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Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

ycombinator.com

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Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#41

Post by uxp »

revorad wrote: post #28

One question I ask myself now before commenting is: Will this comment significantly improve this conversation? I try not to comment if the comment is merely: 1. clever and amusing 2. expressing anger/disagreement 3. disproving a wrong but unimportant claim made by another commenter. Besides these, submitting, upvoting, downvoting, not voting and flagging are enough to make HN more interesting for myself.

I find myself writing comments fairly often, but end up pausing before I hit the reply button to re-read what I'm replying to and to think if my comment is actually contributing to the discussion. A good percentage of the time, I just end up closing the window.

I may have good intentions to begin with, but if what I say reads as being one of the three points you wrote, there's no point in having other people argue against my invalid or ignorant claim. It just leads to semantical flame wars.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#42

Post by [deleted] »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #34
swombat wrote: post #7

Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined two and a half years ago.

I think that reminding people to read the guidelines does not necessarily mean that HN is becoming bad. I incur sometimes in posts that do not follow the guidelines and get a lot of downvotes. Half the time they are from new users that maybe do not even know about those guidelines, so maybe they do not even understand why they are getting downvoted. Of course they can learn it the hard way, but reading the guidelines…

[deleted]

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#43

Post by _cbsz »

bpyne wrote: post #32

As long as someone has opened up a guideline discussion.... "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." Agreed in full. However, downmodding without constructive criticism leaves the downmodded with no sense of what to improve in the next comment. A downmod could easily be due to underdeveloped point, style, or disagreement about an opinion. At least 2 of the 3 re…

So assume it's that your comment fell into the "noise" category and work harder on producing "signal" next time. We don't need to have a discussion every time someone felt that some post did not contribute sufficiently to the discussion.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#44

Post by andreyf »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #34
swombat wrote: post #7

Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined two and a half years ago.

I think that reminding people to read the guidelines does not necessarily mean that HN is becoming bad. I incur sometimes in posts that do not follow the guidelines and get a lot of downvotes. Half the time they are from new users that maybe do not even know about those guidelines, so maybe they do not even understand why they are getting downvoted. Of course they can learn it the hard way, but reading the guidelines…

Does this all mean that HN is becoming bad? I don't think so. It just means that we have guidelines we care about because they made HN a place we all like.

Exactly. I actually haven't noticed any egregious infractions in the comments or stories, just thought it might be a good idea to point them out for those who might not be aware the guidelines even exist.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#45

Post by edw519 »

swombat wrote: post #7

Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined two and a half years ago.

Right on, swombat.

Last year, upon Iteration 27 of this same subject, I threw something like this together in jest:

                 Quality of HN Comments Over Time
   |                   . .
   |                  .   . 
  q| . .             .     .
  u|    .           .       .               . . .
  a|     .         .          .           .       .
  l|      .       .              .      .           .
  i|       .     .                  . .               .    
  t|        . . .                       you are here -->. .
  y|                                      (that's all)
   |________________________________________________________
    M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A
                    '09                     '10
I must have been on to something because so many didn't realize it was a joke. What fun that was. All I have to do is shift the x axis every n months: some things never change.

Original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#46

Post by kamechan »

aside from this one, i never read the comments. i'm just here for the links not the community editorialization of them. but my faith in "communities" has dwindled over the years through my continued participation over the years in this thing called "the interwebs". as the japanese would say, ganbatte kudasai. keep up the good work/do your best.

in other words, please do not ruin this nice little community with your own baggage.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#47

Post by slater »

jng wrote: post #30
Vivtek wrote: post #10

I'm pleased to see that I am officially allowed to complain that HNN is getting to be just like Reddit.

Hacker News is starting to feel like programming.reddit.com a year ago. Now, Reddit is getting more and more like Digg a year before that. Digg certainly looks like Youtube comments one year before. Now, Youtube, that surely is now just like Myspace some time before. And Myspace now is somewhere close to what the AOL forums used to be. But AOL - don't look at the AOL forums! they now look as bad as Usenet did when ev…

"We should all return to Usenet. There's nobody there"

... except for spammers.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#48

Post by kaiserama »

edw519 wrote: post #45
swombat wrote: post #7

Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined two and a half years ago.

Right on, swombat. Last year, upon Iteration 27 of this same subject, I threw something like this together in jest: Quality of HN Comments Over Time | . . | . . q| . . . . u| . . . . . . a| . . . . . l| . . . . . i| . . . . . t| . . . you are here -->. . y| (that's all) |________________________________________________________ M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A '09 '10 I must have been on to some…

Sadly this is exactly what the CEO of a company (maybe all companies?) I worked for would do with his projected sales chart...and he still has his job. Now THAT's funny.

Good work :)

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#49

Post by pg »

kscaldef wrote: post #38
pg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find is that randomness produces the appearance of cycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion The last couple days were particularly bad, with lots of articles about controversial but fundamentally boring topics. But I think it was a coincidence, as usual.

Do you collect any metrics on user behavior? For example, it seem to me like downvoting (and particularly the abuse of downvoting) is on the rise. But this is just a gut feeling based on my particular comment history.

I don't think people are more apt to downvote than in the past. But there are a lot more voters. Plus I recently removed the -4 threshold on comment scores and instead merely never display a number lower than -4. So downvoted comments now cost more karma. (This was in response to people who would say asshole things, knowing they couldn't cost them more than 4 points.)

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#50

Post by duck »

andreyf wrote: post #44
DeusExMachina wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that reminding people to read the guidelines does not necessarily mean that HN is becoming bad. I incur sometimes in posts that do not follow the guidelines and get a lot of downvotes. Half the time they are from new users that maybe do not even know about those guidelines, so maybe they do not even understand why they are getting downvoted. Of course they can learn it the hard way, but reading the guidelines…

Does this all mean that HN is becoming bad? I don't think so. It just means that we have guidelines we care about because they made HN a place we all like. Exactly. I actually haven't noticed any egregious infractions in the comments or stories, just thought it might be a good idea to point them out for those who might not be aware the guidelines even exist.

It would be nice if a brief summary of the guidelines appeared on the "submit" page if your karma is below say 20 just so you have a more constant reminder.
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