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New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

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Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#611

Post by stcredzero »

wamatt wrote: post #256
Udo wrote: post #8

One 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…

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…

I'll note that straw-man seems very common in language flame wars. Steelmanning in that specific context would tend to make one examine the particular context in which the language is most used and why. Come to think of it, many language discussions would vanish in a puffs of pointlessness if it weren't for the many levels of subtlety with which one can disguise straw-man.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#612

Post by tomjen3 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #600
tomjen3 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how toxic PC people are to debates (ironically exactly because the gratuitus negativity they bring) that is more than a defence mechanism that any healthy community needs to develop to protect itself. Political correctness should be considered the same as writing a negative comment.

You might get fewer downvotes if you define "PC" and offer some examples so we understand your perspective. Most people who rail against "being PC" are walking pits of gratuitous negativity, so people are probably assuming you're one of them.

PC: Political correctness.

Best example of my head: the developer on Node.js who got haunted to hell because he reversed a change from he to some gender-neutral term. For the feeling of some undefined person Node.js, and I suspect open source in general, lost a good developer.

Other example: after landing a satelite on a rock tens of thousands of miles away the lead of the rocket team is forced to make a tearful apology because is found to wear a shirt with semi-dress women and guns on it. Said shirt being made by his friend, who is a woman.

Other example: dongle gate, github metocracy.

So yeah, a few of these people may, sometimes, have a point, but the community will be much better of if we kick them out on sight.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#614

Post by mkr-hn »

tomjen3 wrote: post #612
mkr-hn wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might get fewer downvotes if you define "PC" and offer some examples so we understand your perspective. Most people who rail against "being PC" are walking pits of gratuitous negativity, so people are probably assuming you're one of them.

PC: Political correctness. Best example of my head: the developer on Node.js who got haunted to hell because he reversed a change from he to some gender-neutral term. For the feeling of some undefined person Node.js, and I suspect open source in general, lost a good developer. Other example: after landing a satelite on a rock tens of thousands of miles away the lead of the rocket team is forced to make a tearful apol…

This seems a bit different from my example: being attacked for using a less common term. In this case, the "PC police" (going by your examples) were the people attacking me because I used a term that offended them.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#615

Post by mike_hearn »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #136
bengali3 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, what if in downvoting a comment you had to pick a reason? What are all the reasons one would downvote something? "I do not agree" "I do not believe this adds value" "Inappropriate conduct" "I think you are being mean / rude" "Bad attempt at funny" "Off topic to parent" "Off topic to post" "Difficult to understand/Noise"

I don't have a strong opinion on whether that'd work, but it sounds a lot like the Slashdot comment moderation system. Perhaps someone with a good level of experience of posting on Slashdot can help shed some light on how it works out in practice.

I think it works well (been reading and posting to /. for about 15 years), and if I designed a forum then it'd work the same way. The trick is it forces you to justify your opinion in some way. There isn't a "-1 Disagree" or "+1 Right On" so to mod a comment you have to find some actual flaw with it, or justify why you think it should be raised above the rest. If you pick a dumb reason that clearly can't be justified based on the text, meta-moderators will wash things out later.

That said, it's not perfect. There are -1 Overrated and +1 Underrated mods. I would not have these if I was king for a day, because:

• They apparently somehow bypass meta-moderation, or have done in the past (!) so not surprisingly they get abused a lot

• They are vague and don't force you to justify what's good or bad about a post, in many cases I have seen abuse of these mod types devolve into reddit style agree/disagree modding

• They don't adjust the adjective that goes with the post, so for a long time and maybe still now you can get posts like +5 Troll or -1 Insightful, which is just confusing and generally bogus

Stripping out Underrated and Overrated would improve things a lot. I'd maybe make +1 Funny count for karma too because funny posts deliver a lot of value to the slashdot reading experience, IMO, and I see no problem with encouraging them.

I think the balance of adjectives is important though. There is no -1 Wrong or -1 Misinformed mod and that's important. If someone posts something polite, earnest and completely wrong there's no justifiable word to mod them down with. Instead you have to wait for a reply to correct them and then mod that up as Informative, Insightful etc.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#616

Post by jmilloy »

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 guess part of the problem is that there is disagreement about what the down vote is for. I try to think like this: I press the up and down arrows if I think something should be farther up or down on the page. Since the comment score was removed a while back, this approach is now more intuitive. Since I read from the top down, and will stop reading when the comments become uninteresting, it should also produce the desired effect. Whether I disagree with something is orthogonal to whether it is interesting or informative.

I do wish, however, that there were simply two voting options: one for up/down on the page and one for agree/disagree. Just to give us all something to do when we disagree with a comment, other than reply or downvote. It would give "disagree" downvotes their own place and let the other votes dictate a comment display order and user karma. Of course, it would also be interesting to see a user with high karma and high disagree score, for example.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#617

Post by david927 »

staunch wrote: post #39
Udo wrote: post #8

One 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…

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…

he knew it was a hit because of how many people were saying negative things

Most get negative reviews, few are hits. The irony is that I've seen that thread and I thought it was generally well-received.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#618

Post by krick »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #314

It is with great joy and positive vibrations that I receive this real world implementation of a few worthy ideas from the amazing Psycho-Pass[1] anime series. Cynicism is not conducive to peaceful productivity and it should be gracefully eliminated. Preferably by silencing gratuitously negative voices, for the common good of the cheerfully desperate community of Silicon Valley and by extension - the world. [1]: http:…

Wow. That's pretty subtle.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#619

Post by tomjen3 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #614
tomjen3 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PC: Political correctness. Best example of my head: the developer on Node.js who got haunted to hell because he reversed a change from he to some gender-neutral term. For the feeling of some undefined person Node.js, and I suspect open source in general, lost a good developer. Other example: after landing a satelite on a rock tens of thousands of miles away the lead of the rocket team is forced to make a tearful apol…

This seems a bit different from my example: being attacked for using a less common term. In this case, the "PC police" (going by your examples) were the people attacking me because I used a term that offended them.

They attacked you because they assume, incorrectly, that you were one of the PC people, because you used a PC term, not just a less common term. This isn't unreasonable and the cost of letting PC people in is high.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#620

Post by dang »

solve wrote: post #607
dang wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Dang, what's the percentage of active / new users who visit the guidelines page? Can you measure this in the website analytics? > Rules don't communicate themselves, but culture does. At this point, you should really just copy the methods that Producthunt used to shape their community culture. Their strategy was perfect. In PH's case, it wasn't some intangible culture persuading people how to act, it was the founders…

I think that would be going too far. There are many ways to comment substantively and civilly. Being supportive and friendly isn't absolutely required.
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