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Trolls (2008)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Trolls (2008)

#191

Post by scott_s »

angersock wrote: post #136
scott_s wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of trust I'm talking about is trust in honest discourse. If I don't trust that others on a forum will engage with me honestly, then I am less likely to engage with them honestly. As a consequence, the overall discussion on the forum degrades.

Out of genuine curiosity, how would you define "honest discourse"? Online forums are, by definition, right there on the 'net along with Google and Wikipedia and other resources, so flat-out misrepresentation of facts seems somewhat difficult. If somebody chooses to be irrational, they are readily identified as such, right? So where does honesty fit in all this?

Honest discourse is when both parties are willing to work to understand each other, and not just trying to "win." Both parties default to the most reasonable interpretation of what the other says - having all of the facts available doesn't help much if you spend most of your time clarifying what you're trying to say.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#192

Post by billswift »

angersock wrote: post #136
scott_s wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of trust I'm talking about is trust in honest discourse. If I don't trust that others on a forum will engage with me honestly, then I am less likely to engage with them honestly. As a consequence, the overall discussion on the forum degrades.

Out of genuine curiosity, how would you define "honest discourse"? Online forums are, by definition, right there on the 'net along with Google and Wikipedia and other resources, so flat-out misrepresentation of facts seems somewhat difficult. If somebody chooses to be irrational, they are readily identified as such, right? So where does honesty fit in all this?

Every time I have seen (or heard in person), "I would like to participate in and read honest discussion", it has been someone who turned around and accused anyone who disagreed of "trolling" or of being "close-minded". I have found it a waste of time arguing with them, if it hadn't been the general topic of this thread, I would have just ignored the comment entirely.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#193

Post by DiabloD3 »

Being a recent "victim"[1] of trolling here on HN, I understand pg's sentiment. However, the question is, has HN (since 2008, anyways) fallen into the pit with the trolls?

For example, recently there was the thing with Rob Malda's resume. The entire thread on that was rather derailed into either sucking up to Rob, or saying Slashdot is full of trolls.

Or rather, it had a rather unfavorable signal to noise ratio. I tried to vote comments accordingly, but it didn't really seem to help.

[1] Tried to stick up for FOSS and expose Microsoft/Mono for what it really is, got downvoted for doing the right thing. Oh well, the trolls got me, not really a big deal.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#194

Post by nodesocket »

Love what Ryan Dahl has to say about being humble. http://youtu.be/SAc0vQCC6UQ?t=55m58s Honestly, happens almost daily, especially in SF. We meet awesome developers, but they are frankly arrogant assholes. This sort of entitlement results in those people trolling and flaming. Be humble, there are many smart people in the world; you're not that awesome.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#195

Post by DiabloD3 »

lmbe wrote: post #183
zedshaw wrote: post #179

I normally find that, unless an essay is about mathematics, if it is based on a binary argument then it's just false because it's too simplistic to be based in reality. In this case saying there's only "trolls" and "super awesome people!" is childish. There's a much more interesting spectrum of human behavior online that doesn't fit into these convenient categories. To then say there's only two types of "trolls" is a…

So Hackernews is the new slash-dot yawn. I'm all about lamernews. You can't change a community you can only leave it.

Although I'm pretty sure you made this comment to be troll bait, I'm upvoting it.

>You can't change a community you can only leave it.

This is very very true. I've quit many communities because they devolved into noise and spam. I've publicly said that I came to HN merely because I wanted a good list of links worth reading, and somehow I ended up with an account and almost 1000 karma.

I suspect in the next 2-3 years I'll leave HN because it really will have jumped the shark by then. Although, I think the discussion of the slashdotification of HN is off-topic according to the rules.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#197

Post by tptacek »

tokenadult wrote: post #156
interlagos wrote: post #91

I've been hellbanned here on HN on at least three different IP addresses and accounts...that I am aware of. Probably more. In each case nothing I'd ever said would be considered trolling by any rational observer. Here on HN, however, as with most communities where you start to recognize the regulars (tptacek, raganwald, etc), "trolling" is redefined to simply mean "going against the grain". There was one discussion t…

I'll disagree with you in part while agreeing in part. I invite onlookers to apply the rubric from pg's essay "How to Disagree" http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html to rate how well I do in disagreeing here. You write, Here on HN, however, as with most communities where you start to recognize the regulars (tptacek, raganwald, etc), "trolling" is redefined to simply mean "going against the grain." I disagree with this,…

There is zero chance yelling at or about me on HN is going to get you hellbanned. There's a bigger chance I'll get hellbanned.

This is one of the dumber meta-threads HN has had. Not so much your comment in particular as the whole thing.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#198

Post by psn »

Sukotto wrote: post #92

My go-to commentary on this general topic is the classic penny-arcade comic "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory" (Normal Person) + (Anonymity) + (Audience) = (Total Fuckwad) http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/

I hate this cartoon. it leads real name requirements on sites, in the hope of removing anonymity. This hurts all sorts of groups (see the google+ real names saga for a long list) but doesn't really slow down trolling. You can and do see people making racist / sexist / whatever comments with their real name. Possibly the trolls know that there are many John Smiths in the world. Its a "theory" thats been disproven by this point.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#199

Post by LearnYouALisp »

lmbe wrote: post #183
zedshaw wrote: post #179

I normally find that, unless an essay is about mathematics, if it is based on a binary argument then it's just false because it's too simplistic to be based in reality. In this case saying there's only "trolls" and "super awesome people!" is childish. There's a much more interesting spectrum of human behavior online that doesn't fit into these convenient categories. To then say there's only two types of "trolls" is a…

So Hackernews is the new slash-dot yawn. I'm all about lamernews. You can't change a community you can only leave it.

Lamer-news! Now that would be a funny website.

Re: Trolls (2008)

#200

Post by eldude »

interlagos wrote: post #91

I've been hellbanned here on HN on at least three different IP addresses and accounts...that I am aware of. Probably more. In each case nothing I'd ever said would be considered trolling by any rational observer. Here on HN, however, as with most communities where you start to recognize the regulars (tptacek, raganwald, etc), "trolling" is redefined to simply mean "going against the grain". There was one discussion t…

I'm absolutely shocked and disgusted to be be reading this discussion regarding being "hellbanned" only to discover that my account in fact has been hellbanned for the past 1.5 yrs without even knowing it!

http://news.ycombinator.org/threads?id=CrabDude * enable showdead in your profile to read my comments

As you can see from my comments and contributions, most are extremely well reasoned and often entirely unique and invaluable contributions to a given conversation that to my frustration were inexplicably never upvoted or commented on, without any real insight as to why. I honestly am in shock and beyond frustrated that so much of my efforts and attempts to edify and contribute have been undermined by something that is explicitly allowed in comment guidelines. [1]

Specifically, the comment that is apparently responsible for my hellban, was on a post that linked to MY NodeKnockout entry which both won the competition category and received over 60 votes to end up on the front page:

  HEY ALL! REMEMBER TO VOTE FOR US! WE'RE TRYING TO WIN THE INNOVATION CATEGORY!
  http://nodeknockout.com/teams/starcraft-2-destroyed-my-marri...
  AND RETWEET THIS WITH #nodeko! =)
Worse, this manner of comment is explicitly mentioned as okay in the guidelines. [1]

  Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks."
And to any who would comment that my use of all caps elicited my ban, I'd respond by pointing out the use of capitalization is used "for emphasis," [2] in this case, specifically, enthusiasm -- unfortunately making the resulting ban all the more disgusting and frustrating.

To any in YC who have control over such things, please unban my account. I would greatly prefer to use it and retain all my contributions than be forced to play wack-a-mole in response to inaccurate rule enforcement.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps

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