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Hacker News is a social echo chamber

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Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#161

Post by babs474 »

lmm wrote: post #118
babs474 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we will never know how the conversation could have developed since the stories were killed prematurely. Do you think the comments section of other types of HN stories are held to the same standard? Or do you think the promptness with which these stories are flagged has something to do with their subject matter?

I flag stories if I believe the odds of the resulting conversation being productive are sufficiently low. Obviously this is more common for some subjects than others; how could it be otherwise?

I understand that strategy. But I would encourage you to instead keep an open mind. You might be surprised at the value you can get from an unexpected direction.

If you have a number of people acting in the way you describe, you end up with an echo chamber, which is what the article is noting.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#162

Post by woah »

MartianObserver wrote: post #153
DougWebb wrote: post #37

I'm curious how many people who have the ability to upvote or flag stories actually do so. For my part, I'm very conservative: - I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions. - I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through…

Yep, let's ignore the main issues raised by the post and have a meta discussion instead. - Leftist orthodoxy (Keynesian good/Austrian bad, etc.) - Disappearing dissenters (HeckBanning, NegVotesToOblivion) - Apple the Immaculate (and Saint Jobs the Perfect) - All startups are equal (but YC's are more equaler than others) Please HeckBan this and prove the points made about HN's accoustics and whatnot. Whatever you do,…

Your comment is badly written, and mostly free of meaningful content, but I don't want to downvote it because I feel that it would somehow be gratifying to you.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#163

Post by 011011100 »

crusso wrote: post #130

The whole argument of the article is a non-starter: Building a social echo chamber risks marginalising us from the rest of society, gradually becoming ignored and irrelevant as our self-reinforcing opinions drift ever further away from the mainstream I don't consume movies, books, music, food, web sites, or much of anything else because they're "mainstream". I do so because they have a high degree of quality that hol…

You don't have to think very hard to find other reasons why 'circlejerks are bad'.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#164

Post by mseebach »

crusso wrote: post #130

The whole argument of the article is a non-starter: Building a social echo chamber risks marginalising us from the rest of society, gradually becoming ignored and irrelevant as our self-reinforcing opinions drift ever further away from the mainstream I don't consume movies, books, music, food, web sites, or much of anything else because they're "mainstream". I do so because they have a high degree of quality that hol…

Yes, I agree. "Echo-chamber" and "bubble" are features. Having a informative and effective discussion at a high level, and having opinions moved, predicates a high degree of common ground.

Effectively challenging somebody's worldview doesn't begin with "everything you consider true is false, now listen to me" as is sometimes the preferred method of radicals. Being bombarded with information and viewpoints you consider wrongheaded doesn't expand your horizon, it galvanises you.

But when a person I have a lot in common with and agree with on many issues says something that I don't instinctively agree with, I listen and at the very least make sure I understand the full argument before I decide whether I think it's wrong.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#165

Post by Zak »

pg wrote: post #133
thetabyte wrote: post #119

Especially after pg's response to the blog post about sexual assault at CodeMash, I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments? I tend to have a lot of respect for pg, and found his apology for what happened in that thread to be admirable. Whether or not preventing discussion of the issue on HN is positive or negative...I have very complex feelings on the issue, and see valid arguments on both sides…

The output of the flamewar detector isn't binary.

If the flamewar detector takes content in to account, could it consider the overall tone of the discussion and the content of each new comment and selectively kill new comments that seem flame-like?

I wrote a moderation bot to use on a political subreddit that used a text classifier to determine whether comments should be deleted. A goal was to delete flame comments rapidly. It worked, but reddit's reply notifications limited its effectiveness.

Of note: the phrase "you are a" ranked higher for the flame category than any particular insult.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#166

Post by MartinCron »

brymaster wrote: post #150
mikeash wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would HN be a particularly good venue for that conversation? There are a lot of smart people here, but a lot of the factors that make HN a good place for technical discussions make it a horrible place for softer discussions like those about sexism.

It's interesting that none of the smart hackers here have 'innovated' an open discussion forum yet. Everyone knows of the problems with moderation and hellbanning, everyone knows that this forum isn't a democracy and yet, here we all are.

Why do you assume that democracy is the right model for discussion? Even with the problems of moderation and hellbanning, the system here is better than something purely open.

I've seen pure open discussions, and I don't want to have anything to do with them.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#167

Post by darkchasma »

damoncali wrote: post #108
jlgreco wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know some people lost their ability to flag while doing exactly that (the 'flag' link is removed entirely when that happens, the removal of the ability isn't invisible to the user it happens to), but I am unaware of anybody being hellbanned for it.

I can no longer flag because I flagged every inappropriate political post on the front page for a couple days. (It was a pretty bad stretch). I knew it wouldn't help much but it made me feel better. As a result I was flag-banned.

I'm guessing that if you're banned from flagging, then the political posts weren't inappropriate, but your behaviour was.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#168

Post by Karunamon »

001sky wrote: post #40
andrewcooke wrote: post #2

Pope remains Catholic 12 points by BCM43 56 minutes ago | flag | discuss Bear shits in wood 32 points by BCM43 21 minutes ago | flag | discuss

But what is important is that the ongoing debates between these opinions be driven by facts

If there's no further facts, what's the point? If discussions 1 through 99 with a given set of facts have produced nothing of any value, why would #100?

This is why I think the "techies are sexist" articles are joining the "NSA is evil" articles on the flag pile. There's more often than not no new information, and predictable, boring (and in some cases, flame-filled) conversation follows.

By all means, kill this crap and let something more deserving and interesting take its place.

The only reason I'm not flagging this article is because it's shown itself to be popular and I'd probably lose the ability as a result. This article is straight up meta noise.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#169

Post by 10098 »

DougWebb wrote: post #37

I'm curious how many people who have the ability to upvote or flag stories actually do so. For my part, I'm very conservative: - I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions. - I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through…

Same goes for me. I never downvote anyone and sometimes upvote comments that I strongly agree with.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#170

Post by jlgreco »

thetabyte wrote: post #119

Especially after pg's response to the blog post about sexual assault at CodeMash, I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments? I tend to have a lot of respect for pg, and found his apology for what happened in that thread to be admirable. Whether or not preventing discussion of the issue on HN is positive or negative...I have very complex feelings on the issue, and see valid arguments on both sides…

> I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments?

In some cases it seems to, though by that time the discussion is long off the front page. I think this is a good thing, if something is on the front page then comments should be enabled, if only in case something in the article desperately needs to be corrected. If we get a post on here about a new study suggesting that vaccines may cause autism, that would almost certainly generate a flamewar but the absolute last thing we would want is for the post to remain on the front page and not permit anyone to post comments that may refute claims made by the study. In situations like those, it is better to kill the discussion and to take the post off the frontpage than to leave it there but disable commenting.

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