Hacker News is a social echo chamber

http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28232.html

by BCM43 • 13 years ago

339 194 13 years ago

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001sky• 13 years ago

But what is important is that the ongoing debates between these opinions be driven by facts

Karunamon• 13 years ago

If there's no further facts, what's the point? If discussions 1 through 99 with a given set of facts have produced nothing of any value, why would #100?

This is why I think the "techies are sexist" articles are joining the "NSA is evil" articles on the flag pile. There's more often than not no new information, and predictable, boring (and in some cases, flame-filled) conversation follows.

By all means, kill this crap and let something more deserving and interesting take its place.

The only reason I'm not flagging this article is because it's shown itself to be popular and I'd probably lose the ability as a result. This article is straight up meta noise.

jiggy20112• 13 years ago

Is there any online discussion place that isn't to some degree an echo chamber?

afreak2• 13 years ago

That is exactly it. We're all here to discuss the same thing and as a result you begin to see traits of an echo chamber within the comments. It's unavoidable really.

What I think HN's biggest problem is story repetition, which can lead to the echo chamber being enlarged. It's not a problem today, but when Snowden's news began to hit HN for days on end, it would have been nice to combine the discussion for all the news stories in order to avoid having other stories drowned out. I am certain that other important news stories were drowned out when the front page was effectively 100% Snowden.

This isn't to say that Snowden's story wasn't important (it was and still is), but similar stories from other sources should be able to keep it at the top instead of having multiple discussions on the same topic coming about.

lmm4• 13 years ago

4chan. Anonymous (well, you can use a trip, but you'll be mocked for it). No downvotes. Very limited moderation, and what there is has a lot of transparency.

There's, inevitably, a lot of low-level trolling, but you also get some amazingly original insights.

sillysaurus2• 13 years ago

4chan [...] amazingly original insights.

On /b/? Where?

nether• 13 years ago

/trv/ has a remarkable ongoing discussion on living and working in Antarctica: https://boards.4chan.org/trv/res/751390. There was also one about working on freight ships.

simias3• 13 years ago

Yes and no, maybe on /b/ but not really on the other boards.

For instance /v/ is mostly very sexist, /pol/ is mostly very antisemitic. Even when there's no voting/karma of any sort if an idea gets a lot of traction at some point people who disagree will get flamed and passed a certain point will give up/stop discussing the topic/leave the forum for some other place.

When someone posts a very unpopular opinion it can't be downvoted, of course, but it will either be ignored or flamed until the thread gets completely train-wrecked/expired/killed by the mods.

kmfrk4• 13 years ago

Communities with good moderation, yes. Something Awful and certain subreddits for example.

afreak2• 13 years ago

SA moderation is only successful because it costs you at least $10 USD to restore a banned account.

jiggy20112• 13 years ago

Which subreddits in particular?

the_watcher5• 13 years ago

Flamewars != disagreements. Discouraging flamewars (namecalling, counterproductive arguing that devolves into ad hominem and unrelated attacks) doesn't mean it kills stories that generate disagreement and discussion. I've had many a disagreement in HN threads, been convinced that my original stance was wrong, and (I believe) convinced others that their original stance was wrong (or incomplete, or to change something about it). I've also learned a lot from simply posting what my understanding of an issue is and letting those more familiar add to it. The fact that HN does not want to go the way of Usenet/Reddit/4chan/name a forum doesn't make it an echo chamber.

I hope people disagree with me in this thread and prove my point.

mjg593• 13 years ago

Reasoned disagreement is obviously easier to deal with than emotional attacks, but topics that incite emotional responses are arguably the most important ones to keep visible - they expose the most contentious points of disagreement in a community. It's certainly true that these angry discussions contain little of value in themselves, but the fact that they exist is valuable. A better compromise would be to limit further comments once a discussion has become overly vitriolic, not to disappear the story that sparked the anger.

the_watcher5• 13 years ago

That's not why Hacker News exists. It's to share and discuss things hackers find interesting. It got as popular and important as it is for a reason, and a piece of that reason are the rules that people now are complaining about. There are other places on the internet to vent your outrage.

danielweber2• 13 years ago

You can debate about emotional topics, but you need a really active group of moderators. HN's moderators, for good or for ill, seem completely invisible, except when someone is quietly struck by lightning and is hellbanned.

lmm4• 13 years ago

I don't find it valuable for these topics to be visible - that's why I flag them.

The site is this way because this way works; it's not like there aren't dozens of other sites with different policies out there on the internet. And yet for some reason we prefer to come here.

Pxtl• 13 years ago

The end result is the same though, HN conceals any controversial subjects, even ones that are important to the vitality of our industry.

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

The topic is undoubtedly important, but is the discussion of the topic specifically on HN really vital to our industry?

I question this because such discussions seem to be, in practice, the exact opposite of productive. They are not so much discussions as they are internet shouting matches. I doubt very few people walk away from those discussions with altered perspectives.

VLM8• 13 years ago

"important to the vitality of our industry"

I do not think the topics getting the smackdown fit that category very well. They fit the category of meaningless "raise awareness" and "anecdote party" and "shouting match". But Vitality? Important?

How about Industry? They are VERY important to the linkbait multi-page online "journalism" banner ad soaked industry, but not the HN readers, mods, or owner. This probably makes linkbait industry people angry, come on guys you're supposed to be addicted to this stuff so click! but its not our problem. I don't know why they'd want us anyway, probably no community on the net with a higher concentration of adblockers installed in our browsers, so we won't make linkbaiters any money anyway.

kmfrk4• 13 years ago

"Flamewar" is such a Paul Graham term that doesn't really help with dealing with the problem.

I'd rather use the reddit terminology of "controversial discussions" where people are coming from very different places.

I think the problems with Hacker News has more to do with a failure to account for those situations over the echo chamber discussions where everyone is in (borderline-insufferable) agreement.

nailer• 13 years ago

"Flamewar" is such a Paul Graham term

We were discussing flame wars on Slashdot before News.YC (ahem, Hacker News) even existed. People on the internet before then were discussing flame wars on usenet (as the parent post mentions).

beat3• 13 years ago

I'm fairly certain that Paul Graham doesn't hold the copyright on the word "flamewar". There's no "Paul Graham term" about it. We all understand what a flamewar is, plus or minus a handful of picked nits.

The HN flamewar detector isn't a human being. It's a software algorithm. It doesn't care about the subject of the flamewar or take that into account. It only looks for certain posting patterns.

What you're asking for is something that discriminates (no negativity intended) "controversial discussions" from "flamewars" - where "controversial discussion" is pretty much defined as "stuff I want to talk about".

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

A "controversial discussion" is what happens here when we start discussing, say, the merits of different memory management schemes. People entering a conversation in disagreement, presenting opposing views, considering other views carefully, and then writing civil and constructive rebuttals to those opposing views that further the discussion. Not a religious war, a technical discussion that involves disagreement.

That is not the sort of conversation that that Paul Graham considers a flamewar.

forgottenpass• 13 years ago

Discouraging flamewars is one thing, but Hacker News does it by leaning hard into different practices that are also bad for discussion.

The fake air of noticeably forced civility on top of a disagreement is annoying to stomach at best, and can cause decent into passive aggression. By treating some regular ol' nonsense as erudite points at the same level as the people who actually know what they're talking about, an uninformed passerby will walk away with the wrong impression about the ideas presented. Disagreements aren't settled on the facts if someone is willing to talk longer and strain their original points further than the person they're talking with can tolerate. I've noticed that the most-informed in a Hacker News thread is not necessarily well-informed, unless I'm ready and willing to write walls of text (which I never am) there is often no point in attempting to join the conversation. The closest I'll even try anymore is making a small point at the fringe.

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

Stories that discuss the difficulties faced by minorities in our field are summarily disappeared.

Really?

I've tended to notice the opposite: new ones are constantly appearing, they get lots of comments, inspire heated debates and most sentiments are sympathetic, sometimes to an almost unhealthy and postmodern degree.

myhf• 13 years ago

Those kinds of stories get attention if they're about a YC company and disappeared otherwise.

tehwalrus4• 13 years ago

I've gotten into several interesting discussions on these topics, only to have them rapidly drop from the front page and/or be killed. In general, I think this should be seen as a much bigger issue than it is on HN.

I generally take the view that if everyone is complaining, then the middle ground is being struck. The classic example is the BBC - the BNP (British National Party, nasty fascists) often claim the BBC has a "left wing bias", which makes activists on the centre left laugh out loud, given how much right-wing bias we detect in programmes like the flagship "today" on R4 in the mornings.

So, unless both sides are complaining (me and you, the OP and the flaggers, PG, tokenadult and stiff,) something is wrong. :)

humanrebar• 13 years ago

In the spirit of interesting discussion and congenial disagreements, I believe you're committing the argument to moderation fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

The existence of two parties arguing does not imply that:

1. All views are more-or-less represented 2. All views fit on a one-dimensional spectrum 3. A middle view is more desirable than either "extreme" view (or even desirable at all).

babs4743• 13 years ago

This is really an egregious pattern. Two examples below.

One is an npr story. You can flag these stories all you want, but they still influence how the wider population views programmers and the field. Wouldn't it be interesting to discuss that here?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6360328

bcoates2• 13 years ago

Those stories are barely more than gossip and belong on mainstream news sites. It doesn't look like they were generating much of interest in the comments either, just the usual go-my-team rhetoric and unfocused outrage in a random direction.

llamataboot2• 13 years ago

These stories regularly appear, get upvoted, inspire lots of discussion, then get flagged and disappeared within the hour. It's almost as if the people /visiting/ this site want to talk about these things but the people /running/ the site don't.

Also, many of us have no problems with postmodernity and consider ourselves part of the political left. Which is fine, programming and god forbid "startup culture" should not be monolithic.

VLM8• 13 years ago

"inspire lots of discussion"

inspire lots of repeated, rehashed discussion.

Hey you probably don't know this, but some guys working in sausagefest industry segments, like IT, exhibit uncivilized behavior around women, and I theorize acting like apes doesn't exactly encourage ladies to help us fix the sausagefest problem, bet you never heard about that story before! However, story 234243 on that topic adds nothing so it gets flagged. Aside from adding nothing new, its often of the anecdote - generalization anti-pattern which also adds little to the conversation. "Once, postgresql didn't work, therefore it always universally sucks for everyone and all applications". Eh, flush it.

lemmsjid• 13 years ago

Count me as one of the unhealthily sympathetic. That said, different people and/or cultures have more or less tolerance for argument. One person's 'spirited debate' can be another's 'flamewar'.

Now, preface my following comments with the fact that I don't have data to back them up, so really you can take or leave what I'm about to say--if it resonates, then maybe I'm on to something--if it doesn't, then maybe I'm just projecting.

What I've noticed is a pattern that a dispassionate article about the plight of women in the tech industry will survive, but an article by a woman who is actively angry about being harassed will get a large number of angry, devaluing comments and will disappear very quickly.

On a positive note, this reflects a culture that values a level of scientific detachment, and also a recognition of the fact that Internet arguments can get very circular and ugly and can ultimately destroy an online community if left unchecked.

The problem is that this pattern also belies a cultural devaluation of the role of anger in combating trauma. Where trauma exists, anger will exist. Angry people are not always fair and balanced--in fact the state of the emotion actively undermines such a thing. Anger and scientific detachment are quite antithetical, because an angry person is very much inside of the thing they're supposed to be detached about--and it's hurting them.

So when a woman who is traumatized writes an article out of anger, there is inherent value in that, even if the anger behind the article makes it one-sided, because in the end that person is (bravely, in the face of the inevitable harassment that will come of it) bearing witness to what is (in my own experience) a major problem in the industry, a problem that is not only hurting people but limiting the talent pool significantly.

asdasf3• 13 years ago

So when a woman who is traumatized writes an article out of anger, there is inherent value in that

But that doesn't mean there is value to it being posted here. I don't think it is surprising or bad that angry rants disappear quickly, while a dispassionate analysis lives on.

theorique3• 13 years ago

In other words, a place focused on particular subjects (technology, programming, science) collects people with similar life experiences, interests, worldviews, etc.

kmfrk4• 13 years ago

That kind of thinking betrays the idea of diversity existing within those fields.

beat3• 13 years ago

Why don't we just admit that this whole post is just a response to offense at a single post getting bopped off the front page because of a flamewar, when some people really want it on the front page? It's a lot easier when we aren't tippy-toeing around the actual issue.

Sure, the problems of that post were symptomatic of the broader social algorithms of HN, but I don't think they mean HN's rules and the underlying enforcement patterns are inherently wrong. They just didn't work well in this particular case.

_delirium• 13 years ago

That explains some of it, but I think it's even a narrower focus than that. I participate in several communities that are broadly technology/programming/science, and they're quite different from HN (and from each other). For one thing, my impression is that there are relatively few scientists and engineers on HN. I occasionally will see a post by a biologist or a civil engineer, but it's not typical. Even among computer people, it seems like a particular social subset, perhaps due to being hosted by Y Combinator.

ginko• 13 years ago

What does having an interest in technology, programming and science have to do with the huge libertarian/pro-capitalist bias HN has?

tonyarkles• 13 years ago

I think the pro-capitalist bias comes from the fact that a lot of people here are entrepreneurial. The site is hosted by a company that funds startups.

The libertarian part? I'm not so sure there, but I'd guess that it comes from a sense of "I'm just trying to build my business, it'd be awesome if a bunch of silly regulations and crap would get out of my way"

theorique3• 13 years ago

Productive people with real skills are part of that fraction of humankind who make stuff that others want, and don't sponge off their fellows. As such, they tend to be in support of political and economic freedom, and against socialism and redistributions.

steven20122• 13 years ago

HN is privately run by pg. He's allowed to set the rules whichever way he wants.

Just because the author wants it to be run a certain way doesn't mean that it should. If he doesn't like how it's done and thinks that issues that he believes are important should be discussed, he should make his own news aggregator site, instead of trying to hijack an already-established site for his own agenda.

If the majority start disagreeing with the curation of HN articles, then they will leave to other places, like reddit. And frankly, I'm not sure that pg even cares if this happens, he didn't start HN to increase his popularity or his influence.

gfodor2• 13 years ago

Uh no. You can criticize HN while also claiming pg has the right to do what he wants. Oh look, the article does just that:

"Hacker News is a privately run site and nobody's under any obligation to change how they choose to run it. But the focus on avoiding conflict to such an extent that controversial stories receive less exposure than ones that fit people's existing beliefs doesn't enhance our community. "

steven20122• 13 years ago

Oh look, I never once said the author wasn't allowed to criticize the way HN was run. I said that if he wants something different, then do it himself instead of trying to hijack HN for his purposes.

GrinningFool• 13 years ago

The statement "X can do what they want with their Y." is simply ceding to X that which was already his.

The statement "X can do what they want with their Y BUT they shouldn't because Z" is ceding to X that which was already his, and in the same breath revoking that cession. Essentially: They don't have to change it, but they should change it.

Consider instead: "BUT this isn't what I'm looking for in a community, and it's not a community in which I will continue to participate - I encourage others to do the same."

That statement would have both acknowledged the owner's right and done so without attempting to indirectly dictate what the owner should do with his property.

mortice3• 13 years ago

But if he intervenes at this point it will spoil the emergent complexity of the community, and hence the beauty he has created per his revolutionary treatise "Hackers and Painters"

makerops• 13 years ago

I tend to agree with the premise of the article, but found this line from a self described "big government" type, funny:

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

_mvuc• 13 years ago

So he went to the SJW echo chamber of LJ/DW.

tehwalrus4• 13 years ago

big government != mind control.

EDIT: to add, I thought that Orwell actually wrote an essay called "I am on the left" although I can't now find it. He was definitely not right wing - he was just very critical of communism as a supposedly left wing system.

pjc50• 13 years ago

Orwell participated in the Spanish Civil War, which had two "left" sides (anarchist-syndicalist versus communist) versus the "right" (monarchist-fascist).

Within the Communist side, there were further factions (NKVD:Stalinist, POUM:other Marxist). Orwell joined POUM. As a result, he was condemned by Stalinists and had to flee back to England. He spent much of his career warning against Stalinism, from a position on what might be called the social democrat left.

mynewwork• 13 years ago

Reading Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" was eye-opening for me, I'd highly recommend it to everyone.

In short, while I think communism is roughly the worst idea ever, that book gave me an understanding of the world he lived in and why he was quite rational to view radically left-wing ideas as the best option for that time and place. A functioning, reasonably fair capitalist society like we have in the US today would have been unimaginable or unbelievable based on his life experiences.

drcode• 13 years ago

What HN should do is add a feature where readers can upvote stories so they can have their say about what is on the front page. This would address OP's concerns.

</sarcasm>

mjg593• 13 years ago

Stories receive upvotes and reach the front page. Certain topics then tend to be aggressively flagged and vanish off the front page no matter how many upvotes they have.

jasonlotito2• 13 years ago

I don't see an issue with that. There are other venues for discussing certain things. This isn't to say that these topics are bad, just that at the time, they really don't belong here.

mortice3• 13 years ago

This is just a natural consequence of Hacker News not being a free market. The state controls of the karma system practically guarantee inefficiency in the free exchange of ideas. We need to stop subsidizing mediocrity.

ThomPete2• 13 years ago

Well culture is an echo chamber. It does not mean it's bad.

I see it as there is a certain culture here, one which i happen to be in agreement with most of the time, while there is still room for dissent.

mortice3• 13 years ago

no there isnt

ThomPete2• 13 years ago

DougWebb2• 13 years ago

I'm curious how many people who have the ability to upvote or flag stories actually do so. For my part, I'm very conservative:

- I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions.

- I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through the new stories and if I see something interesting there I might upvote it.

- For comments, I upvote comments I find particularly helpful or insightful. I don't downvote comments very often unless they're particularly rude. However, I never downvote comments that are part of a discussion I'm having; I don't trust my impartiality in that case.

If my behavior is typical, then stories are being controlled by a 'vocal minority' who take the time to upvote or flag them. As in any group, the vocal minority tends to have the more fundamentalist / extremist points of view on a subject, which could lead to the outcomes TFA discusses.

GuiA• 13 years ago

As an other point of data:

- I only flag stories that are clearly posted here for promotional purposes only (example: Ask HN threads where the author does not ask anything but just posts a link to his site/startup)

- I upvote stories that I feel have a very good level of quality (i.e., deeply technical stuff) and have a low point count (support the underdogs)

- I upvote any comment that's mature, respectful, and which the author clearly spent a decent chunk of time on.

DanBC• 13 years ago

You should visit new and upvote the interesting links, and consider flagging the links that should not be here.

If a submission is good I always upvote it.

I downvote quite often, but not for disagreement, only for comments that are not helpful to the discussion.

HN would be better if more people used their tools.

DougWebb2• 13 years ago

You should visit new and upvote the interesting links, and consider flagging the links that should not be here.

Yeah, I know... I spend so much time on this site (it's my primary news feed) I really need to make more of an effort to do that.

angersock3• 13 years ago

My heuristics go as follows:

- I flag stories only if they're poorly-written and completely unrelated to tech, or if they are opinion pieces that fail to back up their assertions (two or three short paragraphs)--in those cases I'll try to comment on why I flagged it.

- I upvote stories if they're technically interesting or socially relevant; I try to make a pass through the new section at least once every day.

- I upvote comments that are thoughtful or witty but on-topic, and downvote comments that are poorly written, severely off-topic, or mean in a non-clever way (dumb trolls).

The practice of downvoting because you don't agree with something is tricky--it makes sense (I can more easily pick out comments that probably run counter to the community and thus have better entropy) but also is kind of detrimental, because it conflates "This is a bad, poorly-worded off-topic comment" with "This is a comment I find disagreeable".

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

> "I flag stories only if they're poorly-written and completely unrelated to tech"

Why the tech requirement? It's HackerNews not TechNews. There are plenty of good posts I've found useful which fit the hacker label but not the tech one.

bhauer• 13 years ago

Your heuristics are a very close match for my own. I've written similar options in previous threads here concerning flagging and the ranking algorithm.

Whenever this matter surfaces, I recommend the HN Slapdown user script [1] which indicates stories that have been moved below the position they would have based on points only. In other words, it draws attention to stories that have been flagged or otherwise adversely affected.

In my opinion, the homepage either weights non-upvote inputs too heavily or receives too many non-upvote interactions from users.

I can't be certain whether flagging or other measures such as the "flamewar detector" are more or less responsible for the volatility of the home page ranking. My only anecdotal evidence is that when I have (very rarely) flagged stories, I've witnessed an immediate and severe rank adjustment, often immediately sending the submission into second-page purgatory. This has given me great respect for the severity of flagging.

My heuristics:

1. Most of all, I try to keep my interactions positive. If I don't agree, I act as if I don't care, by which I mean I do nothing. I see little value in downvoting something I disagree with. It won't change the person's mind—only a comment in reply has a chance of that.

2. I will downvote comments that I believe are objectively wrong and potentially misleading to other readers or are clearly intended to be offensive or mean-spirited. Still, I feel I am very sparse with downvotes. I downvote approximately one out of every 1,000 comments I read.

3. I've only flagged stories that are unrelated to technology, but even then only in extreme cases. I don't bother flagging stories about popular fiction, movie reviews, or other elements of geek culture because I don't think those stories are an epidemic at HN. Like you, I feel it's important to leave a comment when flagging a submission. I have flagged two stories if my memory serves me correctly.

4. I skim the new section on every visit to site; about once per day.

5. I upvote stories I find interesting or agreeable. I think this is the point of the upvote. Upvotes are where I can be entirely subjective. I upvote approximately one out of every 10 stories I read.

6. I upvote comments by the same rule as stories. I upvote approximately one out of every 100 comments I read.

7. I strongly disagree with downvoting or flagging simply because of disagreements. I don't think use of downvoting is as problematic at HN as elsewhere (e.g., Reddit), but I do feel there is still slightly excessive comment downvoting and moderately excessive story flagging (or other adjustments).

[1] http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/150452

danielweber2• 13 years ago

I heard about a guy getting hellbanned for flagging all but one of the "Steve Jobs is dead" stories on the day Steve Jobs died. Each time my finger hovers over the "flag" button I wonder ". . . is this really worth the hassle?" Then I close the tab and go off somewhere else.

(I've flagged probably 10 things total.)

EDIT: jlgreco corrects me. The guy I was thinking of was flag-banned, not hell-banned.

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

I know some people lost their ability to flag while doing exactly that (the 'flag' link is removed entirely when that happens, the removal of the ability isn't invisible to the user it happens to), but I am unaware of anybody being hellbanned for it.

blueblob• 13 years ago

I wanted to do this for the google privacy settings change, did 4 links about it really need to be on the front page?

angularly• 13 years ago

I guess I was flag-banned. I can't see the flag link anywhere, and I seem to remember it was there before. Must be that one post recently where I expressed a libertarian political view :)

Semaphor• 13 years ago

- I flagged one story in my time on HN (< 2 yrs). It was obvious spam (referrer included and went to a webstore; unrelated title).

- I see newer stories thanks to some chrome extensions showing a 2 column layout. I rarely upvote though as I feel I am too inexperienced to decide what others should find interesting.

- I upvote comments that made me learn something. I downvote "redditism", flaming etc.

Just as another data point.

te_platt• 13 years ago

It's ok to upvote something just because you found it interesting. Emphasis on you.

unhappyhippie• 13 years ago

My voting behavior on HN is very different from other websites. Since the saved stories and upvotes are the same, and upvotes cannot be taken back, I use the upvote as a "save story" button. There are many submissions which are not of a good quality, but the ensuing discussion on the wider topic prompts me to save the submissions as there is no option to save comments. I maintain a separate database of my saved stories, which I keep preiodically updating and pruning, primarily for NLP and ML experiments. So that is my personally "curated" list of HN bookmarks. Though I must say my visits here have become less frequent.

potatolicious• 13 years ago

- I flag stories only if it seems like the story is abusive, not just off-topic (e.g., overly self-promotional, complete noise, etc). This happens very rarely.

- I don't usually upvote stories. I only do so if I have a very immediate "holy shit this is amazing!" reaction to it.

- I upvote comments frequently, particularly if it's a good, well-argued point done in good style (i.e., more factual than rhetoric). I downvote a lot more than I used to, but usually reserve it for posts I consider abusive. This means ad hominems and egregious displays of fundamentalism/extremism (e.g., "all laws are paid for by big corporate interests", which comes up every. single. time. AirBnb or Uber is mentioned).

That last part is subject to some personal bias naturally, but I do think it's important to reward posts that provide a holistic, nuanced view of issues rather than the fiery rhetoric of people banging on black and white drums. I've noticed a lot more of this sort of drumbeating on HN nowadays.

There are some topics that show up on HN frequently, but the discussion is incredibly poor every single time. I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech.

selmnoo• 13 years ago

I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech.

You know, I've noticed a lot of the 'superstar commenters' on HN have polar opposite views from each other on a lot of these touchy issues. So, it's sad to see that what ensues out of smart people disagreeing is a plain refusal to talk about these very things.

Why does it have to be this way? Why are some of the most respected and the smartest commenters on this site unwilling to have an intellectually honest debate?

Is it because of time? I've noticed that if I just sound the first thought in my mind, it's likely to come out as being rude ("wow, this sucks", "this is the 100th time I'm seeing this", "why did this person make this obvious mistake?"). It takes effort and time to structure these first thoughts as positive criticisms. Presumably, the smart folks here don't have a lot of time, so maybe it's just that they end up sounding terse and rude only because they don't have the time to reword things to sound more polite and supportive?

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

I don't blame you, but I find it especially sad, because sexism in tech is one area that actually needs more meaningful nuanced discussion. Not to be too elitist, but if we can't have this conversation, who can?

tptacek• 13 years ago

Look at the thread below to see what happens when you simply mention sexism on HN. It's like we're a permanent chapter of /r/MensRights.

buro9• 13 years ago

- I never flag stories, but would if it was spam or trolling (but I've not seen any of either hit the front page, and that on /new is already [dead])

- I upvote stories fairly liberally. I use the saved_stories feature on my own profile as a lightweight bookmarking solution. So anything of interest that I think "I may want to find this again in future" I upvote. I tend to visit /new once or twice a day to spot interesting things that haven't hit the front-page, I think of this as community service.

- I upvote only the most insightful comments, I upvote comments less than I upvote stories. I downvote only the most rude or dumb comments, the ones filled with bile, hatred and flamebait views... downvotes are very rare but that's my criteria. I don't downvote dumb jokes, but notice other people tend to.

I never upvote/downvote other people's comments if I've taken part in the debate. I do notice that it's not possible to downvote the branch of the debate you've participated in, but I just avoid voting on any comment on a story I've posted a comment on.

One thing I have noticed, on a couple of occasions I've made a divisive statement and whilst it would overall get upvoted my total karma gets reduced. It seems a few people throw hissyfits when they disagree and go check other comments you've made and downvote a bunch of them.

simias3• 13 years ago

I think the problem is that some people are not as thoughtful as you are when it comes to up/downvotes. The terrible "downvote because I disagree" is not as bad as in other forums but it's definitely on the rise. When people use the voting system to express an opinion instead of judging the quality of the comment itself it kills the quality of the discussion very very quickly in my experience.

The people who don't take the voting system seriously are probably those who are the most likely to mindlessly upvote/downvote stories and comments.

I think up and down votes should be rationed. Or at least have some kind of cost (when your ratio is depleted you can upvote by using your own karma?). I remember slashdot had (has?) a similar system. It would force the users to think twice before mindlessly up or down voting anything. Maybe a downvote should be more expensive as an upvote, even.

Flagging stories would still be free for completely off topic contents (and fighting voting rings).

EDIT: or as an alternative: the more you vote the less your vote is meaningful.

kutakbash• 13 years ago

Voting system is a great cleaning mechanism (akin to current in a pond), something that keeps mediocre submissions and poor comments out of sight. If this feature is rationed (eg flow of the current is weakened), comments and posts ought to be rationed as well, otherwise HN gets overwhelmed with poor input.

jamesaguilar• 13 years ago

I flag when the story is deceitful or otherwise not a legitimate topic of discussion. I also rarely upvote stores, although I frequently up or down comments.

chollida1• 13 years ago

- I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions.

I used to until I lost the ability. I guess the impulse came from stackoverflow, where you are encourage to try and make the site better by editing and flagging poor items.

I used to go to the new page and flag 3-5 stories a day. I thought this was a benefit to the community and one way I could help make it better.

Finally one day I lost the ability to flag. I assumed a moderator didn't like one of the stories I'd flagged and took the privileged away.

No good dead goes unpunished:)

koko775• 13 years ago

I avoid voting for exactly this reason. I prefer to filter the noise myself by ignoring it over decreasing it for others, and the only reason for this is that I don't want to be penalized for it.

MartianObserver• 13 years ago

Yep, let's ignore the main issues raised by the post and have a meta discussion instead.

- Leftist orthodoxy (Keynesian good/Austrian bad, etc.) - Disappearing dissenters (HeckBanning, NegVotesToOblivion) - Apple the Immaculate (and Saint Jobs the Perfect) - All startups are equal (but YC's are more equaler than others)

Please HeckBan this and prove the points made about HN's accoustics and whatnot. Whatever you do, must not upArrow and offend the hive mind.

woah• 13 years ago

Your comment is badly written, and mostly free of meaningful content, but I don't want to downvote it because I feel that it would somehow be gratifying to you.

100982• 13 years ago

It's hell, not heck. What is this, preschool?

100982• 13 years ago

Same goes for me. I never downvote anyone and sometimes upvote comments that I strongly agree with.

wellboy2• 13 years ago

You know what sux, stories critical of HN are getting flagged and pushed off the front page, exactly the flaw that this article points out. This article is at position 58 now with 308 upvotes after being submitted 9 hours ago. There's another link from 9h ago with 48 upvotes and it's at position 36.

This article is direct user feedback and points out that moderation is just harmful for what HN stands for, why "making it disappear". You can't moderate a community-driven website. You can for porn or harassment speech, but not for critique, seriously. Even if the critique is unconstructive, that's how humans discuss, don't moderate that, otherwise you will falsify the outcome.

That's like the NSA, always trying to control things and sweeping things under the carpet, no like.

pbreit• 13 years ago

The ZenPayroll post disappeared pretty quickly, too.

welly• 13 years ago

Your HN behaviour is pretty much identical to mine. I rarely comment, I do occasionally but generally I skim through comments and upvote occasional comments I find interesting.

elp1stolero• 13 years ago

A wise man once said,

"Seeking clarity is more valuable than agreement."

That changed the way I think about writing, and sharing my opinions or discussing other people's ideas. If you go into a disagreement looking to better understand what led the other party to their beliefs, you typically have a more mature and interesting discussion. Plus, why someone believes something I completely disagree with is more interesting than the what, anyway. It is likely in the end that you both may agree to disagree, (a lost art in this age), but at least you can converse respectfully about complex ideas like adults.

MichaelAza• 13 years ago

"There are no social problems in the technology industry. We have always been at war with Eastasia."

Boy oh boy, I sure love me some Orwell references.

Referencing 1984 should be on par with referencing Hitler. It's just a lazy debate tactic. If you have a good point you can make it without resorting to these much-too-often used references.

Orwell himself went against it his essay "Politics and the English Language". Read it. It'll do you good.

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

I don't see any particular reason to eschew common or obvious references to history or literature because they are easy or common. If that is honestly something that bothered us, we would be complaining at the shear number of western authors who have been falling back on biblical allusion, or greek mythology for centuries (both in fiction and otherwise). It is easy to reference The Tower of Babel, or the story of Icarus, but we don't complain when people do.

(I know, I know, being an easy comparison isn't the real reason we complain about references to Hitler. I don't find the real reasons to be compelling either.)

mattmaroon• 13 years ago

Hacker News was a social echo chamber long before there was flagging or flamewar detection. I think it's just an inherent law in any small, passionate community.

yummyfajitas• 13 years ago

The author's sole example is incorrect. Paul Graham did not dismiss any peer reviewed research. The original article provided no argument (peer reviewed or otherwise) asserting that natural born programmers were a myth - the cited research merely argued that the belief in natural born programmers was harmful. Paul Graham gave an anecdote explaining why he believed in natural born programmers.

spindritf• 13 years ago

Exactly. I hate when people do that -- cite an argument that got torn to shreds as if it was widely accepted.

elchief• 13 years ago

My stuff has been on the front page twice, and I'm a left wing, big government Canadian.

Some people can be a little cranky, we're computer guys ffs, but I think the discourse here is pretty civil and open minded.

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

The discourse here is the worst, except for the discourse everywhere else.

protomyth5• 13 years ago

"The original story linked to a review of peer-reviewed scientific research."

I believe the credit we assign to peer reviewed scientific, mathematical, or engineering papers shouldn't be anywhere near the same weight we assign to peer reviewed social science papers. I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct.

My takeaway was that they tried to present some idea as universal when it really required the culture of the researcher in the geographical area the researcher was studying[1]. The second problem is that they didn't understand what they were studying. They didn't think that way.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are some amazing researchers whose results were really useful, but the lack of true rigor in many of these studies is just poor. Don't get me started about the damn math errors or "correlation does not imply causation" arguments.

1) Community risk factor studies have to be the worst. The number of them that only studied urban settings, but believed their results applied to rural areas is astounding.

spartango• 13 years ago

While my inclination is to agree with your critical view of social science research, I think picking at this example misses the point of the article.

The idea that 'hivemind' discussions are drowning out 'other' viewpoints has merit with respect to this forum. There are copious examples, from role-of-government discussions to technical preferences.

Indeed, there are cases where the community massively promotes dubious science that it finds agreeable.

We would be foolish to throw out this author's commentary because one of his examples is not bulletproof.

bcoates2• 13 years ago

That assumes that the purpose of HN is to be a debate site, or a 20th century "fairness doctrine" media outlet, or a town-hall style public forum. I do not think any HN is any of those things or well-suited to become one.

Most of the useful and interesting things that come out of HN are in threads that assume the answer to the big question and make some interesting point about the details.

protomyth5• 13 years ago

I don't dismiss the whole of the article, but I do dismiss its premise event.

I get the greater point, but I do not like starting off a perfectly fine argument with such a poor premise. It reeks of wanting to write an article on an important subject and using a poorly chosen event as the "catalyst" or "trigger point" for your need to write it. Also, I am not among those who take that sentence from the article as a "statement of truth".

logicallee• 13 years ago

I think your second sentence reads the opposite of what you mean!

protomyth5• 13 years ago

this one?? "I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct."

No, I'm pretty sure I meant they can get you grants but are, on the whole, hogwash. I do admit to using these studies to write grants to get money to do things for people. I was a bit of a crusader in my younger years before I realized the end never justifies the means.

crusso5• 13 years ago

I kind of thought the same thing, but then again he didn't mention the direction of the disparity.

Steko2• 13 years ago

"My takeaway was that they tried to present some idea as universal "

Strange apologia. This isn't about whether it was a good article or not or the relative merits of peer reviewed social science. It's about whether it's good for the community when top articles are disappeared by a bunch of dittoheads simply because pg was critical.

Before pg post: top article.

After pg post: flagged to oblivion.

If that's going to be the case than it would be better for the community that pg had not commented in that post. Which is unfortunate because pg is very insightful and I think right in that case. Insight is wasted when it's buried on page 10.

The fault obviously is the poor use/abuse of the flagging power and has been extensively documented previously. I've seen zero evidence that it adds anything to this site. Make it cost 100 or 1000 karma to flag something and maybe it can work.

protomyth5• 13 years ago

I assume, since you commented well after spartango, that you read spartango's comment and my reply. To repeat, "I don't dismiss the whole of the article, but I do dismiss its premise event."

Also "My takeaway was that they tried to present some idea as universal", is a takeaway from social science research, not the article.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 13 years ago

When you write to hacker news to say hacker news is an echo chamber I go into an infinite loop and run out of stack space, thanks a lot.

squozzer• 13 years ago

So are CSPAN, NPR, and most media outlets. Duh.

mwfunk• 13 years ago

Not every forum is obligated to be as democratic and decentralized as 4chan or Reddit. I like HN because it's more focused, and in some cases more aggressively moderated, even if the mechanisms for doing so are more opaque/blunt/arbitrary/etc. than in other forums. If HN was the only place on the web to discuss anything, I would be much more concerned about the points raised by this article. Fortunately it's not.

trendspotter• 13 years ago

The comment section of this article is a social echo chamber of a critique of a social echo chamber.

thetabyte2• 13 years ago

Especially after pg's response to the blog post about sexual assault at CodeMash, I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments?

I tend to have a lot of respect for pg, and found his apology for what happened in that thread to be admirable. Whether or not preventing discussion of the issue on HN is positive or negative...I have very complex feelings on the issue, and see valid arguments on both sides.

What I do not have mixed feelings about, however, is that these issues need to be put front and center, so that people in our industry a) know they exist b) know how common they are c) are inspired to make personal effort to fix it. I would hope that pg agrees.

If he does, why not make such stories, when they set off the flamewar detector, maintain their ranking, but disable comments? That way, the issue is still raised, and people are still alerted to it, but it prevents the (some believe) "unproductive" discussion.

pg• 13 years ago

The output of the flamewar detector isn't binary.

thetabyte2• 13 years ago

Ahh, that makes sense. Can there be a sliding scale of delay for the ability to comment, or depth of thread allowed (before commenting is disabled for that thread), based on the output of the flamewar detector?

This may also have the side effect of allowing for some opinions to be shared, without being mired in flame-y back and forth. (And, importantly, still allows the story to stay more visible)

Zak• 13 years ago

If the flamewar detector takes content in to account, could it consider the overall tone of the discussion and the content of each new comment and selectively kill new comments that seem flame-like?

I wrote a moderation bot to use on a political subreddit that used a text classifier to determine whether comments should be deleted. A goal was to delete flame comments rapidly. It worked, but reddit's reply notifications limited its effectiveness.

Of note: the phrase "you are a" ranked higher for the flame category than any particular insult.

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments?

In some cases it seems to, though by that time the discussion is long off the front page. I think this is a good thing, if something is on the front page then comments should be enabled, if only in case something in the article desperately needs to be corrected. If we get a post on here about a new study suggesting that vaccines may cause autism, that would almost certainly generate a flamewar but the absolute last thing we would want is for the post to remain on the front page and not permit anyone to post comments that may refute claims made by the study. In situations like those, it is better to kill the discussion and to take the post off the frontpage than to leave it there but disable commenting.

gnarbarian• 13 years ago

Anyone who believes in big government has never contracted for one at length.

crusso5• 13 years ago

The whole argument of the article is a non-starter:

Building a social echo chamber risks marginalising us from the rest of society, gradually becoming ignored and irrelevant as our self-reinforcing opinions drift ever further away from the mainstream

I don't consume movies, books, music, food, web sites, or much of anything else because they're "mainstream".

I do so because they have a high degree of quality that holds my interests. Mainstream is often the opposite of quality.

The more mainstream HN becomes, the less desirable it becomes. If I wanted mainstream I'd spend more time looking at Slashdot and Reddit.

mseebach• 13 years ago

Yes, I agree. "Echo-chamber" and "bubble" are features. Having a informative and effective discussion at a high level, and having opinions moved, predicates a high degree of common ground.

Effectively challenging somebody's worldview doesn't begin with "everything you consider true is false, now listen to me" as is sometimes the preferred method of radicals. Being bombarded with information and viewpoints you consider wrongheaded doesn't expand your horizon, it galvanises you.

But when a person I have a lot in common with and agree with on many issues says something that I don't instinctively agree with, I listen and at the very least make sure I understand the full argument before I decide whether I think it's wrong.

crusso5• 13 years ago

Some people just aren't comfortable dealing with reality since reality is an echo chamber that reinforces successful survival behaviors.

0110111002• 13 years ago

An echo chamber fosters confidence in a single perspective, or a small subset of many perspectives. And not everything we speak about is mathematical and can be formalized so that we can have confidence in a single perspective (social, political issues).

Can you, in particular, handle being confident in one perspective and being able to acknowledge, understand, and evaluate another? Maybe. Can most people? I don't think so.

"Having a informative and effective discussion at a high level, and having opinions moved, predicates a high degree of common ground."

We can agree on definitions, but that's not necessarily an echo chamber. An echo chamber, or the negative kind of echo chamber, is when a (nonmathematical, nonformal) perspective or conclusion is reinforced by the entire community.

Example: "everybody has the same opportunities and therefore everybody is equally capable of achieving success". You get people on hacker news asserting this all the time. This is not a definition. This is dogma.

"Being bombarded with information and viewpoints you consider wrongheaded doesn't expand your horizon, it galvanises you."

Key phrase: "[ideas] you consider wrongheaded". Nobody has all the right ideas from the start. A priori, there is no reason to think that you will never encounter any ideas which appear wrongheaded to you at first.

znowi• 13 years ago

Abundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion is a good evidence of a groupthink environment. People either afraid to lose karma or be scrutinized or otherwise upset the mods.

I can often see people opening their comments with a hefty preamble, which goal is to justify the following controversial opinion, in hopes that it will not bring or at least lessen the wrath of the mob.

And of course people like their idols, too. When PG makes a comment - it's a godsend and instantly attracts the fervent following. In a similar manner, there's no lack of ardent supporters of Google that will rationalize any move by the company in a way that is good for the world.

crusso5• 13 years ago

Yeah, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes people support PG, Google, Apple, etc. because those people or organizations have a proven track record and despite stock market legal disclaimers, past history is indicative of future results.

The funny thing is that HN is the ultimate in technical austerity. The only thing it really has going for it is the influence of PG and the moderators... yet there are those who call out those things as being a problem.

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

Abundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion is a good evidence of a groupthink environment.

It is evidence of nothing more than somebody wanting to make a poorly considered comment without the negative ramifications associated with typing before you think. HN loves people who are willing to be contrarian. The 'leaders' list is absolutely littered with people who spend most of their time disagreeing with the bulk of the site. They get upvoted, not downvoted, because they express their disagreement well.

Throwaway commenters typically get downvoted not because they are going against the grain but because they make very low quality comments.

ctdonath• 13 years ago

Seems his prime complaint is that resonating consternation is aggressively removed, giving an undue illusion of peace and harmony - and somehow that's a bad thing.

Some issues are social hot buttons, with a roughly even split (if not in actual numbers, then in energy exerted in pushback against the opposing view), roughly equal validity to each perspective, and pretty much no chance of one side reversing their view en masse in short order. Repeated prolonged verbose heated arguments over these subjects will not lead to any meaningful consensus. Their presence tends to erupt as a tangent or non-sequitur to another discussion, destroying the overall thread in a wave of verbose hysteria. Nothing is served by their recurrence; we all know there's a dramatic split on views regarding the subject, we are each settled in our own views thereon, and frequent re-hashing the subject just sours the environment and encourages participants to seek more sensible discussions elsewhere. Ergo, there's no point in letting these recur. PG is right in weighting the algorithm so such destructive & pointless discussions tend to disappear.

Yes, we know such disagreements exist. A policy of "not here, guys" is a good thing. Yes, the issues being suppressed are of great sociopolitical importance; please recognize that decent people can disagree over them, please agree to disagree, and resolving that disagreement will not happen here - but continued rehashing thereof will create a toxic environment.

BigChiefSmokem• 13 years ago

We are all pretty like-minded and I see nothing wrong with that. This isn't Congress, it's the Hacker News Social Club. You can leave when you like.

scott_s• 13 years ago

Hacker News is a meta-experiment on confirmation bias. In every meta-discussion I see on the "bias" in HN, there is always someone saying "HN is biased against X" and "HN is biased against not X". It's in the comments linked in this story, and I see it all over HN itself. My best explanation for that is an individual's confirmation bias.

Steko2• 13 years ago

Hilariously, this article appears to be flagged far below it would naturally score atm.

NovemberWest• 13 years ago

Funny, my concerns about the social climate here are rather different. But I suspect writing this type of article is probably not the way to fix things. When people feel attacked, they get defensive and tend to become more entrenched, not less, due to trying to justify their behavior.

EliRivers• 13 years ago

Stories that appear to challenge the narrative that good programmers are just naturally talented tend to vanish.

Wait, is that the common narrative? Surely the only people who believe that are the elderly, who just can't shake the "child genius" idea of programmers they were fed in the seventies and eighties?

Hacker News is a social echo chamber

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