
Ask HN: Where is the Hostility on HN Coming From?  - OoTheNigerian
Jut take a look at this thread that is <i>proposing</i> NOT implementing a new design for Wikipedia.  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4352290 The presentation is very polite but the HN'feedback'? Woah!<p>The responses even from veteran HNers is nothing short of shocking. I can mildly 'understand' harsh responses from people whose present jobs are to design Wikipedia however, the extremely harsh responses from others is not constructive and leads to no learning whatsoever both for the designers and others.<p>This post is just an example of the latest trend of a new and unusually hostile HN.<p>Not cool.
======
OoTheNigerian
People in the comments are claiming it is "Feedback". How many of you would
critique that presentation that way (like in the comments) to the designers in
person?

There is a whole world of difference between:

"Hey, did you consider this and that." and "What you have done is rubbish. You
did not think"

For heavens sake the presentation ended with "And here we stop. But,
hopefully, the discussion begins." <http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/>

If it was that bad, then you do not upvote it. if it was good enough for a
discussion (upvote), then discuss politely.

Not once in the comments did I see an alternative suggestion. even it it was
entirely different from what was proposed. It was all condemnation.

At least we can agree Wikipedia can be improved, they made a suggestion. If
you cannot constructively improve on what was proposed, then you can avoid
polluting it. Or better still propose your own suggestion.

~~~
samdk
If I am working with someone on a design and they bring me something as bad as
that redesign, I'm going to tell them it's awful. That redesign _is_ rubbish
and it very clearly _was_ done without thinking about what was important, and
nobody benefits by pretending that's not true. As a designer, you should not
be offended by people telling you things you've made don't work, so long as
they're providing reasons. Those people are doing you a favor. You cannot
remain emotionally attached to your own work and be a good designer.

It is far easier to work with people who are direct and harsh than the people
who dance around the matter. You can never trust anything the latter group of
people tell you, and so you end up wasting a tremendous amount of time because
you have no idea what they actually want because they refuse to actually tell
you.

(That said, there _is_ a world of difference between "that is rubbish, you did
not think" and "that is rubbish because you did not think about things X, Y
and Z". The first is useless, the second is helpful.)

\--

Your idea that people must offer alternate suggestions before criticism is
ridiculous. If you present your redesign idea to the public and it's terrible,
the correct response is "that's not very good, go back and try again", not
"that's not very good, therefore I will spend the months required to come up
with a non-awful alternative before commenting".

~~~
ShellfishMeme
> If I am working with someone on a design and they bring me something as bad
> as that redesign, I'm going to tell them it's awful. That redesign is
> rubbish and it very clearly was done without thinking about what was
> important, and nobody benefits by pretending that's not true. As a designer,
> you should not be offended by people telling you things you've made don't
> work, so long as they're providing reasons. Those people are doing you a
> favor. You cannot remain emotionally attached to your own work and be a good
> designer.

I think that's a terrible and even dangerous attitude - especially when done
in public - for several reasons.

Firstly, if you heavily criticize something when many people are watching, it
might keep you from receiving balanced feedback. Some people probably liked
some of the aspects of the redesign, but with dozens of people in the thread
saying how awful it was, they will rather not speak up and talk about what
they liked. If you tell a mass of people "X is rubbish and whoever came up
with this is stupid", and some more people join in, the others will probably
assume they are idiots for liking it and say nothing. As an analogy: When I
was younger I really liked a girl in my class but all my friends were going on
about how ugly and weird she was, probably because of some kind of social
feedback loop. So instead of telling her that I liked her, I started joining
in with the "X is stupid" meme because I didn't want to look like a fool in
front of my friends. Had they not talked about it in such an extreme way,
things might have went differently, but because of the situation, I lost all
my courage to admit it to her and my friends.

Secondly, if you mix valid criticism with being a dick about it, people will
more likely think that your criticism is less valid since it's easier to just
assume you are an asshole. Most people are emotionally attached to their work.
If they weren't, their work would probably suck. They'll learn how to handle
criticism, but that doesn't mean it won't hurt or demotivate them if you tell
them it's rubbish.

Thirdly, there is absolutely no need to ever mention that it's rubbish or
awful. All you need to do is to list the points where they failed and maybe
give advice on how to improve it. Calling their work rubbish helps nobody and
makes you feel smarter and more powerful than you actually are. If you treat
people like this, their work will become worse, not better, and at the same
time they will probably stop asking you for advice because you can't stop
being a dick about it instead of just encouraging them to improve on what they
did by giving valid advice.

People aren't just machines that you can tell "this is all awful, throw it
away and start over" without hurting their feelings in at least some way. You
should learn to use these emotions to steer them in the right direction, not
condemn them and call people who express them unprofessional. You'll get a lot
further by nicely packaging your criticism.

~~~
samdk

        "X is rubbish and whoever came up with this is stupid"
    

To be clear, I agree that this is awful feedback. It contains no useful
information and personally insults the creator, both of which are bad. There
is a world of difference between saying "this design is bad" and "you are a
bad designer". Even good designers come up with truly terrible ideas
constantly--it's part of the process. (I certainly have more than my share!)

Obviously people get emotionally attached to their work. I certainly do. But
you have to be able to let go of that while you're receiving feedback, or
there's no point in you getting any.

Again, to be clear, I would not say "this is rubbish" or "this is awful" while
critiquing a design. I would say "this is not working at all because you're
ignoring considerations A and B". There are many, many design ideas that just
do not work. As a designer, you are much better served by someone telling you
"this is not working at all, you need an entirely different approach" than you
are by someone trying to hint you towards evolving a design that's based on a
faulty premise.

------
morisy
A lot of the strong feedback appeared to be a backlash to the perception that
this was a marketing scheme dressed up as a public service suggestion.
Offering an open letter of advice coupled with biting critique, rather than
making a private offer, does strike a certain self-serving tone. While I
generally love seeing how designers would, free of real-world constraints, re-
imagine popular sites, maybe the authors didn't choose the best tone or format
for their submission.

That said, when I find myself typing something venomous (more often than
warranted), I try to take a breath and delete. Worked for Lincoln:
<http://www.examiner.com/article/an-unsent-letter>

~~~
oinksoft
Yes, there's been a trend recently of "I'm redesigning X, completely from
scratch, because it needs it" with the implication that X's current design is
badly in need of improvement. This is going to bring the designer both
positive and negative attention, and deservedly so. Typically the redesign is
radical and makes bold, often false assumptions about the product, which makes
these posts seem particularly self-serving.

I think that these designers could do just as good a job of demonstrating
their creativity by using a fictitious brand (and possibly even drawing
comparisons to known brands in the article). It is not classy to drag someone
else's brand through the dirt.

~~~
rm999
>It is not classy to drag someone else's brand through the dirt

Wikipedia is fairly democratic, they're open to redesign decisions if they
work for the site and are free. See this response to the article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2012_main_page_redes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2012_main_page_redesign_proposal)

Of all brands the designers could have chosen, Wikipedia may be one of the
most appropriate.

~~~
snowwrestler
I think the response would have been different if the design firm had openly
approached the Wikipedia community at the beginning of their project to offer
their pro bono services. Instead it seems like the designers did the work in
isolation for 2 months and then sprung it on the world--not a very
collaborative working style.

~~~
rm999
I believe most design firms offer some kind of prototype as a first step,
which is what they did. They weren't commissioned to do anything, and there is
no go-to person at Wikipedia for them to work with; an iterative process would
have required working with a democratic committee of volunteers who
individually don't have the authority to make any kind of decision.

~~~
snowwrestler
I've hired a lot of web design firms over the past decade and I've never seen
or requested a 2-month-long prototype phase as the first step.

The first step in a web design project is always discovery, so that the design
firm does not waste their time (and my employer's money) on work that does not
solve the right problems, or cannot be implemented.

Ad agencies, in contrast, will typically come to a pitch meeting with some
concepts or prototypes. But that is ok because ads are self-contained products
that are largely free from legacy systems.

------
shokwave
Without the hostility, the designers might get the idea that their suggestions
were good.

Without the hostility, the submitter might get the idea that hackernews liked
the article.

You say the response "is not constructive and leads to no learning
whatsoever". I'd like to substantively address the second claim.

    
    
        "A smart man learns from his mistakes.
         A wise man learns from the mistakes of others."
    

The designers learned that their changes were bad. They learned WHY their
changes were bad: many responses gave detailed reasons. The submitter learned
that their model of what HN likes was wrong. And if the submitter thought this
was a good design, they learned their understanding of design is wrong. All
the others who read the submission and responses learned a few design pitfalls
to avoid. There are whole chapters in books on design that teach less than
this.

And this is learning from the event itself! What learning could this event
LEAD to? I don't know, someone might pick up a book on design?

(As an aside, I didn't address "not constructive". I have a truly marvellous
rant on the emptiness of this concept that this comment field is too small to
contain.)

~~~
mattdeboard
"If I don't hit you, how will you know I'm mad?"

Work on your communication skills.

~~~
mhluongo
Saving this for the next yelling match I get in over a system design...

------
rickmb
I hope you can think of better examples.

I hadn't seen the post you mentioned, but the whole thing was so dripping in
arrogance and a complete disdain for Wikipedia and its international users and
contributors it is begging to get panned.

Basically, it is the original post that is not constructive to the point of
being hostile. There is very little "polite" about it.

Maybe it should have been ignored rather than reacted to, but this kind of
thing would provoke a negative response anywhere.

Also, I suspect the whole scenario of arrogant designers presenting a design
that completely ignores the needs and identity of the client and the audience,
interspersed with arrogant statement declaring their own superiority is not
entirely unfamiliar to many here. At least my first reaction was "oh great,
that again".

This is not a way to start an friendly open discussion or get constructive
criticism. It's a provocation, which is also a perfectly valid way to start a
debate, but it does set the tone.

~~~
armored_mammal
I think the wikipedia post is a great example.

I love wikipedia, but it is poorly designed. In fact, there has recently been
speculation that the decline in new editors is due to wikipedia being too
arcane, particularly on the edit side. Despite its popularity, I can't see how
that basic notion is even controversial.

Meanwhile, somebody comes up with a redesign mockup and it's the end of the
world because 1 page (out of ~ a dozen) doesn't make it easy enough for people
to switch to the right language version?

Anyway, I'm not sure about 'all the hostility,' but I agree that thread was a
little weird. I expected HN types to maybe not be thrilled with that redesign,
but at least agree that wikipedia needs one.

~~~
chc
None of the criticism was of the flavor "Wikipedia must not be redesigned."
The hate was directed toward the actual redesign presented there, not the
general idea of a different design.

------
mechanical_fish
The designers took a big, unsolicited, passive-aggressive public dump on the
design of Wikipedia – which is, for all its faults, undeniably a project that
has attracted a million people to lavish love on it without pay – and now you
profess astonishment that they got some harsh feedback?

Perhaps tomorrow you'll profess astonishment when someone walks into Yankee
Stadium wearing a Red Sox shirt and uses the PA system to "objectively"
redesign the Yankee pinstripes to "be more functional, more useful, more
pleasing to the eye"? Oh, lordy, lordy, who could have predicted the harsh
language in response? I thought New York was a civilized town!

If the designers had actually wanted to improve Wikipedia, the correct
strategy is to start small and modestly, and aim the pitch _at the decision
makers_ \- presumably Wikipedia has a design committee? - not the entire
Internet. You suggest ideas one or two at a time and collect feedback as you
go, not merely because you care what the customer thinks - you do, right? -
but because you're trying to get them to feel invested in the new product
instead of clinging reflexively to the old.

People don't see designs objectively; that's an artist's special power. The
see designs like they see puppies. If a strange puppy walks in and starts
fighting with _my_ puppy I'll call Animal Control and have it dragged away in
a cage. But if my new puppy chews the furniture, I might scold him, but I
probably won't disown the little rascal. The secret is to introduce the small,
cute, innocent little puppy to the customer and have it be petted for a while
_before_ you let it soil the old rug, drive the customer's other pets insane,
and run up vet bills.

~~~
dalore
To use your metaphor, walking into the Yankee Stadium and using their PA would
be akin to this person putting the new design up on Wikipedia, like on a talk
page or linking to it from Wikipedia's entry on Wikipedia. No, the person put
their new design up on a totally separate website.

He didn't say that Wikipedia has to change, it was merely just his design idea
that he wanted to share with the world. Yes, if he actually wanted Wikipedia
to change there is a process of contacting Wikipedia and going through the
whole bureaucratic process but I think it was more of a show what's possible.
Kind of like that design project that was on HN a while back showing a
possible rebranding of Microsoft.

I may be in the minority here but I don't believe it warranted such harsh
criticism.

~~~
jonnathanson
_"He didn't say that Wikipedia has to change, it was merely just his design
idea that he wanted to share with the world."_

Well, the cynic in me -- which I've been trying to restrain throughout the
last few days of this discussion -- thinks he was doing it primarily as
"content marketing" for his design firm. Maybe it's a little unfair to pin
that motive on him. And I certainly have no way of knowing what the hidden
agenda was, or even if there was one. But when you make a "pitch" to the
entire Internet in this fashion, generally speaking, you're doing it to get
attention (and business).

There's nothing wrong with content marketing. Some HN luminaries do it all the
time. But the content has to provide some value, and a lot of folks (myself
included) are still struggling to find the value in the Wikipedia redesign
post.

------
debacle
It was a poor design, that altered the UX in a significantly negative fashion
due to a lack of understanding of what Wikipedia _is_.

I'd be like someone doing a very swooshy automobile design, and then moving
the clutch to the passenger's side, just for kicks.

Also, in general I believe that hacker culture should tend towards cutting
through the bullshit. You have no expectation of courtesy except for the
courtesy of honesty on the Internet.

Harsh criticism is the quickest way to let someone know they're doing the
wrong thing, and the fastest way to get your point across.

~~~
sime
While you would probably be naive to expect courtesy on the Internet, there is
no reason not to offer it.

It's no harder to write a courteous and constructive criticism than it is to
write a harsh and mildly condescending one. The former can serve to foster
creative discussion while the latter often kills it.

~~~
panacea
Spare us the "kumbaya".

You earn respect and the courtesy of others falls out the other side. And even
with all the trolls, anonymous bluntness and dens of iniquity that exist on
the internet, there are plenty of ways to engage in positive or constructive
feedback loops.

But if you've got a bad product (in this case a poorly executed and thought-
out speculative redesign promotional piece) and you actually host it on a .com
domain name for said product, it stands or falls on it's own merit.

Had this been a forum post or addressed to a design community with a culture
of courteous discourse, I would decry the lack of respect and courtesy
provided free expression, but as it stands, this was a cynical and misguided
top level domain attempt that failed and should be called out as such.

~~~
sime
I agree that respect is earned. I disagree that courtesy should only fall out
the other side.

------
shrughes
People are hostile to that posting because it talks down to its readers by
being a gigantic infographic, as if the reader was retarded, instead of being
a few paragraphs of text. Also, the idea is without merit, and you don't need
to read past the first character to realize that it's made by people with a
preference for form over function. It is a truly revolting submission.

~~~
markkat
>It is a truly revolting submission.

This is the problem. The MSM is full of hyperbole. One nice thing about HN is
that it is rarely rewarded here.

You could have said:

 _People are hostile to that posting because it talks down to its readers by
being a gigantic infographic. It could have been explained in a few paragraphs
of text. Also, the idea appears to be made by people with a preference for
form over function. Therefore it has little practical merit._

It would have made the same point, without the hostility or hyperbole.

Personally, I found the overall idea unrealistic, but it was interesting to
see Wikipedia mocked up in another way. Their schematic using the color bars
for languages gave me some ideas.

~~~
debacle
But to anyone who understands the dichotomy between _those people_ and the
people who get real work done, "revolting" is the right word.

~~~
markkat
IMO so readily putting people into groups of 'approval' and 'disapproval'
based upon such limited information is a mistake. Quickly writing off others
as _those people_ seems close-minded, and you can miss out on a lot of
opportunities with such an attitude.

~~~
debacle
The nice thing about opinions is that you can change them more often than you
change your underwear.

~~~
markkat
Sure, but inconsistency of opinion isn't a very admirable trait.

~~~
debacle
I'd rather be right than consistent.

~~~
jeremyarussell
I'd rather be consistently right.

~~~
debacle
Not everyone can be tptacek.

------
beeneto
I theorise that the post gave the hackers of the community an opportunity to
vent their latent dislike of superficial or even detrimental UI changes. Note
though that the 'vitriol' was mostly sarcasm and scoffing. If we use 1
torvalds as a unit of hacker irascibility, then the comments never rose above
about 300-400 millitorvalds.

------
brudgers
Having gone through design critiques in architecture school and presented
designs to clients in practice, I would say that taken individually the
specific comments were largely constructive criticism when I last read through
the thread (yesterday evening) and that the discussions of the problems with
designers were largely consistent with my experience in a design discipline.

The project in general looked to me like the response to an academic design
brief, and taken individually, the comments were largely consistent with the
sorts of comments which might be made during a juried crit in a US
architecture school. However and although piling on can occur in a juried
crit, the pack mentality is constrained by time - unlike typing on the
internet.

On the other hand, nothing in the comments when I looked at them stood out as
even close to the limit of what a paying client or one's boss might say during
a design presentation or review. Tptacek's top comment might have been
conveyed as a Jobsian "This is shit," and perhaps accompanied by a discussion
of whether or not the designer should seriously consider ever reproducing.

One factor I think led to the volume of comments is that unlike most "Show HN"
threads, this one was not couched as an MVP (or in this case a minimum viable
design), but as finished project. In other words, it wasn't "Here is the
landing page with a new logo and a drop down menu for choosing the language,"
with changes to the editor left for version two.

What I think contributed to a more visceral reaction among HN'ers is that the
designer as hero approach feels at odds with the particular ethos of Wikipedia
which is iterative and collaborative - particularly telling considering that
audacity and heroism are among the common fetishes of HN.

In my opinion, the level of criticism was not unusual for HN. I've read plenty
of blunt responses (closer to "This is shit") on "Show HN:" threads. It was
really the volume which was unusual, and that I attribute to the subject
matter.

------
olalonde
Read the top comment and first thing that went through my mind:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4328399>

On another note, I think the lack of a down vote button on submissions might
explain this behavior. If a topic is highly polarized/controversial, it might
end up on the front page with a lot of up votes even if most HNers would have
down voted it. This results in a lot of people venting off in the comments who
would have otherwise simply down voted.

~~~
paulsutter
I thought the top comment by tptacek was perfectly reasonable and
constructive, and didn't find it offensive at all. On the other hand I found
the original article to be naive and remarkably arrogant, despite its
saccharin use of language.

Be curious to hear pg's thinking on the absence of downvotes for stories. This
particular story was of such low quality, that I wonder if people were really
upvoting the discussion as opposed to the original story.

------
alexkearns
I agree with you. Not cool at all. Unfortunately, there is an unpleasant trait
that hackers seem to suffer from more than most other people. I call it the
'know it all' complex.

Know-it-alls are intolerant of views that are contrary to their own, usually
very narrow opinion on how things should be done. Woe betide anyone who does
not do it their way.

~~~
mediacrisis
Ah yes, the alpha nerd syndrome. Symptoms include not commenting code because
"it should be obvious!"

~~~
slurgfest
A lot of people don't like comments because they feel that they tend to go
stale, and code should be self-documenting.

------
lovskogen
I work as a designer. And seeing fellow designers doing things without
research on the domain they're designing in is shocking. This is basic stuff,
and people need a heads up.

The designers should take this as valuable input, ignore the subjective
comments, and move on to create greater things.

~~~
iamben
Yeah, but I sort of took it in the same way you take it when you see a design
for transparent phone that you can roll up and put in your pocket. The
technology isn't there to do that, it just is what it is.

~~~
lovskogen
What great technology or... thing, isn't there to do the wiki-redesign?

~~~
iamben
My point is that I don't think their design had the existing technology /
current Wiki infrastructure in mind (and never meant to).

It was just design for the sake of design - it didn't need to be based on a
MediaWiki theme or anything like that. It's just a visual representation of
what 'could be'.

~~~
lovskogen
You are right, and that's why this is not good design.

------
ilaksh
To be honest, I am a pretty negative person sometimes. I hope my cynicism
isn't ruining the mood or setting a bad example or anything.

As far as that particular Wikipedia thing: I think a lot of people really
liked the design, and most of them clicked the upvote. On the other hand, most
of the people who didn't like it couldn't downvote so they left comments
instead.

So part of the hostility you notice might just be the fact that they took on
Wikipedia and really put themselves out there, so it was a controversial post.
And HN needs to fix the downvote thing (there I go being negative again).

One other thing is that you have people with really different backgrounds
coming to Hacker News. Some people are like me and have a lot of coding
experience including, for example, enterprise(y) application programming.
Other people have much more experience in marketing and/or graphic design
and/or UX/UI.

This might just be another example of me having a bad life, but there also
might actually be a bit of pent up resentment between UX/UI designer people
and coders in general. I will be too honest as usual and elaborate.

Basically, what it seems like from my own programmer perspective is that the
people doing the software UI design in Photoshop or whatever think that they
know better how to build software than me and therefore are placing themselves
over me in the project decision making, even though they have written very
little (or zero) code. That sort of misplaced disrespect could possibly
sometimes make a person feel righteously hostile. Of course, I do realize that
UX is its own field with knowledge that isn't automatically absorbed in the
process of coding, but that doesn't really change the situation between coders
and UX designers.

~~~
fendmark
I think the most obnoxious thing about this post (and I saw a Wikimedia
employee point this out in the comments as well) is that it completely ignores
the fact that Wikipedia is built on the MediaWiki platform and doesn't even
attempt to address how their proposal could be realistically implemented from
a development standpoint in coordination with the Wikimedia Engineering team
and the community's ongoing product roadmap.

Maybe this is being a tad catty, and standing in the way of innovation in some
respects but design led initiatives that don't take a close look at the world
from other discipline's perspectives are usually doomed.

~~~
iamben
Wasn't this exactly what it was though? A design led initiative?

I don't think they ever had any intention of it becoming a default
wikipedia/mediawiki design - it was simply a way for a design team to show
their chops by saying 'this is what it could have been / could be'.

I can totally understand the frustration from the engineers and developers who
get that 'the design team always think they know best' feeling - hell, I've
been there countless times - but I don't think they meant for that.

But reading some of the comments in that thread, I felt awful for them -
nevermind a lack of constructive criticism, some of it was just out and out
hate.

I'd like to think if they were ever taken on to design a site they'd be able
to sit down with the developers/UX team/marketers/SEOs/whoever and come up
with something that works for everyone. That's a lot of what being a good
designer is about.

(For the record, there really has been countless times I've been given a
design from a designer and almost wept with frustration. Mostly with agencies
that employed print designers who've been forced to now design for web.)

~~~
fendmark
All good points, iamben.

------
Paul_S
I don't see people in that thread being hostile - only honest. And honestly,
that redesign is really bad. There's really nothing positive to say about it
and although the old adage goes "don't say anything if you have nothing
positive to say" I'm glad people here don't bide by it and provide useful
critique instead.

~~~
sp332
Criticism is not the same as hostility. We should be polite even if the
criticism is harsh.

------
dclaysmith
Agreed. It's a shame too because many of the _harsh_ comments have good points
but the tone of the comments is vitriolic.

Slow down people. These people put a ton of work into a project which is
really cool. They deserve constructive criticism.

------
throwaway-0
>This post is just an example of the latest trend of a new and unusually
hostile HN.

It's not a new trend, you're just starting to notice it. I've been coming to
HN off and on for years. It has always been unpleasant. I get physically
uncomfortable whenever I come back here.

The community here is toxic. It's dressed up in the veneer of thoughtfulness,
but it doesn't take a genius to identify the cultural attitudes, group-think
and see how the detractors are treated. I got burned by my wrongheaded
assumption that it actually was a place for reasoned discussion. Not gonna
make that mistake again.

------
minikomi
J don't think that the response was that out of order.

Edit: I feel bad getting upvotes for a snarky off-handed comment. So here's
what I think: Contrast and compare the comments to thread regarding the hn
statistics page. I don't get the feeling the community is critical for being
critical's sake at all.

------
jessedhillon
Recurring rationale I've noticed in this conversation:

If nobody harshly slams this, they might think they're good designers.

The designers are so arrogant, thinking they could redesign such an important
website.

Harsh feedback makes you better.

\--

First, I have never encountered anyone important (to me) who cared what HN
thought, or even rethought their opinions after reading HN slam something.
I've only heard people talking about HN as a source of news, not as a relevant
gauge of anything, and certainly not to reconsider if one is right or wrong.

Frankly, nobody ever should pause and reconsider what they are doing because
of HN's sentiment; at this point it's still better than some random forum, you
get a lot of useful links and facts, but the critiques are totally worthless.
People rarely try to be helpful here, it's just a positive feedback loop of
nerds trying to show that they have more refined taste, more nuanced
discernment, or a bigger mouth than the nerd before him.

------
res0nat0r
I think it is because lately there are just more postings which are posted and
voted up because they are _emotional_ more than the fact that they have
anything to do with the core topic(s) normally found on HN.

As I mentioned in the other post yesterday about the NYTimes reporter being
beaten there are more emotional posts now which are on the site just related
to how bad big companies, government, the music industry, Google, Facebook,
Craiglist and Hollywood is (this due to the PG _Destory Hollywood_ post I'm
sure).

It seems there is more bandwagon jumping lately on hating anything which is
big and makes a lot of money, so it is inherently bad (see every post about
Craiglist this month). HN talk is usually about startups and small business,
it seems to go against the ethos here about building businesses that somehow
when you make a lot of money you are now 'the man' and must be destroyed, or
at least give your hard earned work to new HN'ers startups to help them profit
(information wants to be free and all), since that must the right thing to do.

Is Square set to become the enemy soon due to their big deal they just signed
with Starbucks?

~~~
mhluongo
%s/Stripe/Square/

~~~
res0nat0r
Oops. Fixed. :)

------
ColinWright
Clickable: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4352290>

------
jongold
I'm a designer - it's not hostility, it's feedback :)

There's no point being nice to people when they present flawed work - that
just propagates bad work.

(and my CTO is way harsher on my Pull Requests than anyone has been on the
Wiki redesign anyway)

~~~
rizla
Your profession doesn't make your opinion any more valid than anyone else's,
or less valid.

There is a point in being nice, it's part of being sociable. We could have all
the best solutions in the world, but if we can't share them in an agreeable
way then they are going to be useless

Think of a world where parents mocked their toddlers for presenting them with
a anotomically and structurally defective picture of their family and home.
Would the child continue to create with happiness or just associate
experimentation with negative response?

~~~
mhluongo
Not sure we should compare a design firm to a toddler... are you joking?

~~~
rizla
I'm not comparing a design firm to a toddler,

I'm comparing the act of creating and reviewing. More explicitly I wanted you
to think about how a new designer would respond to overly harsh and non-
constructive critisim in the early stages of developing their skillset.

------
angersock
Honestly, I didn't find the feedback that terrible--I'm somewhat new here, but
if you want carebears you should be over at reddit. I appreciate having a
community honest enough to say what it thinks. I'm not sure what your other
datapoints are, though?

For what it's worth, I thought it was an interesting and refreshing design
proposal, though I did have issues with the way they chose to render logos and
use screenspace--it was a bit too kitschy in its minimalism.

~~~
simias
I agree. The main factor should be whether it's constructive criticism or not.
In the case of the Wikipedia redesign thing, the tone of some of the comments
might be a bit harsh but they were mostly insightful.

This is the internet, it's how it works, it's how it worked since at least
Usenet (and probably before, but I can't testify of that). The social norm is
different than regular "face to face" conversation.

It's harsher, but it's also often more honest I think.

~~~
richardw
_This is the internet, it's how it works, it's how it worked since at least
Usenet (and probably before, but I can't testify of that). The social norm is
different than regular "face to face" conversation. It's harsher, but it's
also often more honest I think._

That's exactly what PG intended HN not to be. It's meant to be different,
nicer, better thought out. If it devolves to a common web message board, we
lose what makes it special. Read this, if you haven't before. Especially the
last paragraph:

<http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>

In any case, if there's a secret HN where everyone is nicer, sign me up.

------
jschuur
This applies to more than just the tech space, but I get the sense that people
feel under siege from a lot of different directions these days that are out of
their control. This encourages knee jerk reactions to anything where they
think they have an area of expertise in (or just an opinion) and they use any
forum possible to air how they think things _should_ be done, or just what
other people are doing wrong and why something will never work.

If you're frustrated about the general status quo, some people will become
extremely vocal, and use language to stand out in the crowd and have their
opinion be heard. Venting alone becomes therapeutic to them, because it's
their way to contribute to the process.

...until they need to do it again in the next thread.

------
tsahyt
I think this is largely a communication issue. I don't think people on here
are inherently hostile, except for a few. Personally, I tend to chose rather
strong words to get my point across. People who know me realize that I don't
mean to insult anybody with this. It's just that I have strong opinions and
try to emphasize them in discussions. You could call my discussion style
harsh, but I'm really just trying to be as honest as I can and I don't care
whether my wording is polite or politically correct or whatever, as long as it
serves it's purpose. And there are quite a few people like myself.

There's also an exact opposite of that: People who choose their words
carefully in order to be polite and constructive. That's what you describe, if
I understood you correctly.

I personally think that most people here are constructive, no matter whether
they're giving harsh responses or polite ones, because it's all feedback. It's
part of the discussion. I think we (not just here on HN) shouldn't get caught
up in social norms too much, as it only hinders the actual discussion. Words
are just words and the way somebody tries to get a point across is a part of
his character and others just have to accept that.

But still, there's a line in the sand and that's ad hominem attacks. This is
what can truly kill constructive communication and should be avoided in any
community.

However, just my 2 cents.

------
akirk
It might be due to the fact that it is about Wikipedia.

Most people have strong feelings about Wikipedia because it has become a big
part of many people's internet experience. And people usually don't like
change and can become offended when people propose to do so.

~~~
slurgfest
You are onto something. I wasn't a huge fan of the redesign but I couldn't
understand the high emotional tone. A lot of the feedback runs along the lines
of 'how dare you change Wikipedia without going through the Wikipedia
process', etc.

------
gyardley
I'm probably as guilty of this as anyone else.

Perhaps we should all watch Derek Siver's "A Real Person, A Lot Like You" on a
regular basis.

<https://vimeo.com/26110865>

~~~
crgt
Thanks for this. We get the occasional vitriol-lined customer feedback.
Intellectually, you have to let it roll off. Emotionally, it's obviously more
challenging...

~~~
slurgfest
Without knowing the details, it's entirely possible that some of that vitriol
from customers has real signal value for your business and is ignored at your
peril.

------
javert
I think that article was treated so harshly, because it was a genuinely bad
fit for the tastes of the HN community. Given this community's preferences, I
don't really understand how it got so many upvotes and stayed up on the front
page for a while. I thought it was bizarre.

~~~
ed209
>genuinely bad fit for the tastes of the HN community

Suited me just fine. Whether or not I agreed with the design conclusions they
came to is not the point. They gave something a try - good on them. Maybe it
sparks ideas for someone else.

Failing or succeeding aside, surely the spirit of this whole community is
about trying ideas and getting constructive feedback.

------
pud
I didn't post in that thread, but I did find myself cringing at the author's
suggestions.

------
autophil
Actually, I lavished on praise for their brilliant redesign, but it turned out
I was hellbanned and slowbanned for an earlier comment. My comment of praise
never showed up.

And that gets to the point of why people are hostile on HN: because the site
administrators and moderators are hostile and hellban users for the most
benign comments.

Leaders and administrators set the tone. It all rolls downhill, as the saying
goes.

Oh, and my account will be hellbanned and my connection slowbanned yet again
for speaking out. As per usual.

TLDR: Look to the admins of the site. They have been setting the tone all
along. That's where the hostility is originating from.

------
petercooper
Natural part of a community's lifecycle.

~~~
rizla
I think HN has got to the stage were members are assuming to be knowledgeable
on all, rather than trying to learn, experiment and educate.

Added to that a certain attitude of 'just because I'm right, I can be mean'

All just leads to an environment where trying new things is discouraged. The
guy didn't follow the status quo, he tried something different. What happened
wasn't quite a pitch fork smack down, but it felt pretty mean spirited.

I certainly didn't see anything constructive in the comments.

~~~
jarek
As an interested party, may I ask why you feel citricsquid's and my comments
in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4352446> are not constructive?

~~~
rizla
Im not attempting to single anyone out, your comments are 3 amongst 200+ (the
link u send is actually a useful opinion which could be acted upon and
something I'd agree with). So I and you shouldn't take yourself representive
of the entire HN community right?

That said...

I responded to the OP who seemed to be making a general observation, based on
a particular post. My reply was to be in generalisation too, so it may not be
a correct view of the state of HN

------
nekopa
HN seems to focus a lot on execution. I want to say that I think it would have
been better received if they had just taken the wikipedia full content
download, taken a small subset of the data and actually just _built_ the
redesign as a live site with all of their proposed features. Then we could
have just tried the original, the new, and see what really did or didn't work.
As a side benefit, the designers themselves while doing this would also have
made lots of adjustments going through this process and probably would have
fended off a lot of the caustic comments.

Plus, if they actually had access to coders who could take a full image of
wikipedia, div it up and refactor it to a db, then wpredesigned.com could
actually run as a real site, with hourly updates from wikipedia merged in
automatically.

------
orangethirty
We are, after all, humans. Not machines. Our goal may be to remain civilized,
yet we sometimes succumb to our raw emotions. Hackers are a weird bunch (I
know, because I am one). We see ourselves as logical, prudent, and fact based.
In reality, we are as emotion led as any other individual. Biggest difference
is that we work with machines. A machine cannot (yet) get angry or offended.
And when the day they are able to do so, I will no longer will be able to
write code without being sued by the computer I'm programming. Alas, I'm not
defending any behaviour. Just stating something we forget. Hackers are people.
People are irrational. We are just a bit more logical than other professions,
but not less rowdy. Though losing our shit is sometimes the right course of
action. :)

~~~
slurgfest
Granted that people can be emotional, but the aggregate tone of HN itself
isn't completely stable, which it would be if it were entirely determined by
generic facts about people.

~~~
orangethirty
Good point. Though sometimes I feel that HN is hosted on planet Vulcan, rather
than on planet Earth.

------
andrewfelix
Generally I feel Karma does a good job of keeping the comments in check.

I think the Wikipedia article was an emotive exception.

EDIT: Thought I'd add that there were a lot of positive and friendly comments
surrounding the Curiosity landing. So I don't feel like the tone of comments
is leaning in one particular direction.

~~~
alan_cx
The problem with Karma is that too often people are voted down for simply
posting views others disagree with, and I didn't think it was for that. That
that leads to is people not sticking their necks out and only posting if they
agree with the community vibe.

Cards on table: I have often avoided replying through fear of people not
liking my opinion, regardless of how well thought out it might be. Often only
replied if I already know my views are acceptable here. In fact, to get Karma
up, I have merely posted agreeable posts. For example, I have noticed that
having a go at the MPAA gets lots of up votes. See what happens if you dare
argue for the MPAA, you enter down vote hell!!!

That has to be badly wrong, right? Surely its is the worst sort of mob rule
and utterly stifles diverse opinion. Is that what HN is all about?

However, I don't know of a better way to do it, so it is better than nothing.

------
PaulHoule
I thought it was a pretty crappy article although I never said that in the
comments.

------
cutie
> "rubbish; passive-aggressive dump"

Many here were jealous someone had the nerve to redesign their precious
wikipedia and lashed out at the poor sap who dared stuck his neck out.

It may not have been perfect, but what project of that size could be? A few
things on the page looked like an upgrade to me. The appropriate reaction
should have been, "interesting, meh," rather than ugly comments.

"...no one ever kicks a dead dog." --Dale Carnegie

[http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/stop-
worry.html...](http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/stop-
worry.html#six)

------
yequalsx
I too was surprised by the comments. I thought the post was nice. It
demonstrated their process for coming up with a new logo. It showed their
thought process. It gave me an insight into how such things are done. An
insight I didn't previously possess. A number of the comments to the redesign
rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't down vote any of the comments but I didn't
like tenor of them.

I did like their redesign though so this may skew my perception. I don't like
Wikipedia's landing page. It's quite frustrating to me.

------
insertnickname
People are hostile because it's an awful design.

~~~
alan_cx
An awful design is no excuse for hostility. If it is, what is the emotional
response if you are personally insulted?

------
vivekjishtu
Just saw a video about something similar about how we normally talk to a real
person compared to someone online.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfwwHa-7Ux8>

------
wilfra
Another disturbing trend I've noticed is upvoting and downvoting based simply
upon whether or not you agree.

A well-reasoned, polite and civil viewpoint that doesn't match your own should
not be downvoted. The result of this is that people will not post viewpoints
that differ from what they think the community will agree with. That doesn't
help anybody. It causes groupthink and a hivemind mentality.

Downvotes should be handed out to posts that do not contribute positively to
the discussion, that are spam or trolling etc. Not to good faith comments you
don't agree with.

------
ObnoxiousJul
because if you are really a coder you prefer negative feedbacks than a false
confidence. Even though it is yet socially unacceptable, social rules are
stupids.

You cannot earn any glory in publishing your code if people don't tell the
truth. To be pleased by one «I love what you do», you should ready yourself to
get a couple of «you are doing crap». Coders are not expected to publish good
code at first, they are expected to improve their work through sincere
feedbacks. That is our culture.

Social norms are unproductive when it comes to work in cooperation.

The fact that Asperger (sociopaths) are 10 times more prevalent in coding
expertise might not help.

Excellency in coding is an aristocracy that needs no excuses and don't fear
critics. You shall not fear the fight if you believe in your creation, because
good design can stand the assault of the best criticisms.

Social norms are only their to protect a hierarchy of status. Truth protect
the hierarchy of competence.

If you are just a hipster searching for a social status based on consensus
then flee for this is war against you. THIS IS SPARTA!!!!!

~~~
Zak
_The fact that Asperger (sociopaths) are 10 times more prevalent in coding
expertise might not help._

This is not an accurate characterization of Asperger syndrome or the hacker
community. Wikipedia offers the following definition:

 _Sociopathy is the result of social conditioning which leads to a lack of
natural human values. It refers strictly to a social condition where a person
knows, yet has been socially conditioned to disregard, the intrinsic human
values which are believed to be universal._

The somewhat similar characteristic of Asperger syndrome is a lack of
demonstrated empathy. In the case of a harsh review of someone's project, this
could manifest as statements that are accurate from the author's perspective
but do not take in to consideration how they might make the reader feel. I
don't think being blunt in a review is a sign of disregarding universal
intrinsic human values.

~~~
ObnoxiousJul
Well, I like to exaggerate a little bit. Especially since sociopathy/asperger
are rather ill defined. So discard all my remarks as pure troll (don't feed
the troll :).

The real point is there are no truly acceptable positive feedbacks if one does
not equally express negative feedbacks.

So ... one should not whine for getting flamed even if it is socially
unacceptable to discard all this work because that's the path for
improving...and later maybe getting praised.

