HN comments are full of naive political opinion, groupthink, and a tendency to blind optimism on all things technology or new. Often older ways have merit too. It's also probably the only place left on the net where, from comments, I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic, and sometimes talk with the guy who…
HN comments are underrated
141–150 of 383 posts
Re: HN comments are underrated
#142I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments that floods several discussion forums that I have come across. "Nice article", "Great write-up" and the next thing you know, you have created a place where people are only interested in submitting their articles and getting it upvoted rather than make meaningful contributions. People want to make good contributions here and that's something that differenti…
".. the measure of a healthy organization is probably the degree to which negative thoughts are allowed. In places where great work is being done, the attitude always seems to be critical and sarcastic, not "positive" and "supportive". The people I know who do great work think that they suck, but that everyone else sucks even more." -- Paul Graham
In particular, Google found that psychological safety is a key component of successful teams.
Indeed, I think in an environment where rudeness is the norm, it's much harder to get people to share negative thoughts. Sure, you'll have a few alpha-dicks who will say whatever shitty thing that comes to mind. But most other people will just keep their lips buttoned because they don't want to deal with critical, sarcastic comments.
If you want real, long-term organizational improvement, you have to create an environment were people are willing to share problems and concerns without fear that they'll get insulted or blamed.
One great example is Toyota's culture of continuous improvement, which helped them go from post-WWII decimation of Japan to the world's dominant carmaker. They're explicit that "respect for people" is foundational. A good book here is Rother's "Toyota Kata", which goes into Toyota's culture and people-management practices.
Another is airplane safety. For its ubiquity and technological complexity, flight is amazingly safe. But this requires a culture of deep, thoughtful honesty. Sidney Dekker's "Field Guide to Human Error" explains how much this depends on creating blame-free contexts, how much it requires a deep respect for people. Without that, people will a) blame others, and b) cover their own asses in an effort to avoid getting blame. That muddies the waters enough that you can never find and fix the systemic problems that caused bad outcomes.
TL;DR: If you really want people to share negative thoughts, you need positive, supportive environments.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit is a swamp of filth wrt economics comments. Basically all the subreddits except /r/academiceconomics, /r/badeconomics, /r/econpapers are awful. I'm friends with the mods of /r/economics and they have a really hard time reigning in the masses of ideologues (on all sides) ruining what should remain pure economics discussions.
Reddit and HN make an interesting comparison. Reddit's highs are really high, far higher than HN's, often skirting the level of "so good as to be newsworthy". But Reddit's lows --- and I don't mean trolling and harassment, I mean the lower bounds of normal conversation there --- are much lower. I think the median HN comment is better, by a lot, than the median Reddit comment. I think you can extend the same judgement…
Re: HN comments are underrated
#144Re: HN comments are underrated
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Business startup ideas are essentially experiments in economic theory. Yet HN comments are vastly inferior to Reddit's when regarding anything to do with economics. It didn't used to be this way, and I kind of miss the HN of old... where logic and fearlessness were valued more than affiliation or keeping up of brand appearances. I've been finding it increasingly disconcerting that the incentive here lately has been t…
Reddit is a swamp of filth wrt economics comments. Basically all the subreddits except /r/academiceconomics, /r/badeconomics, /r/econpapers are awful. I'm friends with the mods of /r/economics and they have a really hard time reigning in the masses of ideologues (on all sides) ruining what should remain pure economics discussions.
Reigning monarchs have it hard these days.
Not that reining stubborn mules is much better.
(Pet peeve, but really paying forward a good correction someone gifted me a few weeks ago. Otherwise quit, really ;)
Re: HN comments are underrated
#146On a more serious note, I guess most people in the tech crowd can make a 5-item list of why HN comments suck and that is exactly the power of HN comments.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#147I lost faith in HN crowd when hyperloop started. California can not even replicate 40 years old TGV, but somehow it will build space-like technology for fraction of price. And than there are politics. Entire world should accept millions of refugees. But SF is different, and should not even host 400 homeless who arrive every year.
In my experience, H.N. comments have a lot of wrong. But when the content is good, it can be truly great.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#148In many ways this is more of a professional board than a personal board. A lot of folks here are in the profession and don't seem to speak their mind, lest they lose career opportunities. This also seems to promote an affection of expertise and authoritative tone even on subjects commentators may not know much about.
There is offhand dismissal of dissent as 'resistant to change' and a serious lack of scrutiny that often allows broken technologies and services to be hyped endlessly untill people come back months or years later to report deficiencies but by then the train has left the station.
And any forum that promotes downvotes to signal dissent cannot by design promote diverse discussion and will naturally coalesce around a 'socially acceptable' consensus.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#149I have often thought it's be great to do a "best comments of the week" email list the same way "Kernel Traffic" did for a number of years with Linux kernel development: http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/archives.html Condensing comments down to the 5-10 gems would be very interesting. And, perhaps with the voting system, not that difficult.