

Ask HN: What is the consensus on Hacker News? - tokenadult

A thread currently at the top of the Hacker News main page includes comments mentioning issues on which most Hacker News users agreed a few years ago, and other issues on which most users agree these days. Users are speculating about HN's "broader sentiments" and others are mentioning "fanboys" or "echo-chamberism."<p>As far as I know, no one reads Hacker News exhaustively. I certainly don't. I miss hundreds of threads each week now, not even having time to lurk in them. So I'm not sure if Hacker News today has any consensus points of view. What do you think? Within the scope of the site's guidelines (which were recently revised) what are the issues on which most users here agree, and what are the issues on which there are vigorous debate?
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jcr
tokenadult, from all of the things I've read from you over the years, I
believe you are too kind and well intentioned to notice the reality of the
situation. Then again, maybe I'm too harsh and jaded.

If you're as jaded as I am, you've already realized that the ancient days when
people put great stuff on the Internet because they enjoyed working on it are
long gone. The commercial interest of the web combined with human vanity have
transformed the Internet into a for-profit popularity contest. The vast bulk
of submissions to HN support this, both the stuff on the front page, and all
of the countless things that have slid off of the 'newest' page into oblivion.

A large part of the supposed "sentiments" show in comments, submissions, and
voting/flagging are really just playing to the crowd. Though it might be
offensive to some, the typical phrase is "karma whoring." It's really just
human nature at work; if you buy or buy into some expensive widget, you
promote your choice publicly to gather the esteem of your peers. Similarly, if
you abandon something, you disparage it publicly to promote your choice and
gather the esteem of your peers.

Using gmail/google?

Bought an Apple?

Programming in javascript?

Love/Hate copyrights?

All of the "consensus" issues boil down to pimping for profit and praise, or
resisting the resentments of others. A prime example is, when was the last
time you saw someone really speak out against javascript? It does happen on
occasion, but voicing a negative opinion of javascript is always severely
punished -- negative comments threatens the capacity of js coders to make a
living, so they respond harshly.

As noted by others, positive opinions of javascript are promoted endlessly,
and for the opposite reason -- positive comments increase the value/income of
js coders, so they respond beneficially.

There are plenty of people on HN that work for the big companies (Apple,
Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and gasp, Microsoft), so the pimping and
punishing is rampant on every mention of any of them. As harsh as it might
sound, the people employed by these companies have vested interest in
promoting and protecting them.

If someone disparaged the value of the skill you use to make a living, how
would you react?

On the flip side, if someone praised the value of the skill you use to make a
living, how would you react?

(For the record, I'm a typical human language monoglot, so I absolutely envy
your skill with the Chinese language!)

    
    
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Did my admission of envy for your skills make you feel good or proud of your
abilities?

    
    
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Maybe that was just what I wanted you to feel...

If you have far too much free time and spend it watching the /newest queue,
you'll see the attempted manipulation of HN by both vested parties and
professional marketers. Their efforts are continuous, and their goal is
manufacturing "consensus" by any means possible. The self-reinforcing echo
chambers seen on HN and elsewhere are entirely intentional, completely dubious
in nature, and created specifically for the sake of profit.

When you hear an echo, the only rational question is, "Who profits from this?"

With all of the above said, we still see people asking tough questions and
others responding in an honest attempt to contribute help. It's the very best
part of HN. Unfortunately, the bright sparks of HN have been slowly fading in
the face of contentious discussions, ever falling average technical acumen,
and of course, the self-centered motivations behind promoting and punishing. I
honestly don't know if the trend of decline is inevitable or reversible, but
surprisingly, I like to believe the latter.

~~~
pestaa
Great comment.

And now the only rational question is, "how do you reverse it?"

~~~
jcr
Thanks for the compliment but my simplistic summation of game theory and group
psychology still needs a _whole_ _lot_ of work. ;)

As for how to fix it, that's a remarkably tough question, in fact, it might be
a formally "undecidable" (unsolvable) question but that doesn't mean a better
_partial_ solution can't be found. Either way, writing up my thoughts would
result in a _painfully_ long post, and I'm not sure I would make much useful
progress towards potential improvements.

More importantly, I have already derailed tokenadult's submission; it's clear
that he wanted to know both the _personal_ and _perceived_ biases are around
HN, rather than look at the root cause of those biases. It's fair to say I let
him down by examining root causes. If you asked me what color the sky is, and
I answered with the physics causing sky color on various planets, then you
wouldn't have gotten the answer you wanted.

An important part of overcoming bias is knowing what the biases are.

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hiddenstage
After lurking for a few months, here are a few "consensus" issues that come to
mind (again, this is just the majority of users - certainly not all):

\- Macbooks are the best laptops

\- iOS is preferred over Android (both in use and development)

\- PHP is terrible

\- Facebook is the devil

A few common debates here are:

\- Ruby vs. Python

\- Rails vs. Django

\- Google (whether they are evil or helpful)

\- Whether or not we are in a startup bubble

~~~
S4M
Other "consensus" you forgot:

\- lisp is good, java is bad

\- working in a big co sucks

\- rms is awesome

\- pg is awesome

~~~
brudgers
_lisp is good, java is bad_

And this makes Clojure...??

There is plenty of dislike for Lisp and acceptance of Java.

~~~
dylanpyle
I think you'll find the common theme being Java hate, but a general love-hate
relationship with the JVM (clojure, scala both have their fanboys and
critics).

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DanBC
If you mention some companies a few people will rabidly upvote your comment,
and a few people will rabidly downvote your comment. It doesn't matter what
your comment actually is. Online communities are used to this kind of
religious war. It's sort of surprising to see it so blatantly here.

TSA are always stupid, all the time.

Patents are evil. (But no-one knows what to replace them with. And maybe
they're only evil for software.)

Facebook is evil and will destroy the Internet, but most certainly are
violating all kinds of privacy laws.

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brudgers
There is an historical bias in favor of Google and Apple. Somewhat
contradictorily, there are biases in favor of privacy and open source. Other
large companies tend not to be seen as positively.

On the hardware side, ARM is favored over Intel.

Politically and culturally, HN tends to US centric with an Anglo shell.

~~~
viraptor
I'm not sure if Google part contradicted the other ideas until a few years
ago. Easily available software, open-access quality services, clients
available for linux (even if not open-source, it's still something), they
contributed to many projects like the linux kernel, published go, worked on
Android which is... corporate-flavoured open-source, etc. They were very much
about geeky stuff and easily available information. Google groups were also
popular with open-source projects.

Also in all cases at some point in the past favouring those companies was
about rooting for the underdog... and then just continued even when they
became large and abusive in some cases.

~~~
brudgers
Apple v Open Source (particularly since the iPhone).

Google v Privacy (always).

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Piskvorrr
I think you have just spawned a recursive argument, which Segmentation fault

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csense
Consensuses I've noticed on HN:

\- Paypal screws merchants over.

\- Startups are cool.

\- PG is God.

\- The US should be more liberal, like SF or Europe.

~~~
_delirium
As an American who believes the last one (and moved to Denmark), I haven't
felt that HN posters generally agree with me, unless you mean purely on social
issues (e.g. discomfort with religious conservatism and support of gay
rights). On economic issues there seem to be a lot of libertarians around,
tempered mainly by a vocal group who're unhappy with the healthcare situation
for freelancers and startups.

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andremendes
My 2 cents on what I think is consensus here:

    
    
      Javascript frameworks are cool
      Public API's are good
      VIM is awesome

