Ask HN: Do you feel welcome on HN? - meesterdude
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akulbe
Only as long as it never touches politics. I'm conservative (not taken to mean
Republican). If I opine on something political in nature, and it doesn't
follow the normal liberal hive mind, I'll get criticized and/or downvoted.

Thus, I don't feel welcome to participate in such discussion.

~~~
existencebox
Gender and politics. I've noticed that it often doesn't matter _what_
alternative viewpoint you have, if it doesn't align with the predominant view
of the thread (which, interestingly, isn't a single philosophy, I've seen
multiple threads frontpage with different thrusts, e.g. recently during the
tesla harassment discussions) you'll be silenced.

Someone can tell me if this is rose colored glasses or not, but I do feel that
"Old HN' downvotes correlated far more directly with "does not contribute to
discussion" whereas now it feels a lot more like a reddit style
"support/oppose" voting contest.

What bothers me more, and has gotten me "in trouble" on a few occasions for
speaking up in defense of hearing out, is that posters more fringe than
myself, but who are still making a solid post and useful contribution, are
often silenced/flagged into oblivion. It's not even a matter of feeling
welcome or not, most people I find who post here regularly are _very_
polite/welcoming, but to watch silent attempts at forming an echo chamber
gives me pause.

~~~
jfaucett
I agree with you completely. I always strive (doesn't mean I never slip up),
to only downvote someone if they are not contributing to a discussion. One
thing that irks me bad though is when people make emotional claims about
complex topics without any references or even logical arguments to back up
what they're saying. I really like hearing new opinions, but you cant have a
real conversation when the other person is convinced they shouldnt have to
convince you.

The most recent thing I changed my opinion on thanks to HN though was smoking
- a guy came with studies in his comments, and convinced me there is actually
a net monetary benefit govt healthcare systems have from smokers i.e. smokers
die younger and the treatment method is shorter than other diseases. Those are
the good moments on HN :)

~~~
mattbgates
I've definitely learned my lesson: Never respond with a political comment
(unless of course it pertains to the thread.. though even that can get
downvotes).

So politics and religion are two things I definitely stay away from on HN.

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thecrazyone
TL;DR Moderation on HN is a black box and is scary and not comforting (hence
unwelcoming a little bit?)

Details: I _feel_ like there's an undercurrent of heavy handed moderation
here. Replies get detached, deleted, and no one would know unless you really
looked.

PS:I'm not saying these forums aren't vulnerable to abuse. They're and should
be moderated (I guess), but make the moderation visible and obvious, is what
I'd say.

My worry is if and when I step over to the wrong side of the (imaginary) line
that the mods have drawn in the sand, my replies or posts here would be
doomed, pushed out of existence and visibility.

Mods also do appear snappish here based on the few replies that I've read.

All of this seems anecdotal. The question did say "feel". I'm not going to
bother collecting evidence because don't think this topic would get that much
attention (it should though)

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muzani
No, but I don't feel unwelcome either. It doesn't feel much like a community,
perhaps by design? It feels more like a place where people can anonymously
voice out.

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rwnspace
Sort of, but in the spirit of Groucho, I wouldn't want to be a member of any
in-group that would have me. I avoid Reddit these days, except in specialist
subreddits, it feels like wading through a mire, and highly combative. The
over-arching subculture is a little much for me.

I wouldn't come here instead if it was too welcoming - getting to the end-
result of high-quality discussion involves being harsh or exclusive in some
way, and false-positive/debatable-positive moderation happens. I'd personally
like to see a little less technophilia (or more philosophy/critical
commentary), but you can't say WYS!=WYG with a name like Hacker News.

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kevintb
There's an awful lot of trolling, and moderation is not quite transparent.

But as another comment said, I don't think HN is a meant to feel like a
welcome community by design. It feels more like a semi-anonymous public forum.

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johnpython
Not at all. HN is a Silicon Valley echo chamber while at the same time being
an accurate reflection of the tech industry: predominately young, white men
with vocal but shallow opinions on anything outside of tech.

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Powerofmene
I am new to HN (less than a month) and I have not seen any negative issue. I
have noticed several grayed out comments etc but have not noticed a tendency
toward such. On a number of the comments that are gray I have not found
anything wrong with them. This may be a result of the down-voting. It I am
just not that familiar with the down-voting aspects of HN as of yet.
Additionally, I don't really comment on things of a political nature but have
commented on several of the sexual harassment stories etc without issue.

I think overall the active HNers a great.

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jrowley
Although I don't have the technical experience of many more active commenters,
I do generally feel welcome to comment. I do self censor sometimes - catch
myself making a irrelevant joke, etc.

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tabeth
It's OK. Downvoting is the worse thing about HN (and Reddit) IMHO.

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SirLJ
Not really, for a few moths here I have been bullied by someone already plus a
lot of sheep mentality from the crowd...

~~~
csa
Hmmmm.... I looked over your commenting history. Let me provide an alternative
viewpoint:

1\. You frequently make very bold claims about quantitative trading. Some of
these comments were contextually appropriate, but others came across as tone-
deaf. Most of these comments seem very hand-wavy, and you have provided very
little in-depth explanation of how such a system actually works in terms of
profitable categories of strategies (even in abstraction), robustness of
strategies in "black swan" events, etc. Some of the claims even seem
contradictory (e.g., amount of maintenance required, amount needed to invest
at scale, etc.). Note that there are many people on HN who have an interest in
using their brains and tech skills to beat the market, and there have been
some amazing threads on those topics. That said, those threads tend to be very
frank about risk, scaling, potential role of luck, etc. This type of frank
discussion is largely missing from your posts. As such, I think your posts as
a new person are not held in particularly high regard from people who have
been here a while and have seen very high quality threads on quantitative
trading.

2\. You quote Warren Buffet frequently seemingly in a way that supports
quantitative trading. Warren Buffet is a value investor, and quantitative
trading is the antithesis of what he does. Many people here have intimate
familiarity with Buffet's writings, so associating Buffet with QT probably
comes across as odd to quite a few regulars. Again, there have been many good
threads on Buffet, and maybe you have something substantive to add, but many
the hand-wavy comments you have made so far just seem flippant (at best) or
just wrong.

3\. You got into a flame war with logicallee. He is our resident troll. I
haven't looked at his history, but most of the dead comments I see are from
him. I am surprised he still has an account. Apologies for that, but I hope
you can appreciate the context -- my guess is that he is on a short leash.

4\. You seem to get very defensive when people do not take your hand-wavy
comments at face value. As a new person, I hope that you can appreciate the
skepticism that the community has towards people who make bold claims without
backing it up or having an established track record.

5\. You insult people quite a bit. The "sheep mentality" comment here. The
suggestion that someone just "get laid". The comment about the "forever
lonely" person due to their choice not to have kids. This is certainly against
the spirit of the rules here at HN if not against the actual rules. I hope you
appreciate that these types of blithe comments are not a particularly
effective way to endear yourself to a new community.

SUMMARY

HN is a place that historically appreciates thoroughly reasoned explanations
of potentially complex topics. You have written some stuff that has a lot of
interest on HN, but you have provided very little detailed reasoning for your
claims, and your claims fly in the face of the experiences (direct and
observed) of many HNers. As a new person, if you would like to warm yourself
up to the crowd, then invite questions when someone challenges you and answer
them with well-reasoned detailed answers. You don't have to give away your
trading strategy, but you should be able to talk about it in abstraction such
that your argument is believable. A detailed example of a strategy that you
developed, used, and now no longer use would be a very easy way to do this.

As for potentially being bullied, please report these cases to the mods. They
strike me as being quite effective at handling abusive commenters.

~~~
SirLJ
good analysis, unfortunately it had not much to do with the bully, which I
promptly reported and the mods took care of him, but it doesn't change the
fact I was bullied... for my detailed trading strategy, I am yet to see a sane
person with good working trading strategy to go and publish it on the
internet, so nice try with the analysis, I'll give you that :-)

