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Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

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Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#411

Post by sheriff »

I think there are two distinct use-cases for posting to HN, and I think the OP's pain can be partially connected to the fact that both types of posts get treated identically.

The first use-case is "Person A discovers Thing X on the Internet and wants to discuss it critically with the people on HN."

The second use-case is "Person B wants to share Thing Y that they made, in hopes that the people on HN will give positive feedback."

As a reader, you can choose to treat the two types of posts differently, but without a conscious effort, I think the default behavior is to use a consistent approach to all posts on the site. The result is that either real industry news doesn't get reviewed very critically, or personal projects get reviewed more critically than the poster would have hoped.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#412

Post by duaneb »

sw007 wrote: post #45
rprasad wrote: post #22

Wow, it's a good thing you're not a writer... Criticism is one of the best ways to learn to be better at what you do. "Hate this, hate that" may be negative but it is useful feedback from actual/potential users of your site/service/app/whatever. HN is a far better site with useful comments than it is a site with solely positive comments.

Ironically I am a writer - I've written a sitcom and had it made and have had my fair share of 'this is awful' comments - I get people won't like my stuff, I don't have a problem with that. I am making the point that the old HN crowd would give constructive feedback rather than just rip in to you...

I think the line between "ripping in" to someone and "constructive" criticism is a fine line, probably something to do with tone. Personally, I don't view (let alone comment) on product launches, I'm more of a code kind of guy, but from my position I see excellent discussion. I suspect that the negativity on product launches is because everyone can contribute - there's no skill barrier.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#413

Post by fingerprinter »

pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

Hey PG - Honest feedback from someone in one of the largest tech communities in the world (Linux). Technical solutions won't solve the problem. Even things that various communities have tried around governance won't solve the problem.

It basically takes strong leadership, preferably from one person or a (very) small group of people.

Look at GNOME these days. They are rudderless and mostly because they have absolutely NO leadership either from community people or RedHat (GNOME is basically RedHat). They are dying slowly.

Look at the Kernel, though. Linus controls it, sets the tone (often harsh!) and it hums along.

Look at Ubuntu. People may hate the direction, but Mark runs that show and they people know what they are doing and where they are going.

IMO, the idea that the community will govern itself has never held up. Communities are formed around ideas or interests, but are led by people (leaders).

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#414

Post by opminion »

rbanffy wrote: post #368
deadlysyntax wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoy that, that is a great quote. It is the last thing I read before posting this comment and I instantly started looking for a more diplomatic way to tell you that I think it's a bit poetic and would likely be skipped by people who don't have the time to decipher the metaphors. Then again, it seems to have worked.

We can always make the understanding of metaphors a required step for signing up.

Tongue-in-cheek, how hard would be to make a captcha?

Examples from [1]:

Metaphor: Argument is war I shot down his argument He couldn't defend his position She attacked my theory

Love is a journey: Our marriage is at a crossroads We've come a long way together He decided to bail out of the relationship

[1] http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2006_09_30_then...

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#415

Post by sigkill »

phaus wrote: post #389
dfc wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I've run into just as many dishonorable people as I have in the general population." Can you think of any group this would not be true for given a sample size or population as large as the military?

The point was that I can't. The study mentioned above claims that people act more honestly when they are reminded of a set of values to which they are supposed to adhere. I was simply stating that while I was in the military (for about a decade), we were constantly reminded of the set of values which we were supposed to follow, yet I saw no signs that such a practice has any effect whatsoever on an individual's behav…

And SoftwareMaven said that you don't have a control. What he meant is that, if these values hadn't been reminded there's a very high probability that honest people might have done dishonest things, and dishonest people might have done dishonest things of far greater magnitude.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#416

Post by rafedb »

tptacek wrote: post #406
larrys wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You of course are allowed to joke because more people know who you are and allow it (so your comments aren't greyed down for everyone to see). (I've noticed this a few times at least). So now the poor puppy of a newbie user thinks it's ok to tell a joke (because he doesn't know who you are) or be funny and then BAM he gets slapped with a newspaper full of downvotes and runs away yelping all confused with his tail bet…

Maybe overthinking this one a little.

no his post is actually 100% true.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#418

Post by tripzilch »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #255
tripzilch wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used to be mod/admin on a rather busy and strife-filled SMF-forum the past 6-7 years, I can confirm that this works surprisingly well. I say "surprisingly" because, like a lot of tech hackers, I often think about a technical solution before I think about the simple social one. But I've noticed time and time again just how much effect the simplest changes in user-interface can have on the entire "mood" of a com…

The SMF forum? Or another forum running SMF? I only ask because SMF (well actually its predecessor YaBB SE) was what got me active in contributing to open source projects. Solid software that SMF.

No, no, another forum running SMF.

But solid software, really? I give them one thing: it works. Can't recall encountering any real big bad bugs either, so yeah in that sense, quite solid.

But given that you contributed to it I assume that you've seen the code? I've had to make some modifications/hackery here and there myself and the amounts of time I've cursed at it for being a tangled and obscure mess... combine that with the childish language in the comments, urg.

I guess that's one important thing it taught me: never be flippant or rude in your code comments because it'll invariably end up making you look like a fool. Kind of like that "Muphry's Law[sic]" someone quoted in another thread. In "production code", but I found it easier to change my habit to "in general" because you never know who's going to see your code, and even your 3-months-future-self might as well be a different person when reading code is considered (except future-me does tend to share my sense of humour).

Because of that, all my own modifications ended up looking like rather ugly hacks as well because there was simply no "coding style" to join in step with.

(and the templating system (that is neither). and the amount of semi-duplicate subroutines and their names!!. "post", "post2", "message". And trying to guess in which of the five "/∗ probably the most important module of SMF ∗/" giant includes you're going to find a certain routine is about as predictable as trying to guess the name of a PHP library array function without reading the docs ... I really should stop, sorry :) )

It does work very well, I must repeat that. But only as long as the original magicians are still there taking care of it I'm afraid.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#419

Post by nor-and-or-not »

nikhilgk wrote: post #214
jimminy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would leave people like me out. I often find the news here, so I'm very unlikely to submit something. And I only comment when I feel like I'm going to add value to the community or discussion, which isn't that frequently. So I have a clear judgement on when I contribute, it's not much or often, but it tends to present some value. I've had an account for 2.5 years, and used the service for even longer, yet my kar…

I echo this sentiment. I have been here longer and does not comment unless I have something of value to say, but do actively vote on stories or comments. People whom I know in real life and frequent here have the same usage pattern too. I would hazard a guess that there is a substantial amount of people in this category. So a purely karma based approach may not be sufficient.

About the same here. I'm a member for ~3.5 years and don't comment very often, not to say very seldom (my karma is at 23 points). When I write down my thoughts, I really want to add value to a thread, which I also feel isn't very often. Humble or shy - don't know.

I do frequently vote up good articles regarding programming, hacking, startups, and such things. That's the things I'm interested in since I was a young boy and that's my daily life. I'm a freelancing coder (yes, I see that term as positive, same way as hacking) since '96 and tried my own startups since then over and over. That said, I value good and constructive and sometimes also funny comments and being able to upvote them I frequently do so.

Are my upvotes even counted? I don't know, I don't really care. But I admit it gives a bit of a strange feeling to be "less worth" in a community where you participate - we can argue about that - daily.

Nevermind, just wanted to say.

Small addendum: After submitting this comment I remembered that I wanted to add that I'm from Europe and people not being from the States and therefore in a different timezone often experience to comment on already discussed topics (this also happens on Reddit a lot). Maybe this is also a part of why I'm not commenting that much.

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