The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes • Hacker News Board

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#181

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:26 PM UTC

HNerInChina wrote: post #179

andrewbinstock wrote: post #3

When I was the editor of Dr. Dobb's, we were very concerned about how to create a lively discussion forum that was free from jerks and unpleasant people. Ultimately, we settled on two components: treat everyone respectfully even those who seemed to be trolling, and delete all insulting posts. This largely worked. Similar elements seem to work here on HN too. That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests t…

> jerks, bozos and assholes Looks like incivility to me. In my humble opinion, more often than not, when a techie refers to another commenter as an "asshole" they simply mean that they dislike the other commenter's politics or lack of left-leaning political correctness. You see, most techies espouse leftist views, which are rarely challenged in public because most media lean left. When they come across real-world opi…

> real-world opinions held by a large percentage of the population

Quite a lot of the population believe all sorts of intolerant things about women and nonwhite people. That doesn't make it right.

> most media lean left

Hahaha no.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#182

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

r_smart wrote: post #177

dang wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks; I just re-read that and it seems to me that HN is mostly pretty well aligned with what he's saying. But let me phrase that as a question: what's the most important insight in the essay that HN does not currently line up well with?

As a long time lurker, but a brand new user, I think my one criticism, as it relates to the article, would be that HN doesn't facilitate conversations as well as I would like. Or I'm using the site wrong. So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some mean…

> So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some means of being told, hey, someone posted a response to your comment 'X' would be nice.

It used to be that you could put a token for an YC-backed messaging startup, but I think the startup died since you can no longer do so. In the meantime, bunch of HN notification services were created. I currently use HN Replies[0], which sends me an e-mail every time someone responds to my comment.

I agree this is a very important feature if you want to facilitate actual conversations; otherwhise, it's hard to track discussions that started more than a day ago. I've noticed a significant positive change in the way I interact with HN since I started using third-party e-mail notifications - I'm more likely to participate in a comment thread over several days, and I now consider it good manners to respond to replies that try to engage me in further conversations.

So, tl;dr - 'dang, I strongly second the "comment notifications" idea!

[0] - http://www.hnreplies.com/

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#183

Post by r_smart » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #182

r_smart wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long time lurker, but a brand new user, I think my one criticism, as it relates to the article, would be that HN doesn't facilitate conversations as well as I would like. Or I'm using the site wrong. So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some mean…

> So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some means of being told, hey, someone posted a response to your comment 'X' would be nice. It used to be that you could put a token for an YC-backed messaging startup, but I think the startup died since you can…

Thanks for the tip off on that, it looks like a decent work around for what I'm looking for. Except that I hate getting a lot of email, but I'll have to live with it.

One of the things I get frustrated by with online conversations is how frequently they just sort of die without making much progress. I'm usually not interested in just scoring points with searing rebuttals followed by a mic-drop. I like hashing things out. That these conversations take place on HN so frequently is put in an entirely different context now that I see how poorly the site facilitates it.

As a side note / issue: culturally this site discourages low quality posts (like this one would be if I just said a quick 'thanks for the link' like I intended to), but sometimes manners dictates an acknowledgment even when you have nothing else to add. Some means of doing that beyond an anonymous upvote could be kind of cool.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#184

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

MrZongle2 wrote: post #20

smacktoward wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all truths are the same size, though. If someone is ugly, telling them so in conversation is both completely truthful and completely unhelpful. Just because something is true doesn't mean it's necessary to say it out loud, or constructive to building a civil, respectful space.

Useless but brutally honest truths aren't something we have abundance of in our society. We are, however, drowning in possibly-actionable nuggets of data that range from the somewhat-truthy to the probably-bullshit area of the honesty spectrum. That people fabricate -- and worse, repeat without fact-checking -- such information contributes to the problem I refer to.

The principle of "fact-checking" has a fatal flaw - it gives power to those who have time and resources to fact-check, and even more to those that can control the availability of facts.

Consider information regarding the Iraq war before wiki-leaks - only facts beneficial to the image of the US military were released.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#185

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

r_smart wrote: post #183

TeMPOraL wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some means of being told, hey, someone posted a response to your comment 'X' would be nice. It used to be that you could put a token for an YC-backed messaging startup, but I think the startup died since you can…

Thanks for the tip off on that, it looks like a decent work around for what I'm looking for. Except that I hate getting a lot of email, but I'll have to live with it. One of the things I get frustrated by with online conversations is how frequently they just sort of die without making much progress. I'm usually not interested in just scoring points with searing rebuttals followed by a mic-drop. I like hashing things…

> As a side note / issue: culturally this site discourages low quality posts (like this one would be if I just said a quick 'thanks for the link' like I intended to), but sometimes manners dictates an acknowledgment even when you have nothing else to add.

I see what you did there ;). I sometimes too spend a while figuring out something constructive to write when the only real thing I actually wanted to say is "thanks!". I agree it would be good to facilitate this use case better, but I have no idea how to approach it. For now, if I can't for life find anything else of value I could add to my reply, I'll just write "Thanks for the [link/explanation/whatever]!" and hope it won't be treated as comment spam.

(As an aside, I tend to upvote honest "thank you" comments whenever I see them. As a way of encouraging civility, I think one should not only reward the good comments, but also expressions of gratitude.)

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#186

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #5

I want to inline a linked reference and provide a summary as a form of protecting the reference against link-rot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule Their unpleasant behaviours were catalogued by Sutton as The Dirty Dozen: (Robert Cipriano (2011), "No Jerks Allowed in This Department", Facilitating a Collegial Department in Higher Education, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 978-1-118-10764-5) Insults Violatio…

What some of these miss are context. It matters who threw the first punch. If snub you because you keep insulting me...

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#187

Post by Noseshine » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

GVIrish wrote: post #172

Noseshine wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Um, it is someone's right to feel offended Well, doesn't that mean then other people have the right to say whatever they want even if others feel offended? Which means we don't need to have this discussion and just accept both the offended and the assholes. This argument seems to me to lead nowhere, unless you say being offended is okay, offending is not. Which I would find quite disturbing, not just because Recep…

No, it just means that you can't control how something will be received and that sometimes people are going to have an negative emotional response to something benign or well-intended. Now, whether someone should change their behavior to suit the sensibilities of the offended is the question. The answer to that question is basically what social norms are. It's a moving target that evolves over time and across segment…

Since you feel you had to reply with

    > Um, it is someone's right to feel offended,...

it certainly shows that you dispute the right of the person to say what he had to say - so my point stands. If you accepted his right as well you would not have felt it necessary to make that statement. As I said,

    > Which means we don't need to have this discussion and just accept both the
    > offended and the assholes.
    > This argument seems to me to lead nowhere...

I see you arguing for one side's right to speak their mind only.

Either you see their right as more important, or your post is completely unnecessary and you could just have let everybody say whatever they felt like.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#188

Post by KaliYugaz » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #180

KaliYugaz wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really arguing that there are no objective standards by which we can judge rationality?

To the extent that there are, that would really limit the scope of discussion. There's no objective morality and no objective politics. Even if we try to limit discussion to "facts", things fall apart fairly rapidly once we start talking stochastic events and statistical morality. Rationality can tell us about likely means to achieve goals and give a probability distribution of outcomes. It can't tell you what to wan…

>There's no objective morality and no objective politics.

Really? The majority of academic philosophers disagree with you, and they have very good arguments for moral realism.

One thing to think about: it's not possible to affirm objective standards of rationality and deny objective standards of morality at the same time without being inconsistent, since both epistemology and ethics deal with normative statements (what one ought to do), not fact statements.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#189

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:08 PM UTC

KaliYugaz wrote: post #188

pjc50 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the extent that there are, that would really limit the scope of discussion. There's no objective morality and no objective politics. Even if we try to limit discussion to "facts", things fall apart fairly rapidly once we start talking stochastic events and statistical morality. Rationality can tell us about likely means to achieve goals and give a probability distribution of outcomes. It can't tell you what to wan…

>There's no objective morality and no objective politics. Really? The majority of academic philosophers disagree with you, and they have very good arguments for moral realism. One thing to think about: it's not possible to affirm objective standards of rationality and deny objective standards of morality at the same time without being inconsistent, since both epistemology and ethics deal with normative statements (wh…

Really? I wasn't aware that morality was a solved problem! Now that we have the one true moral code, why aren't copies being distributed everywhere?

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#190

Post by krapp » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:08 PM UTC

Mendenhall wrote: post #155

krapp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of imageboards have that feature. It doesn't tend to lead to higher quality content or a better community, though, it just leads to sockpuppet accounts, shitposting (because no one has any reason to invest themselves beyond the most superficial level) and mods with Napoleon complexes.

Do you think part of the "mods with Nepolean complexes" often happen because they are not paid ? I think mods need to get reviewed and logs looked at as to why they deleted accounts etc. To me a mod deleting things that shouldnt be is a rogue employee. Personally I am part of some very heavily moderated forums and I really enjoy them. I find people invest because they appreciate it being looked after and not a childi…

I think it's less the lack of pay as a lack of maturity, although getting paid might help them take their jobs a bit more seriously (assuming there's enough money to make that worthwhile.) A lot of fault lies with the administrators or whomever selects the moderators, who themselves may not be willing or able to act impartially or reasonably.

A lack of transparency in the moderation process can protect moderators from the social consequences of. Having known moderator accounts (not necessarily linked to user accounts) and a public mod log might make it more difficult for moderators to feel their position puts them outside the community.

And I think reversibility is important as well - nothing a moderator does should be destructive, as far as the database is concerned. At best, they should be able to flag posts and users for review later. I would even go so far as to suggest that mod actions which aren't approved get automatically reversed after a certain amount of time.