without comment scores, new users don't have feedback from the community on how they're supposed to act. There's no way for them to learn the culture.
Or more likely, the culture just changed. That happens sometimes, and when it does, there's no going back.
HN has become much more adversarial in recent months, and it has nothing to do with whether or not we see a number attached to the comment. You don't need that number to know whether the person who wrote the comment is someone that you probably wouldn't want to hang out with in real life.
My guess is that we're just all strangers now, and that it is human nature to implicitly treat strangers differently than we do friends. What's amazing (to me anyway) is that this change has affected even users whose names I recognize going back years. People whom I used to have a lot of respect for. It's not just the new users.
You either like debating strangers or you don't, and the people who relish these kinds of debates will pursue them even in the absence of a scorekeeper.
I just mostly can't get it in me to write long comments when there are so many more short comments that I can easily reply to. I also feel like if I do have something long/complicated/insightful to say, no one will see it anyways. I also have no idea who anyone is anymore -- but yes, early on, Hacker News was a bunch of friends, and now it's a really popular site on the internet that everyone knows about. It's way past my Dunbar number.
Or more likely, the culture just changed. That happens sometimes, and when it does, there's no going back.
HN has become much more adversarial in recent months, and it has nothing to do with whether or not we see a number attached to the comment. You don't need that number to know whether the person who wrote the comment is someone that you probably wouldn't want to hang out with in real life.
My guess is that we're just all strangers now, and that it is human nature to implicitly treat strangers differently than we do friends. What's amazing (to me anyway) is that this change has affected even users whose names I recognize going back years. People whom I used to have a lot of respect for. It's not just the new users.
You either like debating strangers or you don't, and the people who relish these kinds of debates will pursue them even in the absence of a scorekeeper.