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New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

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Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#371

Post by mbesto »

tptacek wrote: post #321
abalone wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. You've highlighted the problem with your phrase "isn't no negativity". It's a poorly defined slippery slope of a criterion. Where is the line drawn? Banning personal attacks, but allowing unlimited criticism of ideas, is more of an objective guideline.

Unlimited criticism of ideas is fine as long as it's substantive. Critical comments must contribute something to the discussion. A reader unfamiliar with the topic of the discussion should be expect to learn something from critical comments, more than "a commenter named $foo doesn't like this thing".

Perhaps what abalone is referring to is anything seemingly positive that doesn't add any value to the discussion should also be pointed out. In other words, gratuitous comments in general, positive or negative, should not be supported. For example, we see lots of "XYZ just raised $10mil" on here and the comment section is littered with "Congrats Jim!". Should we not be downvoting those too so we keep the consistency of "I learned something here" comments?

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#372

Post by ZenoArrow »

throwawaymaroon wrote: post #367
ZenoArrow wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let's discuss what I missed, perhaps I did misunderstand you. Let's start again from this, do you agree with the golden rule? What does it mean to you? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule

You're not going to get anywhere by throwing discussion questions at him like this is a school exercise. You missed his point and he's gone. Edit: Oh, don't mind me, I'm just dwelling on how you seem to be in some starry-eyed optimistic we're-all-in-this-together quest to "further understanding" in a pit of petty verbal combat.

"You missed his point and he's gone."

He made extra posts after the comment you replied to. Furthermore, the exercise could've been used to further understanding. If the poster decides they have something to say in response, I'll take the time to read it.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#373

Post by throwawaymsft »

abalone wrote: post #236

Can we also have a rule against Gratuitous Positivity? Seriously, it's a slippery slope. "Nothing of substance" is a term that needs more clarification that what that post provides. It seems to suggest that if the criticism is too harsh, then it's no longer substantial. I think there's a better guideline than that. The best ideas not only can withstand criticism, they get better with criticism. If you examine what's…

When HN becomes an unending fount of positivity, we can address it then. Right now it's veering off the other side. Course correct first, finesse later.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#375

Post by kposehn »

I read this and immediately thought "I hope I never actually did this myself"

Looking through my comment history, I have a few times previously. We're all fallible, but at the same time this sort of negativity can come through without intending it. I'm really caring and optimistic, so to see some of my comments become unintentionally overly negative is kind of humbling.

Let's all remember how easy this is to do and keep an eye on ourselves. It matters.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#376

Post by tptacek »

mbesto wrote: post #371
tptacek wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlimited criticism of ideas is fine as long as it's substantive. Critical comments must contribute something to the discussion. A reader unfamiliar with the topic of the discussion should be expect to learn something from critical comments, more than "a commenter named $foo doesn't like this thing".

Perhaps what abalone is referring to is anything seemingly positive that doesn't add any value to the discussion should also be pointed out. In other words, gratuitous comments in general, positive or negative, should not be supported. For example, we see lots of "XYZ just raised $10mil" on here and the comment section is littered with "Congrats Jim!". Should we not be downvoting those too so we keep the consistency…

Unwarranted positivity simply isn't as harmful as unwarranted negativity. There's basic psychology behind that, for instance, loss aversion.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#377

Post by oldmanjay »

vacri wrote: post #327
mreiland wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, hypocrisy. You don't get to pick and choose who to interpret charitably unless you want to be a hypocrite. But here's the thing. That idea is valid even though your dislike of my post is going to drive you to continue attacking me unnecessarily. and that is why I have a tendency to dismiss people.

"Charitable reading" is not synonymous with "ignore abuse and snark". Edit: oldmanjay - I can't reply yet, so editing here: mreiland is basically arguing that abuse should be let through because of 'charitable reading'. I'm commenting against that concept, not chiding mreiland for being abusive. However, mreiland is definitely being snarky - if you wanted to read this comment as chiding the behaviour in this thread,…

It seems like you would have to be incredibly uncharitable indeed to feel abused by anything in this discussion. Although I admit I am not particularly sensitive.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#379

Post by notatoad »

abalone wrote: post #236

Can we also have a rule against Gratuitous Positivity? Seriously, it's a slippery slope. "Nothing of substance" is a term that needs more clarification that what that post provides. It seems to suggest that if the criticism is too harsh, then it's no longer substantial. I think there's a better guideline than that. The best ideas not only can withstand criticism, they get better with criticism. If you examine what's…

I think it will be a while before we come to the point where a guideline against "gratuitous positivity" is required. This forum is pretty far towards the other end of the spectrum right now.

I see where you're coming from though. The comments on HN, while often being negative, and almost entirely constructive. I try reading the comments at product hunt from time to time, and while all the "beautifully designed" and "i've been using this since [earlier than you] and i love it" comments are nice and surely make the developers feel good they inevitably add nothing of value to the submission, and as far as providing useful context to the submitted link they may as well not exist.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#380

Post by dang »

lnanek2 wrote: post #356
abalone wrote: post #236

Can we also have a rule against Gratuitous Positivity? Seriously, it's a slippery slope. "Nothing of substance" is a term that needs more clarification that what that post provides. It seems to suggest that if the criticism is too harsh, then it's no longer substantial. I think there's a better guideline than that. The best ideas not only can withstand criticism, they get better with criticism. If you examine what's…

That's a very good point. I'd be much happier if they said the new guidelines is no personal attacks. That's very clear and easy to check. Instead we end up with this slippery slope of certain types of negativity vs. others and all it really means is the mods have a blank check to remove anything they don't like that isn't meaningless happy fun compliments.

As Sam pointed out, gratuitous negativity has always been against the guidelines. Personal attacks are, too, of course.

The way this stuff really works out is in practice, so judge it based on what you see actually happening on HN. The intention here is pretty modest: to nudge the community slightly in the hope that the culture will grow a little more aligned with the guidelines. We're not interested in false positivity either.

That doesn't mean this isn't a big deal. Gratuitous negativity is a hard problem because it's mostly unintentional. That's why the most important part of this is asking the community to gently give commenters feedback when they see it. Any significant effect of this guideline change will not be in what moderators do, but in what the community does. Given the quantity of comments posted to HN, there aren't enough moderators to make that big a dent by direct intervention anyhow. We like it that way.

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