I think that recently, I've been seeing more snarky and dismissive messages than compared with several months ago. They are always very brief, gotcha-style replies. Is it just me? It sometimes makes me doubt if there isn't a coordinated attempt at destabilizing the otherwise orderly (no doubt after some heroic wrangling by dang & co.) discourse taking place. Those posts get downvoted rather fast, but I feel that there's been a quantitative difference in their occurence.
Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
21–30 of 106 posts
Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how much of the difference is just because HN doesn't allow you to post / display images inline like Reddit does, forcing users to engage with the content (written or video) rather than just reflexively upvote low-effort content.
It's because of the people who come here. You might post about a project and discover that the person who made the thing is replying to you.
I think that is the bigger difference, I agree, but I think the format and media involved still have an effect on the type of discussion that takes place
Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hearing this makes my day :) Feedback is extremely welcome! Feel free to email ideas to me (in any state of polish) or post them on https://feedback.scour.ing . Looking forward to hearing your suggestions!
Hey, was checking out the site and stumbled across a small bug: head to https://scour.ing/browse/feeds/popular while logged out, press the + button on a feed, and it breaks the browser back button. Happens on FF and Chrome.
Thanks for the heads up! I'll get that fixed
Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#24> There were many large forums that hit a tipping point where low-effort posting and polarization drag everything down. How does HN resist the slide? It doesn't. Admittedly, HN discussion is generally of higher "quality" than Reddit, at least for large subreddits, but that's a very low bar to hurdle. > The HN welcome page lays out two cardinal rules: don’t post or upvote crap links, and don’t be rude or dumb in comme…
Discussion here is generally of higher quality because of the people who come here. Lots of developers of all kinds, tech company employees, insiders, people who invented the algorithms you read about in the books, people who invented the programming languages we use. I for one ignore the articles and go straight for the comments. I care a lot more about what smart people think than the articles themselves. The news…
Reading the comments on non-tech submissions that a person has some basic knowledge of should make them aware that the vast majority of comments are simply confidently pronounced ignorance. (This is particularly evident on medical and health related submissions.) Then they should start to notice that, to almost as high a percentage, the comments on tech are just as much confidently pronounced ignorance.
Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#25The best comments are at the bottom. I’ve been twaddling here long enough to know what the most upvoted take will be, so unless it’s a personal anecdote it’s not worth reading. The real juicers are usually buried near the bottom of the page, a few comments above where the apathy and sarcasm start bleeding into grey.
> The best comments are at the bottom.
You clearly don't have the showdead option enabled. ;-)
Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#26I don't like the word "karma" because it's often, for better in worse, group affinity (and we are most often trajectories rather than pure insight). I often find minority views and unexplored paths interesting, even when they're obviously wrong.
One time I made a negative comment about Lord of the Rings, and I think I lost a thousand points. Does it really make sense that my karma as a complete user drops so much because of one specific comment? Blasphemy, but maybe Reddit's per-subreddit score makes more sense.
I can promise I don't craft my comments for karma, though many people deserve their high 'karma' because they offer genuinely great contributions.
Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#27I don't like the word "karma" because it's often, for better in worse, group affinity (and we are most often trajectories rather than pure insight). I often find minority views and unexplored paths interesting, even when they're obviously wrong. One time I made a negative comment about Lord of the Rings, and I think I lost a thousand points. Does it really make sense that my karma as a complete user drops so much bec…
I thought HN caps negative score at -4?
Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#28I think that recently, I've been seeing more snarky and dismissive messages than compared with several months ago. They are always very brief, gotcha-style replies. Is it just me? It sometimes makes me doubt if there isn't a coordinated attempt at destabilizing the otherwise orderly (no doubt after some heroic wrangling by dang & co.) discourse taking place. Those posts get downvoted rather fast, but I feel that ther…
No conspiracy is needed. HN is attracting more and more new users who enjoy making low quality posts on hot button topics, which also triggers other previously well-behaved users to make low quality posts in response. This behavior naturally spreads outside of hot button topics to ordinary submissions.
Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find myself going to the comments before the article. There's so many times where one of the first comments are something like "I work in the industry, and the base assumptions of this article are incorrect", and I feel that that's a valuable thing to keep in mind before digging into the meat.
> There's so many times where one of the first comments are something like "I work in the industry, and the base assumptions of this article are incorrect" There are so many times where the top comments are totally full of crap, including and especially from people who work in the industry. It's a large industry with countless subspecialties. What reason do you have to trust a comment over an article? If you're going…
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Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
#30I don't like the word "karma" because it's often, for better in worse, group affinity (and we are most often trajectories rather than pure insight). I often find minority views and unexplored paths interesting, even when they're obviously wrong. One time I made a negative comment about Lord of the Rings, and I think I lost a thousand points. Does it really make sense that my karma as a complete user drops so much bec…
I thought HN caps negative score at -4?
Maybe they do now, but I remember losing a lot more than that for that comment. I recall it was just after I made a comment that received a lot of upvotes, which were more than wiped out by having a critical view of the ultimate morality of LoTR. Then again, my "karma" currently at 1066 after 12 years goes up and down by points at a time, so a few points lost will be felt more than for people who have tens of thousands of points.