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

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#641

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 8:12 PM UTC

cw0 wrote: post #580

cw0 wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and you got downvoted. It's absolutely ridiculous that a forum like HN supposedly frequented by the best and brightest has so many immature children.

I've lost almost all of my karma on this thread and not a single comment as to why I'm being downvoted (-7 points or so). The original article is right that HN has become an incredibly negative community. Downvoting is the internet equivalent of saying "fuck you." So many people want to tell me to shut up but no one will actually say one word why?

> but no one will actually say one word why?

Here's a word about why. Your comments were rightly downvoted because they didn't contain any information. They lashed out at something you happen to dislike, using phrases like "immature children" that merely vent personal displeasure and offer nothing of value to the community. If HN threads are a swimming pool, that is peeing in it.

HN has a long history of users repeating the same complaints about downvoting. These get downvoted because they lower the signal/noise-ratio. They are such a cliché that the guidelines have for many years contained a rule asking you specifically not to post that kind of comment.

If, instead of familiarizing yourself with any of this and taking your lumps like the rest of us do, you decide to post such things anyway, the only surprise is that they aren't downvoted more.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#642

Post by protomyth » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 8:21 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #637

protomyth wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The costs of negativity and discouragement are difficult to judge because they usually take the form of opportunity costs which aren't directly visible. That has nothing to do with anything I have said. You have unfairly added an assumption to my comment and asserted I said something I did not. Saying that going too far on one side of an activity is bad does not imply that the other side is better. You have basical…

Just a reminder that this subthread is litigating the value of unwarranted and insubstantial negativity.

Yes, which I believe has been demonstrated on one of my comments by stating a position that I did not take. I can think of no worse source of the two things you mention than forcing a position on someone who didn't take it.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#643

Post by tomjen3 » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 8:46 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #640

tomjen3 wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a "PC word." I like the way the word sounds more, so I use it. Word choice is my prerogative as a writer.

It is a PC word. Your choice of word is as you said, your prerogative. How people read it is theirs.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#644

Post by solve » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 8:56 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #638

solve wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting choice of metrics. I'll just point out this community culture difference: - Mods on sites like PH tend to measure quality by the results of how the comments are likely to affect the post's creator. E.g. Could a comment contribute to preventing the next AirBnB from happening. No metrics that can be gamed to get around that. - HN mods seem to be measuring quality through simple crude metrics like civility a…

> Trying to put this in the nicest way, the HN mods come across as autistic and emotionally detached The nicest way? :) Assumptions that work at one scale stop working at the next, which is one reason this stuff is hard. You're making assumptions about "regular persons" and what's "very easy" that aren't true of the HN community as a whole. We couldn't enforce those by decree even if we wanted to.

I can see what you mean about the scaling problems.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#645

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

smoyer wrote: post #609

My comments (depending on my mood) will often include "Snark" while still making a point. I suspect I'm going to get down-voted much more often if the community decides that down-votes are the way to enforce this. I don't mind being down-voted occasionally but I'd rather not be hell-banned - I think I still contribute to the community overall. I (previously) used the average karma/contribution on my profile page to s…

If worried, you can always email us at hn@ycombinator.com to get a reading on what's going on (not that we always know). But really, don't worry about it. Of course you're a positive contributor. Truly negative contributors, by the way, never worry about this.

We got rid of average because (a) after looking extensively at the data we didn't see any value in it, (b) we had evidence of people gaming the metric, (c) its implementation was complicated, and most importantly (d) we think upvotes are wrong thing to optimize for. Optimize for saying substantive things.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#646

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

daliwali wrote: post #631

I was thinking that the only possible effect that this policy could have is the complete removal of outsiders (I consider myself one, rarely chiming in on HN), and eventually even insiders will simply migrate elsewhere for meaningful discussion that is not happening on this website.

Why would you think that? We're very concerned with not excluding outsiders. One of the great strengths of the internet is the potential for anyone to make a substantive contribution. Indeed, making substantive contributions should be the way to become an insider (or the healthy equivalent of that concept) on Hacker News.

There are some fair criticisms to be made of HN being a little insular and exclusive. (The leader board, for example—not that we emphasize it or even like it—moves in geological time.) We plan eventually to work on that to encourage more up-and-comers. But how a guideline against gratuitous negativity could discourage any outsiders except trolls is beyond me. It's dismaying that anyone would think so, so please let us know your concerns.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#647

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

mncolinlee wrote: post #558

I have an idea related to this guideline. Good tools already exist to do automated sentiment analysis. It would be extremely interesting to build forum software for HN that detects when a commenter is going too far with negativity and then gently guides that person to tone it down a bit while the comment is still being composed. Maybe a few gentle prompts at the right moment is all it really takes.

I'd love to be wrong about this, but believe that the sentiment tools are too crude to rely on. They tend to get the nuances of conversation wrong, and those are the life blood of HN threads.

We do intend to try it, though, when we have the cycles. It might be useful as a supplement, or if nothing else a fun experiment.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#648

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 9:41 PM UTC

bootload wrote: post #578

"Modnesty --to turn more moderation power over to the community." Q. Does everyone get equal access to moderation? If so, will equal access cause a skew in moderation?

As equal as the current access is to flagging, unless we see evidence that that won't work.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#649

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 10:10 PM UTC

unconed wrote: post #630

jseliger wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

disagreeing with the hivemind Using terms like "the hivemind" (which doesn't exist) is actually a good example of the thing the new guideline covers!

Getting upset over a term like "the hivemind" is exactly the kind of thing that turns off true rational debaters, and sets you on the path to a self-reinforcing validation box. Uncomfortable truths will always be unpleasant. Spot on criticism will always make people feel stupid. You cannot be nice and be right all the time. Furthermore, experience has shown that there are in fact a bunch of topics that are anathema h…

[deleted]

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#650

Post by kolbe » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 11:09 PM UTC

owtM wrote: post #629

kolbe wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that's what you think. At some point, you picked up a very linear path in life, and you think any deviation from that line constitutes some form of imperfection. It's why you're probably great at coding or math, but suffer in some other areas of life. Why should you listen to someone who doesn't write like a robot? For one, it is boring to listen to people who communicate that way. Read some Gaddis or Pynchon.…

> I choose to speak the way I do because I would rather risk alienating people like you by being myself than to allow the world to mold me based on some ill-informed[1] perception of what I think the other people in this world are like. This very admirable and evident in this comment thread. I don't agree with everything you've been saying, but the sense of genuiness found in the way you've expressed yourself here is…

Thanks bud. It is appreciated.