231–240 of 383 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant the karma ratio (or what it was called) that was on the profil page, a percentage value as far as I remember - ...maybe dang can explain it?
Yeah, that had a major drawback: it discouraged helpful replies deep in the thread. I'm glad they removed it.
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…
".. 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
Removing the vote count was a step back. You end up with highly positioned comments that are factually wrong and no way to weigh the corrections made in replies. If you saw that a comment had 20 votes, but a reply had 500, you'd have something to go by. If nothing else, they could show the relative score of a reply to its parent.
So far it seems to actually work. There are differences in the scores and lazy but popular comments get punished.
These criticisms, when phrased in the manner of the post ("HN is full of mean and rude people"), suggest by omission that there's some kind of internet forum Nirvana out there where everyone's nice all the time and nobody every says mean things or is rude. ("HN is full of mean and rude people [... unlike place X, which is always great all the time]") But the thing is, once a community reaches a mid-to-large size, cer…
> And yet, I haven’t found a public internet forum with better technical commentary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
Lots of good discussion in this whole thread. Another thing to keep in mind is that good, effective communication involves both/all parties. That involves the speaker communicating in a way that will be effectively received by the listener, and the listener actively participating to try to hear what the speaker is trying to communicate. So it's context dependent as well. There very well can be mismatches and miscommu…
That's a good point. In my classes on it, they called it active listening. Anyone interested in following up on your point should type that phrase into Google to find all kinds of interesting resources appear. Another angle I found interesting was "dang" linking to Principle of Charity:
http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html
I think that would've stopped a lot of arguments. I was against enforcing it totally at moderation level as I'm for empirical approach where we do dismiss bad information if it clearly fits the pattern. It's good as a general principle in discussions, though, when one's instinct is to think other party is an idiot on specific topic. A combination of active listening, charitable approach, and follow-up questions can make that discussion much better for both parties. I even learn from people who are clearly wrong about an issue when I see what things matter to such people & can fine-tune my solutions or arguments to reach more people. Other times I'm wrong with similar effect of fine-tuning ideas or beliefs as long as I suck it up. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You want to find the niche expert subreddits. The ones you named are good. So is /r/badhistory, /r/badeconomics [1] which are generally hangouts of experts to make fun of people claiming things. /r/netsec is generally good, so is /r/machinelearning. Even niche job-specific subreddits (like meddit or /r/protectandserve) are interesting to observe. Because economics gets politicized so much, it's very rare to find soun…
I didn't know about badeconomics, and I'm enjoying a lot, but I can already see ways in which its moderation reduces the average comment quality. For instance: there's a whole lot of insubstantial snark. A lot of it is funny, but you have to pick through it to find the actual information. That's not a criticism of badeconomics! Just an observation on how moderation choices can affect total thread quality in different…
The subreddit has tripled in subscriber base over the last year, and growth like that can be harmful if you're aiming for a higher signal/noise ratio.
Snark is not frowned upon as long as it's based on something meaningful. I'm guilty of snark, but I try to craft high quality posts. Making fun of people because they disagree with your viewpoint is not fine if you don't explain why in an objective manner, though.
But the subreddit is such that a lot of people bring their personal ideology and hope for the regulars of that subreddit to back them up. So there's a balance to be struck.
These criticisms, when phrased in the manner of the post ("HN is full of mean and rude people"), suggest by omission that there's some kind of internet forum Nirvana out there where everyone's nice all the time and nobody every says mean things or is rude. ("HN is full of mean and rude people [... unlike place X, which is always great all the time]") But the thing is, once a community reaches a mid-to-large size, cer…
Uh, did you read his second paragraph? > And yet, I haven’t found a public internet forum with better technical commentary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
To those people (not you) "who see downvoting as a legitimate way of showing disagreement" I would say that it's too lazy. Better instead to try to explain why something is wrong. Then we can look carefully and objectively at the explanation rather than at the score or the expert/layman status of the author. Also many disagreers would find themselves unable to explain why they don't like some idea and might even change their minds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first bit is true, but the second is pretty much the opposite of what Google found: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learn... In particular, Google found that psychological safety is a key component of successful teams. Indeed, I think in an environment where rudeness is the norm, it's much harder to get people to share negative thoughts. Sure, you'll have a few alpha-dicks who will say what…
Nope. Seen both many times. The positive enforcement causes no one to share any negative thoughts after a while and the company smiles it's way out of business. Unfortunately people who will not speak up out of fear are toxic to company culture. The creative process is immediately destroyed when people need to second guess everything they say or do since it is impossible to know if you are about to say the wrong thin…
> If someone can not tolerate cynical and sarcastic comments they need to be removed quickly. This is very different from mean spirited put downs and intentionally hurtful comments.
If somebody belives that cynical comments are valuable that person needs to be removed immediately. Cynicism is never the most effective position. Anybody who thinks it is is an asshole. If they can't realize this, they'll become a cancer.
Cut out the cancer. Get rid of the cynics. If you hire somebody who says that being cynical is a must, then admit your mistake quickly. Fire them. They're worse than useless. An empty chair is more valuable than such a beast.