Ask HN: Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604

by ncarlson • 17 years ago

74 156 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

In the early days of HN, there seemed to be a tight-knit group of entrepreneurs that offered support and advice to each other. Now when I read comments, there seems to be a race to see who can write the first criticism or who can pick out the first inconsistency.

Don't get me wrong, constructive criticism is essential for growth. But I feel like the atmosphere of the comments dialogue is becoming more and more negative each day. Am I the only one feeling this?

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive.

mrshoe• 17 years ago

Oh shut your dirty trap, you whiny moron.

</sarcasm>

I still find HN to be a friendly, positive environment. Let's keep it that way!

Edit: Wow. Either starting your comment with a joke is somehow no longer OK, or nobody else agrees with me that HN is still friendly and positive. I've been reading HN everyday for a very long time. I think these negative trends are mostly just an illusion due to the novelty wearing off for newer users. "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)" (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

sli• 17 years ago

Oh come on, -3 points? It was a joke, people! I upvoted because he beat me to it AND because I agree with him. I'm not seeing the negative downturn.

drhowarddrfine2• 17 years ago

Uh oh. I did the same before seeing yours. Maybe sense of humor is the real problem here.

scott_s2• 17 years ago

You're not as funny as you think you are.

jriddycuz• 17 years ago

I don't notice HN being that negative at all, although I'm relatively new, so I don't know if I know anything yet. What I do notice, however, is a bit too much self-seriousness, and it can come across as cold or negative at times when you're not used to it.

ncarlson• 17 years ago

>"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"

Sweet. Only 8 more days and then I'll be able to voice my opinion without the "noob" stigma.

unalone11• 17 years ago

I'm at a year and a half. Hacker News is turning into Reddit. It's following the exact same path, albeit thankfully slower, and the causes behind that path—influx of users, need for attention, karma lust—aren't causes that Paul is looking to fix.

Reddit's not the worst thing in the world, but make no mistake, we're headed there.

thenduks2• 17 years ago

Every online community is naturally inclined to become 4chan. It happened to 4chan, it happened to digg, it's definitely on the cusp at reddit and I expect it will eventually happen to HN.

I'm not happy about this :/

crystalis7• 17 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920110 <-

I wouldn't mind subscribing to your whitelist.

Freebytes4• 17 years ago

One thing I find interesting is that people will read posts on discussion groups, read articles on blogs and web pages, watch television, listen to music, and over time, they will begin to connect with the person with whom they believe they are interacting. The truth is that the other person that is providing the content for the lurker has no idea who that person is. However, the lurker feels like he knows the poster, the community, the musician, or the actor because he has been involved in a one-way interaction for such a long time. So, the poster may make a small joke that he believes to be harmless because he believes he understands the other person; however, he comes across as a stranger simply telling a negative joke. I have encountered this issue may times. I feel like I have some kind of connection, but that connection does not truly exist unless you actively engage with the target of your interest.

elblanco7• 17 years ago

I've received that exact same reception here. I've lurked HN for about a year. And I get challenges like "your karma/post count/profile length/fame level is too low for me to take you seriously".

Sorry, I don't measure a person's worth, or the quality of their statements by karma score.

crystalis7• 17 years ago

It had to happen- there's relatively fewer pg, patio11, raganwald, wheels, tptacek, swombat, etc., and more of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=903880

tptacek6• 17 years ago

Crap. I just upvoted edw519 for his pithy comment!

crystalis7• 17 years ago

Would it be petty to edit you out of my original comment? :)

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how his asserted graph deserves the points it has now.

swombat• 17 years ago

Me too. Great graph, would have taken a lot of words to convey otherwise. Effective communication at its best.

I'm thoroughly disappointed though... from crystalis' later post, it appears you guys all have areas of expertise, but I'm just some kind of generalist or something... cries

nkohari• 17 years ago

I agree entirely. I rarely do more than skim the comments anymore, because too often it just turns into a contest for one-upsmanship and ego stroking. There are people on here that will take any opportunity to argue about any topic.

tsestrich2• 17 years ago

Eh, I get the sense that sometimes people will just grab any news story that hasn't been posted yet and post it hoping to get voted up points. I haven't been around all that long, but it seems like the signal to noise ratio is getting a lot higher even during the short time span that I've been on here.

Not only that, but you get twenty blog articles submitted pretty much all talking about the same thing every time, and it can just get draining. I think people get aggravated when they start reading the same thing over and over. "Release early/iterate often" has been the subject of no fewer than one top-page article nearly every day, and though it's good advice, I think by this point we get the message. Once the main point of an article is understood, people start to pick apart and criticize the smaller points I guess.

stanleydrew• 17 years ago

I assume you meant to say it seems like the signal to noise ratio is getting lower? i.e. more noise.

tsestrich2• 17 years ago

Yes indeed I did, lol. Thanks

spudlyo• 17 years ago

I've noticed it as well. I'm not sure if this is due to an increased amount of criticism or if the quality of the articles posted has gone down, warranting more criticism.

tonystubblebine• 17 years ago

I've noticed it also. When I first joined people really took care that their comments were thoughtful and respectful, even if they were disagreeing. Is there anything to do other than to personally try harder to be thoughtful contributors?

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

Those comments are still there, just a bit less obvious.

I figure it is because the "original" members were of a certain level of contributor. "hand picked" in a sense (classic early adopters). A these move on to pastures new and a large numbers of new people come in you start to get a range of commentary style rather than just top class stuff.

(not that all newcomers are bad - or indeed not that many of us are - just that you get a range of attitude).

And of course almost outright trolling is less obvious once the general range of commentary style is expanded; so it passes off as serious discussion.

dschobel• 17 years ago

I think it's a vicious cycle.

The more blog drama (AA killed my dog!) which gets through, the more people who like blog drama are drawn to the site and up-vote it.

If I were PG, I would look at the data and try to categorize the type of submissions which draw the most negative comments (and I think we still do a good job of -4'ing useless comments) and set a high threshold for a story of that type to get through to the front page.

As another example, if submissions about 37s tend to be really vitriolic, make it harder for those submissions to get through and make it harder for people with a history of incendiary -4 comments to post in them.

The bottom line is that there is a lot of data collected here which can be used to optimize the content towards quality, since we all seem to be talking about the same thing when we talk about quality.

elblanco7• 17 years ago

This kind of internal reflection probably happens at the minimums in the graph also. Thus helping the community reset its direction.

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

I think part of it is the extra traffic too: 10 comments pointing out the same criticism within a few minutes of each other. And you can see the rush in posting it.

Personally I have a few names I like to read commentary from and so keep an eye out for - then skim the rest.

edw519• 17 years ago

                 Quality of HN Comments Over Time
   |                   . .
   |                  .   . 
  q| . .             .     .
  u|    .           .       .               . . .
  a|     .         .          .           .       .
  l|      .       .              .      .           .
  i|       .     .                  . .               .    
  t|        . . .                       you are here -->. .
  y|                                      (that's all)
   |________________________________________________________
    S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D
                 '08                     '09

hack_edu• 17 years ago

Graph is shockingly accurate. I've deleted and created accounts in each peak and trough you laid out.

adrianwaj2• 17 years ago

Why do you delete and create accounts? How do you delete an account?

lsd5you• 17 years ago

Wouldn't this mean that you're part of the problem? Just kidding :p

andreyf• 17 years ago

Did you generate that from intuition, or by some concrete algorithm?

yan• 17 years ago

I'm pretty sure intuition : )

jurjenh2• 17 years ago

Looks very seasonal to me... probably indicative that most of the readers are in the same hemisphere.

I know that when winter approaches for me, I tend to get a little disheartened with whatever I'm doing, want to quit and do something inspiring and new... Then when spring rolls around, things are so much better and I have a new lease on life.

I'd suggest comments reflect people's internal barometer, and there probably have been studies on this...

jshen3• 17 years ago

move to california ;)

NikkiA3• 17 years ago

The majority of the english speaking net is in the northern hemisphere anyway - with notable examples of southern hemisphere mostly being limited to australia and brasil, sure there are other net users south of the equator, but those are the two countries with the most presence online...

The reason why brasil's huge online population doesn't really count in these kind of things is because they largely keep to their own communities, often portugese-speaking.

So it being seasonal in appearance isn't really much of a surprise.

I'd also argue that geek-types (which most of us are) seem to be more prone to SAD.

anateus• 17 years ago

That looks like a damped harmonic oscillator to me.

Which I guess makes sense :)

grinich• 17 years ago

Hopefully it's driven.

teeja• 17 years ago

That's different. In the early days of the web, the quality of any board <<<<< forum was destined to plummet every September, then slowly rise with attrition until after Spring break.

But then maybe there aren't that many students here ???

drhowarddrfine2• 17 years ago

It's just you....twit.

amichail2• 17 years ago

Could this have something to do with startup failures?

Multiple failures might put people in a bad mood.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

Do you really think there are that many actual startup people here, relative to the commenters as a whole? Also, with few exceptions (myself clearly included), the people here who actually have companies tend to be very positive.

amichail2• 17 years ago

Probably many want to have startups. Such people might be frustrated by their failure to acquire funding.

unalone11• 17 years ago

Are you actually that negative? I hold my grudges against haters, but you always seem more snarky than actually hostile.

richardw• 17 years ago

While quality may have been varying, it's still fantastic compared to the mire that exists outside. We're lucky.

Luyt• 17 years ago

I also like the frugal and simplistic layout. It's easy on the eyes and doesn't distract. Luckily there are no sidebars, blinking flash ads, 'next page' links, etc.

jeromec• 17 years ago

I think there are certainly times when things may go a bit far, but that's to be expected with such a volume of people - largely independent thinkers. A few might even be overtly negative or bellicose. I try to call it like I see it whether endorsing or critical, with no regard for being ingratiating for much the reasons PG points out here: http://www.paulgraham.com/discover.html

DanielBMarkham3• 17 years ago

There are a lot of complicated and interesting things going on here. I just wish I had more time and data to dig into them.

One thing I have noticed is a consistent desire for the community to "meta discuss" how the board is doing -- much to the annoyance of others. (yes, this is a comment about meta comments, which makes it a meta meta) I'm not sure any of these conversations have kept the board from getting worse quicker or not -- it's impossible to measure something that didn't happen.

There seems to be common "games" you can play on boards like this, whether you're into game-playing or not. Edw519 has a tendency to come up with pithy quips that the majority of readers would like, thereby gaining his comments a lot upvotes. People who comment early get the "pile on" effect.

I know PG has tweaked the algorithm some to combat this, but all it's really done for me is to put rather worthless comments up above more interesting ones, so for me it makes the board less valuable.

At the end of the day, I think 3 things: 1)karma matters, whether you like it or not, 2) people play games with karma, and 3) you can only play so many quality-enhancing games: as the crowd grows outlying players are left with "cheap and dirty" games which work every so often.

notaddicted• 17 years ago

What does Karma matter for?

I notice that people care about it and experience consternation about downvotes, I don't yet understand why. In my experience with the site, every comment speaks for itself, and getting downvoted just means a lot of people disagree with you. When it happens in real life it doesn't bother me, I don't see why it would on here.

The thing I'm really looking out for when I browse are the topical mega-comments that appear sometime, usually when someone understands the topic at hand better than the original author. There are only so many of those to go around, so the rest is chatter, it has to be. Everyone wants to talk, only a few people have relavant insight... still true to life :S.

DanielBMarkham3• 17 years ago

Yeah whenever we've had a meta-chat inevitably people come on and say "who cares about karma?"

That sounds all fine and dandy, but study after study has shown that if you put numbers/points/stars next to desired user behavior it is going to incentivize it. So yes, in theory it shouldn't matter at all, but due to the freaky way people's minds work, it actually matters a great deal.

It's not a logic thing.

Freebytes4• 17 years ago

The down side is that people rate up and down based on whether they agree with a comment instead of whether or not the comment was well crafted, high quality, and respectfully argued. If I make an off-topic post about how Watchmen was the best comic book movie of all time, that should not result in positive or negative ratings based on the opinion of the readers. Instead, it should be based on the quality of the input.

gaius• 17 years ago

getting downvoted just means a lot of people disagree with you

Not here it doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. Getting downvoted here means that people don't think you are contributing constructively to the discussion, I'll usually upvote a thoughtful comment that I disagree with, especially one that's a reply to one of my comments.

abefortas• 17 years ago

I feel bad when I get downvoted because I respect the opinions of other people on HN and they tend to use their downvotes pretty responsibly.

I don't think upvotes are quite as meaningful, though.

raintrees• 17 years ago

I do not post very often, as I frequently seem to have little to add to the already proliferate content. But it seems somewhat telling to me that my biggest recent gain in karma was directly related to a comment on Dell that seemed a bit of a zinger.

Most of my other sparse comments were questioning a premise, offering my .00002 cents worth, and typically neutral to positive in tone. I think. (Or at least that was my intention).

_pius2• 17 years ago

You're definitely right. Worse, I can feel the increase in negativity and trolling influencing me to become a more negative contributor myself.

vaksel• 17 years ago

I think we need more erlang threads to drive the quality up

_pius2• 17 years ago

Don't even joke about that!

dave_au• 17 years ago

It looked like the most recent wave of erlang threads - or the one around the time when _why disappeared - got deleted by the admins.

I was really disappointed by that, since it seems like it was the unofficial way for the community to signal large scale concern over the quality of the site.

It would be nice to have another channel to replace it.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

Erlang is a great language (and a great way to design a language as well), it really does a disservice to all that using it as a way to drown out unwanted conversations.

At a minimum I would suggest a mix of Erlang, Lisp, Scala and Clojure articles. Besides being more even handed it probably will be more useful.

Freebytes4• 17 years ago

I was going to leave a rude comment in response to this as a joke, but someone beat me to it. What a jerk.

(By the way, me saying "What a jerk." is a joke. (To prevent more downratings.))

louislouis• 17 years ago

Comments get upvoted for different reasons. Split the karma into sections like funny, insightful, cool, whatever.. then u can weed out the crap.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

I mean, look how well that worked for Slashdot!

potatolicious4• 17 years ago

Actually, Slashdot's quality of moderation and posts is very, very good, not to mention having maintained a consistent quality over the years. In comparison, every other "upvote/downvote" system has succumbed to the Digg phenomena sooner or later.

It's still one of the rare sites where, years later, I go back and see the same quality of posts (which honestly isn't that bad), and the caliber is kept high enough that my brain doesn't bleed internally.

ramchip2• 17 years ago

I agree. I had a submission killed recently, even though it was getting voted up very quickly and (IMHO at least) completely relevant; a few people flagged and said it was 'garbage' without bothering to open the PDF referenced in the article. Doesn't make me feel like posting again.

kaitnieks• 17 years ago

what was this submission in question?

ramchip2• 17 years ago

You can click on a username then on submissions to see it (if you see dead submissions; you can change this in your profile). Otherwise, it was this story about Gödel, Einstein, and Morgenstern (not my blog): http://blog.plover.com//law/Godel-dictatorship-3.html

I don't really want to bring this into the discussion though; just saying I thought the way it was shot down was rather rude compared to what I was used to from HN, and I've seen similar posts in other people's threads.

hyperbovine• 17 years ago

HN should charge people for the right to post. Even $1 a month would go a long way towards separating out the yokels from those who actually have something to contribute. I'd pay it.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

So, the people here that annoy you most here can pay $1 to be entitled to annoy you, and meanwhile we make sure that people like David Heinemier Hanson and Nate Lawson and Joel Spolsky and the UX guy from Zappos and all the other interesting people who drop in to comment once or twice... never do.

coffeemug• 17 years ago

I'd pay too.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

Price elasticity doesn't enter in to it.

The barrier is having to pay at all. When you contribute to something online you are already paying, with something far more valuable than that $1, with your time.

It also limits the speech to the voices of those that happen to be able to use the method of payment and adds significant overhead to the running of the site.

ubernostrum• 17 years ago

Metafilter does that. Guess what still happens there?

tptacek6• 17 years ago

Quick caution: there's selection bias here bigtime. If you read the comments on this thread, Hacker News is clearly in urgent danger of becoming Reddit. Of course, this post is designed to attract people worried about Hacker News becoming Reddit.

clistctrl• 17 years ago

I find this phenomenon to be most interesting. Digg is constantly worried about becoming 4chan, reddit is paranoid towards becoming digg, and HN is speculates about becoming reddit. The question i'm ultimately asking is where is this place that fears degradation into HN? finally which social media portal is so elite, so stealthy that they have no fears at all?

blhack• 17 years ago

Finally which social media portal is so elite, so stealthy that they have no fears at all?

I don't know if you'd call us "elite", but we're still really small over here (full disclosure: this is my website) http://www.gibsonandlily.com (this is mostly just my friends and I along with a few people that jumped ship from reddit)

Most of the articles are science and technology related, with a few funny, economic, and political things peppered in.

jackchristopher• 17 years ago

>where is this place that fears degradation into HN?

It may not be on the web at all. Could be mailing lists.

jurjenh2• 17 years ago

The arc forum (http://arclanguage.org)

OK, ok I kid, I kid... but you are inferring that there is a lisp of forums, and most fall in the blub category. Whilst this is entirely possible, there is a lot more scope for orthogonal directions in discussion.

It might be interesting to contrast some alternative discussion forums / mailing lists and discuss the relative strengths of each, rather than worry about becoming reddit or digg od 4chan or /.

NikkiA3• 17 years ago

Many of us 'newbies' came here because reddit has gotten near unbearable recently...

I suppose you can blame us for any recent decline in quality, although some of us do try not to pull the place down.

endtime• 17 years ago

HN best practices (in contrast to reddit):

* Vote a comment up or down based on its quality, not on whether or not you like/agree with it.

* No politics.

* Downvote reddit-style conspiracy theory/rage against the machine comments...I have started seeing these sorts of comments on HN and it is making me very sad.

DanielBMarkham3• 17 years ago

Every article's comment threads are visited by those interested in the article. So how is it any different for this article as opposed to others? I mean geesh, every internet discussion is only going to have people participating that are interested in the discussion, right?

After all, we wouldn't confuse a random topic on the internet with a scientific survey, would we? (rhetorical question)

pg• 17 years ago

A little, probably. There are good days and bad days. I was particularly struck by the harshness of this one:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=925034

and also that such a huge number of people piled on to vote it up.

In fact, that makes me wonder: could it be the voting that makes the tone of the site seem more negative? There are often nasty comments lurking at the bottom of a thread with 1 point or less, but they're not very noticeable. Whereas this one + 49 points (currently) = an angry mob.

willwagner• 17 years ago

On the harshness scale, I'm surprised with the number of downvotes some recent comments get not on the quality of a comment, but that the voter disagrees with its stance.

I like well-crafted comments that I completely disagree with; it challenges me to rethink my own position. I'd hate to see people get fed up and not write comments simply because it goes against the grain; it would change the nature of the site, and to me, part of its value.

kls• 17 years ago

You have a point on this one, I recently moved over to HN from Slashdot. I was one of the first 100 users over there, so it was hard to accept that the place had gone completely to pot.

Anyway, I am sidetracking, let me get back to the point. One of the things that makes me jump from a site and not look back is down modding because of disagreement with the idea of the post and not with the nature of the post. I feal that just because you do not agree with a subject of a post if it is well articulated, covers that persons rational and is not abusive or deriding then if you don't agree with it just move along.

In saying that, I have had allot of post here that I thought where great debates (which I love) get blasted down to -1. None of which I thought where particular offensive or abusive. I am passionate and opinionated but to down mod for that, reflects of a desire to constrict ones freedom of expression.

Let me be clear I do not blame HN for this, it is a personal issue among each of us as individuals, but one should really be introspective before they click that button either way (up or down) and ask themselves, is this a good argument, not just I agree with this or I don't like what this guy is saying. If a person does not then they should really reflect on their ability to critically analyze information as they are doing themselves a disservice by limiting their horizons to there own intellectual prejudices.

pchristensen3• 17 years ago

I think one problem is that there are two different ways people can vote. One is to cast a vote for or against a comment, expressing your opinion. This works well when there the point total is low.

The other way is to vote towards how many points you think is should have. So if something has 15 points, if I agree with it but think it's not that good to have 15 points, I sometimes downvote it. Likewise, I'll upvote some heavily downvoted comments because they weren't that bad. I figure no comment should be below -1 unless it's overtly belligerent or trollish.

3dFlatLander• 17 years ago

I've thought the same thing. But, I think that to say that a comment has X number of upvotes so it's good or bad doesn't really work since there's no max points a comment can have, or knowledge of how many people voted on it, I'm sure there are some other variables that would make it work.

My idea to solve the problem you're talking about is to have 3 ways to vote. The usual up/down (which in this case can be agree/disagree) and a third for good comments that the user doesn't particularly agree with. It's a rough idea, but I think it could help solve the problem.

Something else I've been toying with that's along similar lines involves removing any up/down/other voting and instead uses a small area of say, 50x50 pixels. The X axis would be the quality of the comment, the the Y would be personal agreement with the comment. And the user could just click anywhere within that area to express their opinion. It's not as easily quantifiable as regular voting, but allows for more expression.

Just some thoughts. :)

allenbrunson• 17 years ago

Okay, I'm one of the people who voted for that "harsh" comment, so I'm going to take a stab at defending it.

Writing anything here requires a lot of time and thought. You can't just dash something off. Careless comments are frowned on, and rightly so. In particular, if I choose to disagree with something, I have to really pick my battles. More often than not, I just don't have the time or energy to get that involved. So if there's another comment that is at least in the same ballpark as what I would have written, I'll just vote that one up instead. Then I don't have to personally join the fray.

I am of the opinion that, while Dustin Curtis' heart might be in the right place, the way he's going about expressing himself in the AA situation is not very good. And if he can dish it out, he should be willing to take it. So while the comment in question is perhaps more vitriolic than I would have written myself, this is a topic I didn't feel strongly enough about myself to get personally involved. So I just voted up somebody else who did.

So, "angry mob?" Man, I really don't think I'd characterize the comment that way. But I'm open to hearing from other people who think so.

chrischen• 17 years ago

The ability to downvote brings out the bad in people. I made a suggestion before to experiment with only allowing up votes. No one's feelings get hurt but good comments still get pushed to the top.

davi• 17 years ago

The new method of debuting new comments at the top of the page -- a good thing, in terms of trying to keep discussion fresh & open to latecomers' good ideas -- may also have increased how rewarding the site is to quick negative posts.

It used to be that the highest-scoring comment on a thread squatted at the top of the page forever (occasionally displaced by some slow-moving boulder of a competitor). These posts acted as quieting blankets of calm over the whole page.

Now, new comments get debuted at the top of the page, and if they can draw a few lightning strikes of upvotes ("yeah! that's right! screw that!"), they get a chance to stay there, or at least contribute some positive reward to the poster.

messel• 17 years ago

Times are tight, so while more unemployed folks are desparately tearing revenue out of their businesses, the business growth is seeing less of the capital fired back in as growth.

Suspect YC comments will be more optimistic with perceived wealth increasing and folks spending more of their hard earned $$

I'm optimistic, but I have food in my belly at this moment, and a warm place to sleep tonight. That combination falls under the "rich" category at the moment.

bjclark• 17 years ago

I've noticed it. Especially the anti-37signals comments. I got -4 for saying I agreed with DHH about something.

utku_karatas2• 17 years ago

Was your post only saying that? That you agree with DHH? In that case you got those downvotes for adding a useless comment to the discussion where a simple upvote would cut. Your agreement or disagreement without a story backing you up means nothing to the reader. Don't take it the wrong way.

Poiesis• 17 years ago

Wait--wasn't an upvote supposed to be based on post quality, and not on agreement?

chasingsparks2• 17 years ago

If the proportion of negative comments is growing and if this is a symptom of karma lust, it's a pretty interesting event. The assertion being that as karma wealth grew, the system has became more volatile. There are some complaints about swarming in up-votes, but this thread deals with increasing down-votes. The question now becomes will a higher frequency of down-votes bring about smarter comments so as to avoid down-votes, or will the system become unhinged?

..I wonder if any systems act similarly? ;)

logicalmind• 17 years ago

The Law of Hacker News Comments: Any sufficiently long comment thread will converge on a semantic argument.

Prediction, the comments in this post will converge on the semantics of the word "negative".

hernan7• 17 years ago

I don't know... comments here have always had a dose of healthy skepticism. Now, if I never again read a comment starting with "meh", "yawn" or "shrug", I will die a happy man.

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

I'm going to look through my comments to see if I'm contributing to that. Admittedly, it's tempting to react when I see something I disagree with.

zackattack• 17 years ago

The reason that now it is a race to see who can write the first criticism or who can pick out the first inconsistency, is because people think that they will be upvoted for that.

So, we just have to start changing what people get upvoted for.

I think we should create a small group of supermoderators who have 10x voting power.

elblanco7• 17 years ago

It's perhaps not helpful that HN is also full of pedantic know-it-alls (I count myself among that group).

A community of self-made people tends to self-select for a certain personality type.

fjabre• 17 years ago

Agreed. This is kind of the reason PG did away with numbers on comments a little while ago but brought them back after a lot of criticism.

techiferous2• 17 years ago

I'm a refugee from Reddit. That place has become too immature and ignorant. It's hard to have a courteous, intelligent discussion there; it very easily degenerates into name-calling, arrogance and dogmatism. It feels like middle school all over again.

Hacker News' voting system is very Reddit-like, so it will also become Reddit. Expect Hacker News to become more immature as it grows in popularity.

Here are two changes that can be made to Hacker News to keep it from becoming Reddit:

* Discourage controversial or dramatic posts. For example, the latest brouhaha about American Airlines and Dustin Curtis was very dramatic, but its educational value was lower than some other less-dramatic posts on Hacker News. I think it's okay to have content like that on Hacker News, but there should be some damping effects to keep the controversial stories lower on the list. Otherwise, Hacker News will be taken over by knee-jerk, reactionary thinking instead of deeper, more nuanced, intelligent discussion. Technical gossip will supplant technical news.

* Provide two ways to vote: vote up if you agree, and vote up if you think the content is valuable. It's important not to conflate the two into one vote up button.

dcurtis4• 17 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924943

It is because of this thread that I probably won't participate in discussions here anymore. The extreme negativity and personal attacks make me feel as though I'm not a welcome voice here.

I miss the hacker news from two years ago, when I doubt wmeredith would have been supported so highly for a nasty personal attack.

On the other hand, I understand Michael Arrington a lot better now.

unalone11• 17 years ago

While I sympathize with you, you're a part of the blogosphere and you're acclaimed. With that comes the criticism you deserve.

Would you claim to be perfect in skill and intent? Are your writings brilliant and your designs unilaterally breathtaking? No? Then you should not only accept intensive criticism or embrace it. The simple fact is that if you were flawless, wmeredith wouldn't have felt the need to call you an ass; that he chose to, and that others agreed with his sentiment, implies a fault of your own, and one that you can fix and mature in the process. Pressure makes diamonds and suchlike.

I learned when I was thirteen that the Internet existed to call me out for my bullshit. I have it to thank that I've become as shitless as I am, and I welcome the future negativity that I'm sure will shape me in the future. You can either sulk that people think you're an asshole, or you can figure out why and become better in the future.

The contrast between this controversy with you and the Fake Steve controversy last month is striking. You get called out for bullshit and reply by being smug. You don't even drop the smug in private email conversation, as I found out last night. Then, when people get irritated and slap you, your reaction isn't to lose the insincerity but to get mad at the people who'll call you out for shit. Meanwhile, last month Dan Lyons decided he was pissed off at John Gruber, and Gruber utterly ignored him except when he had a crushing rebuttal. That's maturity. You'd do well to learn it before you try grandstanding the way you did with your American Airlines series.

EDIT: Can whoever's started downvoting Dustin please not? He made an earnest argument, and he's contributing to the conversation.

dcurtis4• 17 years ago

I have been trying to resist responding to you.

At least ten of your comments in that thread contained petty negative personal attacks as well. You do not know me, yet you have created a very negative image of me in your head after reading an angry rant I posted to my personal website. Come on.

qeorge• 17 years ago

I don't blame you, and its really a shame because you do make interesting comments. I intended to reply in the original thread, but just didn't have the energy, so I'll do so now. You wrote:

people call me arrogant, young, naive, and stupid

There is no clearer signal that you're doing something right. Keep it up.

adrianwaj2• 17 years ago

I agree. And I'm sure AA are going to fix their site, even after firing the employee and having Dustin being crucified in the process. And good comes from bad, but it's by the bad eating the good.

kingkawn• 17 years ago

If you're convinced that the world is getting worse and less civilized, it means you're getting old.

jsz0• 17 years ago

I haven't noticed it myself but I like seeing inconsistencies picked apart. It's constructive. If I disagree with someone they might get some value out of understanding why their idea/argument doesn't jive with me. I think it's only negative if you approach it with an accusatory or condescending tone. Otherwise it's exactly what a lively discussion should be.

WesleyJohnson• 17 years ago

I haven't been around HN long enough to really notice a shift in the negativity of comments, but I have been around long to realize I could very easily become part of the probably that a lot of you talk about: signal to noise.

I keep coming back to HN because of the caliber of minds that offer up advice, criticism or personal thoughts on a daily basis for little in return. I envy the amount of collective intellect that HN users have, and yet therein lies the problem - I envy it, so I want to be part of it.

I'm considered the most intelligent person in my family and in my previous job I was the "goto" guy for the tougher questions, the hard assignments or just general advice on your random everyday things. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with this sense of worth. You're admired, needed even, and feel like you have something to offer.

On HN, however, I often feel like I have something to SAY, not necessarily something to contribute. This realization has made me very cautious about posting unless I really feel like I can add value to the conversation. Commenting, as I understand it, should really be about just that - adding value.

Having said that however, I also think there is room to embrace newer users who don't really understand this mechanic. Down voting a comment to oblivion doesn't help with educating those who really don't understand why they're being down voted, whether or not it's a troll or just a misguided newbie. Repeat offenders are a different matter and I can't really offer up suggestions on how to handle them, but for the newer members of HN who just happen to confuse something to add with something to say - hopefully giving them a casual nudge in the right direction will really with keeping HN on track.

techiferous2• 17 years ago

Another idea is to hide the karma number beside posts and comments. You still position the higher-ranked ones near the top, but no number is displayed so that it doesn't influence your vote as much (the bandwagon effect).

Pistos2• 17 years ago

"Experiment: No Comment Scores" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844979

Mz• 17 years ago

As a place grows in size, it changes in structure. There are always growing pains. Some places handle the transition better than others. Small, close-knit communities where people know each other well function very different from large communities where most people don't know each other well.

Ask HN: Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative?

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