
No Comment - EricBurnett
http://prog21.dadgum.com/57.html
======
edw519
I have a simple guideline for real life interactions with others that carries
over quite well on-line, "Deal with issues; ignore details."

It's amazing how well this works in person, especially when trying to get
something done. My number one question to another is probably, "Is that an
issue or a detail?" We can almost always decide together which it is. Then, if
it's an issue, we deal with it, and if it's a detail, we move on to the next
issue.

This has also saved me countless hours and aggravation on-line. If I post
something and someone disagrees, I quickly decide whether or not it's really
an issue and only engage the other if it is. I realize that this is just a
judgment call, but I'd estimate about 90% of on-line disagreements are just
details. In these cases, I think it's best to simply move on.

~~~
sundarurfriend
I'm not sure I understand you, could you provide an example of what is an
'issue' and what is a 'detail'?

~~~
edw519
Examples are everywhere. In fact, almost every human interaction is an
example. Here are a few off the top of my head:

Quality control rejected one program because it was indented 4 spaces instead
of the standard 5, but accepted another, even though it had enough memory
leaks to crash the server under certain conditions. The first was a detail;
the second was an issue. It took me 2 days to get Q.C. to understand the
difference.

A friend recently arrived for a dinner party an hour late and then complained
to me that another spoke with her mouth full. As far as I was concerned, the
first was an issue and the second was a detail. My friend thought otherwise
about both.

Accounting recently spent 3 days implementing a new key policy for the private
rest rooms (presumably to prevent theft) and then wrote off $50,000 of
inventory because no one could find the proper paperwork. IMO, the former was
a detail upon which much time was wasted and the latter was an issue that
never actually got dealt with.

We spent the first hour of a recent meeting trying to determine naming
conventions, but ran out of time before we decided if the customer's credit
limit should be split between 2 divisions. Again, wasting time on details and
not dealing with real issues. (This is a great example. One of the best ways
to lose your shirt is to not deal with credit/collection/accounts receivable
issues.)

My favorite on-line example: A few years ago here on hn, I posted examples of
how I found some of my customers. I expected some interesting discussion, but
the thread was hijacked because of the presence of 2 concepts in my original
post "Bible" and "pawn shop". Lots of issues that could have provided value
for people were never explored because the gang preferred to beat a detail to
death. Unfortunately this sort of thing happens quite a bit on-line.

Funny how I still remember that thread. Here it is:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182400>

~~~
crux
The unfortunate thing, which your examples actually perfectly illustrate, is
that everyone has a different idea of what's important, relevant, or necessary
in any circumstance. Your examples are actually all situations where you and
someone else DISAGREED on what was a issue and what was a detail. Bikeshedding
naming conventions is an easy one, but shouldn't QC have well laid-out
guidelines so that they don't have to rely on judgment calls by individuals?
Was it as obvious to your friend as it was to you that arriving at a party at
a particular time is a major priority, whereas table manners once you get
there are trivial?

Examples are everywhere because all human beings prioritize and act on their
priorities. But we tend to have different ideas of what's important, relevant,
necessary, or good. Hence... discord.

~~~
WalkingDead
I think the parent is implying that while discussing with any second party, it
is easier to mutually agree on which one is an issue and which one is details
--- compared to discussing on the problem itself and finding a resolution.

------
pg
Sadly accurate. And unfortunately the tone here has been getting nastier.
There was a thread a few days ago where I found myself thinking "I feel like
I'm on reddit."

Nastiness is a problem intrinsic to forums. But I'm optimistic that it's
solvable. So few things have been tried so far. Plus I think a lot of users
here would be happy to try out (or at least put up with) design changes
intended to increase civility, because that's why a lot of them came here in
the first place. So this is going to be my main focus for improving HN in
2010.

~~~
Brushfire
I agree - Thanks for acknowledging it.

I've seen a lot more down voting of well-reasoned comments and arguments just
because of disagreement, and I've seen a lot more snide, unhelpful, almost
belligerent comments across the board.

I cant speak for others, but its good to know you are working on it, as I dont
want to find another place.

~~~
pg
My plan for dealing with downvoting is just not to display points on comments
any more. The hard part is that to make that work, I also have to come up with
alternative ways for people to find the comments they're most interested in on
big threads.

~~~
chipsy
An idea I just had that might help civility is to require every post to
"explain itself" with a limited set of tags. Sort of like the ./ point system
in reverse; you would get some set of options like "Information," "Opinion,"
"Related," "Off-topic" and you pick one or more. So if you want to start
making a fuss or interject something outside the immediate discussion, you
have to announce it.

Doing this adds filtering metadata and an gives additional incentive to
downvote comments that don't contribute - they're going to be more likely to
use few tags or inappropriate ones. On the other hand, posts that use a lot of
tags simultaneously and actually encompass all of them are probably detailed
and well-considered.

Downsides: more work to post(not always a bad thing), more room for nasty
rules lawyering("This is not Hacker News").

~~~
rw
PG has been given [literally] dozens of great suggestions like yours, yet has
not implemented them. I think that he is trying to cultivate a respectful
community through conversation (i.e. comments), instead of applying
technological solutions.

~~~
rinich
When your entire site is a technological solution, that doesn't work. It's not
natural to divide conversations and rank them based on merits of "good" and
"bad". This is why flat conversations don't succumb to groupthink as quickly
or as badly.

------
anatoly
There are several reasons to allow comments in your blog, but the one that
speaks most to me personally is learning from people who are
smarter/wiser/more knowledgeable on a given topic than you are.

If you're blessed with readers who're able - and might be interested - to
challenge you, call you on your bullshit, point out your faulty logic, tell
you where you can learn more, and explain what it is that you don't know you
don't know - then it's crazy to intentionally disallow comments, as far as I'm
concerned. Sure, sometimes you'd get feedback by email, but mostly you won't.
Looking at myself, I'm about 10 times more likely to leave a comment on a blog
where I can add nontrivial information, elucidate a point or give a reference,
than send an email to the owner. Are other people very different?

To me, a conversation with knowledgeable and intelligent readers is absolutely
worth ten times its weight in fluffy or incoherent comments. Of course,
there're people with different priorities. There're plenty of people out there
whose blogs are essentially PR vehicles. To them, having comments is probably
only worth it in terms of drawing more readers to the site; and that can be
offset by other reasons. (I just guessed, without looking, that Seth Godin
doesn't have comments in his blog; then I went to look - turns out I'm
somewhat wrong; most entries are closed to comments, but there are rare
exceptions).

I get a huge number of comments, because I write a popular blog, and many of
them aren't worth my or anyone's time. I learn so much from the other kind,
however, that it's absolutely worth it to wade through all the fluff. Every
time I forcefully present a point of view I hope for someone to intelligently
challenge it, and most days that's what happens. The value of that is
difficult to overestimate.

~~~
teamonkey
That's the problem I have with this blog in particular.

It talks about an interesting topic (FP games programming), one that's related
to my profession, where there isn't much material out there. The author is
describing issues he's faced making functional programming practical, but
never provides source or detailed explanations and doesn't seem to reply in
the places he's "outsourced" the comments to.

This isn't an attack on the author, it's just that the blog is framed as being
informative but is actually more of an opinion piece and I think it would be
better as an open discussion, you know, so some of the problems can actually
be worked on and potentially solved.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
I expressed a similar idea here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1052676>

I don't know if it's inherent in the geek mindset, but I often find that ideas
are frequently met with overwhelming negativity. One flaw - often not actually
fatal - is found, and the entire proposal or idea is rejected as inane. The
startup community is generally more encouraging, and perhaps that's why here
on HN there's usually a good mix of constructive criticism and cautious
encouragement.

I can understand where the author is coming from, and I'm pleased that HN is
much less aggressively dismissive.

------
jlesk
I deal with this every day, since I run a community of opinionated teenage
band geeks, which can be worse than any technical forum I've seen.

My approach is that if you want the community to grow in the right direction,
you have to keep pruning the bad stuff. So my main tool has been ruthless
deletion. There's no convoluted point system to distract from the conversation
with endless tweaking, meta-discussion, and arguments about being downvoted.

There is also one big ban button for the mods -- no reputation or warning
system. I just rely on their judgment. We have occasionally banned new members
just for having terrible attitudes. Sometimes we try to talk it out first, but
often it's not worth the time. Maybe this only applies to younger users, but
I've found that you have to toss out the bad apples as early as possible,
because their attitudes will spread.

As a result, I've been called a dictator a few times (justifiably), and there
have been a few bruised egos, but everyone else raves about how great the
community is. Right now there is a civil discussion about Opera vs Broadway,
and a thread with over 100 posts giving kudos to one another about their
accomplishments, which was started by a regular user, not me.

Many banned members apologize and beg to be let back in, but I have learned to
say no, because they relapse. Some have even threatened me, but I would rather
have those people complaining loudly about how much of a jerk I am, than to
have my best members silently leave because the site has gone downhill (though
some people will say that no matter what you do).

Anyway, maybe that approach won't work in a place like this, but I believe
that if you have a strong opinion about how a community should behave, don't
screw around trying to be "fair" or clever. Just pick a bunch of people that
share the same opinion and let them aggressively prune the bad stuff.

~~~
CalmQuiet
I'm not sure why TomJen2's comment was barred - since he may have been asking
what _I_ would like to know: what method of "banning" have you found effective
(with such a rowdy, determined group), i.e., how do you know a member's real
identity: IP address, etc.?

------
bmalicoat
I don't think the flaw-finding mindset is inherently wrong. I think the
problem is that many people have a hard time presenting their criticism in a
non-offensive way and aren't always ready and willing to accept an answer and
change their minds about said criticism.

~~~
Batsu
I'm not sure if it's that people have a hard time, or they don't care to.
Perhaps it's just semantics; either way I agree with you.

I'm curious what PG says about this - Isn't HN's roots in his distaste for
what programming.reddit became?

------
clintavo
Having this discussion is great. I'm glad there are plans by PG to implement
improvements. I have been a _reader_ of HN for years now, but I rarely
comment. Not because I don't want to participate, I _do_ want to participate.
And I want to participate civilly and without nastiness.

The reason I rarely comment is simply my own reading habits and the way the
site works. I read HN on a mobile device via an RSS reader. I flag the threads
in my reader I find interesting to look at further on my next work day when
I'm sitting in front of my desktop machine.

However, by the time I return to a thread it's usually old and no longer
active. At that point, I rarely see any reason to comment, as it likely won't
be seen.

What I, personally, would love is a way to subscribe to a thread's comments in
some way, perhaps via rss. That would help me to track the follow-up comments
made on the few posts I do comment on. But, if there are others like me,
perhaps having a way for people to more easily follow threads would bring more
people into the discussion and bring more of the prolific commenters _back_ to
the discussion.

When I implemented an email notification system for commenters on my blog
which notifies each commenter when a new comment is posted, community
engagement skyrocketed. I used to get 4-5 comments a post and it's now
regularly up in the 40,50,60 comment range. I also found that eliminating
anyone who starts getting "trollish" from getting those email updates tends to
make them naturally drop out of the thread because they think no further
comments are being made.

Anyway, just my two cents. I may be way off-base on this idea, and if so, PG
is obviously free to ignore it and I will continue to love HN all the same.

Look forward to the changes.

------
gengstrand
If only more techies understood and respected the basics of community
management. <http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/news/?p=76> lists that and other
people skills that modern developers need to get ahead.

------
aditya
Does anyone know what the author does now, for a living, if not write code?

------
cookiecaper
This post is great. The contention among people is really frustrating,
especially since the great majority of it is just useless babble that doesn't
solve or address anything relevant anyway.

------
varjag
Flickr discussions in three essential sentences:

"Great composition"

"Nice shot!"

"~~o 8 You've been awarded a useless online award by a self-proclaimed expert,
join the group now! 8 o ~~"

I agree to the author that faceless communication does not stipulate
understanding of finer engineering points. But, sorry, just about any (troll-
ridden or not) group in comp.* on my memory was vastly better with quality of
comment than that. Flickr is just one big circle-pat-on-the-back.

------
lnp
_"But with smart, technically-oriented people, I'd expect there to be more
sharing of real experiences, but that's often not the case."_

That was a problem for me too, finally I learned that it's just like expecting
them to be good at cooking. Social interaction is a skill unrelated to a
technical competence and experience in particular environment affects it more
than than ones intelligence.

------
stuntgoat
I agree with only allowing upvoting as _the_ metric to measure the quality of
a post or comment. All posts and comments could be recognized as 'default
incoming' content or 'approaching exceptional' content.

+1 for disabling downvoting.

~~~
outotrai
I disagree. Being able to downvote comments to -4 (and no farther) seems like
an excellent system to me, as it allows us to punish comments that are
detrimental to discussion while preventing comments from being so downvoted
that they have no hope of redemption (in the case of controversial but
contributory comments). I'm curious - if downvoting were done away with, how
would you suggest that we flag comments which are contrary to the spirit of
HN?

~~~
rinich
With the flag button that already exists?

The instant you let somebody's comment be worth less than neutral value,
you've built a mechanized system that makes people feel excluded. That means
anybody who wants to can make anybody else feel alienated from this community.
Not that I speak from experience.

------
alex_c
You're missing a closing quote in your first paragraph! Your post is therefore
irrevocably flawed, and your point completely lost on me.

------
3pt14159
This is why my blog doesn't have a comments section either. I really don't
care what non-hackers think of my blog. I value the opinions (and the opinions
about the opinions, complete with a useful points system) of people here much
more than I would just any casual observer. Also, I don't have to worry about
the typical: "[blog post about blah blah blah, continued at...]" spam.

------
thinkbohemian
TLDR...

Actually, I completely agree, but I think online identities such as commenting
with your twitter account id, and other similar paradigms help lessen the
number of trolls, or people who don't read their own words before they press
submit.

The internet was designed to be a two way street, so if comments are broken,
instead of not using them, lets take steps to clean them up a little.

------
RyanMcGreal
Disagreement is hard. Let's go silent!

~~~
mbrubeck
This was the first comment on this post, and I had to wonder if it was an
_intentional_ or _unintentional_ example of the article's main complaint.

