My experiences with Hacker News.

http://blog.arsalanbashir.com/2013/01/20/HNB.html

by imwhimsical • 14 years ago

75 65 14 years ago

blog.arsalanbashir.com

HN is a smorgasbord of "strong opinions held loosely". The best advice is not to take anything that goes on here in the echo chamber personally. Relax, sit back, and enjoy your accidental tour of the human zoo.

srl• 14 years ago

Agreed. HN seems uniquely engineered to prevent the formation of echo-chambers. You /will/ come into contact with the completely opposite viewpoint; that's the point. Enjoy it.

denzil_correa• 14 years ago

I liked how you put your perception about HN and in particular this part of your post -

    In my opinion, it’s not the fact that people here are
    skilled enough to comment on the various topics that
    makes it special. That people here have the ability to 
    think in more creative and vivid ways and have diverse 
    opinions (some not always correct, as seen in the case of 
    'misfits') makes Hacker News an interesting place.

I also think you are quite mature to play "I'm a Kid" card (take this as a compliment). Good luck!

_b8r03• 14 years ago

> I am never going to play the "I'm-a-kid" card, because in my opinion my work (not just articles from my blog, I also develop software that I like to show around on HN) are a result of my hardwork, and I think they deserve competing with set standards, and it'd be belittling to have them receive positive feedback just because they were submitted by a "kid"

Brilliant. I've just come from the linkbait thread where a 14 year old who's never been part of the HN community and is still only posting in that thread is playing the just a kid card pretty hard.

imwhimsical• 14 years ago

So I'm guessing it's the one about an iPhone app?

_b8r03• 14 years ago

Yeah, but if you look at his submissions, comments and account lifespan you can see he has no interest in taking part in the community, only pimping his app.

thejosh• 14 years ago

That's been around for so long, kids looking for validation on what they have done (and trying to prove a point (Hey! I'm 14 and look what I did! Pats for me?)).

shantanubala2• 14 years ago

Except you know that this is an age-old rhetorical technique, right?

Examples of Apophasis: "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis

I'm trying not to be harsh with this, because I think the blog post was quite nice, but the only reason to say, "I am never going to play the 'I'm-a-kid' card" is to project a sense of superiority in comparison to kids who "played the card."

I think it's fine if you want your work to be judged on "adult" standards -- it's quite admirable. But if I was 14 and wanted advice on how a 14 year old should proceed, the advice could be very different from the advice you would give to someone you presume to be an adult. This is not an ideal situation, but it's a simple fact that being 14 puts you in a very different position than someone who is 24 -- it's impossible to show up at a bar to attend a meetup, it's harder to find other hackers (depending on location), and there are also a completely different set of life-related priorities that may factor in.

To put it simply: it's not the kid's fault for saying that he or she is 14. It's the community's fault for voting it up just because of the kid's age (if that's what's happening -- in many cases, the upvotes can also be well-earned).

udp• 14 years ago

I know you explicitly don't want to play the "I'm a kid" card, but you're kind of doing that just by mentioning it in this follow-up post. I think 17 is probably the age when you just don't have that card to play anymore.

I released my first OSS project (here) at 17, and mentioning my age didn't even cross my mind. You just take the feedback and criticism and reiterate like everyone else, because you won't have an excuse forever.

thaumaturgy• 14 years ago

Oh, relax. I'm over twice his age at this point (and still younger than many here). If you work at it, then your judgement improves Zenoically each year. At 17, you can have reasonably adult-like judgement about most things, but still get other things wrong by lack of experience.

So, sure, he's still got that card to play. Not that he needs it; choosing to sit back and wait things out and not get dragged in to the HN morass was pretty level-headed thinking. I certainly would've screwed that up at 17.

huhtenberg6• 14 years ago

To be blunt - this is an attention whoring flirty meta. Please keep this sort of thing off the front page.

orofino• 14 years ago

Isn't this the kind of comment discussed directly in the post? Perhaps I'm feed the trolls, but honestly, knock it off unless you have something useful to add.

chris_wot6• 14 years ago

I have to agree. Flag the article, but don't moan if it gets on the font page. It'll go soon enough.

thekevan• 14 years ago

Your Honor, I present exhibit A.

huhtenberg6• 14 years ago

Do elaborate.

alaskamiller• 14 years ago

This place turned more pedantic than I remembered 5 years ago. The benefit is that sometimes the tangential discussions bring about something interesting but most times the pedantry is a negative as it just gets people riled up and nitpicking to death.

It's also more hostile than I remembered, but oddly people use politeness as some weird passive-aggressive pulpit to combat each other. Replies and comments get seen as personal attacks and others quickly get dismissed as trolls. And when the simplest solution to dealing with anonymous people on the internet vying for fake internet points is just to leave well alone, some -- especially nicks I've seen around from five years ago -- have decided the best way to react is to respond. And poorly at that.

It's very much the same catty atmosphere I've encountered when hanging out with my art school friends and their cliques that they endure for their art.

But then again, it's the same eternal september problem that was discussed back then, regurgitated every year, and now we're here.

That said, there are good signals here and I keep seeing the same advice that people give: ignore the noise. But the challenge is two folds: what is noise and should you really be ignoring it?

The first is relative, you decide you own level of involvement but I do have opinions on the second question. I don't think it's right to ignore the negative comments. You can't improve your craft living on good vibes and hugs. So understanding that this place, relative to the rest of the world, is different place, it's both a sanctuary and a padded room. So take the inputs, review them, filter them, and prioritize them. Never internalize the hate but at the same time don't be naive.

PS: 17 is young but it's not that young. When I was in the Marine Corps we gave 17 year olds guns and entrusted them to be men and women that can get a job done when need be.

ignostic• 14 years ago

Why do you think the pedantic comments have become so common? There was one post recently about a breakthrough in cancer research. There was an oncologist in the thread who gave more detail and talked about how exciting the research was, but no one was paying attention to him. All anyone could talk about was whether the headline was or was not misleading.

I found myself nodding in agreement at the author's lines:

"...most of them just criticized for the sake of criticizing."

"They simply hold on to one point and stretch it out, overlooking the fact that the point that they want to make is tangential to the discussion at hand."

I couldn't agree more. I have never seen a community where this is so true, nor have I ever understood why.

Semaphor3• 14 years ago

The comments on HN are still better than most on Reddit. There have been discussion over discussions how to prevent the quality decay with a larger number of users (I remember the time before I had an account here when people were saying (paraphrased) "Don't link to HN, the riff raff will come"). As far as I know no one found a solution yet.

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

I'd argue that the pedantry is not unfounded. As HN grows in popularity, it attracts those who wish to use it to push traffic with link bait. This leads to greater average suspicion about the motivation of the OP. Thus its easier to jump to conclusions as people become more cynical or critical.

sageikosa• 14 years ago

I have noticed that when I comment in agreement or furtherance of an idea, it often gets interpreted as debate or rebuttal of the "parent" remark even though such a reading would be impossible.

jerf• 14 years ago

Positive comments are generally considered fluffy and modded down. It is possible to simply expand on someone's point, or directly answer a question without attacking the arguer or premise somehow (as I am trying to do here), but the openings for that are rarer, whereas "attack the commenter/premise" is always available.

What would happen to this point if it were merely "Yes, I agree."?

And shouldn't it be modded down? I mean, who wants whole comment threads consisting of that?

I think one of the fundamental underlying problems is just that the probability space of possible negative comments is just so much larger than positive ones that it isn't surprising that we end up with largely negative ones. I don't know what to do about it, and I've never heard a halfway feasible suggestion.

nirvana2• 14 years ago

Personally, I've been astounded at the frequency of personal attacks and snotty responses.

The signal to noise on HN is something like 1:100.

It's sad. I don't comment here anymore simply because there is no point when you never get comments from people who even bothered to read what you wrote or will honestly disagree.

Worse there are people who go out on personal vendettas, engage in nothing more than harassment and a form of stalking, and those people are not punished, but dare to post scientific information that disagrees with global warming and you get hellbanned.

That's the cause- the moderation is done by unaccountable people who moderate for political correctness at least as much for politeness. Certainly people who cant' muster anything more than personal attacks are allowed to get away with it, while those being attacked are often censored.

The people who are the cause of the problem like the situation because their egos are getting stroked, so they see no need to change it.

I've solved it for myself-- I just never bother to read the comments these days (for many months at a time.)

If there's nothing intelligent said on hacker news comments, why bother with them?

chris_wot6• 14 years ago

There's plenty of comments that are enlightening... Is it possible that some of your own comments were a little too blunt or were taken the wrong way because of how they were phrased?

I'm disappointed though, I found myself disagreeing with you more than I agree, but you do have an interesting perspective on things. I'd just ignore those who are trolling you.

hazov• 14 years ago

Some days ago a guy pointed right to you why you have so much problems in HN, emotionally loaded text (the "political correctness" is here, you still use the same method apparently), according to him he did the same a year before, but you still insist the problem is with others.

Apparently by labeling the mods someone who moderate you, you again chose to ignore him.

If you authorize I'll find the post and put the thread link here, if not, I'll not be the one stalking you.

EDIT: wrote in a hurry including some lacking words.

richo2• 14 years ago

You're sad because people disagreed with you? Have fun in the OSS world.

Your original post is a bit ridiculous too. OSS isn't for the commonfolk? I guess android isn't the most popular smartphone OS and ubuntu isn't grabbing huge market share.

_Simon2• 14 years ago

This sort of response is precisely what the OP was alluding to. Try and read his post with a degree of rationality and a modicum of humility and then respond. You'll be amazed at how much better you and your point comes across.

richo2• 14 years ago

I disagree completely. His signoff line about a green on black terminal- _must be a hacker_ just struck me as arrogant and dated.

Programmers aren't some mythical beast people hear about but don't see. Open source software is usable by your grandmother.

Obviously there are exceptions to both sides, but I found it very conflicting reading his article with so many things that (to my interpretation, at least) read as though he was trying to put himself on a badass pedestal.

eranation• 14 years ago

You might be "only" 17 years old, but with emotional intelligence higher than some 40 years old I've known (and much more than I had when I was 17). p.s. thanks for introducing rhok.org via your post, sounds like a great initiative.

p.s. I have read your original post's comments (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016620) and I completely agree the comments were nastier than they should have been to make the same point.

phatbyte• 14 years ago

wow, a blog post ranting about a blog post where HN users don't have the same opinion as you...really ?

doctorfoo• 14 years ago

I'm never going to play the "I'm a kid" card, he says - 10 paragraphs after playing it. ("My 17-year-old-brain thought...")

thoughtcriminal• 14 years ago

HN is the herd mind. There are outliers but there are more who mindlessly vote up the karma leaders just because they are karma leaders - and there is nothing you can do to stop them.

It's why I read comments from the bottom, up.

Learn to have a healthy disdain for HN, I do, but every now and then a thoughtful comment or submission will sparkle like a gem in this muddy noise and being here may even seem worth it.

mnicole2• 14 years ago

> It's why I read comments from the bottom, up.

Great idea, I'll be trying this. Edit: Actually in this particular thread it's the opposite..

DanielBMarkham2• 14 years ago

A couple of observations, for what they're worth.

"Tell them you're only 17!"

If you do, you'll only self-identify as one of them. Average age is high teens to low 20s, if I remember correctly.

"People seemed to have a problem with everything."

To me this is the result of a large number of people participating. It makes the commenting system rather challenging. Basically anything that can be misinterpreted will be misinterpreted. Sometimes it's so bad I wonder if people aren't being purposefully idiotic, just to score some karma.

From reading your article, I imagine you found the attention worthwhile, though frustrating. Welcome to the club. In a strange way it's very seductive to have 10K fellow hackers come by and look at your work, even if they do miss the point, wander off on tangents, and generally posture for each other. Just be careful you're not subtly sucked into writing just for the HN crowd, unless you have an idea you want to sell to a lot of nerds.

talkingquickly2• 14 years ago

I'd be genuinely curious where the average age numbers come from?

From a point of zero objective information I'd have guess the average age to be mid to late twenties...

DanielBMarkham2• 14 years ago

We've polled this at least twice that I remember. In addition, I did a poll on caffeine and age among HNers a year or two ago (dig, dig) Here it is: http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-c...

My poll showed mid-20s, but that was 3.5 years ago. If I remember correctly, polls show the age continuing to drop as more folks join.

This isn't much of an argument, but if you think about it, people most likely to be on HN are people who are not doing anything useful besides consuming stuff. That group should trend heavily towards the younger and unemployed. As total numbers rise, total number of young people who are actively consuming HN at any one time should rise disproportionately, no?

sesqu• 14 years ago

It'd worth noting that the average registered user is quite a different thing from the average commenter.

It's also worth noting that in many cases, age is a variable with high deviation.

nirvana2• 14 years ago

Suggestion: Put comments on your blog. You might get better feedback that way. There are many people who have given up on hacker news but still use it to find links. (I mean how many times do you want to put up some cogent information only to have it mindlessly attacked by idiots? Either its the fashion of the time, or hacker news is overrun with narrow minded anti-intellectuals.)

Aardwolf• 14 years ago

The "problem with open source" article doesn't have that many comments... 15, of which 5 are the poster's own.

RyanZAG• 14 years ago

The best discussions and comments on HN are the ones based off technical and constructive submissions. The discussions and comments based off any submission that is someones opinion or is politically/culturally charged will be far less insightful and more about 'winning'.

As can be seen, most of the comments on this submission are now about discussing the age of the poster and how 17 is or is not a kid. Real enlightening stuff.

fatalerrorx32• 14 years ago

If you don't want to play the "I'm only 17 years old" card, how come your main blog landing page says so very clearly =), just kidding, I oddly agree with your point. You can get some good feedback by posting on HN, but there will be the occasional troll that might ruin your day. Give it some time and you'll build up a thicker skin and learn to let them go.

chrisringrose• 14 years ago

My biggest complaint about HN is the users with enough karma to down-vote that do so just because they disagree with you.

I've had legit discussions here about real tech topics (for example web apps vs standard EXE apps), and the guy who continually disagreed with me clearly down-voted every comment I made, and replied with out-dated counterarguments. I wound up losing almost all my karma from one discussion, all while remaining civil.

It's very discouraging to be new here, and try to openly express an opinion. It should take more than one to down-vote a comment successfully.

My experiences with Hacker News.

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