u mad
Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
31–40 of 297 posts
Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#32Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every open online community. This is the flip side of the anonymity and what Jaron Lanier calls "the mob switch" (google it). In other words, human tendency to gang-up/gang-down, up-vote/down-vote in batches, regardless a content. I also noticed that often here the polite but critical comments are down-voted if they don't share the "main theme" of a post. A…
"Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every open online community."
I often hear comments along these lines, I fear that people who write and read them then think that there is nothing to be done. That there is not point in trying, that there is no cultural or satisfactory technical solution possible.
If nothing else it is better try/do something then do nothing at all.
Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#33Not trying to be passive aggressive here, at all; I agree with you here. The reason I didn't post anything was that HN has gotten pretty damn meta recently too. I'm not sure posts like this will help anything, much; probably something needs to come from the top, or the community needs to focus on enforcing the behavioral norm by down-voting (even if they normally wouldn't put in the effort) comments that are of an as…
It's a weekend. There's always more random stuff on weekends.
Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#34FWIW, I discovered that people take disagreements personally and will stalk you across threads if you're not careful with their egos. For some reason I am incapable of remembering names and can only identify about 10 - 15 people here other than the ones I have met or know from somewhere else. So the whole thing feels to me like detached, anonymous discussion. I was surprised to be 1) remembered, and 2) "punished" in…
I wasn't going to reply until I noticed I had a long line of comments with 2s a couple of hours ago, now they're all 1s after this morning's little scuffle: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851115 You can never prove anything unless you have the logs so there's not much point worrying, just play with and enjoy the furore. The best defence, if there is any, is to have a lot of karma and only engage with these folk…
Err, that thread was fine until you linked to his history, Peter.
But yeah, drug related threads, red flag :-) I hope you learned your lesson.
Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#35Incidentally, 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.
You could try fragmenting HN in the same way that Reddit allows; this makes it possible to turn off the bullshit that invariably rises to the top. I mean, I don't even read reddit main or /r/programming anymore; they're just garbage.
Otherwise... aggressively ban people that don't contribute well enough. It is literally the only non-fragmentary way to fix the problem, because it's not a technical issue. People are just terrible. (I'm of the opinion that fragmenting is simply a less aggressive version of banning: leave the trolls to their shit-heaps, forge new ground.)
I'd say you should be banning at a rate over half of the new users you see. And if you look at my posting history, you'll probably see that I'm not exactly grade A material, so I'd expect to get chopped off eventually, probably sooner than later.
Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#36No social news site is going to be perfect. If it's people that are writing comments, some comments will be good and some will be bad. Read them and decide for yourself. If a comment hurts your feelings, get over it. If you like a comment, upvote it, and help other people find the best comments. Really, I kind of get tired of reading stuff like this because there is always some subtext to it. "mean-spirited" usually…
When it comes to things like politics/religion/etc no amount of good writing can convince the other person.
I would make the argument that it depends more on the rationality of the person receiving the argument then what the argument is about.
A rational person is capable and willing to change their mind when new evidence is offered.
A irrational person may easily change their mind on some topics with no evidence and never change their mind on other topics(politics/religion/etc) even with the best evidence.
Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't going to reply until I noticed I had a long line of comments with 2s a couple of hours ago, now they're all 1s after this morning's little scuffle: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851115 You can never prove anything unless you have the logs so there's not much point worrying, just play with and enjoy the furore. The best defence, if there is any, is to have a lot of karma and only engage with these folk…
Err, that thread was fine until you linked to his history, Peter. But yeah, drug related threads, red flag :-) I hope you learned your lesson.
I don't see a problem in looking at people's previous submissions - it can come in handy to get some context (in this case, it did, since his behavior on HN was getting him voted down in the past).
That said, I just went back and re-read your post and, yes, I see your point now and it's not quite how I read it first time round. I think the real problem is people who go back and vote down stuff to "punish" people, not those who introduce context from looking through your history (which I'm quite happy for people to do when replying to me).
Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#38If we could dispense with all of the boo-hoo-someone-was-mean-and-downvoted-me meta posts and comments, this could be a great site. Posts like this are the biggest problem with HN.
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Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#39Incidentally, 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.
Have you ever considered giving people the option to register their abstinence from voting on a comment? Right now we have up and down, but a lot of the time I feel like I wish I had an "abstain" button. This would be reserved for the comments that aren't mean-spirited, but don't add much to the conversation.
Then perhaps a comment with 20 up, 5 down, and 500 neutral would rank lower than a comment with 20 up, 5 down, and 0 neutral. The idea being that, all things being equal for two comments, the one with more indifferent voters is considered less valuable, and is thus ranked lower. Maybe a neutral vote simply works by increasing n when judging the size-weighted score that HN uses to calculate rankings now.
I'm sure there are flaws in this line of reasoning..perhaps someone would be so kind as to point them out?
Re: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually think it's a good idea not to single out anybody; you don't want to attract the attention of somebody who is already belligerent and vile.
"you don't want to attract the attention of somebody who is already belligerent and vile." I would rather these folks/comments are flushed out (the OP claims that someone belligerent and vile are getting a lot of upvotes , which seems strange to me - I don't doubt that mean people post on HN but if they are getting tonnes of upvotes (vs being downvoted or flagged) it would be really nice to see examples), but I appre…
I would agree that there is no reason not to single out those who are constantly belligerent and vile. When these individuals are easy to identify they are often isolate from a group and do not end up causing many problems. However that is probably not the case that causes the most problems.
The case that I have seen cause the most problems are the people who are normally ok but are belligerent and vile with a specific topic and or individual. This hypothetical individual is normally a productive part of the community and may not deserve to singled out. I would not out such a person unless I had good reason to believe that that they would be treated rationally and that the community would only see it as an opportunity to help said hypothetical individual to become more rational.