
Tell HN: Let's Be Civil - raganwald
The release of the iPad Mini and the Microsoft surface have brought with them a rash of uncivil and inappropriate threads. I can count on one elbow the number of times I have seen the word "fanboy" or its faux-hipster alternate "fanboi" used in a comment that led to a productive discussion.<p>Everyone has opinions about consumer electronics. Everyone's entitled to them, even when they're wrong. I owned and liked a Windows Tablet PC at one time! But truly and honestly, are we discussing things that gratify our intellectual curiosity when we attack each other or the authors of the fine articles for their bias? Are we really bringing fresh insights to the table when we complain that the marketplace is capricious and sometimes values things we think are superficial?<p>As hackers--and I include in this definition those who hack software, hardware, social behaviour, and marketplaces--our mission is first to UNDERSTAND and then second to INFLUENCE. When we read a review, no matter what we personally think of its flagrant bias or the comments of others on the thread, we should aggressively throttle our temptation to wield the flame-hammer. We need to ask ourselves, "What understanding would my comment add?"<p>The same is true when we see someone else violating these precepts. The downvote (and flag, where available and appropriate) are the right tools for the job. Most of the time, calling someone out for diluting the discourse simply adds to the noise while simultaneously feeding the troll.<p>(This is one of the reasons I have a personal policy of either responding or downvoting but never both. If it deserves a constructive reply, why is it worth a downvote? If the reply would not be constructive, I downvote and move on.)<p>If we as a community are unable to throttle the bile effectively, then perhaps we should ask the moderators to do it for us. There's no shame in deciding that non-technical articles about iPads or surfaces or what-have-you are better off in /r/technology.<p>I know that in a few days or a week these articles will go away as the novelty of newly released products fade. But the reason I am speaking out regardless is that the echoes of this type of discourse last much longer and I fear they will spill over into other threads. I believe that forums like this need a zero-tolerance policy towards the kind of divisive incivility I've read lately.<p>I'll close by misappropriating an old joke: "Do you know why the flames about consumer electronics are so vicious? Because the stakes are so low."
======
mquander
The root cause is not incivility, it's inanity. Why do we have threads about
these not-exactly-revolutionary things sitting all over the front page? Who
votes for this stuff?

The Surface one up there is just some guy's blog review. It's not poorly
written, but why are we reading randomly selected Surface reviews? There's an
entire post right now that is basically a Samsung press release via CNET,
describing some (totally unquantified, of course) minor uptick in sales for
the latest Android phone. There is literally nothing to talk about there
except to proffer essentially baseless flames, praise, or speculation.

I would have no qualms asking the moderators to fix this. I can't understand
any metric by which these are useful posts to have on the front page. There is
lots of much better stuff sitting on the New page which is being crowded out
by noise that I could go read in two hundred other places. "Intellectual
curiousity" is not referring to what you have every time a phone comes out
which is 20% lighter and 10% longer.

~~~
pg
It contradicts the definition of civility to say that the root cause of it is
things that annoy you. Civility only comes into play when things annoy you.

The HN frontpage has its ups and downs and has for a long time. If you don't
like the stories, it's not going to improve the situation to be uncivil in the
comment threads. It just provokes people to reply in kind. And a fluff story
on the frontpage (assuming it is) is not improved by having a flamewar
appended to it.

~~~
huhtenberg
How about "this doesn't belong to the front page" flag for the stories?

Clearly it takes very little effort to upvote a fluff story to the front page
and to keep it there. It takes substantially more effort to pull an
interesting story up from the New page. For example, I am routinely
disappointed with the Front page content, and yet I am very rarely browse the
New page. Moreover, this is not going to change, because I know myself. I am
guessing I am not alone. There's lot more people who would be willing to clean
up the front page from the fluff than those who'd be willing to patrol New
page in a search of fitting submissions. Just give us a chance.

~~~
white_devil
_How about "this doesn't belong to the front page" flag for the stories?_

Anything belongs to the front page by virtue of _getting to it_. You can argue
that the community is broken because it upvotes stuff you don't want to see,
but that's a battle you just can't win.

Basically, you're suggesting that in addition to there being a button for "I
find this interesting!", there should be another button for "No, you _fools_!
No!".

~~~
raganwald
> there should be another button for "No, you fools! No!"

I have that button, it's called "flag," and that's exactly what it's for:
Posts that are popular but toxic. If a post was unpopular, you wouldn't need
to flag it.

~~~
white_devil
Why do _you_ get to be the arbiter of what is "toxic"?

~~~
GHFigs
Why does anybody get to vote in the first place?

~~~
white_devil
An upvote says "I find this interesting", but you're only speaking for
yourself. If you deem something "toxic" to the community, it implies you know
what's best for everyone involved.

------
msbarnett
One of the smartest things why the lucky stiff ever said (in my opinion):
"When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than
ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. so create."

Notionally, this is a forum for creators, but it seems increasingly pre-
occupied with utterly unproductive posturing over whose tastes are 'better'.
It's a troubling trend.

~~~
danilocampos
What you find troubling I view as inevitable.

Tastes define what we create and how we create it. Tastes inform what we
choose to compromise and what we protect in the process of making things.

So as we venture into new worlds – Surface vs. iPad vs. Android vs. Kindle may
superficially be consumer products but more crucially they are platforms for
building the future for a mass audience – it's natural that we're going to
have to spill a lot of thought figuring out what's most important to us.

Will there be disagreement? Yeah. Will it be perfectly civilized? Almost
certainly not, given rarity of good manners, social skills and healthy
conflict management.

But that's life with the apes.

~~~
mladenkovacevic
I think you could argue that taste often gets in the way of creating things.
Those pre-defined censures you impose on your creation before it's even an
embryo: "It'll be like this and sort of like this, but definitely not like
this because that is so unsophisticated." It's your ego trying to deal with
insecurity and fear of failure before your brain's logical centre has even had
a chance to analyse the idea. Sorry I'm just babbling, I have no real-world
examples of this but it's just a thought and it might or might not be true.

------
lotharbot
A reminder: let's be civil, not just in tech discussions, but in all of our
discussions. Even when someone touches on a pet peeve, don't give in to the
temptation to bend the rules a little bit.

In particular:

* yeah, I know you really like [company] and really don't like [competitor], but please don't say mean things about those who disagree with you, and _especially_ don't say mean things about the staff at those companies without very good reason

* it's election season in the US, which means more than the usual number of offhand derogatory comments about the other side's politicians and voters. Please refrain from this.

* I've seen a few shots taken at other peoples' religions. Principled disagreement is OK, but try to resist name-calling.

* There have even been a couple of recent arguments about nationality that have involved some unnecessary name-calling.

* As a final heads up, remember that even deleted posts may be cached by various external services that grabbed them via the API. It's good to think better of something after the fact and take it down as soon as you can, but it's even better to avoid posting nastiness in the first place.

As a community, let's do a better job of controlling our own posts first and
foremost, and let's do a better job of downvoting and flagging when others
cross the line.

------
brennenHN
I think there is a reason why consumer electronics conversations get so heated
that is even more important than what you've mentioned: the nature of the
products forces us to choose between them. And we spend a decent chunk of
money on them.

The multiplicity of products that we have to choose between and the lockin we
experience once we've made the purchase (we have a contract for the phone and
have made significant monetary commitment to the devices in general) mean we
have to make a hard decision and then try to feel good about it.

Once we've picked, if we admit that another device is better, then we're
saying that we made the wrong choice and that we have to live with a subpar
device for another few years. Most of us tend to get defensive about our
purchases instead, even when we are trying to be objective.

The truth is that there are trade offs between all of the devices that are
related to our priorities, our personalities, and our social circumstances all
of which make us feel personally invested in a gadget decision. This makes it
hard for us to come from an objective place to talk about some of our favorite
topics. Many of us are looking for validation more than information (I've
definitely been guilty of this).

The trick, then, might not be to try and be more objective, but to take
criticism of the products less personally. Headlines are meant to get clicks,
not express thoughtful opinions. The intricacies of the tradeoffs are worth
considering, but you won't find them in most tech coverage. Save your hate and
try to understand why the competition is valuable to others and what your
product could learn from.

~~~
mcantelon
It's about differing visions of the software industry as well:

* Apple's centrally-planned vision of how software should be managed versus Android's more anarchic vision

* Apple's leveraging of the software/design patent status quo as a business weapon versus the Android ecosystem's more laissez faire attitude towards the exchange of ideas

Whoever eventually wins in the market will set the tone of the software
industry.

~~~
krrrh
I think that this perspective certainly has validity. But I've also noticed a
tendency towards making it too simple and this can lead to the sort of seeing-
your-interlocutor-as-one-dimensional that OP is referring to. When it comes to
ceding control of our devices to an authority, the choice hasn't always been
between controlled and open, it's between Apple or HTC/Motorola/Samsung/Huawei
and the mobile carrier. The situation may be improving, but it's still not
great. For a host of reasons, some of them aesthetic and/or idiosyncratic, I'd
rather give up a lot of control to Apple, because I know they won't give an
inch of it over to Rogers, AT&T, or Verizon. It's true that buying an
unsubsidized Google Nexus device sidesteps some of these problems, but large
parts of the installed Android ecosystem seem to be more like feudalism than
anarchy.

Too often I think the people on the Android side of the discussion assume that
iOS folks just lack an entire collection of values around openness that they
personally consider really important. The reality is that the market is big
enough for similar values to be catered to differently. I don't like that I
can't delete Newstand.app from my iPhone, but just seeing a pre-installed and
undeletable "Rogers Anyplace TV Live" icon on a friend's Android phone makes
me die a little inside. A lot of folks don't seem to mind so much. There's no
point in trying to convince each other which is worse, it seems mostly
dispositional.

------
nagrom
The replies about iPad vs. Surface vs. Android tablets have reminded me of
nothing so much as the kind of silly arguments that console fans have over
Playstations, Xboxes and Wiis.

I think that the reason is the same: when you spend money on one, you buy into
a community and an ecosystem. You become a part of a tribe and naturally begin
to see the world in an us vs. them paradigm.

It's worth noting that this is an irrational behaviour set, and best avoided
if you want to learn anything objective. In typically-emotive arguments like
these, you have to make the decision yourself and realise that, whatever you
choose, you'll likely justify it to yourself afterwards however you can. Once
you start to realise that, you begin to realise how inconsequential "what type
of tablet or console you own" is, and the less likely you'll be to fall into
that destructive us-vs-them mindset.

------
jusben1369
Was I the only one who saw the irony that the author asking for civility
didn't even make it one paragraph without having a dig at people who use the
word "fanboi" by calling them faux hipsters? That's not very kind now is it?

These threads remind me of reading newspaper articles that discuss how uncivil
our current political discourse is compared to the far more civil past. And
you can read essentially the same article from a 1880's/1950's/2012 newspaper
archive.

~~~
saurik
You are not.

> Everyone has opinions about consumer electronics. Everyone's entitled to
> them, even when they're wrong. I owned and liked a Windows Tablet PC at one
> time!

This was also telling, as it was itself a pretty clear insult, going so far as
to call an opinion wrong, buried in a plea for people to be more careful with
their arguments.

(In fact, I flagged this "Tell HN"--not that I imagine it will matter--as I
believe that it is actually worse than having the threads of people arguing
with each other.)

~~~
raganwald
This comment seems odd. You are suggesting that being told you're wrong is
equivalent to being insulted. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it,
but it is wrong. And no, I'm not insulting you. People differ about all sorts
of things, that's the way the world is. And people have strong opinions.

I'm very ok with people telling me I'm wrong. Sometimes they're right about
that, sometimes they're, how shall we put this, "mistaken" about my being
wrong. But that doesn't mean they're insulting me. I could only be insulted if
I have tied the idea of infallibility to my self-worth, if being found to be
wrong is some kind of social shame.

If I had _that_ idea, I'd vigorously dispute anyone arguing with me, like I'm
doing right now :-)

 __ __*

Ok, I've had my little joke. In all seriousness, I did own a Tablet PC, and I
liked it, even if many people told me that I had overpaid for an underpowered
laptop with a flakey pen interface and a lack of decent software. Was I wrong?
maybe, maybe not. But I certainly am not intending to insult anyone by
suggesting that their worth is somehow connected to whether I agree or
disagree with them on the subject of Tablet PCs.

~~~
saurik
I am perfectly happy if someone tells me that I am wrong on a matter of fact,
especially if when I ask there is some argument to back it up. One of my IRL
"catch-phrases" is, in fact, "touche, you win this round, my good man ;P".

However, that's not the kind of statement you made. To demonstrate this with a
concrete contextualized example, instead of writing this response, I could
have instead said the following: "well, people are entitled to their
misunderstandings about discourse; I mean, I actually used to have the same
wrong opinion you currently do, so none of us are beyond reproach".

Of course, that statement would add nothing: by your own criteria (We need to
ask ourselves, "What understanding would my comment add?") I would have made a
comment whose sole purpose is to throw in a bit of rhetoric for which the only
realistic goals would be 1) to play towards audience members who agree with me
and 2) to fluster you by belittling your opinion in a highly flippant manner.

In the case of your comment, it was even weirder, hence the response to the
person pointing out "irony": you seriously took an article you posted about
how people were making pointless comments over something you claimed wasn't
important and used that as an opportunity to make an equally pointless comment
about the _exact same topic_.

This, in one fell swoop, both demonstrated that you actually felt someone
_can_ be "wrong" on this specific topic (which is exactly what the people in
these flame wars believe and is why they bother to spend so much time arguing
with each other instead of just saying "that is your opinion, I have mine;
opinions are awesome!"), while at the same time making it clear that you felt
that a specific one of the two parties you were arguing about was on that
"wrong" side.

I will then go so far as to say: how much more "ironic" can one man get?

(Note: I am pretty certain I have not participated in a single iPad Mini or
Surface discussion; looking through my history, the last comment I made on a
similar overall topic was in regards to the iPhone 5's larger screen almost a
month ago, and I was commenting on a specific sub-argument, taking no overall
stance on the high-level war people like to wage.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4609243> I say this to disclaim quickly
that I am not "in the middle of one of these arguments" and thereby
emotionally flustered at being called out by your overall article topic.)

~~~
raganwald
I can't go along with "You win this round," as this isn't really a debate for
points but rather a coöperative game where we're all seeking some sort of
optimum experience for HN.

In that spirit, I will say, "Nice move!"

------
9oliYQjP
I've always wondered if the down-vote should actually just be an arrow
pointing sideways. People use the down-vote like it's a thumbs down. If they
don't agree with an opinion, then it's a thumbs down. But really the cancerous
comments are ones that, in an offline conversation, a group would quickly and
politely move past and ignore. The sideways arrow would represent brushing
these comments aside.

Besides, you're supposed to up-vote comments you don't necessarily agree with
so long as they are well argued. That is what a good debate is about.

~~~
astine
Maybe there should be an "x" for hide. The comment's would disappear and it
would register as a downvote.

~~~
001sky
Maybe a 'Z' for end of the line. ZZZZZ...etc. Like take a nap.

------
dmpk2k
I concur. HN suffers from ye olde bike-shedding: people argue about trivial
things, because the hard stuff is beyond their ability and/or inclination.

I regularly see long and technically strong articles sink with less than ten
votes and zero discussion, while those lambasting Apple yet again get dozens
of votes and comments. Add hair-splitting with strong passive-aggressive
undertones, and what's left is vacuous and mildly toxic.

------
skibrah
Thank you for writing about this. Bickering about biases that an article or
commenter might have is the least productive thing imaginable. We all have
biases, we all have one product that we prefer over another. If you have a
well developed reason for that preference, I want to hear it and hope that
you'll share it. But, when I come across a post/comment that is clearly of no
substance, my first reaction is to ignore it and move on with my day. Life is
too short to waste time and typing on attacking someone for sharing something
of little value.

------
acabal
"Uncivil"? "Inappropriate"? "Bile"? "Divisive incivility"?

Those are pretty strong words. All I've seen is a few geeks trading opinions
about--ultimately petty--consumer electronics issues.

It's all just opinion. Nobody's said "Person X is ignorant waste of
consciousness and they should kill themselves" (which would be uncivil,
inappropriate, bilious, and divisive.) They just have opinions about products.
Products that in the grand scheme of human achievement _really aren't that
important_.

You're just causing even more drama with this self-righteous post. It's all,
like, _your opinion_ , man; take it easy, let the geeks bicker (relatively
politely) about fruit versus miniature eiderdown, and save the outrage for
things that are truly worth it.

Edit: I'm not going to upvote this parent meta-post, and neither should you,
dear reader, for it itself is the one causing drama, not the majority of posts
on HN in the past few days.

~~~
msbarnett
> "Uncivil"? "Inappropriate"? "Bile"? "Divisive incivility"?

From literally the story directly under this one, #2 over all at the moment:

> Its an appeal to the Apple sycophants who troll this web site: "oh no who
> dares best my beloved Apple?!? I'd better click!"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4706953>

As I post this, the karma on that comment is currently > 0\. Comments like
that didn't used to happen "back in the day". Then they happened infrequently
but pretty much everybody downvoted them into oblivion. Now they happen as a
matter of course and get voted up instead of down.

The level of discourse has unquestionably gone downhill.

~~~
acabal
Oh, please. That comment is _in reply to one_ at the _very, very bottom_. (As
I'm viewing it.)

Cherry-picking a single--frankly, not really that rude or terrible--comment
isn't proving anything.

In either case, the "good old days" never existed. See:
[http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-
sundays-2-the-...](http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-
sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/)

I get it, though. It feels good to be self-righteous. So let's go nuts, let's
have this little drama in this thread and give PG and the mods another
headache they don't want or need. As the owner of a social network for over
five years, I feel for them.

~~~
msbarnett
> I get it, though. It feels good to be self-righteous.

This is, to put it mildly, uncharitable. If you're only interested in being
part of the problem, I don't think we're going to find anything useful to say
to each other, and I'll bid you adieu.

------
brianwillis
Thank you for saying this. The comments I saw on yesterday's post by Marco
Arment really upset and concerned me.

Hacker News is usually a pretty nice place to hang out, but that comment
thread reminded me of the ten minutes hate from 1984.

------
Tloewald
It seems to me that conflict of this type arises when people are forced to
make difficult choices between similar options with real but minor differences
which have a large switching cost. Hence Nikon vs. Canon and Android vs. iOS.
And of course religion.

The conflict doesn't arise when switching cost is low or the differences are
too minor (e.g. Sony TV vs. Panasonic TV, Verizon vs. AT&T, Unitarianism vs.
Baha'i fail to generate rancor on both counts).

The conflict would appear to arise from people struggling with cognitive
dissonance. In other words, if an iOS or Android user were supremely confident
of the superiority and perfection of their chosen platform there would be no
dissonance and and no outward invective.

Just as Freud (correctly, for once) observed that the most passionately
homophobic individuals were often in denial of their own urges, the most
fervent boosters of a platform are probably plagued with doubts about it.

------
BrentOzar
For whatever it's worth, I'm the guy who wrote the Surface review trending
today. I love reading HN every morning while I walk my dog, and I was
dumbfounded that my Surface review made HN. That was a WTF moment for me. It's
not the kind of stuff I come to HN for.

Don't get me wrong, I was honored - but it's off topic.

------
hooande
_As hackers--and I include in this definition those who hack software,
hardware, social behaviour, and marketplaces--our mission is first to
UNDERSTAND and then second to INFLUENCE._

Maybe I can help with the understanding part. Here are some things that I've
observed, as a hacker, about humans:

1\. (most) people like to form groups and then compete with other groups

2\. (most) people enjoy feeling superior to other people

These are things that seem to have been true in any part of the world,
throughout all of human history.

So what's our plan here? Are we going to turn hackernews into the only
collection of humans to ever live that defies these rules? Is there some
technical solution that will change fundamental aspects of human nature? Maybe
getting rid of the voting arrows will remove all of the meanness and tribal
thinking on the planet.

I say all this because I don't understand the impetus for your post. Of course
it would be nice if everything everyone said made an insightful contribution.
But you know that people aren't like that. No amount of blog posting or
commenting is going to change how people interact with each other. It seems
like your problem isn't with the hacker news community, but with the nature of
human socialization.

This looks like a clear case of selection bias. It's hard to do good as a
hacker if you isolate yourself in an ivy tower of ycombinator hackers and
geniuses. Making things does take some understanding of the average person and
how they behave. If you truly think that hackernews is negative when compared
with just about anywhere else, then you might be out of touch.

~~~
astine
Many people, including the primary demographic of HN, like to also learn and
have insightful discussions. We can get our competitiveness and tribalism out
at sporting events We can have nice discussions here.

------
Tycho
You see, I had no idea of this current crisis until I read this thread.
Really, what were reading threads about iPad Minis or MS Surface's going to
add to my life? They are good products possibly but at this stage just small
refinements on an existing category of device. So I never bothered to click.
Sometimes I'm dismayed that people are wasting their time not just reading but
writing long comments about these things. And not just new product releases
but also nebulous, insight-free articles like that one about 'no more big
ideas.' I suppose no one should be on their high horse though: few articles
are 'essential reading' when it boils down to it.

------
smackfu
It's because HN has become the defacto comments section on every blog that has
turned off comments. The comments are pretty much the same, just moved to a
different place.

------
grey-area
If you disagree with the balance of stories on hn, the most useful thing you
can do to fix it is visit /newest and vote up stories with interesting
content. Nowhere near enough people do this and as a result many stories just
slide off the new submissions page unread.

Re lack of civility, this is a normal feature of anonymous interaction which
stems from lack of accountability - the only way to deal with it is to impose
social sanctions on the users responsible. Everyone can do this by refusing to
be baited, and calling out others for antisocial, insulting, or extreme
comments.

Actions will have more impact that meta discussions.

------
hnriot
Having a meta discussion about this community doesn't seem very productive.
The community is what it is and asking people to be civil is a waste of yet
more bytes on a server.

As is evident by the comment threads on the tablet releases, people have
strong opinions, supressing these with calls for 'civility' are nothing more
than asking for people to only post comments that you approve of, which seems
extremely bourgeois to me. I enjoy seeing the comments where people express
strong opinions because I am able to learn for example what kind of person is
going to like the Surface and who won't. There's signal in the noise and in a
public forum it's not about what you want to read. If I could down vote your
thread I would because I find it extremely distasteful to see someone wanting
to read just what they enjoy. It's really no different to me posting an ASK
requesting that we focus more on Python or jquery plugins. Please, less of the
high horse rhetoric.

------
white_devil
So you're not happy with the current level of self-censorship in the name of
political/social correctness, then? I find it _far more_ than sufficient.

As for the issue you're talking about, this guy here is obviously a flaming
Microsoft-fanboy: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4706624> .. I _wanted_
to call him one, but refrained from doing so, mostly because I thought it
would be met with a negative reaction.

But you know, talking to fanboys is really frustrating. Their posts are full
of such obvious, annoying bullshit/misdirection that it's just really
difficult to ignore, but on the other hand, going through the effort of
shutting them up is pointless too.

That's why it's tempting to just call a fanboy a fanboy, instead of wasting a
lot of time and effort in a _civil_ discussion with them.

------
ek
Amen - the launches of both Surface and iPad mini are to me terribly exciting
events, and I am impressed with both Microsoft and Apple. One of my favorite
parts of being a technologist is that I get to observe how people adapt the
myriad of available technologies and software/hardware systems to their own
unique needs, and this extends to even myself. I've been through Macs, Windows
machines, and more Linux distributions than I can count, as well as handhelds
from both the Android and iOS camps, and I've been happy each time I have
switched setups.

As hackers, I believe we all subscribe to the old mantra that one should use
what is best for the job at hand, and arguments about whether Microsoft
Surface or iPad Mini or so on and so forth are the "right way" detract from
the quest for knowledge in which all of us participate.

------
w1ntermute
How about this? pg is not willing/interested in implementing stricter
filtering - it's a discussion that has come up many times in the past, but
nothing has changed.

So can someone create a 3rd party site that displays HN, but removes/hides
these off-topic posts? Then everyone would be happy. There are already some
similar implementations (like <http://ihackernews.com> for a mobile version),
so it can't be that technically difficult. It would also be great for users to
be able to specifically block certain domains (e.g., I could get rid of all
Gruber and Marco blog posts from the list of links I personally see).

Edit: this could also be done with a browser extension, but that wouldn't work
on mobile devices (I think)

------
zenocon
The meta-commentary on here has become a parody of itself. Spend more time
with your family, or outdoors, or doing just about anything else.

------
urbanredneck
I am at a loss for these arguments, I like what I like and I make no apologies
for it. I prefer one system over another for a variety of reasons and I am not
a fan of a company as it is a company. I may use their products because of
reasons that make sense to me personally.

Performance, cost, usability, etc. are all factored into the system I use, the
phone, tablet, etc. are all purchased based on these factors. If you do not
like a particular product just do not buy it and if for some reason someone
asks for your opinion on a product you can give it without being fanatical
about it, it is just a product.

------
emmelaich
> Because the stakes are so low

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences>

related: best God joke ever:

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion>

------
lsiebert
The root cause is simple human tribalism. We are, in general, people that
pride ourselves on our intelligence, but we often don't turn that intelligence
towards our social tendencies.

Liking or disliking Apple or Android or Windows... well sure. people can have
preferences. But self identifying or rejecting people based on their computing
software? Being rude to people because of their technology preferences?

Ask yourself, why do we do that? Does it make sense logically? Not really. But
at an emotional level, it feels good to have a group of people who one can
feel part of, and a group of people that are outside it that one can disparage
as not being one of us. Making moral judgements based on what tech company a
person likes? Human tribal groups.

The truth is, we can do better then that.

------
pixelcort
On [Coinbase's announcement yesterday][1], I was concerned that the top 14
root-level comments were all focusing on the security implications of the
announcement; it was as if there was nothing else to discuss other than that.

In many other discussions it seems like one controversial sub-topic ends up
dominating as well.

Perhaps downvoting controversial comments isn't always a bad thing? There
seems to be a big fear of the downvote button, but in some cases, even if a
comment is useful on its own, in the end it sparks massive amounts of arguing
back and forth which could be avoided if it were just downvoted instead.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703443>

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facorreia
OP mentions downvotes. Are downvotes possible on HN? Are they reserved to some
users only? Being a member for 4 years with less than 300 points, I don't have
downvote icons on my page.

~~~
grecy
Downvote comments kicks in at 500 karma.

I don't know if downvote articles is an options.. maybe I just don't have
enough Karma.

~~~
astine
It's not and it never was.

------
jmitcheson
I know there are a million and one people offering arm chair suggestions, but
IMO it's about time that HN got sub-forums and moderators.

I'd like to see a /startup or similar, moderated by entrepreneurs to set the
tone of what posts or comments aren't welcome.

For that matter, a /front-end would be cool too. HTML/CSS/JavaScript demos
posted here grind my gears so much; the comments are all negative and totally
not constructive.

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countessa
>>"What understanding would my comment add?"

Agree - this should be the default in any comment. It would be interesting to
see a "karma" score for those who hold their tongue when they have nothing
constructive to say, but obviously, that's pretty much impossible in an online
format. In a way, the karma on a forum encourages opinions whether vacuous or
not.

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10098
Maybe it's because we're so pathetic that we actually associate ourselves with
the gadgets we use, and thus, we somehow perceive any attack/criticism of our
favorite tech as an attack on us.

------
jebblue
Is Microsoft using people in some way to try and take over the psychology of
HN'ers.

------
lexy0202
*iPad

~~~
raganwald
You're right, it's either an iPad Mini or iPod Touch Ultra with iOS 6 Home
Edition, but not an iPod Mini. Thanks!

