New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity • Hacker News Board

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#621

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 5:12 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #588

dang wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw in your argument is its assumption that the community would remain intact under such poisoning. When the threads degenerate, smart people leave. When smart people leave, the threads get less substantive. That vicious cycle leads to the death of the community, not the vital online place where people are free to speak their minds which you're positing. HN started as [1] and remains an experiment in seeing whet…

There's an old saying that poison is in the dose, not the substance. Many things are therapeutic in one quantity, fatal in another. An innovative community needs some of that nootropic "poison" once in a while. We already have social pressure and technical mechanisms (upvotes and downvotes) to deal with these differences of opinion about whether negativity is warranted. Over-policing such things, by declaring critici…

You needn't worry on either score. There's no question of lurching to an opposite extreme—it wouldn't be doable and is not how we think about HN.

As for over-policing, we don't have the staff, don't want the staff, and the staff we do have don't like police work.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#622

Post by sillysaurus3 » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 5:13 PM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #122

It's "the programmers way" to try to come up with some sort of moderation/policing system to solve this. Please do not come up with a moderation system. There should simply be a confirmation step after hitting submit, reminding the poster that they are valued for their positive contribution and giving the poster the chance to rethink their post and cancel if its too negative. Additionally when posting, require people…

The community moderation system, what it ends up being, will be gamed and abused and alienate and anger people. Don't do it. Witness the toxic mess of StackOverflow.

It seems like the reason HN will come up with a new moderation system is because dang isn't going to stay moderator for the rest of his life.

I sometimes feel bad HN has claimed so much of his time. It must be at least slightly depressing to constantly deal with the worst parts of HN. We should send him a thank-you card or a cake or something.

There are other candidates for moderator, of course, but would they be as thoughtful? As careful? Will they have the presence of mind to avoid hellbanning people if it would make the HN mod team appear in a bad light, as in this very comment section? (The squabble near the top of this post was HN at its worst, but dang probably couldn't ban anyone involved without giving the wrong impression.)

One thing's for sure: A community moderation system definitely won't. But a community moderation system might be a better alternative to a careless moderator, since at least the poor decisions can be appealed.

But that would probably be the first time in the history of the internet that something like that worked. So hopefully it will work.

If not, I imagine the HN team will do what they've always done: undo the bad decision and think of something else. They're nothing if not persistent and creative.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#623

Post by tmalsburg2 » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

One issue with this regulation is that hacker news is an international community and there are strong cultural differences in what is perceived as being too negative. In the US, people have a very low threshold and there is always a high pressure to be positive and supportive. People from Europe perceive this as phony and they tend to be more direct with their criticism. I lived in both cultures and observed that in the US there is a strong emphasis on presenting criticism in a considerate and toned-down way, whereas in Europe people are better at dealing with open criticism. There are merits to both approaches and I don't think it's a good idea to force the American way of doing things on this community. Hacker news needs to evolve a composite of the two ways to deal with criticism in an organic fashion.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#624

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #620

solve wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, what's the percentage of active / new users who visit the guidelines page? Can you measure this in the website analytics? > Rules don't communicate themselves, but culture does. At this point, you should really just copy the methods that Producthunt used to shape their community culture. Their strategy was perfect. In PH's case, it wasn't some intangible culture persuading people how to act, it was the founders…

I think that would be going too far. There are many ways to comment substantively and civilly. Being supportive and friendly isn't absolutely required.

[deleted]

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#625

Post by solve » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #620

solve wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, what's the percentage of active / new users who visit the guidelines page? Can you measure this in the website analytics? > Rules don't communicate themselves, but culture does. At this point, you should really just copy the methods that Producthunt used to shape their community culture. Their strategy was perfect. In PH's case, it wasn't some intangible culture persuading people how to act, it was the founders…

I think that would be going too far. There are many ways to comment substantively and civilly. Being supportive and friendly isn't absolutely required.

Interesting choice of metrics. I'll just point out this community culture difference:

- Mods on sites like PH tend to measure quality by the results of how the comments are likely to affect the post's creator. E.g. Could a comment contribute to preventing the next AirBnB from happening. No metrics that can be gamed to get around that.

- HN mods seem to be measuring quality through simple crude metrics like civility and substantiveness. Is HN really that unwilling to consider how the comments emotionally affect the creators? Trying to put this in the nicest way, the HN mods come across as autistic and emotionally detached. It's actually very easy for a regular person to understand whether a comment will be inclined to making someone want to quit working on the creation they've shared, no matter how civil or substantively it's written

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#626

Post by abandonliberty » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

Yes, there are parts of this community very uncomfortable with things they do not understand or agree with, and are very quick to argue or dismiss rather than try and see the value of the contribution or different point of view. Reddit went through the same shift as it became more popular.

There is hope: one of my best received comments was a gentle chiding of someone who had belittled someone's comment.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#627

Post by abandonliberty » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

Yes, there are parts of this community very uncomfortable with things they do not understand or agree with, and are very quick to argue or dismiss rather than try and see the value of the contribution. Reddit went through the same shift as it became more popular.

There is hope: one of my best received comments was a gentle chiding of someone who had belittled someone's comment.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#628

Post by skwirl » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

deciplex wrote: post #466

skwirl wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has been that my comments that are posted to disagree with highly upvoted (often top) comments have been my most upvoted comments. I feel like most people on HN disagree with a comment by upvoting a counterargument, which causes a back-and-forth flow to a thread where the strongest counterargument to each reply is the top child reply. This flow is what often makes threads here great. I'm actually surpri…

> I'm actually surprised to see people here complaining about downvotes being used to disagree with comments. It is quite common and gets really annoying after a while. Some of my comments in the past have broken the rules. Fine - downvote those. But quite a lot of them have most certainly not, and were written in all earnestness with intention of productive dialogue. And too many of those were still downvoted to a v…

Since you're using yourself as a data point, I paged through your comment history looking for your grayed out comments. I have to say that your grayed out comments were all well deserved. They are a very small minority of your comments, but they are comments that generally involved ad hominem attacks and/or gratuitous negativity that did not add to the discussion. I would say the downvote system has worked well in these cases.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#629

Post by owtM » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 6:13 PM UTC

kolbe wrote: post #525

kolbe wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's just a minor mistake, but you have no idea how amusing it is to see a highly pedantic person try to insult me WRT to my ability to communicate correctly, while referring to my negativity as "gratious[1]." As far as the rest of your post goes, communication isn't just a series of code comments for everyone in this world. If every post were subjected to some Critical Thinking 101 interpretation of logic, we…

I know that's what you think. At some point, you picked up a very linear path in life, and you think any deviation from that line constitutes some form of imperfection. It's why you're probably great at coding or math, but suffer in some other areas of life. Why should you listen to someone who doesn't write like a robot? For one, it is boring to listen to people who communicate that way. Read some Gaddis or Pynchon.…

> I choose to speak the way I do because I would rather risk alienating people like you by being myself than to allow the world to mold me based on some ill-informed[1] perception of what I think the other people in this world are like.

This very admirable and evident in this comment thread. I don't agree with everything you've been saying, but the sense of genuiness found in the way you've expressed yourself here is refreshing and very much appreciated. It saddens me that all I see in response are pleas for you to censor yourself. I already see the effects of the anti-negativity community thought police...

Admist the downvotes, know that your words have not fallen entirely on deaf ears.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#630

Post by unconed » Sat, Apr 04, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #44

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!

Getting upset over a term like "the hivemind" is exactly the kind of thing that turns off true rational debaters, and sets you on the path to a self-reinforcing validation box.

Uncomfortable truths will always be unpleasant. Spot on criticism will always make people feel stupid. You cannot be nice and be right all the time.

Furthermore, experience has shown that there are in fact a bunch of topics that are anathema here, which may not be debated, not even with correct citations and rational arguments. Hint: it's pretty much the entire "women in tech" debate. It's apparently forbidden to do anything but "listen and believe".

Good bye HN, I always thought this place would be astroturfed into oblivion, but instead, it's the feels crowd who killed it.