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Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

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Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#231

Post by Zak »

hnriot wrote: post #166
Zak wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's probably tricky to programmatically determine what a nasty comment is I've actually been working on that problem with a bot that assists in moderating a subreddit using a text classifier. It's tricky, and needs more work, but it is not impossible.

it's not that hard. Those that work with classifiers, this kind of thing is pretty easy. Identifying sarcasm and irony are hard, but 'nasty comments' can be identified pretty simply using the well known text classifier algorithms. You find the training data and use it to train something like an SVM.

I'd be surprised if pg hasn't experimented with it at least a bit given his history with text classification algorithms.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#232

Post by WiseWeasel »

dwiel wrote: post #207
guga31bb wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens quite frequently on reddit as well. I'd imagine it's due to the fact that the set of people who vote on a story are different than the set who vote on comments. For example, people could find a title appealing and upvote without actually reading the article or any of the comments. At the same time, the people who take the time to read the article (and corresponding comments) vote up the comments criticis…

It seems lile that could be fixed by tracking which articles a user clicks and disregard an upvote if they didnt read the story or they read it 5 seconds ago.

What if they already read the story from a different source?

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#233

Post by jilebedev »

mhartl wrote: post #196
tptacek wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you'd consider investing less time in technical countermeasures to dumbness (all of them are gameable, and the brand of dumbness you're fighting is not at all incompatible with an intuitive talent for that gamesmanship) and more time into just setting better community norms. It is hard to imagine that the site guidelines you write years and years and years ago when this place was tiny are, intact and without c…

I'm sympathetic to your point, but I fear that the worst offenders are among those least likely even to read the guidelines, much less adhere to them.

It's good that you bring that point up. I disagree with you, and if I could be so bold, I'll paraphrase tptacek's post above: communities are built on principles that goad people to excellence, not forbid them from mediocrity. Communities are built by principles, not by laws. I firmly believe this, and it's why I agree that more good will come on HN from stating what people OUGHT to do instead of listing the kinds of behaviours they oughtn't engage in.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#234

Post by kls »

mhartl wrote: post #196
tptacek wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you'd consider investing less time in technical countermeasures to dumbness (all of them are gameable, and the brand of dumbness you're fighting is not at all incompatible with an intuitive talent for that gamesmanship) and more time into just setting better community norms. It is hard to imagine that the site guidelines you write years and years and years ago when this place was tiny are, intact and without c…

I'm sympathetic to your point, but I fear that the worst offenders are among those least likely even to read the guidelines, much less adhere to them.

Unfortunately I agree, it is no big secret that tech as a segment has a fairly sizable portion of it's population with smartest guy in the room syndrome. The problem with smartest guy in the room syndrome is they already know the answer. Therefore they are not information seekers and they disregard anything that is objective to their world view. It is what killed Slashdot and sadly it is becoming unbearable here. Self policing does not help with this personality type, because they have no vested interest in anything other than everyone seeing them as the smartest guy in the room. Their concern about the community only extends to their recognition. It is a self centered world view and therefore I don't think that self enforced measures will work on this personality type. I almost think a third measure is needed, like a flag as abusive. Knowing that they can be flagged as abusive (even if the system dumps the flag and does not use it in any calculations). Will cause them to reflect on the policy, as it directly threatens their ability to use HN as a platform for self glorification.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#235

Post by railsjedi »

pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

Another simple idea (that you've no doubt thought of): using Twitter (or App.net) authentication. That way people are a bit less anonymous and more accountable. I can imagine people would hate this, but they might be the same people who are the haters to begin with.

I don't think this phenomenon is just on Hacker News. I believe the recent negativity shift is an actual change in the startup community's perceptions of the world.

When things are "hot" in our industry, and seemingly trivial companies are exiting for billions, the people who are still struggling start to develop a somewhat bad attitude. I see it all the time particularly from people who are working on "serious stuff" and then lash out when they see Instagram's success (which they've been saying for years: "sure, but what's their revenue model??").

I don't condone it and honestly think it's genuinely strange. Now is as amazing a time as any to be founding a startup. Success of others (no matter how trivial) only makes things better.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#237

Post by MuGo »

pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

I think it should be a more aggressive approach.

Delete insulting comments that cross the line. Trolling is like pornography. You know it when you see it.

After three offenses, delete that person's account. After 5, ban their IP address.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#238

Post by xtracto »

I am quite new here, but one thing that I have looked in the last months or so is that more and more new submitted links are mainly personal rants.

Not trying to attack sw007's post specifically, but I am talking about blog posts linked from here that seem to be added only to spike controversy.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#239

Post by jackpirate »

Splines wrote: post #217
InclinedPlane wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between merely hostile, negative commentary and constructive, well-founded criticism. The problem that HN faces is that because of the voting system those drive-by valueless negative comments are getting amplified all out of scale relative to their value. Imagine being in a restaurant. It's not so bad if there is someone in the far corner having an argument that you can just barely overhear or so…

Part of the problem with HN (and reddit) is that the format is still linear. A comment system results in multi-dimensional conversations both in subject and in tone. Some comments are on-topic and are helpful, some are on-topic and humorous. Some are off-topic and also helpful, some are off-topic and worthless. As so on, and so on. With only one direction we can "push" a comment (and only one direction with which we…

I did always like Slashdot's commenting system for precisely these reasons. It seems like their meta-mod system worked pretty well too to ensure that people's votes were actually meaningful. Oh, and the limit on the number of votes you could give really made it feel like your vote mattered and you couldn't waste it.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#240

Post by rjsamson »

mhartl wrote: post #196
tptacek wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you'd consider investing less time in technical countermeasures to dumbness (all of them are gameable, and the brand of dumbness you're fighting is not at all incompatible with an intuitive talent for that gamesmanship) and more time into just setting better community norms. It is hard to imagine that the site guidelines you write years and years and years ago when this place was tiny are, intact and without c…

I'm sympathetic to your point, but I fear that the worst offenders are among those least likely even to read the guidelines, much less adhere to them.

True, but wouldn't it better rally the rest of the community to keep those offenders in line? If their harmful comments don't get upvotes, they lose their audience.
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