
How to Participate in Hacker News - joshuacc
http://edweissman.com/how-to-participate-in-hacker-news
======
DanielBMarkham
Here's another suggestion: flag sparingly.

A lot of long-time HN'ers are frustrated at the "flag patrols" -- people of
one group who don't like such-and-such author and flag them and their
submissions. I've heard several people complain to me about having normal
articles flagged and I've done my share of complaining. Don't be the guy who
takes out your personal grudges in the form of flagging. Let the votes work.

The system will not work with punitive flagging. My policy is that I flag only
when I'm convinced an article is going to take the board off the rails. That's
a tough call anymore. With a large enough audience, people get emotional just
about anything.

But remember that HackerNews is defined the most by what the people _don't_
do. They don't comment if they don't have something interesting to say, they
don't flag unless absolutely necessary, they don't criticize unless it's in
the spirit of discovery, they don't vote down unless it's really a trivial
comment. Do less and you'll enjoy it more. With the crowd as large as it is,
I'm starting to see good comment X which has ten sub-comments, nine of which
either didn't understand the main comment or don't understand the issue yet
want to score karma points by making somewhat snarky remarks. We all need to
fight that tendency. We do that by doing less.

~~~
blantonl
I've been on HackerNews for a little over 2 years, and in that time I don't
believe I've ever flagged any submission. I guess I've always thought that the
voting process would always take it's course.

Curious, if pg is reading this, how often does the flag link generate real
actions on submissions?

~~~
icebraining
I believe the flags are acted upon automatically if enough people flag the
same item.

~~~
Confusion
Definitely: I've seen an article turn 'dead' the instant I flagged it. This
was on the 'new' page, mind you.

------
Tsagadai
I've been a long time lurker here. I lurked for several months before creating
an account and then I lurked quite a bit longer before participating. Groups
of intelligent people are intimidating at first but please don't hold back if
you have something to add to a discussion. New voices are incredibly important
for preventing groups from merely becoming echochambers for established
members.

I especially agree with the original article's point about talking about your
work. If you are doing something interesting, please share it. I'm always keen
to read about amazing hacks and unique projects and I'm sure many others are
too. I'm very slow at writing up my own projects, so I probably should spend
more time doing that.

If you are working on something that feels like reinventing a wheel for a
company that has a core philosophy of Not Invented Here, share that too. I'm
sure many of us have been there once and could give you some advice on ways to
improve your situation (even reinventing wheels can be done to a high standard
and be great practice coding), empathetic support or perhaps a way out into
another job.

I implore you, dear lurking readers, participate.

Edit: fixed some pre-coffee writing.

~~~
mduerksen
Not a total lurker here, but I have mainly 2 reasons why I don't participate
as much as I probably would/could/should...

1\. Time. A discussion typically only lasts one day, and after that its mostly
silent. Alongside my job, I simply can't find enough spare "thinking-time" to
really write a thoughtful comment in that time frame. I feel that my comments
would be more of a knee-jerk reaction than a real addition of value.

2\. Language. My mother tongue ist german, not english. While I've been told
that my english is quite reasonable, I still feel insecure in it, especially
when I read incredibly well-spoken comments. And I do regularly make some
mistakes, especially in grammar, and I don't like making mistakes in public (I
guess nobody does). And of course, it takes longer to write a comment - see
#1...

~~~
hessenwolf
On 2. Ich wohne in Deutschland seit sechs monaten, und ich macht taglich sehr
schlecht dings mit deinen Sprache, so don't worry about it. Just spit it out.

(I notice not wanting to make mistakes is a very apparent German
characteristic, also visible in the Italians)

------
tokenadult
I particularly like this example, which the author acknowledges is extreme:

"3. Be positive.

"This can really be hard when smart people debate, but try it anyway. Notice
the difference between:

"Person A: Water is dry.

"Person B: No it's not. You're full of shit.

"and

"Person C: Water is dry.

"Person D: Not in my experience. What data have you encountered to cause you
to arrive at that conclusion?"

I really like those "what data have you encountered" questions. In a lot of
threads, I silently upvote replies that ask people making striking, unusual,
bold, or implausible claims to please provide more information. (Too many of
those helpful questions, alas, never get answers. But I'll keep on upvoting
follow-up questions looking for facts when I see them.)

The author finishes his list of good suggestions with

"10. No list is ever exhaustive, on Hacker News or anywhere else. Anyone have
any more suggestions?"

I'd be delighted to hear other suggestions about constructive participation on
Hacker News too.

~~~
jt2190
I've asked some "pointed questions" and been downvoted. What I learned from
this is that while some discussion threads are about questioning and learning,
others are about something else... I'm not sure what exactly... Hearing what
you want to hear? Maybe someone else can provide some insight.

~~~
Kaizyn
If your "pointed question" doesn't sound nice enough, the community will
punish you for it. There are also a couple sacred cows that you would be well-
advised against questioning.

~~~
kaybe
Is there a list somewhere? We could learn a lot about our silent assumptions
and possible limitations arising from it.

------
angrycoder
my suggestions:

1) When a major event occurs that isn't directly related to technology, don't
post comments to the effect "I thought this was hacker news, not reddit". This
will ALWAYS get you downvoted and nothing good will come of the discussion.

2) When someone makes a detailed post that you don't agree with, don't down
vote it, respond.

3) This is just me speaking for myself, but the only comments I really find
useful and thought provoking are the ones that expound on or contradict the
original story with your own personal experiences.

4) Nobody here cares if you don't like the font or styling used in the
article. Likewise if the page doesn't work in chromefox version2079. Email the
owner of the article. Besides, you are a nerd, you already have 4 other
browsers installed and know how to use readability.

5) don't be afraid to post funny or terse insightful comments, but make sure
they are funny or insightful first.

~~~
hessenwolf
4) HN is a really good place for feedback, which trying to get online is often
like drawing blood from a stone. People will say what they think of my
site/article, because it is easy - they already have a HN account and are used
to commenting.

Without reference, I say I see a lot that the authors respond and update the
original article based on HN comments.

------
mattdeboard
My main nit to pick with this article is that you violated DRY principles by
assigning "Water is wet" to both Person A and Person C. Only one person was
required.

edit: I was kidding.

------
shasta
Am I the only one who gets tired of the first sentence of so many replies
being along the lines of "I understand where you're coming from and I respect
you as a person, but..."?

Be respectful, but if you disagree, just disagree. Don't patronize.

~~~
polymatter
I agree in the sense that's the way I prefer communication. Direct and to the
point.

But when I'm dealing with non-techies, I see a use to preface any opinion or
question with some sort of disclaimer of that sort. I do this in order to
lessen the probability that they take offence to what I say and then become
uncommunicative. On more than one occasion, I thought we were having a
productive conversation about their problems with the software and I find out
(when they inexplicably become angry) that they thought I was insinuating
their incompetence or lack of intelligence or something.

I think the terse, abrupt style that I and many other techies prefer, comes
across as needlessly insensitive to non-techies and we need to be mindful of
that if we want to allow them to contribute to this community. (We do like
teachers, accountants and shopkeepers commenting on startups in education,
finance and retail, right?)

Not to the extent of prefacing everything with patronizing verbiage, but to be
mindful not to be too abrupt. Because many people take that as being
disrespectful (in my understanding).

~~~
suneilp
It's always been a problem with subject matter experts dealing with the non-
experts. A lot of people get agitated easily dealing with something outside of
their scope of knowledge.

Neither does it help that computers can be especially complicated and finicky
(looking at you windows).

------
bithive123
I know I would participate a lot more if I could reset my password. Somehow I
was able to register my usual handle without providing an email address
because there doesn't seem to be a way to recover it.

I created this new account just to gripe about this and when this cookie
finally dies I'm not sure I'm going to bother to re-register.

~~~
tptacek
You can reset your password. Fill in your email in your profile.

~~~
bithive123
Is there a way to do that without being logged in?

~~~
Kaizyn
It's doubtful at best. Email PG or another site admin, they are exceptionally
responsive.

------
mhartl

        2. Participate!
    

I often participate, but when I don't it's usually for a simple reason:
downvotes sting. This is so important that I would add it as a corollary to
"9. Be nice":

    
    
        9a. Use downvotes sparingly.
    

I and my poor primate brain will thank you.

~~~
rimantas

      > when I don't it's usually for a simple reason:
      > downvotes sting
    

They do. But recently I am trying to use it as an opportunity to learn not to
care _too much_ what do random (or semi-random) people think about your
opinion. Yep, someone will downvote. Not a big deal it is not like someone is
hitting you on the head.I don't mean one should ignore all downvotes because
sometimes it is healthy to think why are you really downvoted, but quite often
downovtes come as a result of knee-jerk reaction, group-think or because
someone just does not like you. That's another thing to learn: resist the urge
to write "I know I will be downvoted for this". If you write this (of follow-
up comment "why am I being downvoted?") you will be, by me, at least :)

~~~
mhartl
I agree. Alas, my poor primate brain is often not so easily assuaged. But your
attitude of viewing downvotes as an opportunity is very much in line with
Stoic philosophy—an attitude, I think, worth cultivating.

------
dwynings
_Put your contact info in the "about" section of your profile (the "email" is
private)._

Just wanted to emphasize this as it seems to confuse a lot of people.

~~~
tikhonj
Yeah, this got me until somebody found my email some other way and mentioned
it was difficult. The real issue is that I basically never see my profile as
somebody else would see it.

~~~
tripzilch
PG might want to add the text "(not shown)" to the user profile template.

~~~
lancashire
I think a "make email visible" checkbox would clear up any confusion here.

------
Joakal
I think a good point is to avoid jokes, especially weak ones. They're easy and
distract from the original topic(s).

~~~
vacri
HN has a really bizzare, inconsistent relationship with humour. Best to avoid
it altogether.

~~~
Stormbringer
It's more that there are large numbers of people who consistently don't get
humour, either for cultural reasons or deficiencies in their humour glands or
whatever.

On the other hand, in forums where people upvote humour, there can be
mechanisms that actually are counterproductive. E.g. on Reddit where there is
something serious that you are interested in, but some idiot starts a punning
thread which takes off and runs for pages. Or slashdot, where a witty one line
(simplistic) put down off a complex issue will recieve maximum karma, whereas
a well thought out retort will struggle to break the readability threshold.

Hacker News has a number of mechanisms for impeding flame-wars, and I think
some of them also impede the flow of humour. No fast replies for instance
slows things down, and also the depth algorithm because PG doesn't like deep
threads. Another one is de-emphasising karma. If people hand out karma for
being entertained, then the system 'rewards' you for being entertaining, so
again people go for the slashdot style one-off witty put down.

On the gripping hand, now that HN de-emphsises karma (and has weird rules
about what can and cannot be down-voted), I'm much less likely to actually
bother. Karma is already pointless, but rubbing our faces in it simply reduces
participation. The ideal system would 'reward' well thought out replies, and I
don't see the current system doing that anytime soon.

On the invisible hand humour is an important part of geek culture, as are
references to things such as invisible hands and gripping hands. I'm not sure
why that is, but word-play and recursion (important parts of being a really
clever programmer) are already pretty close to humour, or possibly even
forming some of the foundations of it.

Which leads me to conjecture that all of the really good programmers have a
healthy sense of humour, and that implies that if hacker news is overrun with
people who don't have a good sense of humour, that would indicate the ratio of
good programmers here is falling. Why would that be? Perhaps because of the
emphasis on money, and winning the startup lottery. The programmers who are
only in it for the money tend to view themselves as more 'serious' - so I
suspect they are the source of the "humourless git" demographic.

~~~
m_myers
I don't think that downvotes necessarily mean that people didn't get the joke.
If I see a witty one-liner comment to a serious story, my normal reaction is
"Ha ha ha! Downvote." Or else I ignore it entirely. (And sometimes it simply
_isn't_ very funny.)

I just don't think we need to encourage content-free comments here; there are
plenty of places to go if you want to make fun of the news.

Then again, I moderate a site that's been accused of taking too hard a line on
"fun", so maybe I shouldn't talk.

~~~
vacri
The problem I have is the inconsistency. I remember posting a sarcastic
comment in a sea of sarcasting comments, then saying 'seriously though' and
adding genuine content. Mine was the only comment that went gray. I've seen
this stuff time and time again with other users - several comments of fluff,
but only one gets pounded. What gets pounded in one thread gets rewarded in
others - sometimes I'll post a snarky, devoid-of-content comment, hit post,
and then wonder just how fast it will go dead and next thing I know it's
really popular. It really is inconsistent, and that bugs me.

~~~
dasil003
Well all comment voting systems are inconsistent just because it's tough to
get a uniform number of views on comments over time. And now that vote counts
are hidden, things are even more wonky in terms of what sees vote volumes.

But in terms of humor I think it's fairly straightforward: don't do it unless
you think of something that's really fucking funny (and hopefully a little
insightful). If it's funny enough you will get upvoted just by sheer force of
charisma. If it's just marginally funny you will likely get buried, and I
think that's a good thing, because a lot of people aren't as funny as they
think they are, and you don't need to look beyond Reddit to see what a culture
of one-liners does to a discussion forum. If it's just some simple pun then
likely many of the readers already thought of it and don't particularly want
to read it over and over again.

------
pork
What a well-timed post, particularly since reading a bizarre takeover of
another thread by a single person who comes off as a bit paranoid:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420845>

~~~
Maciek416
Thanks for the link.. I find that thread kind of fascinating, not because of
anything in particular about the original comment, but because somehow the
person causing so much trouble managed to convince a large number of HN
posters to jump in and try to reason with him. Usually it hasn't progressed so
far. I think it helps that somehow he got to this point with hundreds of
points in karma and has some to burn.

~~~
pork
I was initially a little worried because he was showing signs of being a
paranoid schizophrenic, but then I remembered that I was on the Internet and
probably shouldn't be surprised.

------
mbesto
\- Don't be discouraged at first to post if you don't think you're "following
the guidelines". We all get downvoted from time to time. Especially when
people first get active.

\- Discussions are almost always value add. Even if you adamantly oppose
someone else's position. Gaining perspective is a huge value add for me
personally.

------
llambda
Great list.

Related side note, I was contacted today by who I can only guess was the same
person, asking how to participate on HN. I sent them an email but didn't hear
back. I suppose I can assume they were busy contacting a large set of users.
Not that there's any harm in that. I hope they find this list instructive!

------
kevinskii
_I never understood why people lurked so long._

As a long-time lurker, I mainly visit HN to get exposed to new ideas that I
know little about. This is why I don't (and shouldn't) comment very often.

~~~
akg
I was a long-time lurker as well for the same reason. I do find however, that
participating in the community opens up new discussions and I can further my
learning by connecting with other people. It's always a learning experience to
have discussions with people who are more knowledgeable about a topic or have
differing opinions than your own.

------
Swizec
11\. Submit good stuff.

12\. Write your own good stuff and submit that. Got a long response? Write a
blog, submit it.

Those two have worked the best for me.

------
6ren
> If you have a theory about something but aren't too sure, fine. Just say so.

> And most of all, please never start a sentence with, "It seems to me...".
> Many of us already get too much of that from our PHBs.

Could you expand on this please? I've always interpreted "It seems to me..."
as "I have a theory but I'm not certain".

------
ottbot
To participate in HN, you basically want to be sure to point out any logical
fallacies, missing citations, and any possible reference to Godwin's Law, the
Streisand effect, or the Dunning–Kruger effect.

------
rubidium
" Best article: I'm nothing until the Hacker News community comments on me."

Well, sometimes the article is better than the discussion. Sometimes the
discussion is better than the article. In my experience, the trivial articles
sometimes have the best discussions, and the best articles seem to often have
trivial discussions.

It'd be fun to get a list of best HN discussions (highest karma average per
comment perhaps) ... anyone know how to do that?

~~~
wallflower
> It'd be fun to get a list of best HN discussions (highest karma average per
> comment perhaps)

The now-discontinued SearchYC database had top lists but not the particular
metric you want. It doesn't show up in the Google cache or archive.org's
Wayback Machine (<http://top.searchyc.com>)

In my opinion, I think some of the best HN discussions have been/are the ones
with hundreds of comments, with divergent threads and replies. They are
usually sparked by a fairly controversial topic.

I can't think of an example right now. However, this API to the HN corpus
might be able to get you the data you want (not sure how current it is):

<http://api.ihackernews.com>

------
zackzackzack
1.) Most of the time I just tell stories. I am only 20 and have relatively
little experience. The only thing I can really add is a well written comment
that asks a question or explains something neat.

2.)The best way to participate is to go out and do something awesome. Take
something you saw on the front page and mess around with it. Maybe something
will happen and you make the front page. Probably it won't, but the next time
it comes up, you can at least share your experience and point out the basic
pitfalls. Example: I am working on extending emscripten to use dragonegg to
compile fortran _. It's really hard and I don't think I can do it, but next
time emscripten comes up, I will know what's up and can comment on how awesome
Alon is.

3.)My password for my account is zackzackzack. Yep, same as my user name. It
lets me keep from getting attached to an argument or an account. If somebody
can just go in and change my password, then it is pointless to really care all
that much. I like contributing, but I know at any instance all the karma I
built up on here could be sealed away.

Edit: _fortran to javascript. Google emscripten github for more info.

~~~
zacharycohn
That's pretty dumb. Your account could be compromised for spam purposes, or
someone could easily start posting things as you.

Because your full name, personal domain (which includes your last name),
college, and interests are all part of your profile, it would be fairly
trivial to post some pretty embarrassing comments or links as you. Then if
someone (potential employer/girlfriend/family member/etc) does a google search
for Zachary Maril, and a bunch of links to racist or pornographic sites come
up... "my password is public" is a pretty lousy excuse.

~~~
zackzackzack
What is preventing somebody from copying your profile and creating zcohn, the
malicious hacker from Seattle who likes parkour, technology, and doing bad
things? Your identity is comparably open as mine is as far as details.

At some point people are going to do bad things to this profile. No doubt.
With that in mind though, I can post here because I want to say something and
contribute, not because of Karma. If I had a few thousand points and a
reputation, I would have something to protect. But now I can just say what I
think is useful, not what I think will be upvoted.

~~~
icebraining
It's not only (or even primarily) about linking your real identity to your HN
account; it's about having a track record on HN itself.

I don't care if you're from Seattle or India, or if you're a young guy or an
old lady; I care that you're the same person who posted that real interesting
post three months ago about certain subject, or with whom I've had some
interesting discussion about this or that, and who has a certain opinion about
a controversial topic. I don't know if a certain post with your handle comes
from the person I know is smart and probably knows what (s)he's talking about,
or from some troll.

If I can never be sure if you're the same person, then trust can't be
established; it's not about karma as "points," it's about karma as a property
of human relations.

It's the same reason why I (almost) never respond to Anonymous Cowards on
Slashdot - I'm never sure if the person who replies to me next is the same I
was talking to.

~~~
zackzackzack
That is a really valid point. I am not a creditable source when posting from
this accoutn. The words coming from here can only be trusted as words without
weight. No more, no less.

As an aside, I was not the person I was three months ago. Neither was anybody
else on here. Part of my world view is that nobody is ever the same person as
I remember them as.

Rationale:

a.) my impression of a person on the internet is inherently imperfect.

The internet is an autistic medium and can't really describe the complexity of
a person. Maybe he is a "dummy" but happened to know one thing really really
well and was having an awesome day mentally when he posted that comment. Or
perhaps he was a putnam winner who was hangover and just broken up with a long
term girlfriend when he made that really douchey comment. I just can't know
this things and won't pretend to know them.

b.) people change.

What if my comment about not knowing anything about Python 12 months ago
spurred me to go out and master the language last year? If you compared a
persons comments at the very beginning of reading hacker news and then a year
later, I expect you will see a massive shift in their writing style. People
change and aren't the people they were the last time I interacted with them.
How could I trust anyone on here (or in real life), if I know I can never be
sure they are the same person they were the last time we interacted? It's a
hard question that I haven't really found a good answer for yet.

~~~
kaybe
To b.) Developement of skills is mostly unidirectional. If you're a master of
Python 12 today and you're not having an accident you won't be a total novice
next year. Experiences you have made will (hopefully) be remembered next year
(and I may want to question you about them), and maybe you will remember the
people you had a conversation with. Yes, people change, but more than traces
of the past remain nevertheless.

~~~
zackzackzack
Very true. The only exception I could think of to that is when we are working
with new technologies. As an example, node js and clojure are changing rapidly
enough that the year to year difference is not insignificant. As we deal with
technologies that are progressing more and more rapidly with time, it would
probably be a good idea to keep in mind that some people who used to know what
they were talking about may no longer have any idea of what is actually going
on. But this is more a particular exception to places like Hacker News.

If I had a facebook, I would never do this sort of thing there. That would
really really suck.

------
cosmez
one of the main reasons i think people don't participate is because of the
language, a lot of us are very good at reading english but are ashamed about
our writing skills.

Its very common to be downvoted or insulted because of that, im trying to get
pass that problem right now

~~~
dekz
This isn't reddit, you're not going to get downvoted for incorrect grammar or
spelling. Anyone who has been on HN for a day can tell it's a multicultural
environment and there are many non-native english speakers.

You shouldn't hold back your participation due to insecurities on your
spelling or grammar. In my experience the only downvoted posts belong in the
categories of; stupid, messaged which consist only of 'haha' or 'this';
Completely offtopic; Insulting or offensive; Incorrect.'

In this post I've probably used semi-colons incorrectly, this doesn't I will
be downvoted because of it.

~~~
gbog
Sure, but on the other hand one should read and reread and reread again before
posting.

~~~
Stormbringer
That would be easier if the reply box was bigger than the address window on an
envelope.

It's like the bad old days of trying to use the Eclipse IDE where most of your
screen real estate is taken up with tabs and buttons and you only get a narrow
5x80 window on the world.

Except that in this case instead of the screen being taken up with masses of
widgets, it is consumed with vast tracts of whitespace. Good job there, PG.

(Actually, if PG had anything to do with it, I suspect it is a well thought
out policy which results because he doesn't like long conversations (possibly
a signal to noise bias against long posts?) consider also that there is no
easy way to quote the parent, which just wastes bandwidth anyway)

~~~
mkr-hn
You can resize the box in Chrome.

------
xarien
Before reading this post, a new user should ask him/herself a question: Do I
feel a need for validation?

If the answer is yes, go ahead and read the suggestion along with the
guidelines of how to act.

If the answer is no, stop reading the suggestion after the first point: "Be
yourself."

~~~
verroq
This exactly. Too many people don't say what they think because they are
afraid of losing internet points.

------
Spoom
Thanks for those article. I'm trying HN at the suggestion of a colleague,
having been a longtime participant in the Slashdot community. It's a bit
intimidating as a noob here, but I think that's just because I'm not used to
the higher signal to noise ratio (though /.'s moderation system does a very
good job with what it has).

I'll still probably lurk more as I get used to the community. It's great to
say "participate!" but there is something to be said for understanding the
people with which one is talking as well.

------
tjmc
Another suggestion - try to avoid reinforcing group think or popular memes.
It's a form of karma whoring that just encourages narrow thinking and prevents
the discussion of new ideas.

There's really nothing to say about software patents at this point that hasn't
been said many times before.

In some ways this is an extension to the guideline of not introducing flamewar
topics, but even less interesting as pretty much everyone agrees.

------
matthiasb
"I see no need for "personas"" If you work for a company X and you are posting
with your real name, you will somehow represent the company X. Whatever you
say on YC is public. Be careful to not damage your company image.

~~~
polymatter
This stung me really bad in my first job as a trainee developer. I made a
comment on a site (slashdot I think) and foolishly put down my real name and
company name.

Some journalist on CNet took my comment as the official company line and
included it in an article. It was picked up by investors (during what was in
retrospect due diligence before the company was sold) and I got a severe
reprimand from my manager for it. He let me know under no uncertain terms that
were it not for my excellent work up till then he'd have fired me for that. I
was never really forgiven, made to feel uncomfortable and left 6 months later
when the company was sold.

Now I don't exactly hide my real name, but its not easily visible. And I
certainly don't disclose the company I work for. I advise any non-C level
employee to do the same.

~~~
matthiasb
Sorry to hear that. I did put a disclaimer on my personal blog because I don't
want to use a persona but I still have things to say ;-)

------
nl
My number 1 tip is to check your comments for replies (see that "threads" link
in the menu bar).

Often someone will ask you a question, and unless you check you will never
know.

------
chorola
Shame for my lurk so long! : )

