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New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#41

Post by woooooop »

itg wrote: post #25
firstOrder wrote: post #6

This is a horrible idea. The Panglossianism that will result from this is indicative of the bubble hype which will destroy Silicon Valley, Y-Combinator and Hacker News. In fact, this is the worst idea I ever heard in my life. So continues the descent of HN...

The guidelines aren't asking you to behave like Pangloss and think everything is perfect. It asks if you do have criticism then address it respectfully and constructively.

According to what moral framework are you precisely defining "respectfully" and "constructively"?

There are plenty of examples in the world where bringing up logical, concise, and polite criticism invokes the wrath of a cabal of power-holders and social media demagogues, especially in a world that promotes the postmodern idea of "interpretation, not intent, is reality"

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#42

Post by gizmo »

wilschroter wrote: post #31

Sorta feel like there needs to be more teeth to this than simply guidelines based. @SamA what more "severe" approaches did you consider and why did you decide they wouldn't work? This is a difficult challenge.

There's a good chance this will be sufficient. If HN discourse doesn't improve I'm sure sama and others will try something else (perhaps with more teeth, perhaps a software change).

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#43

Post by rspeer »

firstOrder wrote: post #6

This is a horrible idea. The Panglossianism that will result from this is indicative of the bubble hype which will destroy Silicon Valley, Y-Combinator and Hacker News. In fact, this is the worst idea I ever heard in my life. So continues the descent of HN...

Good example, thanks.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#44

Post by jseliger »

freeasinfree wrote: post #16

That's OK, disagreeing with the hivemind (critiques of Google come to mind) gets you downvoted into oblivion anyways.

disagreeing with the hivemind

Using terms like "the hivemind" (which doesn't exist) is actually a good example of the thing the new guideline covers!

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#45

Post by moe »

Random idea:

How about an extra pair of vote-buttons to classify a comment as "positive/negative" (karma-neutral)?

I often find the karma-system frustratingly one-dimensional.

Experiments in that direction are of course a slippery slope, but what place other than a hacker forum could be a better petri dish?

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#46

Post by maxerickson »

Udo wrote: post #8

One of the most negative habits is in my opinion the failure to read a comment charitably (to make an effort to interpret it in the best possible light). Instead, people often tend to misread or miserunderstand what's being said, only to use the opportunity to write a "correction" based on that false impression. A worse flavor of the same problem is a misunderstanding that is then used to justify outrage or personal…

The corrections I find the most frustrating are the ones that attempt to frame something that is reasonably a difference of opinion as a black/white, right/wrong issue.

A made up example using something that is about as subjective as possible: No, that's wrong, strawberries are awful.

(just changing that to "I disagree, ..." gets rid of a lot of the nonsense)

There also ends up being a lot of what is essentially squabbling, comments going back and forth over what someone meant, or pedantically squishing some point that had done a good enough job of transmitting the idea (I'm all for being careful when it matters, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter all the time).

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#47

Post by 300bps »

Udo wrote: post #8

One of the most negative habits is in my opinion the failure to read a comment charitably (to make an effort to interpret it in the best possible light). Instead, people often tend to misread or miserunderstand what's being said, only to use the opportunity to write a "correction" based on that false impression. A worse flavor of the same problem is a misunderstanding that is then used to justify outrage or personal…

rampant negativity...seems to have gotten less common recently

HN does do a good job of weeding out uselessly negative comments and other trolling behavior. If you want proof of that, go to your profile and turn on "Show Dead". It is amazing to see how many people are shadow banned yet continue to post on a daily basis. I've seen several accounts that have posted daily for years completely unaware nobody is seeing anything they post. They know nobody has ever upvoted or downvoted their comment or replied to it but just can't seem to make the connection that they're shadow banned.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#49

Post by dang »

minimaxir wrote: post #28
Alupis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a few examples I know of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8938409

The first link is a low-quality comment / ad hominem, the second link is off-topic / ad hominem. Both of those were already against the rules.

That's true. (See "Sharp readers may point out" in the OP!) But the guidelines are not a technical spec, and some redundancy is helpful.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#50

Post by zk00006 »

Given the fact that people get points for their answers, there is already bias towards positive and encouraging comments in hacker news. Notice how the comments start positive and later slowly add the information just to be "safe". Of course not in all cases. From my experience: if I give shallow positive comment I am more likely to get positive points, but strict negative and often deeper comment is down voted. This rule can further increase this bias.
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