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Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

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Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#281

Post by queensnake »

pg wrote: post #186
chaosmachine wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoted comments are bad for the community. They are literally negative. Remove downvotes. Anything that truly deserves downvotes probably deserves flagging/deading, too. Downvotes change how you think about reading comments. Instead of "was this helpful?" you're thinking "do i love this or hate this?". It's polarizing, and as the number of users increases, it's easy for a comment to hit -4 in a couple minutes. Peo…

I've often thought of it. The reason I had downvotes originally was to deter people from saying things that were mean or stupid. But maybe the right way to deal with that is a separate mechanism from voting, as it is with stories. Maybe the right combo for comments is an uparrow, plus a flag link, and encourage users to flag comments that are mean or stupid. I'll think about the real solution more after I'm done read…

I'm an advocate of mean answers, if they're well-placed. I've seen them work at kuro5hin.org; they're 'area effect' weapons against stupid posts (by example), stronger than just a downvote. The truth is, as a site grows, you really only want a subset of the readership posting, and you want the rest to think twice before doing it (that sounds bad, but if you want read-quality and not write-quantity, you've got to do something to make people pay attention). Now kuro5hin.org is pretty much dead, but I don't think that was the cause.

Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#282

Post by davidw »

mkr-hn wrote: post #261
ahoyhere wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason seems to be that HNers feel like they have to project an ultra-logical persona at all times. Even Spock-like. How'd it get started? I wish I knew. It's not just jokes. I've experimented: I can make the most insightful and practical comment in the whole thread, but if I use "cuz" or "gonna," or "man," or more than a single (maybe two) exclamation points in the whole thing, no upvotes for me! But the more ps…

I think that's why I've been spending more time back at Reddit than HN lately. They talk about the same stuff with the same depth, but they have more fun doing it. Even Einstein wasn't afraid to stick his tongue out for the camera.

I've had humorous comments voted up here. IMO, the reason why is that they were actually funny in an original way, and perhaps not so blatantly, "ha ha" obvious to the casual observer as some of what passes for humor on reddit.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458155

For example. I've seen others upvoted too, but it's mostly only for genuinely funny stuff that's not some tired, bedraggled "meme". The other thing is that it's nice not to have too much of it - people "clowning around" just for the sake of attracting votes.

Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#283

Post by usedtolurk »

codefisher wrote: post #73

How about people with low karma (like myself) not being allowed to comment on articles that appear on the front page. Then only people really interested in following HN, and trying to form some kind of reputation in the community would be able to get much exposure. Trolls in general I would think are much more interested in putting out comments that a number of people will see.

That would result in a relatively small panel of generalists and censor specialists who might otherwise make the occasional invaluable contributions.

Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#284

Post by NickPollard »

resdirector wrote: post #227
pg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often thought of it. The reason I had downvotes originally was to deter people from saying things that were mean or stupid. But maybe the right way to deal with that is a separate mechanism from voting, as it is with stories. Maybe the right combo for comments is an uparrow, plus a flag link, and encourage users to flag comments that are mean or stupid. I'll think about the real solution more after I'm done read…

We had a saying in physics: "there are no stupid questions, (only stupid people)". We encouraged people to ask stupid questions, because (a) quite often that's the only way you learn, (b) it encourages shy people to speak up, and, (c) sometimes a stupid question isn't stupid at all, and leads to a deeper insight. I'm a little disappointed that HN isn't like this. Most of the time I have a "stupid question", but I don…

I think self censoring is largely a positive - it means people will actually take the time to think through their post, rather than just responding emotively. Whilst I'm sure there are times that valuable comments are lost because people are too cautious, I think the overall effect on signal-to-noise ratio is hugely, hugely beneficial.

Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#285

Post by lazyant »

pg wrote: post #30

Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I work on. It has been since practically the beginning.

I suggest hiding the points from submissions, comments and other people's summary page.

Seeing the points doesn't add value and it distorts the opinions and upvotes (people tend to like more what other people recommend).

Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#287

Post by alanh »

Sukotto wrote: post #167
pg wrote: post #30

Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I work on. It has been since practically the beginning.

Griefing: If the system does not already, I think it should flag for review users who consistently downvote a particular user. Cliques: Likewise if the same few people are consistently the first to upvote stories or comments of a particular user. Multies/Sockpuppets: I think votes for a user buy another user from "too close" an ip address should be automatically discounted. I'm not sure how to define "too close" (and…

The first thing I ever did with my HN account was make a submission that made it to the front page. There will be some false positives from banning noob submissions.

Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#288

Post by jtheory »

resdirector wrote: post #227
pg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often thought of it. The reason I had downvotes originally was to deter people from saying things that were mean or stupid. But maybe the right way to deal with that is a separate mechanism from voting, as it is with stories. Maybe the right combo for comments is an uparrow, plus a flag link, and encourage users to flag comments that are mean or stupid. I'll think about the real solution more after I'm done read…

We had a saying in physics: "there are no stupid questions, (only stupid people)". We encouraged people to ask stupid questions, because (a) quite often that's the only way you learn, (b) it encourages shy people to speak up, and, (c) sometimes a stupid question isn't stupid at all, and leads to a deeper insight. I'm a little disappointed that HN isn't like this. Most of the time I have a "stupid question", but I don…

Can you clarify the kinds of self-censoring you're doing?

Some of it is really a very good thing -- namely, "am I asking a question that would be trivial for me to answer for myself?"

There are plenty of "stupid" questions that are important to ask of yourself (and are part of the learning process for all of us) but need not clutter up a good discussion.

If everyone self-censors by asking "will this increase the value of this discussion for other readers?", I think that's a good thing.

I think you're talking about self-censoring based on "will this comment reveal my ignorance and harm my karma?", which isn't the same thing. A question or two along the lines of "I don't know much about this, but it's interesting and seemingly not well-covered online -- does anyone want to give a quick high-level explanation?" are normally welcomed.

Be polite, be on topic, don't ask something that's trivial to answer for yourself, and consider the value of the question to other readers... and you don't have to be already a wizard on the given topic to discuss it.

Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#289

Post by jtheory »

queensnake wrote: post #281
pg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often thought of it. The reason I had downvotes originally was to deter people from saying things that were mean or stupid. But maybe the right way to deal with that is a separate mechanism from voting, as it is with stories. Maybe the right combo for comments is an uparrow, plus a flag link, and encourage users to flag comments that are mean or stupid. I'll think about the real solution more after I'm done read…

I'm an advocate of mean answers, if they're well-placed. I've seen them work at kuro5hin.org; they're 'area effect' weapons against stupid posts (by example), stronger than just a downvote. The truth is, as a site grows, you really only want a subset of the readership posting, and you want the rest to think twice before doing it (that sounds bad, but if you want read-quality and not write-quantity, you've got to do s…

The trick is that we don't actually want to shame and anger people posting comments that don't fit into the HN ethos; we just want them to improve their comments, or wander off elsewhere without feeling too bad about it.

If someone has good ideas but is used to discussions on wilder forums, we want to educate them in a respectful way. If someone really doesn't belong here, we don't want to get their attention; we want to make HN as boring as possible to them, so they go away instead of posting a self-righteous rebuttal or seek vengeance in some way.

On the subject of respectful education... it might be helpful to have some built-in explanatory text shown next to downvoted posts shown only to the author, with the standard reasons for HN downvoting, and suitable responses for downvotes that seem unjustified.

Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

#290

Post by gasull »

pg wrote: post #30

Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I work on. It has been since practically the beginning.

Paul, what about having anonymous comments to avoid groupthinking, but keeping those comments linked to the poster's karma?
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