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Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

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Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#101

Post by _cbsz »

bpyne wrote: post #100
_cbsz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So assume it's that your comment fell into the "noise" category and work harder on producing "signal" next time. We don't need to have a discussion every time someone felt that some post did not contribute sufficiently to the discussion.

The noise category assumption is a fair one. "Work harder" is a vague recommendation. Are there more specific recommendations you could make? No, a discussion would create noise, which would not be valuable for the HN community. A voluntary, anonymous, tip about what made the downvoted comment noise would be more than sufficient. To avoid it becoming a discussion, no reply would be allowed. (Just to throw a half-bake…

    The noise category assumption is a fair one. "Work harder" is a vague recommendation. Are there more specific recommendations you could make?
Don't post just because you can. Don't echo comments others have made. Don't post "obligatory" comments or content-free Reddit memes. Say something meaningful that is not immediately obvious.

Don't treat post writing as an exercise in upvotability optimization.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#102

Post by invisible »

bpyne wrote: post #32

As long as someone has opened up a guideline discussion.... "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." Agreed in full. However, downmodding without constructive criticism leaves the downmodded with no sense of what to improve in the next comment. A downmod could easily be due to underdeveloped point, style, or disagreement about an opinion. At least 2 of the 3 re…

I think if a post goes -1, anyone else downmodding should have to reply to be allowed to downmod them again. I am all for the karma system, but I have had situations where people misinterpret what I am saying and after requesting a "why," I find out changing one word makes people understand to the point of me not being negative. (And burying a dissenting opinion for no reason should need a defense.)

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#103

Post by TGJ »

steveklabnik wrote: post #98
TGJ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up votes instead of 'thanks' would seem to me to remove any kind of interaction that helps foster a community. If people knew who up voted their post then that would not be a problem.

Saying thanks in and of itself isn't bad, but some additional substance would be nice. Compare these two comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644924 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644906 Which would you rather see more of? One highlights something specific, says 'this is really important to me,' and gives thanks... and the other says nothing, really.

I understand what you are saying and I see the merit of having more content to a thank you post, but if it is not there is that in and of itself a warrant for a down vote? Sure you want more and more is sometimes great, but there is still a lot of substance in a simply 'Thank you' to be had. While the comment definitely does not merit an up vote, neither does it warrant a down vote. I would almost hazard to say that you no longer appreciate the value of the thanks itself and simply see it as a customary response that after being used so many times, no longer has any meaning. I see that you want "Thanks, (and here's why)" but what exactly are you worried about with having a few thank you posts?

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#104

Post by techiferous »

binspace wrote: post #59
georgecmu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst trend I see is comments getting downvoted based on opinions expressed within, not on how poorly they are expressed. No matter how thoughtful a comment, if it goes against the groupthink, you can expect it to hurt your karma.

I like /.'s tagging of comments. It's good feedback on why something was up or down modded. It also forces a downvoter to justify why something is getting downvoted.

Yes. I think a simple tweak of having two ways to vote could be an interesting new dynamic: agree/disagree and valuable/not valuable. That way you can express that you disagree with a comment but still upvote them for furthering the discussion. And you can hit the "not valuable" button for insults, trolls, fluff comments, etc.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#106

Post by sabat »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
spoondan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not arguing for URL shorteners to be permitted. He's arguing that the prohibition should be made upfront.

How much more up-front than seeing your link go 'dead' could it be? After all it's not like anybody reads the guidelines linked above anyway before submitting a link, especially not if they're old hands (and most likely not even if they're not). Maybe a message could be added to the submission process that said: "You've used a URL shortener, bang , you're dead", but that's pretty obviously the reason why. After all,…

The URL shortener was just an example -- just one example. My point is not about bit.ly or anything like it.

My point is: there are apparently a bunch of rules, and I don't have the sense that I understand them. Worse, I have the sense that asking about the rules is frowned upon. I find this a little chilling, and it seems to fly in the face of the quasi-libertarian spirit I generally find on HN.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#107

Post by mkr-hn »

I try to be a good new person who follows the rules. :)

The rating system is probably the only one I've seen work this well. When I see myself getting downvoted, it tells me pretty clearly that I need to go and reconsider what I posted.

The apparent degradation in quality is probably because the average quality of discussion on the internet has declined as more people entered the melee. It'll probably go back up as new combatants start to get better at expressing their ideas. That, or it'll become so hopelessly unproductive that everyone will collectively decide the internet was a bad idea.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#108

Post by techiferous »

A reminder from the guidelines:

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.

And some recent examples of comments here on HN:

"All you have is a pink blouse and a pathological case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder" -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644724

"I'm sorry, but even on HN I feel it is appropriate to reply to this jackass with only two characters: FU" -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644606

So sometimes HN can feel like a pretty rough place and a reminder is in good order. To HN's credit, though, these comments tend to be few and tend to be downvoted. You can also find comments like this floating around:

"Email me, and we'll figure out a good time for you to come buy and visit; I'll buy you coffee." -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1641763

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#109

Post by ismarc »

lsc wrote: post #97
mquander wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it spammish too (there's my feedback.) But my observation is that there are a ton of people who link their own blog posts all the time, and if the blog posts are of an OK quality, everyone here seems to be fine with it.

hm. What do you think of the other suggestion, a "submit this to hn/talk about it on hn" link that asked a user to do the submission for me? does that make it any more or less spammish, in your opinion?

While it may be a bit spammy, with the frequency you updat your blog, I personally wouldn't see it as such. However, you're tying yourself to HN for discussion (typically a good discussion), but I see it as "setting precedent" for others.

You remember the web rings? It reminds me of that. Perhaps a single platform for managing discussions of articles/posts/blogs similar to news list sites, but specifically for discussion of the posts, not specifically for news. I mean, we could all find a majority of these articles on our own if we wanted (eventually), but the community discussion about the topic/story is what really adds to it.

In short, I personally don't see an issue with YOU submitting each post, but I wouldn't post just to comment and would be disheartened if it became a standard way of providing discussion about your posts.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#110

Post by steveklabnik »

TGJ wrote: post #103
steveklabnik wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying thanks in and of itself isn't bad, but some additional substance would be nice. Compare these two comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644924 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644906 Which would you rather see more of? One highlights something specific, says 'this is really important to me,' and gives thanks... and the other says nothing, really.

I understand what you are saying and I see the merit of having more content to a thank you post, but if it is not there is that in and of itself a warrant for a down vote? Sure you want more and more is sometimes great, but there is still a lot of substance in a simply 'Thank you' to be had. While the comment definitely does not merit an up vote, neither does it warrant a down vote. I would almost hazard to say that…

> there is still a lot of substance in a simply 'Thank you' to be had.

I think this is where we fundamentally differ.

> what exactly are you worried about with having a few thank you posts?

They don't add anything to the discussion. They're meaningless. I'd rather see a story with 100 upvotes and 0 comments than a story with 1 upvote and 100 comments with a full text of "Thank you."

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