Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/06/03/some-tips-to-improve-the-civility-on-hacker-news/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BothSidesOfTheTable+%28Both+Sides+of+the+Table%29

by wheels • 16 years ago

68 77 16 years ago

bothsidesofthetable.com

ugh3• 16 years ago

Those comments he linked to did contain actual arguments. They also contained insults, which is unfortunate, but they were definitely not merely ad hominems.

I would not have problems with such comments directed at myself. As long as there are well written, structured arguments in there a insult won’t annoy me. Well, it probably will, but not very much.

I think it‘s also important to note that this is a controversial, highly emotional topic. I would expect it to get a little bit rough whenever that’s the case. The vast majority of comments on HN don’t contain insults or ad hominems.

macemoneta• 16 years ago

I think the problem is that there are progressively fewer and fewer places where civil discourse is the norm. Many sites start out that way and establish a stimulating environment. As the site becomes popular and attracts a wider audience, civility and discourse are replaced by memes, ageism, misogyny, and sarcastic sniping. I think we've all seen it happen, on many sites. It gets old fast.

10ren5• 16 years ago

I think that insults combined with actual arguments are worse than plain insults, because the latter are easy to ignore.

The only trolls that ever got to me were the ones that combined them.

Also, the guidelines are quite clear on shortening responses (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - bottom of frontpage):

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

ugh3• 16 years ago

Insults are unfortunate. I thought I was quite clear on that?

greyman• 16 years ago

Such spiritedness is very rare on HN, and such comments can be downmoded to invisibility, which I think is enough.

wisty• 16 years ago

HN is not civil towards external targets (i.e. bloggers, Microsoft, Zuckerberg, etc), but it is civil in the sense that HN readers are discouraged from attacking each other.

I guess we could learn to not attack the authors or subjects of the articles, but that's not the point. The "civil discussion" rules are there to keep the discussion from degrading into flame wars, not to be nice to bloggers.

Also, not that he uses simple present (HN readers are mean), then only considers one article (his own article about why you should never ever hire a job hopper). Most of the discussions seem fairly civilized to me. I guess you wear a bit of heat if you suggest that a large fraction of your audience isn't worth hiring. The insults weren't pretty, but they aren't typical HN comments.

looprecur5• 16 years ago

I think a lot of the criticism of our generation and of job hopping is projection. The whining about entitled, self-centered young people sounds exactly like the complaints that were made of the Boomer generation in 1970, and they're just as exaggerated-- somewhat true, mostly not.

What's lost in this mess is that very few people actually want to job hop. They do it because they have to do it in order to have their career progress at an acceptable pace. It's risky and painful and the vast majority of people would rather not have to do it. So it sucks to be criticized for a behavior that we're forced into.

Loyalty has to be earned. If I'm pigeonholed or passed over for a promotion, damn right I'm going to start looking for another job.

Also, with all the complaints about people job hopping to increase their salaries, this wouldn't work at all if companies paid fair salaries. If companies are slow with raises and promotions, leaving their people underpaid after a couple of years, they get what they deserve when people stream out. (Obviously, this matter is different for cash-strapped startups, but people who join those aren't especially concerned about salary.)

marilyn• 16 years ago

The civility on HN is unparallelled. This community, with pg's guidance has done an amazing job of fostering a thoughtful community for intelligent discussion. Suster's arguments all focus around one particular discussion in which emotions ran a little higher than usual, and are not, in my opinion, representative of the community as a whole.

As for Suster's suggestions, the first one would be a mistake. There are many situations when a throw away account is warranted, such as asking for anonymous advice on a tricky work situation, or submitting a controversial article.

For the second suggestion, it already exits. Once a user reaches a certain karma level s/he has the ability to down-vote comments.

For the last, an RSS feed on a user's "threads" page would likely be useful to those who wanted to be notified on updated conversations they are participating in.

warwick• 16 years ago

He's asking for a notification of when his site is linked to, not anything to do with conversations. It sounds like a clumsy solution to a problem that trackbacks should already have solved.

michael_dorfman• 16 years ago

Let's not get too self-congratulatory here. Yes, the civility on HN is much higher than on many other discussion sites, but it's still a lot lower than you'd find in most real-world situations.

I agree that throwaway accounts are useful, and that there are times when anonymity is advantageous, and that the added civility that comes with real names is a bad tradeoff in this case.

However: in this case, the second point (downvoting) didn't prevent an uncivil (yet insightful) comment from becoming the highest ranked comment in the thread.

I'm not saying Suster's suggested fixes are good ones-- but I don't think we should dismiss the problematic out of hand.

Unchecked nastiness and incivility are the broken windows of the online community.

arethuza3• 16 years ago

Is the civility level on any site like this doomed to decrease over time as popularity grows?

swombat2• 16 years ago

Actually, having just observed a situation where a bunch of people who met in real life exploded into an immature email discussion full of insults and accusations, I don't think the civility on here is any worse than it is in real life.

I think the reason why it feels like "real life" is more civil is that you don't hear about people insulting each other in real life, because they don't usually shout it out on the rooftops (in my experience, after a particularly nasty discussion, both sides prefer to keep it quiet and just not talk to each other anymore).

anamax• 16 years ago

> However: in this case, the second point (downvoting) didn't prevent an uncivil (yet insightful) comment from becoming the highest ranked comment in the thread.

So? Does it happen often enough to worry about?

> still a lot lower than you'd find in most real-world situations.

It's not clear that that's true and even if it was, it's not relevant. The relevant comparison is with comparable real-world situations.

Which reminds me - there's an acceptable way to call someone an asshole in every situation. Are you measuring "civil" by whether the acceptable form is used or by whether any form is used?

If someone is being an asshole and pointing that out is useful, I don't have a problem with what form that takes so long as it doesn't draw unnecessary attention. In fact, failing to point out assholism in many cases is itself uncivil.

YMMV.

arethuza3• 16 years ago

I actually rather like that HN doesn't do email notifications or an RSS feed of your own comments/replies.

wheels• 16 years ago

Well, it is possible to use searchyc to snarf people's streams; I do so for a handful of HN users, e.g.

http://rss.searchyc.com/user/wheels?sort=by_date

looprecur5• 16 years ago

I agree. Hacker News has a lot great people on it.

Karma, however, is a joke because accounts are regularly nuked for no good reason, which necessitates starting over at zero. Hellbanning spammers and outright trolls makes sense. Hellbanning good posters who make one annoying comment is ridiculous. If you don't like what someone has to say, disagree with him. (This is also why I don't like downvoting without a reply; I think people who object to something should say why they object to it.)

swombat2• 16 years ago

I've made a prodigious amount of comments, and I'm sure some of them were quite stupid, and yet my account hasn't been banned. So have most of the people on the leaderboard. I guess it's not "one annoying comment", but a) how bad the comment is, and b) how much contribution that user had made in the past.

Sukotto• 16 years ago

  The civility on HN is unparallelled

I submit that http://ask.metafilter.com is as good, or better. Mostly due to their excellent moderators.

[edit to expand] Also because you have to pay $5 to join and they impose traffic caps on newer users to get around some of the spamming problems. So yeah... not entirely apples-to-apples.

bhousel• 16 years ago

Yes it is apples-to-apples. Sometimes you have to pay more for the nicer apples.

dejb• 16 years ago

> The civility on HN is unparallelled.

Try looking at lesswrong. Scary. I think prefer the odd venomous irrational spew at the moment rather than having to mathematically prove my opinion. Good reading though.

Vivtek• 16 years ago

Making Light (http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/) is both civil and open to the non-paying public, and has no registration requirement. So it's possible to do it. In this case, they moderate, and they attract more literate people to start with.

Certainly no "flame war" there has gone any further than you might have over drinks with your friends if you'd had a bad day.

Anonymous posting is very important to me - I don't ever actually use it, but I like to know I could. I really don't like the idea of having to present photo ID to express an opinion.

j_baker• 16 years ago

To be totally honest, the article those comments were in response to was an ad hominem directed at many of our users. It's one thing to ask if someone's going to leave in 6 months. But it's another thing to ask if someone is a job hopper.

I think a point can be made that we should have risen above his ad hominems, but don't complain about an argument you started.

10ren5• 16 years ago

1. If you are writing self-admittedly inflammatory material, and you get inflammatory responses, you should try stopping doing that and see what happens before suggesting changes in HN. People are mirrors.

2. You can flag inappropriate comments (click on their link or parent link for the flag link to appear). [EDIT maybe there's a karma threshold to see the flag link.]

I think swearing and meanness is very rare on HN. I would say there is a fair bit of "scrappiness" - argumentativeness/combativeness - which sometimes undermines the productivity of the discussion. But although annoying, it's quite different from mean spiritedness.

wwortiz• 16 years ago

The karma threshold to flag comments is just as minimal as the threshold to flag stories, but it would be much easier to see if you didn't have to go to the comments actual page.

jamesseda2• 16 years ago

Agree with Number 1. If the article was titled "How to increase company loyalty and reduce turnover?" The "Fucking Asshole" comment would have been the top comment.

msuster5• 16 years ago

I normally avoid being inflammatory. I wrote my original post too quickly and late at night. I agree it wasn't well worded and accepted (almost) all criticisms. I don't think that forgives people saying FU or similar. There is a difference between attacking and crossing the line with epithets.

10ren5• 16 years ago

Thanks for replying. I think you did the best to rectify the problem you created. And I agree that your error doesn't excuse others' errors. You're both wrong (although the initiator is generally seen as being more in the wrong, "who started it").

But the most effective way for you to change this is to change yourself rather than to try change other people. Be the change you want to see in the world.

10ren5• 16 years ago

Thinking on this further, HN could have flagged the submission, instead of being drawn into attacking it.

There are so many interesting articles on the web, why give their space to an abusive one? If HN has civil standards, shouldn't we ignore articles that fall below those standards?

Any argument that an article makes - even the most subversive and intrinsically inflammatory - can be articulated in a civil manner. And I think these would be extremely intellectually stimulating.

looprecur5• 16 years ago

Job hopping is a touchy subject because young people don't like job hopping, as was discussed in those posts. They do it because, in today's corporate climate, they usually have to do it in order to prevent being pigeonholed, neglected, and otherwise left to stagnate.

Most people in most companies are going to find that the people above them don't care about their advancement. Sure, companies have their spiel about personal growth and continuing professional development, but it's often paper-thin. Managers can't look out for the careers and development of 10 or 20 different people, so it's often only one or two who gets "protege" status (favoritism in project allocation, mentoring, political look-out).

Also, the level of visibility and relevant work that are necessary for career advancement in today's competitive culture simply cannot be available to everyone. Unless you're a startup founder, you have to become the protege of someone important-- which only happens for the lucky few within 12 months at a new job, or you're wasting your time. This means that anyone with half a speck of ambition is going to keep moving around until finding a fit. No one exactly likes doing this; it's better to have this success early on and no longer need to "job hop".

So job hopping is not really voluntary. It's a natural outgrowth of today's corporate culture, one created by our elders who seem to be unhappy about our rational response to it. They're mad that the people under 35 have actually figured out the unwritten rules.

Oh, and I am pw0ncakes. Why did I (have to) change username? Because the incivility on Hacker News exists on both sides of the table. At least uncivil comments can be seen and argued against, whereas the sloppy, poorly-reasoned, invisible and heavy-handed ban policy, on the other hand...

brc• 16 years ago

I don't know about using real names. People use real names on Facebook, and i've seen some very nasty stuff there after wandering into the wrong groups by accident.

There just needs to be a way, and a culture, of playing the ball and not the man. Most of use are OK with the substance of our arguments being torn apart, but aren't ok with abuse. Sadly there are many who can't do the former so always stick the latter, like quarreling bullies in the schoolyard. Maybe that's where they are from.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

His complaint seems to partly center on the amount of swear words... one reason I prefer HN over other communities is we are not scared of the word fuck. Swearing is a part of honest society (and, luckily, gratuitous swearing is downmodded to oblivion in my experience).

Why did pw0ncakes get upvoted. a) because he is probably right but b) mostly because he accurately represents his generations reaction to things like this (and, lets face it, the original post was rather silly/incindary)

My suggestions (which will not be popular with many of Ycombinator’s hackers but may meet your goal of civility).

And here's the problem with this entire post; it adopts the same slightly sneering, "peering down on us" tone. It's not overtly rude - but no better, really, than "fucking asshole" (once you get over the swear word).

It's not, actually, a post about improving civility on HN - it's a thinly veiled attack/return shot :)

Ok, I'm not going to support calling the guy and asshole (he sounds like a bit of an idjit, I think, reading through the various posts/comments etc. and the original post he made before the updates did sound a bit "asshole") and, yes, there is a slightly growing problem of attacks over fair argument here in HN comments. But this is still a stellar community; positive suggestions are good, sneering resentment, probably not :)

Send me alerts when comments come in on a story I’ve written

That's silly; just monitor your logs if you want to see when HN comments come up (or set up a google alert etc.).

But actually I would prefer not encouraging people to come here to write about their posts unless they are already a member, reasoning:

- they are probably not "up" on how things work here, and so it risks going downhill

- comments here can be acerbic and honest, and people do take offense at that (which seems unfair to the writer)

By all means if it benefits the discussion invite him/her in. Otherwise leave it be :)

pavs• 16 years ago

    > I have thick enough skin or I wouldn’t blog.

...

    > It’s totally acceptable to me for people to harshly criticize my  
    > points-of-view. No problem.  But calling me a f***ing a**hole or some  
    > of the other epithets used goes too far.

Does not compute.

Though I agree with you that such language is not nice and can be (should be) avoided as much as possible. Some people sometimes have bad days and certain topics can bring the worst in you. As long as it is not regular pattern of certain individuals being very liberal with their Fs and As, I think it is fine. The examples you gave are cherry picked in reference to a discussion about a blog post that you made and was directed at you. It says nothing about the general level of civility at HN, which I think is pretty decent, not perfect, but decent.

Forcing people to use their real name is the worst idea that I can think of.

looprecur5• 16 years ago

I don't think "fucking asshole" is much worse than "trophy kid". They're about comparable in terms of incivility.

tedunangst• 16 years ago

One of those terms I would use in front of my mother. The other I would not.

seabee• 16 years ago

You can be thick-skinned without being totally oblivious.

Offensive ad hominems further no debate, and they aren't even a skilful way of showing emotion. I wouldn't put up with it if that's all I got. However, some people can't take it when people (rightly) tear them a new one for some flawed point they make. Hell, some people get ultra-defensive at light criticism. There's a spectrum of skinned-ness, and I wouldn't define thick-skinned as accepting obscene idiots gracefully.

msuster5• 16 years ago

These same people on a bad day wouldn't likely say FU to my face. They would argue with me and I would listen. But verbal insults of this type are usually encouraged by anonymity where people feel brave using this language with no attribution.

jkahn• 16 years ago

I'm pretty happy with Hacker News as it is. I think the comments are generally insightful and the few trolls are dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly.

Let's face it, we're not Olde English Lords here in polite discussion. People have opinions and occasionally get animated. Really, who fucking cares if someone curses, if they've got something good to say?

tom_ilsinszki2• 16 years ago

"Make all users post under real names that you verify".

Advantages:

* Better comment quality: verified users would think twice if they wanted a curse words to show up when someone googled their name.

* Connectivity: If you like someone's reasoning and thinking, it would be easier to check out more about what they do online (accomplishments, blogs, twitter, etc).

Disadvantages, anyone?

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

pbiggar might have some insights here, his startup (newstilt) uses Facebook logins only for this very reason.

Disadvantages?

It's hard to do- how do you verify the names? Some people will post more insightful things under their pseudonym.

Take my example; I'm quite happy to discuss my work openly if it is interesting (which it has proven in the past). My pseudonym is very open and you can find out who I am in about 2 minutes; but if I had to use my real name directly I'm not sure I would post so openly about those topics.

arethuza3• 16 years ago

How would you go about verifying someone's real identity? Or by real names do you mean having identities strongly linked to accounts on other systems (e.g. Facebook) that probably have more reputable identity details?

Even Certificate Authorities these days don't do a whole lot of verification of your identity when getting a personal certificate - it's usually at the level of checking that you have access to an email account.

thirdstation3• 16 years ago

1) The Internet never forgets. If you post something regretful in a fit of rage you can never take it back. You are not the same person you were ten years ago (even if you have the same name). Do you want to be judged today on how that person behaved back then? It is naive to think you won't be judged so.

2) There are some really batsh*t-crazy people in the world. I prefer to be somewhat isolated from them.

3) How do you verify a real name from a real-sounding name?

I would also like to see some evidence that "Real Name" = "better comments".

sarvenna• 16 years ago

#3 is what always confuses me about the argument that switching to real names would in and of itself make flames and trolling less common.

That said, I don't think this is necessarily something where solid evidence matters. It seems to me that requiring real names is much more about making bloggers and journalists who consistently have their real names attached to postings feel more on an even footing with their commentariat. See, for example, this post on crosscut where Ted Van Dyk argues that he feels more comfortable with a critic that has a real name attached: http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/19530/Should-online-commen... Is that about categorical differences in comment quality, or personal comfort within a newsroom?

fragmede• 16 years ago

Connectivity is only helped by your real name if you actually have a unique name, but for all the John and Jane Does in the world, a unique pseudonym is more likely to be (uniquely) "Googleable". (Then again, some of the John Does who share a name with someone more successful/famous might not mind the mix-up.)

steveklabnik• 16 years ago

>Disadvantages, anyone?

There are certain things that I'd like to comment on at times, but don't, because I post under my real name. I hold some controversial opinions on things, but I refuse to have them permanently associated with my name on the internet in an easily abusable way. Any statement can be taken out of context.

For example, I thought long and hard before making this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1314757

I only lurked on /r/anarchism for a long time, and didn't post there. Now I do.

There are a few other things that I just can't talk about in a public forum. I would contribute meaningful and thoughtful discussion if my account was anonymous.

tom_ilsinszki2• 16 years ago

See your point (btw I liked the comment you posted about your gf; I feel the same way).

Okay then, there should be an option to mask your identity as anonymous, if you're not totally comfortable with a subject and post it like that. But those who would comment under their (real) name could get a higher priority for that given comment.

EDIT: an algorithm to verify identity (far from perfect and not necessarily for HN)

1) Give 1 person a verified account (linked to facebook) who the admins know personally. 2) Let that person invite her _facebook friends_ to the system. ... and so on

omgsean• 16 years ago

Not that it's hard to find out how I am based on my username, but I might hold back on posting my opinions on controversial matters if they were going to be sitting right next to my real name.

smokey_the_bear• 16 years ago

A large part of why I chose a pseudonym is because I'm a woman. People react very differently on tech boards to people they think are women.

acangiano• 16 years ago

It wasn't the main point of the article, but on a side note, Hacker News doesn't even have a reset password link, do you seriously expect email notifications to bloggers?

philk2• 16 years ago

I'm not sure that I can agree.

1) The blog post of yours which attracted such vitriol was entitled "Never Hire Job Hoppers. Never. They Make Terrible Employees"; you aren't using a conciliatory tone and it seems unfair to expect one in response.

2) Practically all the comments I read on here are more civil than I see elsewhere on the web.

3) In pw0ncakes original post there were a lot of measured statements (for instance Job hopping is almost always involuntary-- not in the sense of a person getting fired, but in the sense of a person being wise enough to realize that he's in a position that his wasting his time, and moving on-- the rational response.) which you appear to have disregarded.

4) Most of the vitriolic posts I've seen on HN have already been modded down into oblivion.

5) Although purely anecdotal I notice the civil air here and censor myself accordingly (in real life I tend far more towards "sarcastic douche" than I do here).

msuster5• 16 years ago

I wrote the first post. The title was too extreme. I acknowledged that and apologized for it. I agree that many of the comments were fair and said so in this post. This isn't my first post to get FU's. I can live with that. I still wonder whether my suggestions may help?

philk2• 16 years ago

I don't really see that there's a problem with incivility on HN.

Of your suggestions I only take issue with the first; if I had to post with my full name I'd leave. I've already got Facebook/Twitter/blogging if I want to publish something on the web with my real name.

I'm also not sure how easy it would be to enforce.

On a side note I usually really enjoy your blog. So, you know, thanks in general.

shadowsun72• 16 years ago

Your first six sentences tell us that you were mistaken, that the problem isn't as big as you realized, and that you are partly to blame. That is: you admit that you have grossly exaggerated the problem of incivility on HN.

How, I ask, are your suggestions to help when there is no problem to solve?

thaumaturgy• 16 years ago

Well, for most of the folks that are regulars here, HN is still considered to have a pretty decent tone overall. There are tons and tons of counterexamples to your examples of "meanness" -- and, by the way, some of your examples of meanness seem to be conflated with angriness, and anger seems to be generally acceptable here.

The rest of your post comes off as licking your wounds over the response to your last article. That, or, more cynically, attempting to get the greatest possible mileage out of your job hoppers post.

And ... don't you think maybe that blogging about HN is the silliest waste of time? Out of all the possible subjects out there, and all of the possible insights to be discovered ... blogging about some forum somewhere is it?

Huh.

earl• 16 years ago

It's funny -- I was reaching for a phrase to describe your post, remembered reading the phrase grinfucker on a blog post linked here, searched, and it's your blog! Small world. It's not quite the phrase I need, but I'd like to repurpose it.

So Mark, the deal is simple -- your post was about grinfucking employees, trying to convince us that a behaving in a way almost exclusively in employers' interests is actually in employees' interests. So, you know, say whatever you want to whoever you want, it's your reputation. But when you get called on it, even in language with naughty words, sack up. And frankly, I responded exactly the way I would in person -- I don't like it when people try to sell me a line.

ojbyrne• 16 years ago

In my opinion, the people looking for civility are often people in positions of authority looking to maintain a hierarchy. They're often rude and uncivil to people of perceived lower status in real life, but because of their status don't expect that same tone to be reciprocated. They dislike the internet, because in general the clues about status aren't as clear, and thus they get talked to just like everyone else.

edw519• 16 years ago

OP is asking for gadgets to treat the effect, not the cause of the problem. The cause? I'm not really sure, but this whole discussion reminds me of some simple, yet brilliant advice my grandmother once gave me, "If you look hard enough for trouble, you'll probably find it."

Mark, I've been here for ages and simply have not witnessed very much of the negativity you talk about. I don't remember any of the original threads you cite, so maybe I just travel in a different circle within hn. Or maybe I stick to more technical issues. Or just avoid threads that invite more emotional responses. I don't know.

Or maybe you're just looking to stoke a little bit. That's fine. We need that kind of thinking from time to time. But don't be like the kid with green hair that gets upset when people react. You know they will. So deal with it. That's my tip. Not much else needed here. Move along.

alttab2• 16 years ago

Had the author of the article had responses that did not bruise his ego because of what people on the internet said to him - he would be writing an article about how awesome Hacker News was.

Posting another article explaining how you would change HN to your own benefit is adolescent behavior. Maybe, just maybe, the OP didn't have the correct view point. These types of people hop from job to job because everyone at the old company was "a bunch of idiots." Irony much?

Bluntness induced to make a point - suck it up, make a conscious effort to understand the true source of your emotions, and allow other people to have an opinion you may not like.

msuster5• 16 years ago

OK. I accept that. And the truth is that I really did value the push back that I got. I only felt it was over the top when invective language was used and personal emails were sent.

alttab2• 16 years ago

And getting value out of it was the best thing that could have happened. However, the incendiary responses and the personal e-mails come with the territory of having a blog, submitting it to aggregators only increases that. HN or not, this is the internet - and everything that comes with it.

A worst case scenario is you got no responses. At least this way you know people are reading what you write, and actually care enough to say anything to you at all. This, as my boss always says, is a "happiness problem."

jamesseda2• 16 years ago

"This comment received the most votes (61) out of 128 total comments and therefore comes first as you can see here."

If you scroll down you will the the top comment was here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1287147 And had over 100 votes.

angryasian• 16 years ago

how egotistical is this guy to assume that we should play by his rules, because he doesn't like the outcome of the game.

First its with people leaving his company so obviously its our fault, now its with people that comment on his blog. Its simple if you don't want criticism don't write anything, or if you do want to write controversial things then grow a thicker skin. Lets be real for a minute. People are attacking him because he is saying something controversial and he can't take it.

CodeMage• 16 years ago

Dear Mr. Suster,

While I personally don't condone obscenities, insults and ad hominems in a discussion, I couldn't help notice that most of the time HN audience downvotes comments according to their signal/noise ratio, which means that we're willing to tolerate even occasional obscenities for the sakes of a valuable contribution.

In the first example you pointed to, pw0ncakes actually made a rather valuable contribution to the discussion, despite obscenities. He gave the view of the other side of the story, the side you seem to have completely overlooked in your original post. Let's also be honest here and admit that it's very naive to expect calm and collected responses from everyone after writing an inflammatory, one-sided post on an emotionally significant topic. In the old Internet jargon, we would describe your situation as "he trolled and they flamed him for it". That does not justify what happened, but pointing it out might help avoid your readers getting a one-sided interpretation yet again.

Another thing I would like to point out about pw0ncakes' comment is that it's actually not the most voted. His comment has 61 points and is served first, just like you noted. However, the most voted comment was posted by apsec112, has 116 votes and has no obscenities whatsoever. It might not seem important, but it's really recommended to thoroughly check your facts before addressing your audience, especially if you're going to accuse that audience of improper behavior.

Yet another point worth noting is your own writing style in this latest post. I'm sure you've heard it said that people in glass houses should not throw stones. If you really expect a calm and rational discussion, then I would wholeheartedly recommend avoiding rhetorical tricks like "OK, HN folks, let ‘er rip. I can take it." Setting yourself up as a victim in advance is pathos. Considering that your post is asking for logos and ethos, it seems like a bit of a double standard to me.

Last, but not least, I'd like to state that I actually agree with most of your suggestions on improving the quality of comments and the user experience with them. Certainly #3 is an excellent idea. While I believe that #2 might be a good one, it should be studied for other side-effects it might have on social dynamics here. As for #1, I firmly believe that people should have the right to post anonymously if they want to. I prefer to do it in a public way, which is why my username is connected to my blog, which in turn has my real name, but I would not presume to take away other people's rights. Especially not on the grounds of someone's hurt feelings.

Cordially yours,

Vojislav Stojkovic

msuster5• 16 years ago

Vojislav,

Thank you. Well written and fair points. I was expecting negative comments and wrote "let 'er rip" as a way to add some levity. But you're right that it doesn't achieve what I'm after. I will change it.

Mark

shadowsun72• 16 years ago

Dear Mr Suster,

You sound much better here than in the rest of the thread. Perhaps the lesson to be drawn from this exchange is to rise above whatever it is people throw at you. If they act rudely, and you respond cordially, you force them to meet you at your level.

And if that doesn't happen, I assure you the ruder person will be downvoted.

Cordially yours,

Eli James

r0s• 16 years ago

These are good points.

I'd like to get philosophical about 'obscenities' for a bit. A mature discussion must include diverse input, or you sacrifice the benefit of a diverse group.

I think it's unproductive to try to sanitize discourse by removing hyperbole or perceived obscenity. Such 'civil' exchanges leave the idea of 'obscene' an open variable, ready to take whatever shape the accuser wishes to vilify. The very concept becomes a censorship device. I think many people see the hypocrisy inherent and intentionally evoke obscenity while maintaining their salient points.(At work in the above example.) This is an attack on the concept of obscenity itself, and the tenuous standards of the civility enforcer.

I'm open to other interpretations, but to me it's like this: Making a discussion PG-13 isn't a sign of maturity, it's the opposite.

grellas• 16 years ago

Wow, I love Mr. Suster's contributions generally but this one is unfair. It reads like an indictment. HN "falls short" on its goal of maintaining civility. A YCombinator company CEO goes there only when he wants to get "upset." And so on.

This paints the site in a false light - yes, the individual bits of evidence might be true in the particular case cited but they are nowhere near representative of the whole and to say that they are makes it a gross distortion.

Not at all fair to this site or to the administrators and core members who, if anything, regularly go way out of their way to keep standards high around here.

That said, I look forward to many future outstanding posts from Mr. Suster, who remains one of my favorite bloggers on the whole range of startup issues that are important to the HN community.

pacemkr• 16 years ago

This is nonsense. I enjoy HN primary for how quickly posts that add no value are down-voted into oblivion. I enjoy it because commenters are generally blunt, measured, and to the point. I could care less about swearing as long as the comment adds value.

Bottom line is, you wrote a story and you didn't like the response you received from the community. It is what it is. If the rest of the world -- not even saying 'the internet' -- was as civil and to the point as HN I'd be one happy man.

lvecsey• 16 years ago

Hacker news might need a vector arrow over it. In other words, has the direction of conversation changed from one where "hackers" (those that grok a vast or complete portion of a given system, and can identify and implement a clever tweak) can have vibrant discourse to one where the VC side of the coin has come here to observe, and essentially squash out the dialog in the process? (uncertainty principle involving observation and position)

As the hackers post less they become lurkers observing the commentary of the business folks. Eventually, interest is lost in even that. I recognize a VC professional could be redefined, interpreted, or understood as a hacker operating within the domain of the larger business and financial world, so I give them credit for that.

mkramlich• 16 years ago

I experienced directly some uncivility recently on an oil disaster thread. While not pleasant, I expect it when you have a large group of mostly strangers, of varying degrees of maturity, together in an online forum. There will probably always be a few rude juvenile assholes who unleash. It would be nice to see a consistent ban rule in such cases, but I don't expect it either. As with many things in life, the world would be better if each individual would follow something like the Golden Rule.

zackattack• 16 years ago

Something I've been working on is editing my posts to remove words like "obviously" and other statements that (subtly) vilify people with whom I disagree.

Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

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