Imageboards can have pretty low-tech and annoyingly obtuse UX as well but trolls adapt and abound because there are no user accounts and they know they have an audience. Most of the trolling I think i've seen here has been done through throwaway accounts, so who knows whether or not those are sockpuppets of existing accounts or people showing up from /g/ to have some fun?

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#586

Post by mkr-hn » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 1:30 PM UTC

sjy wrote: post #547

wamatt wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment brings to mind the concept of the the steel man [1][2] . Steelmanning an argument means to go one step further. In addition to selecting the most charitable parts of another person's argument, one seeks to improve on it, by making it the best possible representation of the other persons position. From there, one can offer their own counterpoint, to this improved version. [1] https://themerelyreal.wordpre…

At the risk of further derailing the thread, I wonder if there might be a more inclusive term than 'steel man' — I don't feel great about using that phrase to describe 'the best possible representation of a position.' (The issue is fresh in my mind, since I stumbled across the gender-neutral alternative 'straw person'[1] this morning.) [1] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2013/18.html , para 21.

I was attacked for being "PC" the last time I used straw person here on HN. I just thought it sounded better, but the poster was adamant that I was responsible for all the ills in society.

Hopefully, this new guideline will avert similar incidents.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#587

Post by krebby » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #442

krebby wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If negative, anonymous feedback here disuades and disenchants them, what hope is there? Absolutely. See Dropbox's Show HN, the slashdot iPod announcement, and every other worthwhile product ever. As a community we're pretty bad at picking successes.

People are also erroneously overrating things all the time. The problem with our predictions isn't a skew to negativity, just the normal inability to predict the future due to lack of knowledge.

There's also a definite survivorship bias (and an equally strong failure bias) to remember only the outliers. Most ideas fall squarely in the middle and we promptly forget about them.

(obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1497/)

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#588

Post by notacoward » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #404

throwawaymaroon wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online discussion simply isn't the same as being in a room with someone, or more precisely, it's a type of 'room' all its own. We're not being introduced to each other by mutual acquaintances who then have to get along with one another for the remainder of an evening. We're not even at a house party in a city we've never been to before meeting people that may become good friends. Nor are we at a press conference aski…

The flaw in your argument is its assumption that the community would remain intact under such poisoning. When the threads degenerate, smart people leave. When smart people leave, the threads get less substantive. That vicious cycle leads to the death of the community, not the vital online place where people are free to speak their minds which you're positing. HN started as [1] and remains an experiment in seeing whet…

There's an old saying that poison is in the dose, not the substance. Many things are therapeutic in one quantity, fatal in another. An innovative community needs some of that nootropic "poison" once in a while. We already have social pressure and technical mechanisms (upvotes and downvotes) to deal with these differences of opinion about whether negativity is warranted. Over-policing such things, by declaring criticism as "gratuitous" even when the justification for it is clear, won't improve diversity of opinion. Au contraire. Comments that are negative but in accordance with established opinion will be deemed non-gratuitious. Comments which challenge the zeitgeist will - in the very moment of their greatest fragility as they're introduced to the community - be stamped out as gratuitous precisely because they're unique.

The answer to "negativity killing the next AirBnB" is that over-policing negativity will give us nothing but AirBnB. That's not a good outcome either.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#589

Post by Dewie » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

It's simple to be mean on HN. You just have to hide it in some layers of passive aggression and snark. I guess now you need to add another layer. Yay.

HN has got an army of people with overinflated sense of self and importance. I guess people calling them on their self-delusional bullshit is "gratuitous negativity". What a bunch of assholes.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#590

Post by mkr-hn » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #222

tptacek wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also like the (related) idea of an Ideological Turing Test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test

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.

I ended a debate with a local firebrand Baptist with a simple question. He insisted atheists are immoral, so I said: "It sounds like you're saying I'm immoral."

"It does sound a little ridiculous when you put it that way. You seem like a decent person, if a little more sinful than average."

Apparently he was so used to talking exclusively to other religious people that he assumed everyone shared the same concept of morality, which for him was tied up in religious law. It didn't occur to him that alternate morality frameworks (like humanism) could exist, so he assumed atheists were immoral.