
My experiences with Hacker News. - imwhimsical
http://blog.arsalanbashir.com/2013/01/20/HNB.html
======
alaskamiller
This place turned more pedantic than I remembered 5 years ago. The benefit is
that sometimes the tangential discussions bring about something interesting
but most times the pedantry is a negative as it just gets people riled up and
nitpicking to death.

It's also more hostile than I remembered, but oddly people use politeness as
some weird passive-aggressive pulpit to combat each other. Replies and
comments get seen as personal attacks and others quickly get dismissed as
trolls. And when the simplest solution to dealing with anonymous people on the
internet vying for fake internet points is just to leave well alone, some --
especially nicks I've seen around from five years ago -- have decided the best
way to react is to respond. And poorly at that.

It's very much the same catty atmosphere I've encountered when hanging out
with my art school friends and their cliques that they endure for their art.

But then again, it's the same eternal september problem that was discussed
back then, regurgitated every year, and now we're here.

That said, there are good signals here and I keep seeing the same advice that
people give: ignore the noise. But the challenge is two folds: what is noise
and should you really be ignoring it?

The first is relative, you decide you own level of involvement but I do have
opinions on the second question. I don't think it's right to ignore the
negative comments. You can't improve your craft living on good vibes and hugs.
So understanding that this place, relative to the rest of the world, is
different place, it's both a sanctuary and a padded room. So take the inputs,
review them, filter them, and prioritize them. Never internalize the hate but
at the same time don't be naive.

PS: 17 is young but it's not that young. When I was in the Marine Corps we
gave 17 year olds guns and entrusted them to be men and women that can get a
job done when need be.

~~~
ignostic
Why do you think the pedantic comments have become so common? There was one
post recently about a breakthrough in cancer research. There was an oncologist
in the thread who gave more detail and talked about how exciting the research
was, but no one was paying attention to him. All anyone could talk about was
whether the headline was or was not misleading.

I found myself nodding in agreement at the author's lines:

"...most of them just criticized for the sake of criticizing."

"They simply hold on to one point and stretch it out, overlooking the fact
that the point that they want to make is tangential to the discussion at
hand."

I couldn't agree more. I have never seen a community where this is so true,
nor have I ever understood why.

~~~
Semaphor
The comments on HN are still better than most on Reddit. There have been
discussion over discussions how to prevent the quality decay with a larger
number of users (I remember the time before I had an account here when people
were saying (paraphrased) "Don't link to HN, the riff raff will come"). As far
as I know no one found a solution yet.

~~~
graeham
One option would be non-alias usernames. Youtube seems to think this is the
answer to poor-quality comments there, although I can see benefit for some HN
posts being anonymous.

The world is a tough place and life is too short to get worn down by a few
jerks on the internet hiding behind their keyboards. It can be tough to take
criticism on work you spend hours writing, and someone writes a nasty comment
having spent only minutes or seconds reading it. And even with dozens of good
comments, one bad one can make you feel crumby. It is a shame because it
discourages people from submitting good content, but I think its best to just
ignore bad comments.

~~~
Semaphor
While it would probably help on Reddit (though it'd be impossible to implement
there), I think it mostly helps against pure trolls and hateful comments. I
don't think that's a major problem on HN. The bad comments here (I'd say) are
mostly people who are simply not that friendly in their personality and very
direct in what they say.

Now on HN most readers can't downvote but personally I prefer some bad
comments being higher than they should to Reddits mainstream-opinions only
approach.

edit: Just realized that my HN account is from a time I used this pseudonym,
pretty much everywhere else I'm found under my real name;)

------
iuguy
> I am never going to play the "I'm-a-kid" card, because in my opinion my work
> (not just articles from my blog, I also develop software that I like to show
> around on HN) are a result of my hardwork, and I think they deserve
> competing with set standards, and it'd be belittling to have them receive
> positive feedback just because they were submitted by a "kid"

Brilliant. I've just come from the linkbait thread where a 14 year old who's
never been part of the HN community and is still only posting in that thread
is playing the just a kid card pretty hard.

~~~
imwhimsical
So I'm guessing it's the one about an iPhone app?

~~~
iuguy
Yeah, but if you look at his submissions, comments and account lifespan you
can see he has no interest in taking part in the community, only pimping his
app.

~~~
shantanubala
He could have been reading HN without necessarily having the confidence to
post something until he had something he felt he could contribute (i.e. an app
he built). Obviously we can't read his mind, but I wouldn't mind giving him
the benefit of my doubt.

~~~
iuguy
So in other words you're saying that he might have no interest in
participating in the community, only pimping his app?

~~~
chris_wot
The "community" at HN is made up of those create thing, those who read
articles and those who write comments. In fact it's a mix of the three.

Clearly he knows about HN. Possibly he was lurking. Maybe he's not sure or is
not confident enough to comment often. What he has done is created an app and
a few interesting blog posts. As far as I'm concerned, that _is_ what HN is
all about!

~~~
fatalerrorx3
I would say that an even larger part of the HN community is lurkers. Those
that read the articles, comments and upvote, but don't actively participate in
discussions.

I've been lurking on HN for 4+ years, and I rarely ever contributed comments,
mostly just read articles and read the comments to see others opinions.

Don't think this is true? Take a look at how many comments are left on
articles on the front page, then if you were lucky enough to reach the front
page of HN, take a look at your analytics software. You'll see something like
20k visits in a short period of time, there's no where near that number of
comments. Most people passively participate in this community.

------
noonespecial
HN is a smorgasbord of "strong opinions held loosely". The best advice is not
to take _anything_ that goes on here in the echo chamber personally. Relax,
sit back, and enjoy your accidental tour of the human zoo.

~~~
srl
Agreed. HN seems uniquely engineered to prevent the formation of echo-
chambers. You /will/ come into contact with the completely opposite viewpoint;
that's the point. Enjoy it.

------
RyanZAG
The best discussions and comments on HN are the ones based off technical and
constructive submissions. The discussions and comments based off any
submission that is someones opinion or is politically/culturally charged will
be far less insightful and more about 'winning'.

As can be seen, most of the comments on this submission are now about
discussing the age of the poster and how 17 is or is not a kid. Real
enlightening stuff.

------
DanielBMarkham
A couple of observations, for what they're worth.

"Tell them you're only 17!"

If you do, you'll only self-identify as one of them. Average age is high teens
to low 20s, if I remember correctly.

"People seemed to have a problem with everything."

To me this is the result of a large number of people participating. It makes
the commenting system rather challenging. Basically anything that _can_ be
misinterpreted _will_ be misinterpreted. Sometimes it's so bad I wonder if
people aren't being purposefully idiotic, just to score some karma.

From reading your article, I imagine you found the attention worthwhile,
though frustrating. Welcome to the club. In a strange way it's very seductive
to have 10K fellow hackers come by and look at your work, even if they do miss
the point, wander off on tangents, and generally posture for each other. Just
be careful you're not subtly sucked into writing just for the HN crowd, unless
you have an idea you want to sell to a lot of nerds.

~~~
talkingquickly
I'd be genuinely curious where the average age numbers come from?

From a point of zero objective information I'd have guess the average age to
be mid to late twenties...

~~~
DanielBMarkham
We've polled this at least twice that I remember. In addition, I did a poll on
caffeine and age among HNers a year or two ago (dig, dig) Here it is:
[http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-
and-c...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-caf.php)

My poll showed mid-20s, but that was 3.5 years ago. If I remember correctly,
polls show the age continuing to drop as more folks join.

This isn't much of an argument, but if you think about it, people most likely
to be on HN are people who are not doing anything useful besides consuming
stuff. That group should trend heavily towards the younger and unemployed. As
total numbers rise, total number of young people who are actively consuming HN
at any one time should rise disproportionately, no?

~~~
talkingquickly
Makes sense the most active users would be the one's with the most free time
(the younger and unemployed). Unless of course there are many people - such as
myself - who consider Hacker News a fairly useful learning resource and so
contribute (albeit not very often) despite having a lot of other things to do?

I'd be very interested to see how the average age of the submitters of
"useful" content - e.g. posts which rate highly (ok a very tenuous definition
of useful) and content heavy comments - compares to the overall average.

------
denzil_correa
I liked how you put your perception about HN and in particular this part of
your post -

    
    
        In my opinion, it’s not the fact that people here are
        skilled enough to comment on the various topics that
        makes it special. That people here have the ability to 
        think in more creative and vivid ways and have diverse 
        opinions (some not always correct, as seen in the case of 
        'misfits') makes Hacker News an interesting place.
    

I also think you are quite mature to play "I'm a Kid" card (take this as a
compliment). Good luck!

------
huhtenberg
To be blunt - this is an attention whoring flirty meta. Please keep this sort
of thing off the front page.

~~~
orofino
Isn't this the kind of comment discussed directly in the post? Perhaps I'm
feed the trolls, but honestly, knock it off unless you have something useful
to add.

~~~
chris_wot
I have to agree. Flag the article, but don't moan if it gets on the font page.
It'll go soon enough.

~~~
huhtenberg
They took away my Flag option when Steve Jobs died, after I flagged all but
one Jobs-related posts on the front page.

I really don't like navel gazing posts. "How much traffic I got from HN",
"What I learned from being on the front page", "How I was brewing my coffee
when I hit the front page", etc. This is self-centric bullshit that _may_ with
some effort be turned into an interesting discussion, but it is _not_
inherently interesting, leave alone being notable. It's neither N nor is it H.

~~~
DanBC
There are some articles which you don't find interesting. One option is to
flag those articles. You've lost your ability to flag.

Why do you think that commenting on these articles, especially with strongly
negative content free sentences, is the right thing to do?

> _I really don't like navel gazing posts. "How much traffic I got from HN",
> "What I learned from being on the front page", "How I was brewing my coffee
> when I hit the front page", etc. This is self-centric bullshit that may with
> some effort be turned into an interesting discussion, but it is not
> inherently interesting, leave alone being notable. It's neither N nor is it
> H._

The fact that those posts are so common, and voted up, seem to imply that for
many people they are inherently interesting.

But let's assume that you're correct. Your options are to flag, to ignore, to
add to the signal, or to add to the noise. You chose to add to the noise! That
feels really sub-optimal to me.

~~~
huhtenberg
> _Why do you think that commenting on these articles, especially with
> strongly negative content free sentences, is the right thing to do?_

I posted what I did to dissuade the OP from submitting similar junk to HN in
the future. Flagging and ignoring doesn't have quite the same effect as it
aims at the effect, not the cause.

~~~
chris_wot
Except that at the time, all the articles on HN news about Steve Jobs _were_
intensely interesting to a large number of HN participants. Trying to flag
them all was pointless, and as Wikipedia contributors would call it, POINTY
(disruptive to try to make a point).

Clearly the moderators frowned on this sort of behaviour, so you lost your
ability to flag articles. Like I say, don't do that.

~~~
huhtenberg
Yes, _sir_.

~~~
chris_wot
Correction, not don't do that: you _can't_ do that any more. Is that helpful?

------
doctorfoo
I'm never going to play the "I'm a kid" card, he says - 10 paragraphs after
playing it. ("My 17-year-old-brain thought...")

------
udp
I know you explicitly don't want to play the "I'm a kid" card, but you're
_kind of_ doing that just by mentioning it in this follow-up post. I think 17
is probably the age when you just don't have that card to play anymore.

I released my first OSS project (here) at 17, and mentioning my age didn't
even cross my mind. You just take the feedback and criticism and reiterate
like everyone else, because you won't have an excuse forever.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Oh, relax. I'm over twice his age at this point (and still younger than many
here). If you work at it, then your judgement improves Zenoically each year.
At 17, you can have reasonably adult-like judgement about most things, but
still get other things wrong by lack of experience.

So, sure, he's still got that card to play. Not that he needs it; choosing to
sit back and wait things out and not get dragged in to the HN morass was
pretty level-headed thinking. I certainly would've screwed that up at 17.

------
chrisringrose
My biggest complaint about HN is the users with enough karma to down-vote that
do so just because they disagree with you.

I've had legit discussions here about real tech topics (for example web apps
vs standard EXE apps), and the guy who continually disagreed with me clearly
down-voted every comment I made, and replied with out-dated counterarguments.
I wound up losing almost all my karma from one discussion, all while remaining
civil.

It's very discouraging to be new here, and try to openly express an opinion.
It should take more than one to down-vote a comment successfully.

------
richo
You're sad because people disagreed with you? Have fun in the OSS world.

Your original post is a bit ridiculous too. OSS isn't for the commonfolk? I
guess android isn't the most popular smartphone OS and ubuntu isn't grabbing
huge market share.

~~~
_Simon
This sort of response is precisely what the OP was alluding to. Try and read
his post with a degree of rationality and a modicum of humility and _then_
respond. You'll be amazed at how much better you and your point comes across.

~~~
richo
I disagree completely. His signoff line about a green on black terminal- _must
be a hacker_ just struck me as arrogant and dated.

Programmers aren't some mythical beast people hear about but don't see. Open
source software is usable by your grandmother.

Obviously there are exceptions to both sides, but I found it very conflicting
reading his article with so many things that (to my interpretation, at least)
read as though he was trying to put himself on a badass pedestal.

------
eranation
You might be "only" 17 years old, but with emotional intelligence higher than
some 40 years old I've known (and much more than I had when I was 17). p.s.
thanks for introducing rhok.org via your post, sounds like a great initiative.

p.s. I have read your original post's comments
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016620>) and I completely agree the
comments were nastier than they should have been to make the same point.

------
fatalerrorx3
If you don't want to play the "I'm only 17 years old" card, how come your main
blog landing page says so very clearly =), just kidding, I oddly agree with
your point. You can get some good feedback by posting on HN, but there will be
the occasional troll that might ruin your day. Give it some time and you'll
build up a thicker skin and learn to let them go.

------
Aardwolf
The "problem with open source" article doesn't have _that_ many comments...
15, of which 5 are the poster's own.

------
phatbyte
wow, a blog post ranting about a blog post where HN users don't have the same
opinion as you...really ?

------
thoughtcriminal
HN is the herd mind. There are outliers but there are more who mindlessly vote
up the karma leaders just because they are karma leaders - and there is
nothing you can do to stop them.

It's why I read comments from the bottom, up.

Learn to have a healthy disdain for HN, I do, but every now and then a
thoughtful comment or submission will sparkle like a gem in this muddy noise
and being here may even seem worth it.

~~~
mnicole
> It's why I read comments from the bottom, up.

Great idea, I'll be trying this. Edit: Actually in this particular thread it's
the opposite..

------
nirvana
Suggestion: Put comments on your blog. You might get better feedback that way.
There are many people who have given up on hacker news but still use it to
find links. (I mean how many times do you want to put up some cogent
information only to have it mindlessly attacked by idiots? Either its the
fashion of the time, or hacker news is overrun with narrow minded anti-
intellectuals.)

