HN's commenting policy is a barrier to diversity in tech

http://www.caitlinrivers.com/blog/hns-commenting-policy-is-a-barrier-to-diversity-in-tech

by cmrivers • 12 years ago

23 6 12 years ago

hackerjam2• 12 years ago

just for the record, i have been subbed to hacker news for awhile -- just checked, i formally joined 168 days ago -- but i had been reading hacker news for a year or more before i guilted myself into joining and that was just so i could respond to something i had read.

only recently have i stepped up to the plate and started posting links to articles i come across in my daily news dredge and if and when appropriate, made comments on news items that piqued my interest.

but it is in search of your kind of posts that i come to a news aggregation site like hn because i do want to see what the comments are -- they act like a reality check -- so please, don't despair. i am sure there are a lot of people like me who check the "new" section and are able to discover what you have posted before it gets locked. and now you have me thinking that probably most of the stuff i post, get nixed too. cuz only once did i notice something i posted show up in the first 5 pages, but it like #60 and it only got that far because the article was being trashed.

so you go me wondering if i should just go back to being a free-rider. posting and commenting on hn takes a lot of time and effort, probably better spent elsewhere.

DanBC• 12 years ago

Read the guidelines, they're very clear:

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

See also the very clear guidance in the welcome guidelines:

A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting.
What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, then perhaps it could be.
The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter.

What's the point of posting "police should not murder citizens" posts? Anyone who isn't a vile human being agrees; and those posts always drag out the vile human beings who will blame the minor criminal who gets murdered by police.

There is no constructive discussion to be had from them. See also discussions about Israel / Palestine; abortion; gun control; etc.

Having said all that I didn't see the link and if you feel it was unfairly flagged you should email hn and ask them to tweak it. I think they do un-flag-kill some stories that they think should be here and I know of at least one that was about diversity stuff.

hackerjam2• 12 years ago

thanks for revisiting the posting rules. it's been awhile since i read them and i neglected (my bad) to reread them when i finally got up the nerve to start posting. i will definitely keep this mind when i submit something in future. however, most of the time, i do submit non-mainstream stories instead of the "duhhh" everybody w/ half a brain should know or have this figured out already... unless of course, the news item-in-question pertains to emergent technologies, like the blockchain or AI and the like.

however, let me ask you this: do you think hn has reached the point where it is practically impossible to consume all of the content that is posted each day? and the fact that titles+urls i submit -- don't get upvoted or flagged -- is not due to an overzealous gatekeeper but because they fall through the cracks. no one sees them. and perhaps it is time that yc updated their submission form so that the content can be more nuanced (classified) and say, if i, for example, want to look at breaking news in an emergent field like cryptocurrencies i click on that page, the way that i can look at the jobs or show sections.

or if that is not feasible, do you think the hn community will continue to fracture with new hn clones being set up -- like coinspotting, cryptoanalys.is, data tau, growth hackers, inbound, python hacker news, etc. -- to provide for and appeal to a more specialized userbase.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

and the fact that titles+urls i submit -- don't get upvoted or flagged -- is not due to an overzealous gatekeeper but because they fall through the cracks. no one sees them.

Other people's submissions are getting upvoted or flagged, so its probably not that no one is seeing yours (though there are potential timing issues that might make that the case), its probably just that no one is either interested in or objecting to them.

and perhaps it is time that yc updated their submission form so that the content can be more nuanced (classified) and say, if i, for example, want to look at breaking news in an emergent field like cryptocurrencies i click on that page, the way that i can look at the jobs or show sections.

I think YC specifically does not want to be maintaining something like Reddit that covers everything under the sun, and limiting the classification breadth and depth is a tool to encourage that.

if that is not feasible, do you think the hn community will continue to fracture with new hn clones being set up

I think new discussion forums, including ones that are generally similar to HN and target some segment of the same audience, or going to continue to get set up no matter what HN does. And that's a good thing.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

I think this is a mostly useless complaint due to lack of specificity in two key respects. First, it fails to identify what in the HN "commenting policy" is supposedly to blame for the problem, and second, it fails to propose a change that would resolve the problem that could then be the focus of a discussion of whether the change is a net improvement.

Other than the fact that the author clearly doesn't like that the one particular story was flag killed, there's no substance and just a lot of nonspecific complaint and emotional language.

That's not to say that I don't think that HN tends to focus on stories of interest to white upper middle class to upper class people with deep interest in technology and/or the tech industry, but I don't see the article offered here as offering anything constructive with regard to tthat.

bob917• 12 years ago

I disagree with any policy that stands in my way.

HN's commenting policy is a barrier to diversity in tech

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