Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 7:15 AM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #95

maxklein wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the less anonymous a forum like this is, the more polite it will be. You have said you want people to speak to each other here as they would in the real world: well, I believe the more strongly you tie their real world identity to their account here, the more polite they would be. My suggestion, similar to that experiment in the past, and similar to twitter, add a "verified user" badge in the users pro…

I haven't found anonymity to be very well correlated with politeness on tech discussion forums I'm on. Some of the most abrasive ones are filled with people posting under their real names, and folks like rms, Theo De Raadt, Ulrich Drepper, and a bunch of the comp.lang.lisp crowd have no problem flaming you under their real names.

Post by SkyMarshal » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 7:19 AM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #95

maxklein wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the less anonymous a forum like this is, the more polite it will be. You have said you want people to speak to each other here as they would in the real world: well, I believe the more strongly you tie their real world identity to their account here, the more polite they would be. My suggestion, similar to that experiment in the past, and similar to twitter, add a "verified user" badge in the users pro…

I haven't found anonymity to be very well correlated with politeness on tech discussion forums I'm on. Some of the most abrasive ones are filled with people posting under their real names, and folks like rms, Theo De Raadt, Ulrich Drepper, and a bunch of the comp.lang.lisp crowd have no problem flaming you under their real names.

Post by resdirector » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 10:26 AM UTC

izendejas wrote: post #269

resdirector wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Stupid" comments are one thing, "stupid" questions are another. With "stupid" questions you at least demonstrate a willingness to learn and not just spew political talking points, biases, etc. I self-censor because of this and think we shouldn't mind. I end up writing comments I don't submit, but I consider the exercise worthwhile because forcing myself to write my thoughts out and then judging whether they're truly…

Post by brudgers » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 4:57 PM UTC

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…