
Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments - mjfern
I've been visiting Hacker News for just under two years, and recently I've noticed a significant uptick in mean-spirited comments. This echos a recent comment by PG, "There are more dumb and/or mean comments than there used to be..."<p>As you are commenting, or up-voting and down-voting comments, please be conscious of how comments might affect others. This is a fantastic community of incredibly bright people. We should be able to engage in thoughtful debate and discussion, while remaining friendly and polite.<p>Thank you everyone!
======
pg
Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical
changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending
off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I
work on. It has been since practically the beginning.

~~~
maxklein
I believe that the less anonymous a forum like this is, the more polite it
will be. You have said you want people to speak to each other here as they
would in the real world: well, I believe the more strongly you tie their real
world identity to their account here, the more polite they would be.

My suggestion, similar to that experiment in the past, and similar to twitter,
add a "verified user" badge in the users profile. However, to become verified
requires a simple step: add a link to your facebook, linkedin or xing profile.
Any already verified user can then verify you.

Non-verified users then have a very minor voting hit, for example a comment
karma cap at 50 or so.

This will encourage people to associate their real life accounts with their
hacker news accounts, and will result in conversation that more accurately
reflects what one would say in real life.

The fundamental dynamics of the site would not change, since the advantage to
being verified are not that major.

~~~
_delirium
I haven't found anonymity to be very well correlated with politeness on tech
discussion forums I'm on. Some of the most abrasive ones are filled with
people posting under their real names, and folks like rms, Theo De Raadt,
Ulrich Drepper, and a bunch of the comp.lang.lisp crowd have no problem
flaming you under their real names.

~~~
maxklein
But that's real life. The goal is to make the conversation here equivalent to
how people talk in real life, not be more polite than that.

~~~
awakeasleep
In a way I understand what you're saying, but I feel our environment
influences how we interact with each other-- anywhere. For example, rules can
be added to give structure to a debate. The whole debate format, while
artificial, exists to increase the utility of 'real life' discussion.

It seems to me anything we can do to boost the interesting aspects of this
community are fair game, and they augment real life itself.

------
mahmud
FWIW, I discovered that people take disagreements personally and will stalk
you across threads if you're not careful with their egos.

For some reason I am incapable of remembering names and can only identify
about 10 - 15 people here other than the ones I have met or know from
somewhere else. So the whole thing feels to me like detached, anonymous
discussion. I was surprised to be 1) remembered, and 2) "punished" in another,
unrelated context.

There are also times when I withhold contributing to a thread because of its
strong fanboy/flamer possibilities. Certain companies have .. enthusiastic
supporters/haters.

~~~
petercooper
I wasn't going to reply until I noticed I had a long line of comments with 2s
a couple of hours ago, now they're all 1s after this morning's little scuffle:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851115>

You can never prove anything unless you have the logs so there's not much
point worrying, just play with and enjoy the furore. The best defence, if
there is any, is to have a lot of karma and only engage with these folks if
you can bear to lose some of it.

~~~
mahmud
Err, that thread was fine until you linked to his history, Peter.

But yeah, drug related threads, red flag :-) I hope you learned your lesson.

~~~
petercooper
I don't see a problem in looking at people's previous submissions - it can
come in handy to get some context (in this case, it did, since his behavior on
HN was getting him voted down in the past).

That said, I just went back and re-read your post and, yes, I see your point
now and it's not quite how I read it first time round. I think the real
problem is people who go back and _vote down stuff_ to "punish" people, not
those who introduce context from looking through your history (which I'm quite
happy for people to do when replying to me).

~~~
mahmud
OTOH, there are threads that are just way too interesting, but get virtually
no contributions.

Here is a thread with one comment and one upvote, both mine, and it just has
the potential of being very rewarding, IF the person who started has any
intention to continue:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1852001>

------
8ren
pg's quoted comment <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833255>

I've noticed that if you reply to a mean-spirited comment with a
straightforward and dispassionate counter-argument, completely ignoring its
rudeness and tone, you get massive upvotes. Transcending meanness also _feels_
really clean; it is neutralized.

By framing the meanness, the site's collegiality is not undermined, but
demonstrated.

~~~
mjfern
Great point 8ren, and perhaps this is a solution to the issue. A concern is
that the mean-spirited comments are not always countered in a thoughtful
manner, or in time before the post drops off the front page. That said,
perhaps we can draw on your suggestion, and as a community be more vigilant in
quickly responding to mean-sprited comments in a logical and dispassionate
manner to counter their effect.

------
ihodes
Not trying to be passive aggressive here, at all; I agree with you here. The
reason I didn't post anything was that HN has gotten pretty damn meta recently
too. I'm not sure posts like this will help anything, much; probably something
needs to come from the top, or the community needs to focus on enforcing the
behavioral norm by down-voting (even if they normally wouldn't put in the
effort) comments that are of an assholish nature.

As an aside: <http://twitter.com/#!/ihodes/status/29059931658>

~~~
pg
It's a weekend. There's always more random stuff on weekends.

------
tlrobinson
I've been on HN for a few years, and I'm usually extremely skeptical of people
claiming a decline in the quality of HN, but I agree, and furthermore I have
noticed an increase in acceptance of clever but empty Reddit-esque one-liners.
I don't mind them, but I think it's unfortunately a very slippery slope...

------
jrockway
No social news site is going to be perfect. If it's people that are writing
comments, some comments will be good and some will be bad. Read them and
decide for yourself. If a comment hurts your feelings, get over it. If you
like a comment, upvote it, and help other people find the best comments.

Really, I kind of get tired of reading stuff like this because there is always
some subtext to it. "mean-spirited" usually means, "someone disagreed with
me". If people disagree with you, you can either get over it or learn to argue
better. Passive aggressive, "oh noes everyone is so mean" is not going to
change what people think. Good writing will.

~~~
codexon
When it comes to things like politics/religion/etc no amount of good writing
can convince the other person.

~~~
ugh
I don’t think that’s true at all.

------
daeken
I upvoted this because I agree with the concept, but I don't believe such
things are necessary. General rule of life: assholes will be assholes. This
isn't going to make anyone more polite. Most of us are already polite, and
quite content to simply downvote people who aren't.

~~~
mjfern
If mean-spirited comments are down-voted, then it's not much of an issue. The
problem is that I've started seeing mean-spirited comments receiving up-votes,
and rising to the top of discussions. How do we solve this as a community?

~~~
boundlessdreamz
Where have you seen that? I have seen most of them getting downvoted and some
getting 1 or 2 upvotes

~~~
mjfern
I would rather not single out any individuals/comments. In any event, it
appears like a growing issue across the community, and is not isolated to just
one or two people.

~~~
plinkplonk
"I thought this question might come up, but I would rather not single out any
individuals or comments."

So, you state a claim (and it is an interesting claim!). Other people ask for
instances or examples and you decline to point them out. How are we supposed
to "deal with it as a community" if we don't know what you are talking about?

I really would like to see an example of a mean spirited comment receiving
plenty of upvotes and being on top of a discussion. I suggest (just
suggesting, since I don't have any examples of what exactly you mean) that
what you consider "mean spirited" may not appear so to others (and hence the
upvotes)? Sounds like a simpler explanation (or at least an equally valid one)
to me.

What _I_ have seen is that empty/mean comments get downvoted to oblivion very
fast. Comments with plenty of upvotes _generally_ have some valid
points/insights/value, even if the tone is sharp or sarcastic (neither of
which is necessarily "mean").

Posting a mean comment _which gets a lot of upvotes and making it to the top
of a discussion on HN_ , without getting flagged etc, would _seem_ to take
some real skill in writing.

I would really appreciate any examples.

~~~
mahmud
I actually think it's a good idea not to single out anybody; you don't want to
attract the attention of somebody who is already belligerent and vile.

~~~
plinkplonk
"you don't want to attract the attention of somebody who is already
belligerent and vile."

I would rather these folks/comments are flushed out (the OP claims that
someone belligerent and vile are _getting a lot of upvotes_ , which seems
strange to me - I don't doubt that mean people post on HN but if they are
getting tonnes of upvotes (vs being downvoted or flagged) it would be really
nice to see examples), but I appreciate that other people have different
approaches to confrontation.

The problem is that then it is very hard to take a claim like "general uptick
in mean spirited comments" seriously. A asking for evidence of any claim is
valid in any discussion.

Heck if anyone wants to point these out but don't want to be seen doing it,
just create a throw away account and use that?

~~~
davorak
I would agree that there is no reason not to single out those who are
constantly belligerent and vile. When these individuals are easy to identify
they are often isolate from a group and do not end up causing many problems.
However that is probably not the case that causes the most problems.

The case that I have seen cause the most problems are the people who are
normally ok but are belligerent and vile with a specific topic and or
individual. This hypothetical individual is normally a productive part of the
community and may not deserve to singled out. I would not out such a person
unless I had good reason to believe that that they would be treated rationally
and that the community would only see it as an opportunity to help said
hypothetical individual to become more rational.

------
_delirium
This is only for a subset of comments, but one common case that's sometimes
sort of accidental: a commenter disagrees with a submitted article strongly,
but doesn't realize that the article is written by the submitter or by another
HN user. If they had, they probably would've phrased their disagreement
differently.

Of course it's nice to be polite when disagreeing with any article, but I
notice myself making more of an effort to be polite when disagreeing with an
HN user's own submission, compared to disagreeing with, say, a _New York
Times_ article, because the NYT reporter isn't present or going to read my
comment. HN's greater volume of user-written content (compared to, say,
reddit) makes this something not everyone expects to encounter; it's like
ranting about how Daikatana sucks and then realizing that John Romero was
standing right next to you, and then you feel bad.

(This doesn't explain mean-spirited comments that are responding to other
comments, though.)

------
sp4rki
Sometimes mean spirited comments can be full of usable ideas, or at least they
can fuel a debate between contrasting opinions. Remember that what looks to be
a mean spirited comment by you, might be taken a completely different way by
someone else.

In any case I'd say that more important than mean comments is a the downvote
everything I dislike regardless of if it contributes to the discussion in any
way. It stalls actual conversation between different opinions.

------
pointillistic
Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every _open_
online community. This is the flip side of the anonymity and what Jaron Lanier
calls "the mob switch" (google it). In other words, human tendency to gang-
up/gang-down, up-vote/down-vote in batches, regardless a content.

I also noticed that often here the polite but critical comments are down-voted
if they don't share the "main theme" of a post. Again, this is the part and
parcel of every online community.The alternative are the one-liners and up-
likes you get on Facebook, the same Facebook that coincidently is responsible
for the internet-wide decline of the commenting culture.

~~~
davorak
"Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every open
online community."

I often hear comments along these lines, I fear that people who write and read
them then think that there is nothing to be done. That there is not point in
trying, that there is no cultural or satisfactory technical solution possible.

If nothing else it is better try/do something then do nothing at all.

------
FiddlerClamp
I have become a lot more circumspect since I've been on the receiving end of
things. I used to slam books I hated having read on Amazon, but after being
published, I realized how crushing something like that can be.

Just because I think www.linttrapsforsale.com is a dumb idea doesn't mean that
there wasn't a team behind it that thought they had a great vision, emitted
blood and sweat in pursuit of it, and hung their hopes and dreams on it.

Short of replying to things that are actively malicious (bigoted, etc.), I try
to rein in my online 'road rage' and let other people take things to task.
There are so many of them out there willing to do it, in any event...

------
mvalente
Reasons: "The difference between the two societies is that in the society
which performs poorly:

a) the stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members to
become more active and take more actions; b) there is a change in the
composition of the non-stupid section with a relative decline of populations
of areas I, H1 and B1 and a proportionate increase of populations H2 and B2."

[http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidit...](http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidity.htm)

Solutions: "1.) If you were going to build a piece of social software to
support large and long-lived groups, what would you design for? The first
thing you would design for is handles the user can invest in. 2.) Second, you
have to design a way for there to be members in good standing. Have to design
some way in which good works get recognized. The minimal way is, posts appear
with identity. You can do more sophisticated things like having formal karma
or "member since." 3.) Three, you need barriers to participation. This is one
of the things that killed Usenet. You have to have some cost to either join or
participate, if not at the lowest level, then at higher levels. There needs to
be some kind of segmentation of capabilities. 4.) And, finally, you have to
find a way to spare the group from scale."

<http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html>

------
stukhomsimdrone
Considering the perspective of a logged in user, simply give them the
opportunity to deselect others by username and then record their deselections
with their account. This wouldn't require unique pages to be served, except
for a deselected_users array to be picked up and processed at the client side.
The same lightweight approach can be used give shape to a user's own view with
stuff like: 'preferred users', 'out-right scum' etc. Same principles apply to
personal topic preferences and their viewed ranking.

------
csomar
As someone who was a "bad" user (under another username); posting rather
useless, short, unsighted comments and submissions; I think the best way is to
"educate people".

This is not only a HN culture, it's a civilian culture. Limit the freedom of
newbies until they are more mature. When you are committed to the community,
you become more responsible and work toward creating a name/friends. When you
are new, you pretty much don't care.

~~~
mehmeh
I am a bad user who was a good user.

I stopped bothering after a few incidents where content-free snarky bullshit
written in response to my genuine comments was upvoted, and pg was unwilling
to remove any of it.

Then, I got banned for some very genuine, but negative, opinions. I don't
expect people to agree with them, but banning me for them again seemed
asinine.

I didn't bother changing my proxy, so this will probably auto-dead, but that's
true. pg's lack of action was an endorsement of shitty, snarky, content-free
behavior. Unsurprisingly, shitty, snarky, content-free behavior has grown
since then.

Want to fix HN? Fire pg.

~~~
csomar
There is no genuine and negative comment. If it's a good comment, then it's
positive whether you agree with the OP or not.

Can you point me to some comments if they are still available?

------
gsivil
I have noticed that a negative comment(against the main point of the post)
tends to be sometime initially down-voted by some superficial prejudice that
it should be also mean-spirited.

It seems that the community naturally upvotes that comment to support
diversity of opinions.

Of course such support tends to bring some of the provocative comments up in
the list- in my view.

~~~
mjfern
I'm highly supportive of thoughtful debate, but my impression is that some of
the up-voted comments lately have crossed the line from debate to ridicule.

------
Mz
_Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical
changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending
off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I
work on. It has been since practically the beginning._

My observation has been that hackers tend to look for technical solutions for
moderating a forum but forum moderation is a people problem, not a technical
problem. Deal with people first, tweak technical stuff second.

My experience has been that an assumption of ignorance is generally more
accurate and more productive than an assumption of guilt. The antidote to
ignorance is easy access to information. A prominent (top bar) link explaining
how the forum works (both technically and socially) and allowing for "dumb"
questions would likely do more to promote polite, thoughtful interaction than
a million assumption-of-guilt based tweaks to the voting system.

I am not really a hacker, though I do know a little (x)html and css and I am
not new to online forums (and have been a moderator in a forum). I found the
extremely minimalist design of HN hard to fathom. I did not understand why I
sometimes couldn't find the "reply" button and on several occasions I replied
anyway, via another means, and then sometimes edited it once the reply button
appeared. In spite of the fact that the "logo" being linked to the "home" or
"front" page is standard practice, it took me months to figure out that was
the link to the 'top stories' everyone talked about so much. I just didn't
view the words 'Hacker News' as being part of the menu and I just didn't make
the connection.

With so many more people from so many different walks of life and even
countries now using the forum, there are probably quite a lot of people who,
like me, just don't initially have the info they need to effectively
participate. Frustrated people who don't know how to make something work often
sound gruffer/have poor 'tone'. Enlightening them and assisting them will
likely do a lot more for their tone than finding creative, subtle ways to
secretly spank them for it (a la "the beatings will continue until morale
improves").

Good luck with this.

Edit: I probably put this in the wrong place. I am not having a good day. I
have added pg's remarks (at the top), which is basically what I am replying
to. I hope that makes more sense. :-/

------
codefisher
How about people with low karma (like myself) not being allowed to comment on
articles that appear on the front page. Then only people really interested in
following HN, and trying to form some kind of reputation in the community
would be able to get much exposure. Trolls in general I would think are much
more interested in putting out comments that a number of people will see.

~~~
usedtolurk
That would result in a relatively small panel of generalists and censor
specialists who might otherwise make the occasional invaluable contributions.

------
8ren
Previous insightful submission and discussion, for background:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133> (9 months ago)

------
DocuMaker
It's not just Hacker News. It's everywhere on all forums, blogs, etc. I have
no idea what's causing it other than economic stress!

~~~
DocuMaker
Which got me thinking a few nights ago -- what a way to stimulate the economy.
Hire some damn moderators!! ;-)

~~~
Kaizyn
Yeah, but we don't want to actually pay them much. Though, the Amazon
Mechanical Turk might make it cost effective.

$0.01 per every 10 posts moderated.

------
ashedryden
I've been seeing a lot of this lately, too. I wonder how much of it is related
to the Digg mass exodus?

------
sdgasfgas
The price of popularity is interest from assholes, unfortunately.

------
chailatte
I would say the phenomenon is merely a sign of the times.

An echoing of the cries from the world and its people.

People are frustrated with rising food/gas/health insurance, with layoffs
after layoffs and local businesses closing, with governments that work with
banks to steal from the citizen, with corporations that pollute the
environment and food source without consequences.

Their mood is sour. Their heart is heavy.

They know the good times is over, but they can't see when the bad times will
stop, if ever.

They weep for their children, yet they intoxicate themselves with alcohol and
tv and sports and video games, unable to rise up to fight for themselves.

And so they come online and vent their frustration and anger on others,
because its just easier. Because nothing of consequence happens anyways,
except we all drag each down further and further.

------
alnayyir
It seems my brief back and forth with PG is the subject of this post.
(indirectly?)

I'm not sure if my criticism of blind positivity (boosterism) is intended to
be what you're concerned about, or if you're just referring to the popularity
of banal and frequently unkind commentary.

I'd really like to know, because if it was my words that raised your concerns,
I want to address it.

------
sutro
If we could dispense with all of the boo-hoo-someone-was-mean-and-downvoted-me
meta posts and comments, this could be a great site.

Posts like this are the biggest problem with HN.

~~~
pjscott
Here's what you can do:

1\. Avoid meta threads.

2\. Downvote off-topic meta-discussion in other threads.

3\. Do not add to the meta-discussion; just downvote and move on.

In this way, you can express your distaste for such discussion and avoid most
of it with very minimal effort.

~~~
hasenj
isn't this a mean-spirited comment?

