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Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

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Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#21

Post by thisisit »

Firstly, I have a gripe against the word "hate". No one is hating anything, it is critiquing. The question becomes is how do you take it?

And frankly for me the new trends seems to be asking the question - "Why does HN hate X?" with X being blockchain, Tesla, etc take your pick. This kind of negative questioning leads to two conclusions:

If HN does actually hate X, then it turns into a public shaming. And no one on the internet admits they are doing anything wrong. So, good luck trying to talk sense.

If HN doesn't hate a topic, then you are implying that even simple comments are hateful. And slowly things will turn against your topic of choice.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#22

Post by thecrash »

There are plenty of online communities one can approach for general encouragement and moral support.

People choose to Show HN specifically because they know appreciation isn't automatic here. They don't just want a pat on the head, they want to know if they're doing it right.

Often, learning that your idea simply isn't valuable to others (or even worth their time) is very helpful and motivating towards future development.

I do think there's room to ask that people's so-called negative comments at least be detailed, but this goes for positive/supportive comments too, in my opinion. I don't want to just be told to keep trying, I want help thinking about what exactly to try next.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#24

Post by mping »

It's not hate, it's armchair criticism most of the time. People assume their engineering skills transfer over any walk of life, so they feel entitled to voice an opinion just by taking a glance at an idea/code/site/etc. You know, devs have strong opinions about lots of stuff.

It takes a somewhat special individual to be able to give helpful criticism, even if he/she thinks it's nonsense.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#25

Post by eesmith »

tomhoward wrote: post #16

It would help to give some specific examples of threads or comments you think are hateful. The more active HN users, with the support of the moderators, are quite vigilant about downvoting or flagging nasty comments. Can you give any examples of nasty or mean comments that appear high up in the comment thread and/or without being faded or flagged? The whole idea of Show HN is to encourage people to build interesting…

Based on the first page of https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew (30 postings, 29 are "Show HN", 12 have comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17548331 - both comments by the show-er.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547703 - one non-author comment, author responded along the lines "good point" but "edge case".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17546384 - one comment, possibly negative (a complaint about the use of the word 'certificated').

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17545446 - one non-author comment, seems like a valid critique

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544832 - only one author comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544332 - only one author comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544330 - only one author comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541458 - only one author comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541114 - I felt the one comment was negative. I have added a more positive followup.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540687 - the one comment starts "Genius"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540393 - a meta Show HN doing sentiment analysis on Show HN. Many comments. Mixed. Seems overall positive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540210 - only one author comment

From this I conclude that 1) Most Show HNs go uncommented, even when the author tries to encourage feedback by adding a comment, and 2) it is not the case that "the HN community is always hating on new ideas."

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#26

Post by seba_dos1 »

faizshah wrote: post #5
mkempe wrote: post #2

The negativity became dominant post-PG. Unfortunately and disappointingly. [added] To elaborate: his regular essays were thought-provoking and challenging, in a way that generally drove HN commenters to think and contribute. Nowadays there is a discouraging excess of emoting and belittling, even though the moderators have stepped up their nudges and interventions.

That isn't true, the most famous example of HN negativity is Show HN: Dropbox which has been reposted quite a few times on HN since dropbox became dropbox. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306

Uhm... how exactly is this thread a display of "negativity"? Most of the comments are pretty supportive and the critique was mostly placed on project's communication and not yet well-defined business model, which actually made a lot of sense.

Even the famous "you can already build such a system yourself (...) by FTP, curlftpfs, SVN, CVS" comment, which was often cited later as ridiculous, actually ends with a supportive reply and overall makes sense in the context of the whole thread. Heck, even comments like "seen it before in Coda" are in fact supportive and thankful. It's all very sensible, positive and IMO only worth any particular note here if you are (quite paradoxically) blinded with hindsight ;P

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#27

Post by ENGNR »

ENGNR wrote: post #9

Byzantine fault tolerance and zero knowledge proofs, so cool! Oh it's being done by people using it for distributed ledgers? Boooo now we hate it I've realized I have to broaden my news intake as even this community has it's collective blind spots

Check out the top post on EthTrader, it's about Sir Isaac Newton losing money in a scam. HN is not the only ones with this opinion

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/8zamjw/sir_isaac...

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#28

Post by nathanaldensr »

The implication that people who complain about "negative energy" are making is that negative energy has no value or negative value; it doesn't. I'd be willing to say that skepticism has far more value than pats on the back. Children need pats on the back, not adults.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#29

Post by eesmith »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #28

The implication that people who complain about "negative energy" are making is that negative energy has no value or negative value; it doesn't. I'd be willing to say that skepticism has far more value than pats on the back. Children need pats on the back, not adults.

I do not like your last sentence. The implication is that that those who do not like negative criticism are immature.

There are many times when adults have an emotional need for a pat on the back. I know I have that feeling sometimes.

Here's one I came across just the other day - https://youtu.be/UPS4nxI0b9g?t=826 . "But there's no one here to pat me on the back. It sucks."

I also think there are times when negative energy has negative value.

The same person, in the video at https://youtu.be/4nqJiBRNQuw?t=855 , after many frustrating attempts at trying to make a Kit-Kat from scratch, says "I want you to know that I can accept zero criticism right now." I respect her for recognizing that need and expressing it, and for her co-workers to acknowledge that need and support her.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#30

Post by eesmith »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #26
faizshah wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't true, the most famous example of HN negativity is Show HN: Dropbox which has been reposted quite a few times on HN since dropbox became dropbox. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306

Uhm... how exactly is this thread a display of "negativity"? Most of the comments are pretty supportive and the critique was mostly placed on project's communication and not yet well-defined business model, which actually made a lot of sense. Even the famous "you can already build such a system yourself (...) by FTP, curlftpfs, SVN, CVS" comment, which was often cited later as ridiculous, actually ends with a support…

I agree with you. Zed Shaw wrote an essay a few months ago on this topic, at https://zedshaw.com/2018/03/25/the-billionaires-vs-brandonm/ .

> In 2007 what ... wrote is actually valid given the environment. It was a total long shot that Dropbox would go anywhere, and hell it took a whole 11 fucking years for them to IPO. Box did it in 2014 and competes rather well compared to Dropbox. But let’s break down his comments from a 2007 perspective:

I agree with Shaw's analysis as well.

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