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New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

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Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#661

Post by tomjen3 »

Retra wrote: post #652
tomjen3 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to try to do that. Then some people were against gay marriage. And I listened to their arguments - or tried to because they literally didn't have a single one based on logic. So if I was to follow that rule I couldn't critize such people at all. Which lead me to the following conclusion: all of these rules of debate are excellent when you sit around the tables in Oxford or similar places or the debate is held…

You end up with defect-defect in the prisoner's dilemma only in theory. In practice, you tend to get mutual cooperation. The prisoner's dilemma is an incomplete picture of human rationality. It assumes you are playing against an agent you can't actually identify with.

That is true, I guess I should have specified that I meant it between entities (people, countries, etc) that really disliked each other.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#662

Post by jpindar »

im2w1l wrote: post #410
mwilkison wrote: post #52

I really like Recurse Center's (formerly Hacker School) social rules: https://www.recurse.com/manual#sub-sec-social-rules They address some non-obvious behaviors that tend to stunt conversation. It'd be nice to see some of those guidelines bleed over into the HN community.

I like the rule "no feigning surprise". "No well-actually's" and "No back-seat driving" to me seem designed to help the linear flow of IRL interaction. But in a threaded discussion forum like HN, the important main thread can still go on unimpeded despite "no well-actually" side-notes. The "no-subtleisms" rule is designed to hinder the spread of information about the differences of different groups. "It's so easy my…

Do you also make sure a product targeted towards women is especially easy to use? Saying "But older people really ARE less competent and I'm just trying to help them" is still ageist.

If you want to specify that something is usable by people with, say, "age related disabilities", great! But don't use "being a grandmother" as a synonym for that.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#663

Post by striking »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #656
striking wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the FAQ: Resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Shouldn't there be an exception to that rule? "Unless the original discussion is about downvoting, or about an aspect of HackerNews that would lead to a comment about downvoting being on-topic". Of course, there still needs to be something of substance in the comment.

The comment we're talking about isn't quite substantial. Even the meta-discussion that's happening around most of this stuff isn't all that useful. There have been a lot of people who haven't really gotten the hang of commenting here, complaining about the power of a downvote.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#664

Post by bootload »

dang wrote: post #648
bootload wrote: post #578

"Modnesty --to turn more moderation power over to the community." Q. Does everyone get equal access to moderation? If so, will equal access cause a skew in moderation?

As equal as the current access is to flagging, unless we see evidence that that won't work.

thx Dan

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#665

Post by notacoward »

tptacek wrote: post #634
notacoward wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might believe that if our one previous interaction hadn't been a case of selectively over-applying the "no gratuitous negativity" guideline before it was even announced.

Not to beat a dead horse or keep a totally unproductive thread alive longer than it has to be, but, if this is you: http://pl.atyp.us/ (from your profile) you seem like an interesting person with a lot of experience and perspective to contribute. So with that said: why not be specific about the selective over-application you're talking about? I couldn't find it in the comment history. People probably won't agree with…

I didn't consider it an issue worth pursuing, but since you asked:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9290629

I dispute both parts of "gratuitous negativity" wrt the sentence in question. First, it might have been snarky or disrespectful, but neither is the same as being negative. "Gratuitous" is even harder to justify, because the sentence was only the conclusion to a substantive point about the nature of Dunning-Kruger - one that at least 34 community members had considered solid enough to give an upvote. That sentence isn't going to kill the next AirBnB. At the same time, there were other comments on the same thread that were more clearly negative and more clearly gratuitous. Even though dang had even quoted one, this was the only one that got a direct reply.

To reiterate: I don't really care. I'll gladly accept my ticket for jaywalking, but not while drunk drivers are careening around on the sidewalk. I don't think there was any agenda or vendetta involved here, either. There was simple perceptual bias. This comment was singled out because of its visibility, not its content, and that's enough. It certainly puts the lie to the "no time or inclination" claim. Active policing without equally active attempts to avoid this kind of unintentional bias is effectively the same as deliberate bias.

Let's concentrate on finding and discouraging the truly toxic comments, before we start picking mild ones "at random" - because when visibility is involved it's not really random at all. It means comments that have attracted some attention will get quashed before those that everybody already realized weren't worthwhile.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#666

Post by BrandonMarc »

mkr-hn wrote: post #592
SCHiM wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe, the looks of HN have helped protect the community against trolls. Everybody knows internet commenting is crude, rude and awful more often than not. In my opinion HN is a glorious example of an online community done right and I'm not sure we should change the site. But who knows, maybe it will even be better if it gets a little make-over.

I've noticed a big improvement since dang took off the invisibility cloak. All the famous attempts at replacing HN tried to solve community problems technologically (like public referral trees and user-based discussions), but they all fall short of just having a visible and active moderator.

It also helps that dang has been willing - eager, even - to issue a mea culpa and reverse a decision. In other words, he's willing to admit to mistakes, or if not mistakes, at least sincere and reasoned discussion. This goes a long way. He doesn't just say, "Hey, I decided, you live with it."

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#667

Post by yellowapple »

platz wrote: post #459
yellowapple wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is bad and you should feel bad. :) Niceness/meanness is more often than not entirely subjective, relative, and arbitrary. Trying to create an objective definition for a subjective concept is going to end in frustration for a lot of people. Personally, I started frequenting HN mostly because the community was not only smaller, but also more up-front about its opinions. I've come to expect and appreciate a…

I've realized whenever someone uses a smiley face it's when they have their teeth bared and ready to bite, almost without exception

Really? No cases of it being used to denote happy sarcasm? How peculiar.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#668

Post by lexcorvus »

tptacek wrote: post #270
lexcorvus wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their guidelines are hypocritical, i.e., bad. To spell it out explicitly: the -isms rule is probably fine as far as it goes, but if HN is going to be inspired by the Recurse Center's policies, it should go a step further and officially discourage the Recurse Center's brand of pious discrimination as well.

How could this sentiment possibly have anything to do with Hacker News? Much to my disappointment, Hacker News doesn't offer financial aid to commenters.

Assuming that you actually want to understand my position, I'll expand my answer one more time. You don't need to agree with me to see that my view has nothing to do with the literal-minded (and admittedly amusing) observation that "Hacker News doesn't offer financial aid to commenters."

The Recurse Center's guideline against "subtle -isms" takes place in the context of offering financial aid only to favored groups. This suggests that "subtle -isms" against less-favored groups might be policed less vigorously. For example, many ordinary white men might reasonably consider the term "underrepresented" itself to be a "subtle -ism", but I doubt complaints to this effect would fall on sympathetic ears.

This issue applies to Hacker News because being inspired by the Recurse Center's policies risks importing the expectation that "avoid subtle -isms" mainly applies to speech against their favored groups. If Hacker News is to adopt Recurse Center–style community guidelines but wants to avoid such bias, it should be explicit in disclaiming any notion of "protected classes", instead insisting that the guidelines be applied equally to all groups.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#670

Post by superobserver »

Gratuitous negativity is a given when it is possible for users to downvote others anonymously for no good reason. My recent posts are a testament to that; thus, a call to avoiding it would necessitate the abolition of downvoting, which will never happen.
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