HN comments are underrated • Hacker News Board

Re: HN comments are underrated

#201

Post by nickpsecurity » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

hiou wrote: post #187

xenadu02 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First your anecdotes are not persuasive compared to two incredibly successful companies and one incredibly successful industry. Second, you missed the point. It isn't about prohibiting anyone from expressing a negative opinion or sugar-coating things. That's a false dichotomy. It's about not attacking the messenger and not looking to place blame. It also means accepting valid criticism. You can be 100% honest without…

The problem is that many people who are hurt easily by cynical and sarcastic behavior(which is very different than being as asshole) typically take themselves very seriously and it's a sign that they are very self focused and place their own concerns way above those of the team. I wonder if there is a language barrier but cynical and sarcastic is very very different from putting people down.

"The problem is that many people who are hurt easily by cynical and sarcastic behavior(which is very different than being as asshole) typically take themselves very seriously and it's a sign that they are very self focused and place their own concerns way above those of the team."

Please give evidence supporting that claim. What I've seen is a lot of people are just non-confrontational by nature. They'll do a lot to avoid being in a fight. However, they may want to discuss things even with criticisms. It just becomes harmful to them after the conversational style crosses a certain line. Knowing this, groups like Toyota put a line down that allows the negative information to come in without the personal attacks or circumstances that shut many people down. Continuous innovations resulted that dwarfed the competition doing what you suggest. This is not an isolated incident as many innovative companies create similarly respectful environments where everyone tries to improve, either positively or negatively, the process or products without attacking each other.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#202

Post by ghaff » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

edmccard wrote: post #189

nabla9 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

".. the measure of a healthy organization is probably the degree to which negative thoughts are allowed. In places where great work is being done, the attitude always seems to be critical and sarcastic, not "positive" and "supportive". The people I know who do great work think that they suck, but that everyone else sucks even more." -- Paul Graham

>In places where great work is being done, the attitude always seems to be critical and sarcastic It can be tricky, though, to be critical and sarcastic without using a jeering tone.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/789066303566929920

Critical and sarcastic seem to be two rather different things to me.

Constructive criticism is certainly important in all sorts of contexts. You don't want to be all "Oh that's perfect" when in fact it's fundamentally flawed in some way.

Sarcastic is more a matter of style than substance. "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard." Which doesn't seem necessary or necessarily positive.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#203

Post by bashexporting » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

HN comments are moderated (not the moderators which are completely fine and, in my case, always clear of what was off-topic and in need of flagging, but the community that flags) by the hive-mind that is like any hive-mind against diversity.

Of the dozens of accounts I had, some have reached karma levels of awe, and some were met with extreme flagging and disapproval.

The most pleasant and interesting discussions are mostly in the technical, scientific themes.

When it comes to diet, lifestyle issues, comments are overflooded with bunch of anecdotal claims, unscientific babbling and extreme boasting.

I stay away from these threads after I've realized this was the case.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#204

Post by nickpsecurity » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #107

zazen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may very well be true in organizations where the sarcasm exists in an established context of mutual respect (or at least, the knowledge that you'll have to keep working with the other person). But it's very different when total strangers communicate by text over the internet: sarcastic comments breed aggressive replies, and threads degenerate into arguments very rapidly. I think good conversations online need mo…

I have noticed in HN that well justified critical comments without hostile tone are faced with aggressive tone if the subject is some new hot technology. The underdone seems to be "say positive things", not say intelligent or insightful things.

I followed by doing it even more on more topics containing bullshit. I had a steady following of people that respected that I continued counterpoints to fads while linking to evidence justifying it. I have opponents, too, that prefer I cancel my Internet service or end my unrelenting, evidence-driven "attacks" on certain things.

Anyway, the trend exists but can just be ignored. There is a huge crowd of people here that appreciate thoughtful, civil counterpoints. I'll add that quite a few are also professionals in industry worth having in one's network for people that use HN that way.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#205

Post by nickpsecurity » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #22

shubhamjain wrote: post #10

I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments that floods several discussion forums that I have come across. "Nice article", "Great write-up" and the next thing you know, you have created a place where people are only interested in submitting their articles and getting it upvoted rather than make meaningful contributions. People want to make good contributions here and that's something that differenti…

Indeed. When my comments or articles hit the frontpage/top of the thread, I don't really care. What excites me is when I get a ton of responses from more experienced people. Because that gives me an opportunity to learn something.

I second this. I watched the votes for a while to gauge what style, topics, or counterpoints had impact. Then, I mostly just ignored them. The real value is learning from people that know better than me on numerous topics. On top of helping out others with whatever I've learned. I've learned a ton, though, from other commenters with some things might have lasting significance in business or software developments I participate in.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#206

Post by dominotw » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

shubhamjain wrote: post #10

I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments that floods several discussion forums that I have come across. "Nice article", "Great write-up" and the next thing you know, you have created a place where people are only interested in submitting their articles and getting it upvoted rather than make meaningful contributions. People want to make good contributions here and that's something that differenti…

> I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments

Reminds me of the episode from latest black mirror episode where the truck driver falls from 4.6 rating to 1.8 because she is critical of other people, thoughts.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#207

Post by veddox » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

yanjuk wrote: post #200

veddox wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one karma point. That is such a good idea it has actually been integral to HN for, oh, I don't know, a pretty long time... From the FAQ ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html ): ''' How is a user's karma calculated? Roughly, the number of upvotes on their stories and comments minus the number of downvotes. The numbers don't match up exactly…

No, I mean downvoting costs both the downvoter and the downvotee one point each. People won't downvote comments they merely disagree with but they will still try to correct injustice and disruption. I'm no game theorist but that's my guess. It also reflects human psychology where righteous anger comes with a personal cost.

Ah, OK, now I get you ;-) An interesting hypothesis, I honestly don't know whether that would work. The biggest problem then is that there is a large percentage of HNers who see downvoting as a legitimate way of showing disagreement. One of them happens to be dang, so you would have some convincing to do...

(While I don't subscribe to their view, they do have some arguments in their favour. And what is more, this is an issue that gets debated at least once a month on HN, so good luck trying to push the balance :D )

Re: HN comments are underrated

#208

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

tnones wrote: post #161

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regards to the gender aspect, see any of the threads related to 'women in computing' and the horrible posts therein.

Only if you assume women cannot be successful in technology without needing a special interest group mooching off the entire enterprise. It's a vicious cycle based on a kafkatrap. If you don't agree that women are discriminated against in tech, you're discriminating against women. Culture committees, diversity consultants and women-only groups are set up to "address" this problem, yet all they do is create more divis…

A perfect example of my point.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#209

Post by nickpsecurity » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #135

50CNT wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad likes to dismiss Wikipedia, and he used to be an admin. They may just know how the sausage is made. His rule of thumb is "If it isn't a major article there's probably errors". His favorite example is that of an article about an ancient persian poet, which says that there's only 2 of his poems known, and only 1 remains. Next to that line, there's a picture of the other poem. Eh, who knows.

You can see Wikipedia as a mixture of different "subpedias". I find articles on technical and mathematical topics to generally be extremely accurate, content rich, and surprisingly bias free (so not very, but still). Protocols, theorems, proofs, even very advanced topics (way over my head, so perhaps I can't tell...). You could do much worse than take everything Wikipedia says about mathematics at face value.* On the…

"I find articles on technical and mathematical topics to generally be extremely accurate, content rich, and surprisingly bias free (so not very, but still)."

Same here. I usually just link the Wikipedia article because it's either totally accurate or accurate enough for what I'm trying to accomplish. I added a bunch of stuff to it as a result from my domain. I do spot marketing BS on occasion in there but the baseline makes it really stand out. Most people doing IT work are going to say, "Wait, that looks like a fan or advertiser wrote it" then dismiss that specific point.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#210

Post by obstacle1 » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

oldmanjay wrote: post #198

anexprogrammer wrote: post #3

HN comments are full of naive political opinion, groupthink, and a tendency to blind optimism on all things technology or new. Often older ways have merit too. It's also probably the only place left on the net where, from comments, I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic, and sometimes talk with the guy who…

What you see as "groupthink" is really your bias attempting to dismiss any number of people for disagreeing with you. I understand the point of your post, I just don't find that particular bias funny enough to let it pass uncommemted.

Or, it could actually be groupthink, and your bias is acting to prevent you from having to admit that a group you identify with expresses positions that are wrong.

There's actually no way to prove that either case is true. However, you expressed a position as a certainty -- "what you see as groupthink is really..." -- that is in reality just another opinion. Therefore, your comment is equally as ill informed and myopic as OP's.