Be Kind • Hacker News Board

Re: Be Kind

#381

Post by jorgearturo » Wed, May 13, 2015, 7:07 PM UTC

zipppy wrote: post #374

ffn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names. Every internet message board has its own culture with its own take on what's "right" and what's "wrong", and on HN (and reddit) the institutionally accepted way of being mean is misusing the downvoting / flagkilling system to attempt to bleep…

Could HN benefit from a dual-voting system? One for 'agree'/'disagree', and the other for 'constructive'/'non-constructive'?

Don't you think that would break the minimalist design? I don't think it would benefit, not to mention it would be a little too opinionated.

I suspect HN's up/down system follows the pattern of simplicity by design and for good reason; the reason being the flexibility to welcome a cognitive diverse audience.

Apparently HN's decline in audience quality over time was expected from the start¹; quality and popularity seem to be inversely correlated, but the voting privilege threshold is a good way to maintain culture values to some degree.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but given the fact this community was conceived as "an experiment"¹ to explore and empower the hacker community, I suspect one of the points has always been that the "best" ideas float to the top. In this case, the "best" ideas are always relative to the values of the community as a whole; the sum of criteria of the engaged participants, a very diverse audience.

That diverse audience can have multiple motives to vote up or down, according to each individual mindset; it can be agree/disagree, constructive/non-constructive, as you proposed, yes, but it also can be interesting/uninteresting, like/dislike, kind/unkind. Or many other criteria that are not necessarily antonyms; amazing/disgusting, enlightening/TLDR, etc.

So this singular up/down "un-opinionated" system's simplicity allows a cognition diversity one-size-fits-all dynamic, any change in UX would have to be planned for a justifiable purpose and very carefully executed.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: Be Kind

#382

Post by jorgearturo » Wed, May 13, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

doorhammer wrote: post #230

ffn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names. Every internet message board has its own culture with its own take on what's "right" and what's "wrong", and on HN (and reddit) the institutionally accepted way of being mean is misusing the downvoting / flagkilling system to attempt to bleep…

It's not much, but when I see posts that are downvoted for no discernable reason (assuming good faith on the poster), I'll usually throw them an upvote to bring them a bit out of grey. It's not much, but if I'm having a crap day and something I say it getting downvoted, I feel a little better when it ticks up a notch, knowing at least one person isn't trying to just bomb my post. It's basically the tiniest little gif…

>> assuming good faith on the poster

haha I get it. And that's also very kind of you.

I do it too sometimes, trying not to lose perspective of the true purpose of the conversation taking place of course; a single upvote in a bombarded comment won't cause detriment to the conversation but it will provide some motivation for the participant to keep trying to participate (assuming good faith on the poster, as well).

For example in StackOverflow, if I notice a -1 post but the post has some value, I'll upvote it even if it wasn't particularly useful for my issue, in order to give it a chance to be reevaluated without a negative bias of that -1

I find it a bit funny/curios on why we do such things. I've always known I'm not the only one doing that, it's one of those unsaid things that happen on the net, part of its culture.

Re: Be Kind

#383

Post by cma » Wed, May 13, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #337

cma wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Well so he says, but is it useful? When downvoting means two different things, it is hard to discern what is meant. I usually vote with 'helpful'/'I learnt something new' and 'not helpful'/'wasted my time in a mean manner'. I also don't see how one could only want comments one agrees with at the top - you learn less, and there might be less of a discussion. (Maybe I misunderstood pg's intention here?) One could argue…

I don't know that I agree with him, but consider:

As long as people upvote "I learnt something I agree with," and not "I learnt something I disagree with," the effect is the same, the amplification is just tuned a bit. Having a different standard for upvotes and downvotes doesn't do much. If you get less upvotes, it is effectively as if you got more downvotes.

Re: Be Kind

#384

Post by cdosborn » Wed, May 13, 2015, 8:28 PM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #184

Having never heard of this person before, I've done about ten minutes of research into who he is and why (in the words of his own about page) I should care. I've come up empty. It seems like he's got enough money now that he feels like engaging in some verbal philanthropy. That's fine, but does anyone have any concrete reasons I should prioritize reading his output over others?

Perhaps, just judge the content.

Re: Be Kind

#385

Post by jorgearturo » Wed, May 13, 2015, 9:21 PM UTC

cma wrote: post #383

kaybe wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well so he says, but is it useful? When downvoting means two different things, it is hard to discern what is meant. I usually vote with 'helpful'/'I learnt something new' and 'not helpful'/'wasted my time in a mean manner'. I also don't see how one could only want comments one agrees with at the top - you learn less, and there might be less of a discussion. (Maybe I misunderstood pg's intention here?) One could argue…

I don't know that I agree with him, but consider: As long as people upvote "I learnt something I agree with," and not "I learnt something I disagree with," the effect is the same, the amplification is just tuned a bit. Having a different standard for upvotes and downvotes doesn't do much. If you get less upvotes, it is effectively as if you got more downvotes.

I found it curious that something is never mentioned in that post. That is, not voting at all.

So yeah, I generally agree with PG in that

    > it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement

But he never said to do it in a trigger-happy manner. There can be many other reasons to vote, but when the reasoning is 'agreement/disagreement', voting IMHO should be done when you strongly agree or strongly disagree; this way you allow some "space" in between for freedom of expression.

So my current take on this whole vote up/down to convey agreement/dissagreement discussion would be not voting at all unless you find it pertinent.

Also IMHO, in other types of reasoning one should be a bit faster to downvote, for example 'rudeness', or worse, 'hate messages', for those ones I downvote immediately, or flag and sometimes even educate (if the person seems to be just confused, and I make one attempt only, if the person is not interested in changing their mind, I skip).

Other types of reasoning deserve a different approach, for example; Interesting comments I upvote even if I don't agree. Well redacted but uninteresting comments I leave untouched (I don't vote up nor down).

And there are many other considerations for different scenarios and different types of reasoning, I mostly prefer not to waste time, but I liked this post about kindness and find the topic of community very engaging and relevant to me. Maybe because I'm starting to build a community myself.

I admit that I'm a bit faster to upvote, for anything that deserves positive feedback; attention, approval, agreement, endorsement, celebration, applause, kudos, kindness, etc. And I'm OK with that.

Re: Be Kind

#386

Post by vorg » Wed, May 13, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

But do you be kind to some of your coworkers all of the time, and all of your coworkers some of the time?

Re: Be Kind

#387

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, May 13, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

jasonwocky wrote: post #343

oh_sigh wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should provide more insight. I understand that you disagree with the statement, but you aren't really doing anything to prove your point. Granted, the original poster didn't do much to prove their claim either.

I thought it was obvious on its face that "vigorous debate" isn't the "only" way that bad ideas end up dying. In fact, plenty of bad ideas have come out of vigorous debate.

The poster never said vigorous debate is the only way that bad ideas die.

They said that vigorous debate is the only way that some bad ideas die.

Re: Be Kind

#388

Post by doorhammer » Wed, May 13, 2015, 10:21 PM UTC

rootlocus wrote: post #347

doorhammer wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much, but when I see posts that are downvoted for no discernable reason (assuming good faith on the poster), I'll usually throw them an upvote to bring them a bit out of grey. It's not much, but if I'm having a crap day and something I say it getting downvoted, I feel a little better when it ticks up a notch, knowing at least one person isn't trying to just bomb my post. It's basically the tiniest little gif…

> It's not much, but if I'm having a crap day and something I say it getting downvoted, I feel a little better when it ticks up a notch, knowing at least one person isn't trying to just bomb my post. It's basically the tiniest little gift I like to give to people, heh. I think you're too concerned about what strangers think and do around the internet. Most people will "bomb" your subjective side of the argument (the…

Yeah. Part of "good faith" for me is that the person isn't being discernibly or overtly aggressive, mean, or sarcastic.

Basically, if you're being an asshole, I don't feel a need to save you from yourself.

There aren't many (if any) formal guidelines for comment voting on HN, so this is me driving at what I want out of the community. I don't speak for everyone. For my part, I want civility, and to encourage people to contribute their opinions, popular or not.

The polite responses to misinformed ideas are often some of the most educational, at least for me, and so I'd like an environment where anxiety about the chance of being wrong is low for everyone.

I also don't want any of this to sound like an indictment of hacker news. I keep coming back here because I think the community is really top notch, and the signal to noise ratio is high. Commenting systems and forums have had these problems for ages, and they're hard problems. I just wanted to add my voice to the crowd.

Re: Be Kind

#389

Post by jorgearturo » Thu, May 14, 2015, 12:26 AM UTC

ticviking wrote: post #378

jorgearturo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right. Even when in many cases you can immediately tell downvotes were necessary, deserved and the commenter should've seen it coming. I've also encountered many cases that confused me a bit and at the time didn't quite understand why those people/commenters were being downvoted. So I've spent a long time just reading HN without commenting, trying to first understand the culture, the news are just as imp…

> In the end, you'll find it more useful to acquire a thick skin and a "deal with it" attitude towards gratuitous negativity (down-voters included), but not an impermeable shell because sometimes there's some useful criticism behind rude negativity, just don't take it personal and master the art of spinning the conversation towards a constructive direction. This is the most important lesson I was never formally taugh…

Well, there's some high value on learning lessons by yourself, it may have taken some time from your life, but you ended up understanding better the in and outs. So good for you my friend.

Re: Be Kind

#390

Post by jorgearturo » Thu, May 14, 2015, 12:35 AM UTC

weaksauce wrote: post #380

jorgearturo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that the most healthy way to deal with people that dismiss your entire argument/point/opinion by nit-picking your grammar (or similar) is to dismiss them back, kindly. The kindly part is so important; their attitude shows that they don't have an open mind at the moment; dismissing kindly leaves a moral door open so that in the infrequent (but not rare) event that they'll have an open mind later in the day…

Those are all great points and I try to follow them myself when interacting online. I was actually looking for some kind of way to stop it from an algorithmic standpoint or some other fashion. Mainly because I don't like reading and wasting time on some minor nitpicks.

Not sure if I understood you correctly but as far as I know HN uses algorithms already for this sort of taks.

That's cool but I'd like to have better control, so I'm designing a custom HN curator myself. And I've noticed some other people have done the very same thing themselves.