
To my fellow Hacker News contributors - raganwald
http://raganwald.posterous.com/to-my-fellow-hacker-news-contributors
======
tptacek
We are all going to nod our heads to this post, but as 'raganwald knows,
nothing is going to change as a result. The inoculations against tribalism and
tribal drama are cultural. Whatever vaccine HN had against this, it's worn
off.

My take is, flag these topics off the site. Cut them off like a gangrenous
limb. We want to keep the leg, but even more, we want our heart to keep
beating.

But then, a vocal subset of HN users is offended by the idea that story
upvotes don't mean it's OK to debate libertarianism vs. liberalism here, so
don't misread this comment as prescriptive. We're not going to fix this
problem. I'm also fine with that.

Ed's right too, of course. Are you here to hear what the average HN'er thinks
about Steve Jobs? No, you're not. I read HN in two ways, both of which still
work for me:

* I scan for stories I have something to contribute to, _and_

* I read a shortlist of users whose presence on a thread have been reliable signifiers of quality. (The list is on my profile.)

Try doing that. You'll miss a lot of HN; a good thing!

~~~
grandalf
It's funny that you write this b/c I hadn't read any of those threads myself.
I have a filter where I don't often read the comments on stories from major
media that make it to HN. There's rarely anything much to discuss and you're
absolutely right that I do not care what anyone on HN thinks of Steve Jobs.

As a side note, I'm happy about the removal of point visibility on comments...
but I wonder if perhaps increased tribalism might be a result of users in
search of social meaning... which used to be easier to obtain via points.. and
over time has been replaced by an emergent tribal system, wars, etc.

~~~
redler
I think you're spot-on. This has to be a part of it. Whatever its issues, the
visible point system was a way for readers to interact with the site in a way
that produced a response for all to see. Whether this encouraged herd behavior
or changed the shape of discussions in an unfavorable way is another issue.

Comment-dimming notwithstanding, that feedback has been removed. There's a
class of reader whose desire for a kind of interactivity is no longer
satisfied by the voting system; for them, pile-on voting has been replaced by
pile-on posting (albeit often in the more thoughtful HN style). Which in turn
begets more such posts, and thus a more polarized conversational shape.

~~~
tptacek
I think you guys are falling in love with a clever narrative about voting and
comments and socialization and aren't remembering all the pointless and
objectively stupid arguments we were having about transient down _and up_
fluctuations in comment scores when we could see them all.

~~~
grandalf
Perhaps -- but then it was about points and not about ideologies.

------
jrockway
I try not to pay attention to articles about Apple here, because it really
does bring out some strong emotions. Logic goes out the window and everything
reads like a love sonnet written by a retarded monkey. It's stressful and
unfun.

Reddit solved this problem, kind-of-sort-of, with subreddits. If all you care
about is programming, visit the programming subreddit. Unfortunately, the
comments on Reddit are extremely low-quality (even on /r/programming), so it's
not actually worth visiting. But maybe this could save HN for a few more
months.

I have a friend that says an addiction is something you do not for enjoyment,
but because you have to. I sort of feel this way about HN now; I come here out
of habit and feel weird if I pull away, but most of the articles aren't that
enjoyable. The ones that are are easily ruined by jackasses (someone called me
"an internet toughguy" for suggesting that he might be misusing the debugger).

It's probably time for moderation or something like Stack Overflow's editing
and flagging system. It's too easy to post bad comments (look at my history, I
do it), and while one bad comment is OK, 100 bad comments is not. If we could
just kill the flamewars or edit them to be nicer, the would could be a better
place. People will whine about the integrity of the site, but you know what?
Who cares. We already have too many users. I don't think anything else will
save HN from becoming another Reddit.

Or, maybe HN is "done" and the cool people have already found another place,
and we just aren't invited.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Reddit solved this problem, kind-of-sort-of, with subreddits. If all you
> care about is programming, visit the programming subreddit. Unfortunately,
> the comments on Reddit are extremely low-quality (even on /r/programming),
> so it's not actually worth visiting. But maybe this could save HN for a few
> more months.

I think there's a very simple solution to this problem.

First of all, I feel that Reddit has an excellent codebase - for example, it
is much more feature-rich than Arc (HN's codebase). So I'd recommend using the
Reddit codebase for a site that fixes these issues, but that's a minor concern
and can always be changed later.

Now Quora has taken the approach of removing anonymity, which I feel isn't
correct because it can stifle discussion. A better approach would be to simply
charge a nominal fee (a few dollars per month) to enable posting, which would
make it much easier to keep track of and ban trolls. Moreover, if the
community were to grow large enough, this money might actually be useful in
terms of maintenance costs, etc.

Of course, just like Quora, viewing the site should be possible for anyone.
The aim should be to set a high enough standard for discourse that people are
willing to pay requisite few dollars per month to access the site.

Edit: I don't know if this would be a good idea (haven't really thought about
the repercussions), but perhaps adding a "penalty fee" to the next month's
monthly fee if one accumulates a large number of downvotes would be another
way of stopping trollish comments. And perhaps doing the opposite as well -
reducing the monthly fee for users who generate a large amount of insightful
discussion.

~~~
jrockway
Metafilter charges you $5 to gain the ability to post. It's a little better
than Reddit, but ultimately the discussion software is so bad it's hard to
tell if this works or not. Threaded comments encourage back-and-forth and
nitpicking over details. Sometimes these become flamewars when people start
calling other people names. On the other side of the coin, there is flat
commenting. That tends to become one-liners and "like!" instead of anything
valuable.

The problem with community sites is that communities are not good at enforcing
what they want. Stack Overflow is a good example of this: ask a question like
"What's your favorite food to eat while programming", and you get a million
karma points. Solve someone's super-obscure bug and provide a detailed answer,
you get one or two points.

I think my ultimate solution will be to return to blogging, and when I read an
interesting article, write a detailed response. Then I will ignore the rest of
the discussion.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Metafilter charges you $5 to gain the ability to post. It's a little better
> than Reddit, but ultimately the discussion software is so bad it's hard to
> tell if this works or not.

I had forgotten about Metafilter. It's been around since 1999, which is
probably the reason for the poor site design. But that also shows that it's
possible to create a social news website that doesn't turn to trash within 5
years.

I'd say that it's worth giving a Reddit clone with a Metafilter-style pay-to-
post system a shot. I'd do it myself, but I don't possess the requisite time
or non-technical knowledge. Hopefully someone does, because I could see myself
paying $5/month for a social news site that can indefinitely restrict itself
to intelligent and on-topic commentary.

> I think my ultimate solution will be to return to blogging, and when I read
> an interesting article, write a detailed response. Then I will ignore the
> rest of the discussion.

I like this option as well, but primarily for a different reason. It's a well-
known fact that our brains are plastic, and I've noticed that my shift from
reading and writing long-form, thorougly reviewed pieces to short-form
comments (like the one I'm writing right now) has severely affected my ability
to hunker down and concentrate on detailed work.

Perhaps it's just that my expectations aren't that high, but I don't
particularly share the OP's commiserations regarding HN. I still think it's a
nice site that provides me with news and corresponding insightful commentary
on the latest in the startup/tech scene. However, for the sake of my
intellect, I probably need to start cutting back on the internet in general
and return to reading more books.

Unfortunately, the internet is quite the addiction, so it's a bit of a
struggle to take the first step ;/

------
edw519
_I mean that I am making myself feel worse for reading HN..._

<lightHeartedAttemptAtEmpathyAndEncouragement>

That's a signal that your focus has shifted a little too much from your own
work to HN. Take a day off and invest that energy back where it belongs. We'll
be here when you get back. Promise.

</lightHeartedAttemptAtEmpathyAndEncouragement>

EDIT: Added tags (Lighten up you guys).

~~~
grandalf
Rather than interpreting his essay as a sign of HN becoming too important in
his life, I think it's more accurate to say that he values HN and feels that a
blog post is a good way to contribute useful ideas back to the community.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yes, but it's also reasonable to say that HN is a distraction, and the more
time you spend on it, the more you tune in to the various tribes and trends
and stuff -- whether they actually exist, or not.

(Every attempt so far to objectively measure any decline in discourse on HN
has failed, so I try to remain consciously skeptical of any claims to that
effect.)

I do this as a conscious self-correction now. Any time I find myself getting
wound up by something on HN -- which, fortunately, isn't very often any more
-- I try to leave it for a few days, or more. When I come back, it's magically
a better place.

Not that I want raganwald to go away for a while. His name is one that I
appreciate seeing in comment threads. :-)

------
mindcrime
Yeah, it's hard to say what - if anything - to do about this. Like you say, if
you post a reply to a comment that you downvoted, you are - arguably - just
adding more noise. But, then again, people always complain about "ninja
downvoting" and say "if you're going to downvote me, at least tell me why."

But the last time I left a reply to something I downvoted, my reply in turn
got downvoted pretty quickly (although it eventually go voted back up to a
neutral score of 1), which left me questioning the wisdom of doing that. And
the sad thing is, the comment in question was one of those that centered
around one of those possible "group think" scenarios... so I don't know if I
just got downvoted by members of the "other camp" or by (more or less) neutral
observers who don't support leaving replies explaining why you find a comment
troublesome.

Uuugggh.... there's no way to win. Maybe we need /. style moderation so you
can tag a comment as "off topic" or whatever when you downvote...

As to the bigger question of eliminating the "tribalism," hhhmmm... I wish I
had an answer, but sadly I can't say I do. Maybe your post will at least raise
awareness of the issue and will help a bit?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _Like you say, if you post a reply to a comment that you downvoted, you are
> - arguably - just adding more noise._ //

Personally I think HN has degraded vastly since we lost scores. I see far more
downvotes for disagreement and apparently less interest in supporting good
argument.

It's really hard now to read HN and get much from it unless the topic is one
you want to read every single comment on.

I hope I'm not dragging things away from the OP main point but I feel this is
not unrelated to it.

~~~
hugh3
I agree, invisible comment scores add noise, because if I read something I
agree strongly with I feel compelled to show my approval. In the old days
clicking the up-arrow would show a suitable quantum of approval, but nowadays
I sometimes feel compelled to add a comment which just says "I agree" and
perhaps adds some minor extra point.

While typing this comment it occurred to me that this comment falls into that
very category. Whoops.

~~~
_delirium
Going even further and showing the _actual voters_ , in addition to the score
(like kuro5hin does) can also sometimes remove the need to post. I especially
miss it here at the end of an exchange, where I want to say something like
"good point" or "well I still disagree but your argument is a good one". On
k5, I'd just vote "3" on that comment, which they would then be able to see I
upvoted. Here it feels like I need to post an acknowledgement, or else it
feels like I've rudely just ignored a good criticism or went off in a huff,
because there's no silent way to signal that I'm breaking off the conversation
amicably.

I also find it useful as a way of recognizing names. If a comment of mine gets
10 upvotes here, I know that some amphormous subset of readers liked my
comment, but I don't build any recognition of who.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm not sure I care about the voters _per se_ but perhaps about the filtering
ability that one gets by taking extra note of recognised voters. I think that
I'd prefer to be able to, say, give a bonus to votes by people who I've also
upvoted ... the more I think about it the more I'm thinking how good
slashdot's voting system is, OK I wouldn't adopt it wholesale but it's vastly
superior to what we have here now I think.

Is there any reason I can't have something vote numbers and vote inflation
whilst others have only flagging with no vote scores?

------
DanielBMarkham
I've read so many meta articles (including ones I've written) that I'm
beginning to get a bit lost. Didn't raganwald already write something like
this? Maybe a couple of times?

I float in and out of the community, sometimes being gone for a week and
sometimes checking everyday. For many years. As we all know, meta commentary
is not new here.

Yes, the magic sauce has worn off. People who spend weeks working on things
are treated with easy criticism -- there's a reason PG asked for us to "be
nice" to the new bunch of YC guys. People who post fluffy group-think are
rewarded. What this leads to is more and more fluff, less and less real work
that we can help with by commenting. Since we are more likely to be
emotionally moved by things that are higher on the list, we feel as if we must
comment [insert self-serving reason here]. This leads to comment-bloat,
especially as traffic numbers soar.

I wish I had some secret formula to make it all better, but the way the site
is structured, emotional response rules, not quality. When you vote up, you
are saying "hell yeah!" not "my logical brain has deduced this to be of higher
quality than average" -- at least in the aggregate. So the site is performing
exactly as it should, sadly.

------
quanticle
Doesn't this post simply contribute to the problem, though? I mean, if
Raganwald wants the community to be more focused on content, rather than
pointless meta-discussion, shouldn't he or she post _content_? I mean, all
this post serves to do is give even more attention to the hipsters and trolls.

My recommendation? If you see a comment that's clearly off-topic, vote it down
if you're able or ignore it if you're not. Even if you disagree with the
content of the comment, don't respond to it. If its a thread; scroll past it
without stopping. If enough people do this, the HN algorithm will push these
off-topic threads to the bottom, where they'll slowly wither away.

~~~
hugh3
Only works for top-level threads though. A bad response to a highly-rated OP
will continue to hang out near the top of the page.

It's a genuine problem, what _do_ you do with bad comments? The average bad
commenter is a fifteen-year-old boy with strongly held yet poorly developed
opinions. If you downvote them without replying, then you wind up with an
angry commenter who thinks their opinions are being shut down by the
community, and they'll probably feel compelled to keep posting them LOUDER and
MORE EXTREME. But if you reply to them and explain why their comments are bad,
you start a rather boring thread.

Neither option seems particularly good.

~~~
quanticle
>Only works for top-level threads, though. A bad response to a highly rated OP
will continue to hang out near the top of the page.

Yeah, this is why I wish HN had collapsible comments (like Reddit, or even
Slashdot). In that way, you could simply collapse irrelevant comments and
ignore them. Having comments that can't be collapsed makes this much more
difficult, as even a comment that's been downvoted into oblivion still takes
up space and forces you to scroll more in order to get to the stuff that you
are interested in.

~~~
icebraining
If you're using Chrome, check out Hacker News Collapse:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bbkfcamiocfccgmcjn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bbkfcamiocfccgmcjngdljolljhifdph)

------
Androsynth
Two problems with this post: 1-it severely exaggerates the personal attacks
2-it ignores the comments that led to the 'ad-hominem attacks'

The comment that started the 'attacks' was: "Steve Jobs touched people lives
in a way no other can, sometimes at a very personal level". I find this
comment completely ridiculous. I own an iphone and use a mac, I'm not an apple
hater, but I do hate irrational fanboys. Comments that drip fanboyism and go
well past rational discussion should be downvoted, not people posting
responses. The responses were slightly aggressive, but they were responses to
a terrible comment.

------
TomOfTTB
I agree with the sentiment but here's the thing...

The type of person to post an insult or an ad hominem is probably not the type
of person who would read this post much less care what it has to say. Because
for someone to read this they'd have to care about the impact they have on the
community and there's no way an insult or ad hominem can have a positive
impact on the community. They are, by definition, expressions of pure
negativity so their intent is unquestionably negative.

(and don't even get me started on the people who upvote such posts)

So you can't just say "lets all get together and fix this" because the people
who would answer your call aren't the people causing the problem. Then the
question becomes "how do you deal with the people causing the problem".

The only answer I can see is banning. Because said group is made out of two
types of people: Those who don't care about the community and those who care
about the community but care about expressing their own anger more. So the
first group just won't care and the second group can't help themselves.

But then the question is "Do you really want Hacker News to be a place where
people get banned on a regular basis?". First I don't think pg even has the
time for that and second I think most would find that off putting.

So (and pardon me for the long comment here) we end up where we started.
Trying to be civil and interact with the civil members of the community while
trying to ignore those who don't care about civility.

------
webwright
I would love there to be varied flag options for comments. i.e. you click
"Flag" and it spawns a dropdown with:

"Off-topic" "Rude" "Ad Hominem" "Straw Man"

If enough flaggers agree on the lack of value (and the reason for it), punt it
AND ALL OF THE REPLIES.

~~~
rlvesco7
Agree 100%. I'd add it should be a separate score too... No one would want to
be a high scorer in these areas...

------
dgallagher
One thing that StackOverflow does really well is penalize you for downvoting:
<http://stackoverflow.com/privileges/vote-down>

Each downvote costs you karma. You have to have "X" karma before downvoting is
enabled for your account. This incentivizes you to downvote cautiously as it
costs you. That subpar comment you're clicking the down-arrow for must have
really earned it.

------
ForrestN
I definitely share this experience, for instance in many of the recent
"Groupon is a scam" threads, or anything having to do with Android. It becomes
a disincentive to participate in conversations about certain topics.

I think one thing that might help, and that often spurs relatively useless
chains of comments, is to clarify exactly when a post should be downvoted. I
think some people use downvoting to express disagreement, but since downvoting
not only compromises someone's reputation (via karma) but also minimizes the
visibility of the comment, the effect is punishment for that disagreement,
which again motivates me at least to avoid controversial topics where I seem
to hold an uncommon view.

~~~
hugh3
_I definitely share this experience, for instance in many of the recent
"Groupon is a scam" threads, or anything having to do with Android. It becomes
a disincentive to participate in conversations about certain topics._

I find that the worst area of discussion is intellectual property law.

~~~
brudgers
> _I find that the worst area of discussion is intellectual property law._

IP discussions are a veritable oasis of circumspection compared to "Macbook
Pro gets new battery" threads.

------
tokenadult
My suggestion is to upvote all that you find here that is thoughtful and
helpful. Upvote a comment (or story) that makes you think. Upvote a comment
(or story) that "gratifies [your] intellectual curiosity." Upvote comments
that ask other commenters please to provide information backing up their
opinions. Upvote other comments that provide other thoughtful guidance to the
discussion or new information beyond what is already posted in the submitted
article or in other comments. Upvote to mark and thank the good. Since no one
has the time to read the site exhaustively, not even any one of the curators,
mostly ignore the bad and crowd it out with the good.

------
brudgers
Sorry, but I don't see this as a big issue. Discussing Apple is
disproportionately interesting because of the reactions it invokes.

Whenever there is a major story about Apple, there will typically be a tribal
war because Apple has positioned itself as a tribal artifact (e.g. think
differently, I'm a Mac, dolphin shorts v. grey suits)...

And forgive me for being a cynic, but it wouldn't surprise me if Job's
resignation had been sitting in a can to be used in the case of fire...and
yesterday morning, Apple's security incompetence regarding OSX Lion had all
the makings of a major PR fire which has now been swept off everyone's radar
screen like so much anthrax after 911.

------
slmbrhrt
I wonder what this would look like in a two-column view, with one column for
discussion, and a smaller margin to the side for metadiscussion. Maybe some
kind of mechanism to boot a single comment to one side or the other, and an
option as a reader to ignore metacommentary.

------
pseale
I don't know how best to moderate or otherwise encourage better HN
participation (or how to improve forums, or mailing lists, or tweet streams,
or whatever they invent or rename tomorrow), but I have a thought.

Can we apply a "who cares?" ethos/filter to our comments? I.e., if I am about
to post a comment, before I do so I ask myself "who cares about this comment?"
If the answer is Probably Nobody, then I don't post it. Simple, right?

I do this all the time. I probably write and delete five comments for every
comment I post here.

A second question to ask the question is, is my comment adding anything to the
discussion that isn't already glaringly obvious? If it's obvious, but I want
to nitpick or clarify...maybe just sit on it for a while and see if the urge
to comment fades?

With smaller communities, we don't have to apply such harsh filters because
hey, who cares, there's 10 of us. We can hash it out amongst us. But with a
huge community like HN, if _9999 out of 10000_ subscribers resist the urge to
comment but _just one does_ , that makes what, 50 comments? 500 nowadays?
5000?

What I'm saying is, I think HN comments would be a great deal better off if
everyone just sat back and said "hey, do we really need yet another armchair
CEO quarterbacking on Monday (I'm not going to bother getting those idioms
right) about Steve Jobs' legacy and the future of Apple, from the wizened
perspective of another college student (or in my case, .NET dev)?" Even I'm
following the Book of Graham and disagreeing properly and writing well-formed
sentences and generally making my points clearly, am I just adding noise? Does
it matter if anyone reads my comment?

HN would be better if everyone just, just __resisted the urge to comment __and
let the real experts talk. Most of us already do, but there's just too many of
us now for "most of us" to be good enough.

------
espeed
One approach would be to separate content-based comments from meta comments,
and create a culture where if you post a meta comment in the mainline, you're
likely to get down voted.

~~~
kiwidrew
Metafilter seems to have a fair amount of success with this strategy ("take it
to meta"), but often it requires the moderators to intervene and remove a few
comments. I suspect that having active moderators and a clear procedure for
handling "off-topic" posts is key.

~~~
espeed
Do it algorithmically like a flag -- if enough people click "move to meta" it
gets moved automatically.

~~~
Vivtek
Yeah, I think that would work here. Might not on MeFi.

------
EwanG
Have read the article, and read through all 97 comments that had been left
here as of the time of this posting. And this comes back to something I know
has been discussed at least a few times before. Essentially that many good
sites started with a high Signal to Noise ratio. Then more folks found out
about them, and they added more signal, but variety started to creep in, and
what is signal to me may be noise to you, and vice versa. Which means that
there may actually be MORE signal to noise now, but for the average
user/reader there appears to be less because the signal they are interested in
is diluted.

There have been a number of answers to this, and each of them can be found to
have evolved essentially from UseNet News and various simple BBS and/or
FidoNet BBS programs. Not a one of them is perfect (obviously or the
discussion would be unnecessary).

I "personally" think the best answer is to have a site where the "main" board
is run by a benevolent dictator, who also has to monitor other boards off the
main board but has no similar moderation on those boards. Allows the main
board to develop a personality that you can rely on, while insuring that
differing views get their day in the sun, and allow for the growth of new
moderators over time.

I used to run a C64 BBS and wrote and ran an Amiga BBS, and so have at least
some experience to validate my opinion. I suppose if I'm serious about this
being the answer I should be willing to set such a place up and see if people
would actually like it. One person below mentioned a Metafilter $5 to
"subscribe" to post model, but I'm not sure how that would work as a long term
model - though I suspect I would prefer that to having something overrun with
ads.

Anyway, there's my .02 cents. <\- Actually that might be an answer worth
looking into too. The postal service once looked at offering e-stamps to give
you guaranteed delivery and some level of authentication per message. Perhaps
if folks had to pay for each post (even nominally) that would be another
option. For your consideration...

------
3pt14159
Is it really that bad? HN is still an oasis of civil discourse in a desert of
internet trolls.

~~~
Locke1689
I think it eventually becomes a question not of "is it better than the
alternatives?" but "is it good enough for me to contribute my time?".

------
dredmorbius
I've seen two general solutions to the flamewars problem over a quarter
century's exposure to numerous online (and offline) fora.

The first is to keep a group small and tightly cohesive. It may be apparent to
some that this solution Does Not Scale.

The second is to have a well-designed, equitably and expeditiously utilized
content moderation system. It may be known to some who've attempted same that
This Is Hard.

Berating people may have certain effects. They tend not to be long-lasting or
particularly scalable.

Ultimately, if HN wants to maintain a high S/N ratio, it's going to have to
improve its community (by exclusion), its tools, and/or its policing of
comments ultimately overseen by a trusted oligarchy (though general inputs may
and generally should be used).

Most likely a mix of all three.

------
akkartik
As communities grow they need to fragment. Without fragmenting, how a story
does becomes sensitive to initial conditions and subject to information
cascade (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade>). We still don't
know how to manage this gracefully.

------
zwieback
I used to read HN because as an engineer it gave me some insight into startup
culture, of which I'm not a part. Now I'm close to giving up on HN because of
what raganwald is describing.

In some ways HN is becoming like Usenet, which I still sorely miss, but
without the ability to have different groups. A large chunk of HN commentary
squarely belongs in the x.y.z.advocacy bucket and the fact that we have voting
but no comment scores gives us the worst of both worlds.

The only reason I'm still reading HN is because it's HN, not because of the
actual content.

There's an opportunity to use the user base and combine it with a tag and user
based algorithm to create a custom view into content. Not sure how hard it
would be to implement but if I could pick the users I like and the tags I
like, give each of them a specific weight and see a sorted view of topics and
comments I'd be happier.

------
plainOldText
"But here's the thing. It's a big world. Like a democracy, you have to go
along with where everybody goes."

I don't agree with how this sentence is formulated. Most of the time I haven't
personally really liked to go in the same direction as everybody else. It's
just boring. Most of the time I prefer to take a path that hasn't been walked
by anyone else and discover something new for myself.

Of course, in the context of the article the sentence is to be regarded
narrower and the point is illustrating is to have a HN Community that's
organized and follows some rules.Which I agree with. But the way it's
formulated illustrates this mindset that in this big world we should all
embrace whatever the crowd likes, which IMHO is just wrong.

------
rickmb
The only thing that really worries me is that some of the content-free
negative remarks about Gruber/Apple/Groupon/et actually seem to get upvoted
rather than buried these days.

I always felt HN as a community was a little too strict by even downvoting
some genuinely funny remarks, but it seemed to work in keeping a high quality
of discourse. It baffles me how the same community can nowadays upvote ad
hominem attacks. Something about HN's ability to police itselfs seems a bit
broken lately.

------
thom
I hate it when mum and dad argue.

We all have our respective ecosystems wherein we do our business - iOS,
Android, Windows, Linux, people who want you to know where they are right now,
people who don't. So we suckle at the teat of our respective vendors, hoping
they'll ruffle our hair and feature our app in their app store, or pat us on
the back and whitelist us for their streaming API. Or buy us a pony, and buy
us.

But right now, as at various points in the history of the computing industry,
mum and dad have locked themselves in the car, turned the radio up, and
started yelling at each other at the top of their voices. We might not
understand why grown ups get angry about patents, or whatever else they argue
about, but we love mum and dad, and we can't emotionally process what's
happening between them. So we get angry too. And we lash out at our brothers
and our sisters who grew up just trying to do the same things we did - be
strong, happy, successful. Kids take after their parents, and right now the
adults in the tech industry are fighting loudly and emotionally.

Let's hope for a reconciliation soon. At Macworld 1997, when Microsoft and
Apple renewed their vows, and both emerged stronger than ever. It can happen
again, we just need to try and not tear each other apart in the meantime.

------
MrMan
HN members' opinions of themselves are inflated and entertaining. I really
enjoy the stream of sometimes-interesting links posted on the front page. I
also get a kick out of the navel-gazing, the smug self-congratulations, the
herding, the tempests in various teapots, while kettles are black. The content
contributors think the site is about them, while it is really about
maintaining a halo effect for a startup incubator.

~~~
GeneTraylor
>>> MrMan 14 minutes ago | link | parent | flag

HN members' opinions of themselves are inflated and entertaining. I really
enjoy the stream of sometimes-interesting links posted on the front page. I
also get a kick out of the navel-gazing, the smug self-congratulations, the
herding, the tempests in various teapots, while kettles are black. The content
contributors think the site is about them, while it is really about
maintaining a halo effect for a startup incubator. <<<

I don't mean to be condescending, but you do know that you just proved his
point, right?

------
arkitaip
Comment down/up votes have to go. People should be adult enough to be able
read a post without someone telling them what's readworthy or not. Life is not
a popularity contest where you tally how many points you've gotten for playing
the game well.

Members should, however, be able to flag comments that violate the guidelines
so that the mods can deal with spam and other transgressions.

~~~
arkitaip
Just to prove my point, I'm getting downvoted for the comment above :) Some
people simply cannot handle the downvote.

~~~
St-Clock
Yes. Even if I partly disagree with you, I upvoted you. Actually, I find
myself upvoting comments that are in a negative territory and that present a
valid point more often than good comments that are in a positive territory!

I believe we need upvotes for the reasons hugh3 mentioned. Regarding
downvotes, there should be a cost, like with StackOverflow where each downvote
costs you one reputation point.

Another orthogonal dimension to voting could be agree/disagree. I saw this on
a national news forum and it's quite useful (e.g., 5 people agreed, 100 people
disagreed).

~~~
hugh3
I like this idea. Four buttons: "good comment", "bad comment", "I agree" and
"I disagree".

Agreement vs disagreement would be displayed but would not determine comment
position or commenter karma. Comment quality would determine comment position
and give the commenter karma, but it would not be displayed.

I don't know if it's right for HN, but I'd like to see a site which did
implement this kind of two-dimensional voting.

PS. Good comment, I agree!

------
joshklein
My sense is that the threads of discussion raganwald mentions have increased
since losing the comment karma score. The absence of a number next to each
comment has made it impossible for me to instantly filter what's worth reading
and what isn't. When I see a long thread of comments responding to a low karma
comment, I know it's a debate I can probably ignore.

The last poll pg ran asking if people wanted karma totals back demonstrated
overwhelming support for them. That was months ago, so there must be some
compelling reason they're not back, but I certainly think they would go a long
way to making HN comments more readable. At least, they do for me, and I'm the
only one I can speak for!

~~~
spaghetti
Would be cool to A/B test the comment scores. All HN readers would see
identical frontpage. Half of HN readers would see comment threads with scores.
Other half of readers would see comment threads without scores. After a day or
so the most active/interesting threads would be compared. How did threads with
comment scores evolve vs. threads without comment scores?

The results could be interesting. My opinion is that comment scores should be
absent (like the current state). I think they lead to snow-balling effects.
Lazy readers just go with the group's opinion instead of forming their own.

------
adamc
I think people expect too much from hacker news (or any similar site). Every
post isn't going to be scintillating, or every comment insightful. Some of
that is the posts, but a lot of it is what we bring to reading them -- we are
all different, in our desires/tolerances/history. Your "funny" might be my
"trivial" or vice-versa. A repost that bores you might be news to me.

So, my answer is to mostly just skip conversations that bore/irritate me. I'm
not perfect; sometimes I forget and jump in. But little of use seems to come
from that. It's more effective to just skip them and look for something else
interesting to do.

------
juliano_q
Unfortunately the Apple x non-Apple discussion is spreading all over the
internet. I avoid almost all discussion about Android or Apple topics because
of it. Engadget became an unbearable flame-wars hell and I really, really hope
that HN don't follow this path. As someone who like both sides, owning android
phones and mac computers, I really don't understand why some people are so
fiercily defenders of one of this sides instead of trying to find the best
from both.

------
mkr-hn
I see the potshots, but it's mostly confined to threads spawned from potshot
bait.

I think the issue is that the potshot bait is starting to overwhelm the first
few pages like a lazy bacteria. And we just ran out of antibiotics. I know
I've been reading HN a lot less over the last several months. It might not be
reflective of any real reality, but an idea can turn real if enough people
start to believe it.

------
kristiandupont
I wonder how the site (or a similar one) would work where there was a fixed
number of memberships, say 5000. If the max number is reached, new people can
only join when others leave, like a club. If you don't use your membership for
a period of time, you are automatically unregistered. Spammers and others
lowering the quality will be unregistered as well.

------
vectorpush
Find a place on the internet where discussion of Apple doesn't erupt into
controversy. I also disagree with the sentiment that something needs to be
done to fix civility on HN. This entire meta-discussion is a self correcting
mechanism in action, we'll see a wave of civility for a week and then things
will go back to normal.

------
k7zZkw
As mentioned in the article, one problem is that people use the down arrow to
disagree. Perhaps there shouldn't be a down arrow. Instead there should be a
few buttons, such as "Off Topic" and "Offensive". I think presentation can
help guide those people who aren't consciously being cynical and combative.

------
pbreit
I was hoping that the OP would use that post as a chance to discourage
"disagreement downvoting".

To my fellow Hacker News contributors: Use downvoting on comments that are in
bad faith, do not add value, are ad hominem or are otherwise low quality. Do
_not_ use downvoting to disagree.

------
neutronicus
I downvote any comment containing the word "fanboy", and I encourage my fellow
readers to do the same.

~~~
dasil003
I'm voting you up.

"Fanboy" is the most destructive meme to rational discourse ever to emerge on
the Internet. In a single word we reduce any debate to YouTube-style
mudslinging. The concept of "fanboy" has some limited utility in that people
do clearly blind themselves to flaws in products (or ideologies!) in order to
avoid cognitive dissonance and protect their own identity, but any tiny value
in expressing this concept is overwhelmed by the destructive nature of its use
in discourse. The fact is _everyone_ has blind spots, and "fanboy" is just
shorthand for "your opinion is meaningless noise, but I'm going to respond to
it anyway with my own meta noise." Furthermore, the word is most often used by
people who are equally as irrational as the one they are accusing.

Downvoting any comment calling someone else a "fanboy" is a good idea, and I
think one concrete action that can help HN if only in a small way.

~~~
jrockway
I suggest we use the word "lemming" instead. If someone is willing to walk off
a cliff to obtain a new phone, it seems like the right word to use. Also, you
can press that button at the bottom of the screen and they all blow up.

~~~
dasil003
instead. in-stead. Okay, if you absolutely _must_ go ad-hominem then I suppose
"sheep" or "lemming" is less vapid. But seriously this sentiment is way
overused.

------
Karunamon
I have nothing to add other than I agree with the premise of the article, and
I expect this thread is going to be very meta.

------
bane
_edit_ Raganwald, your voice here is generally one of the better ones. I
really don't get this hangup on DF posts. So I say the below with much
respect. _end edit_

 _I mean, if the problem is thread noise, how does adding comments complaining
about noise lessen the noise?_

There's four ways to lessen noise and increase signal:

1) Not posting the junk links to predictable and uninsightful DF posts is the
best.

2) Flagging till removal is a close second, and increases signal.

3) Writing a blog post full of the same kind of meta-comment noise that just
shows up in the comments, then posting it here is a distant third.

4) Barring that complaining until it goes away works as a fourth.

I haven't flagged the last couple that made it to the front page because they
were genuinely interesting or insightful. But I'm one of those that swears
that I will flag any DF posts where Gruber weaves a fantastic tale of twisted
circumstances where Apple should be the villain in that tale, but Gruber finds
some ridiculous and transparent angle where he believes they come out smelling
like roses.

Here's the relevant thread between us on this

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890855>

It's not the triteness of Gruber's Apple fanboyism, it's the ever present
front pagedness of these predictable bizarre posts of his and the subsequent
completely predictable pages upon pages of comments pointing out that his post
is predictable that I think lessens the value of HN and do not further the
conversation.

According to the guidelines:

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

 _What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

These types of posts by Gruber fail this test. They aren't interesting and
they don't gratify anybody's intellectual curiosity.

"What does Gruber think about this potentially bad thing about Apple?"
_always_ has a knowable answer. There is nothing to be curious about.

Another guideline

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something
genuinely new to say about them."

These Gruber fanboy posts serve no purpose but to spark a possible flamewar.
Like I said above, they are predictable and the response is predictable.
There's no reasoning over his posts.

Apple could fuel their next generation of mobile computing devices with the
still beating hearts of Tibetan orphans and Gruber would find a way to spin
that into some bold and brilliant strategy where Apple is helping pull Tibet
into first world-dom by eliminating their orphan problem.

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to
its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there
is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that
you did."

This is the point where everybody here is basically going against this
guideline. Flagging is the appropriate response and less complaining about yet
another Gruber fanboy post is the best course.

In fairness saying you will flag them is a powerful signal to stop posting
these things and stop wasting everybody's time and improve the signal-noise
ratio.

------
leon_
Groupthink is a consequence of karma based non-anonymous discussion systems.
You can't do much about it.

------
lwhi
This post has absolutely nothing to do with technology news.

It's entirely meta.

My head is exploding.

~~~
dredmorbius
More meta.

~~~
lwhi
Recursion

