
Trolls (2008) - evo_9
http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html
======
zedshaw
I normally find that, unless an essay is about mathematics, if it is based on
a binary argument then it's just false because it's too simplistic to be based
in reality. In this case saying there's only "trolls" and "super awesome
people!" is childish. There's a much more interesting spectrum of human
behavior online that doesn't fit into these convenient categories. To then say
there's only two types of "trolls" is again to reduce the argument to just two
boolean options.

For example: I know for a fact that the various people who run HN use it to
selectively market what they want, but maintain that it is some trust worthy
news source for hackers. Since there's no way to distinguish between the
astroturfed "top stories" advertising for YC companies and a real news story
the entire forum becomes suspect. I consider this just as bad as trolling,
except the leadership does it so people don't comment on it.

I've also seen huge double standards on here, again because people in charge
can do whatever they want. They'll yell about ad hominem attacks and then do
them two comments down. They'll post one-liner attack comments and call that
"enlightened discourse", then call someone else's similar comment a "troll".
Shit, people on here have outright called me a cocksucker and posted whole
presentations vilifying me personally and nobody bats a wee little eyelash at
it.

All of you are heavily manipulated on this forum and yet, here you are
complaining about trolls? At least trolls can't hellban you to defend their
little astroturf empire.

~~~
pg
_For example: I know for a fact that the various people who run HN use it to
selectively market what they want_

While you are vague here about what you mean by this, you are more precise
later in this thread,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3354698>

and what you say there is false. Stories about YC companies don't get any
extra points or have a different ranking algorithm. They are also treated the
same by anti-abuse code, like the voting ring detector.

If you'd thought more about it, you'd have realized things couldn't be
otherwise. I know people will ask me whether there is any sort of bias in the
frontpage rankings in favor of stories about YC cos, and I have to be able to
say truthfully that there isn't.

~~~
jcr
Paul, please don't get me wrong, but I would like to politely point out the
exception; job posts from YC companies _do_ get preferential treatment in
rankings on the front page. It's a known fact, and since absolutely everything
here is paid for by you and/or YC, no one has any right or room to complain
about YC funded companies getting some additional exposure on their jobs
posting. It's fair to consider the YC company job postings as a small
advertisement supporting the site.

Considering the crap that Patrick (patio11) and Google received about mixing
advertisements with results in (intentionaly?) confusing ways, it might be
better to put the YC company job ads in a different location (top of the page,
un-numbered and time limited to 24 hours or so) just to make the intent and
separation more clear. --It's just a thought.

Your handling of the AirBnB fiasco was stellar. You let the negative story
posts stay on the HN, and you allowed them to be up-voted to infinity and
beyond. The thing most people don't realize is "Why the stories eventually
started to decline in rankings, and why they declined so quickly?" --The
reason is people like me; those who got tired of seeing the font page loaded
with derogatory speculation and opinion about AirBnB, and decided to 'flag'
all of the submissions. Though I have no proof, I'm certain I'm not the only
one to be annoyed to the point of flagging all the nonsense.

The most recent HN Troll happened this morning, namely the HTTP LoLCats crap.
It made it to the #2 spot on the front page (possibly #1 for a short period).
I was impressed that in the 17 comments, there were no "This doesn't belong on
HN" posts, so a lot of people were smart enough to just silently hit the
'flag' link. I just finished checking, and the HTTP LoLCats submission was
nowhere to be seen in the first 360 results. Had the HTTP LolCats submission
still been on the front page after I got a few hours of sleep, I may have
logged out of HN and never returned.

It's fantastic to know you have voting-ring detection functioning to some
degree. It's a great way to prevent spam in all of it's various forms. Without
knowing the code you're really running (secret sauce and all that), I can see
one potential problem; Since the HN moderators are from the ranks of the YC
funded company founders, their participation on HN is most likely weighted
differently. In other words, the friends amongst the YC founders not only
constitute a voting-ring of sorts, but their actions/votes on HN may have more
weight. With human beings wanting their friends to succeed, there is really no
way around this issue, technical or otherwise.

Though I have no special weight or privileges here on HN, I openly admit to
voting up and rooting for some of the YC funded companies that are doing great
things. A more direct way to say it is, I'm also part of the "problem" of YC
funded companies getting preferential treatment. Maybe I'm a terrible person
for wanting them to succeed, but then again, maybe I'm only human, like
rooting for good people doing great things, and maybe there are plenty of
other normal humans like me around here.

A lot of people, including Zed, only notice the very real inconsistencies, but
they don't understand the fundamental and technical causes of the
inconsistencies. You did address Zed's point, but you are essentially
defending a non-issue.

EDIT: Seeing this post get down-voted is disheartening. It tells me that there
is something definitely wrong, and the cause could be me, or HN, or both, but
I don't know for certain.

~~~
pg
Yes, job posts are ads. I talk about that here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3354832>

(By "stories" I don't mean to include job posts. They are a different type of
object, though they get displayed similarly.)

Moderators' votes are not weighted differently than anyone else's. I don't
weight votes at all. I've occasionally considered it, and I might try it in
the future, but if I did I wouldn't do it based on whether someone was a
moderator.

~~~
jcr
Why not? The people you trust to moderate on HN are really the some of very
best candidates for being trusted with a greater weighting on their
votes/flags. Some might claim it's elitist or unfair, but it _is_ entirely
practical and pragmatic.

Additionally, just about any algorithmic way to assign greater trust, and
hence, additional weight in voting/flagging, will most likely result in a
higher percentage of moderators being trusted than the normal populace. If
your algorithm did not result in a higher percentage of moderators being given
greater trust/weight, then I'd be worried. ;)

The tough thing about an algorithmic approach is whether or not a person with
highly up-voted comments and submissions has good habits, intentions, and
judgement when it comes to their voting and flagging? Pure "common sense"
(cognitive bias) speculation suggests the two " _should_ " be correlated, but
you're the only one with the data needed to prove it.

If there is a way to algorithmically define your standby phrase, "He means
well," then I don't know how to do it. If you do figure it out, please write
about it. It would make the world a better place.

------
edw519
Discussions like this remind me of my favorite scene from "Roadhouse", the
best bad movie ever. Discussion forums are kinda like bars and hackers are
kinda like coolers...

    
    
      All you have to do is follow three simple rules.
      One: never underestimate your opponent.
      Expect the unexpected.
      Two: take it outside.
      Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary.
      And three: be nice.
      Come on.
      If somebody gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker, I want you to be nice.
      OK.
      Ask him to walk, be nice.
      If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice.
      If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you.
      And you'll both be nice.
      I want you to remember that it's a job.
      - It's nothing personal. - Uh-huh.
      Being called a cocksucker isn't personal?
      No. It's two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response.
      What if somebody calls my mama a whore?
      Is she?
      (laughter)
      I want you to be nice...
      ..until it's time to not be nice.
      Well, how're we supposed to know when that is?
      You won't. I'll let you know.
    

Sometimes we hackers work too hard to make things more complicated than they
need to be.

Be nice.

(Oh, and by the way, I'm letting you know now when it's time to not be nice
here: never.)

~~~
jshen
"Sometimes we hackers work too hard to make things more complicated than they
need to be."

tl;dr: maintaining an online community is anything but simple.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. One possibility is that you're referring
to the hackers that build communities online who try to establish some sort of
guidelines for behavior.

If this is what you meant then I think I disagree. I've tried a very similar
experiment to pg's with HN. I run a small community site <http://yakkstr.com>
and most of the users came from an older site called soulcast. soulcast had no
rules and it degenerated exactly as expected and was full of trolls in no
time. My entire goal was to recreate that site minus the trolls, and I
ruthlessly enforced one simple rule. Do not directly insult other users of the
site. (actually two rules: no porn, illegal stuff, or spam)

Simple right? Not really. I loved pg's child metaphor, and just like a child
the trolls from the old site, who are smarter than actual children, do
everything they can to find the limits to what is allowed, and they hover
right around that line. As soon as they think you're going easy they push it
farther.

One example, people like to argue about politics on yakkstr and one of the
trolls uses a pattern of associating a label like "liberal" to someone then
they insult the label. Moronic ideas for liberals, liberals are morons, etc,
etc. Technically he's not violating my rule, but it's very hard to define an
explicit rule to deal with such instances because you want to allow people to
sometimes say controversial things about generic groups.

The problem arises when someone gets offended and reacts by directly insulting
the savy troll. How do you deal with it? Not so easy. And occasionally a good
user gets made at something and calls someone a moron. It leaves a bad taste
in their mouth if you come down with an iron fist on them.

I don't have good answers to these problems, but I think the hard work is
working out pretty well for my little community. But it is complicated and
requires constant vigilance.

~~~
edw519
_Sometimes we hackers work too hard to make things more complicated than they
need to be._

I was referring to the hackers who use the forum, not the ones who run it.
Sorry for the confusion.

It really is much easier and more beneficial for everyone to _just be nice_.
Why work harder to achieve less?

A few strategies that have made it easier for me to "be nice":

1\. Avoid long back and forth threads. Say what you have to say and get back
to work.

2\. Try to plan your comment to not be misinterpreted. This avoids much
unnecessary pain. It's also difficult.

3\. If someone responds negatively to you, wait and let others respond on your
behalf. It's amazing how much better this feels.

4\. Imagine that the other person has 42 legitimate reasons for not being
nice. Let 'em slide.

5\. Imagine that the other person may someday be your ideal co-founder,
mentor, collaborator, customer, or angel. (Or more likely, your ideal co-
founder, mentor, collaborator, customer, or angel is witnessing this
exchange.) Don't say anything to scare them away.

6\. Most of all: It doesn't matter! This is all optional. We were all busy
working before Hacker News and will be busy working after Hacker News is gone
(perish the thought). Lighten up.

~~~
KeithMajhor
"1. Avoid long back and forth threads. Say what you have to say and get back
to work."

If everyone followed all those rules I think this one would be detrimental.
Seeing you smarter-than-me people go back and forth about stuff I'm right on
the verge of understanding is pretty cool.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It depends on the reason for the back and forth. Is it to exchange new
information and deepen the conversation or is it to retread the same ground
and try to defend a point? When it's the latter it's rarely productive. If you
were unclear the first time and someone misinterpreted you then perhaps take
the time to make sure to be clearer in restating what you meant, but try not
to go beyond that.

~~~
KeithMajhor
I remember going back and forth with you about that escher illusion a guy
built in his garage. Just an example of what I'm talking about and why I think
it's cool. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2233584>

------
angersock
Good post, but as someone who dabbles in trolling as a hobby, I'd like to
suggest the following:

Trolls are important.

Trolling, especially as seen on places like
slashdot/4chan/somethingawful/etc., can oftentimes be a mechanism of critique
for ideas and rhetorical styles.

One of the best things about the 'net is that, frankly, none of this really
matters. None of it. It's a big joke. My twitters and my wikis and my posts
don't mean anything. They're bits in the stream. My karma is an int on a
server somewhere, incremented and decremented by the whims of my fellow users.

Trolls can help remind all of us that hey, this is all light-hearted. They say
outrageous things, they stir up trouble, they cause annoyance, they sully the
pristine conditions of these high-minded realms of discourse.

In short, folks, they keep us all honest. They call us on our bullshit. And
when a community takes itself so seriously that it becomes a habitat for
trolls, it usually is a sign that that community needs to be dispersed,
cleaned, and reformed elsewhere.

HN is a pretty cool place, and I hope it lasts a long while before ossifying
and becoming infested with trolls.

~~~
hyperbovine
> One of the best things about the 'net is that, frankly, none of this really
> matters.

I disagree. I think the shift from personal to electronic interaction is
largely to blame for the level of shrill nastiness that pervades our present-
day culture. It's okay to express yourself in ways that would have been
completely socially unacceptable, or just plain embarrassing, in past times.
Social norms can be stifling, and self expression is good, but it's possible
to take it too far. And on the internet, it frequently is. (Although this
problem predates the internet. Talk radio in the 80s and 90s comes to mind.)

Nowhere is this more evident to me than in the realm of politics, where things
really do matter. The process is seemingly held hostage to whoever can scream
the loudest. The result is the sort of do-nothing congressional bitchfest
which is currently pleasing to a whopping 8% of Americans. I read accounts of
the way things used to work (30+ years back) in Washington and am amazed--it's
like studying a lost civilization.

~~~
_delirium
One of my hobbies is reading a lot of history, and I don't see much support
for this narrative. American politics has long been _really_ nasty. Take a
look at the 19th century presidential campaigns: there is some pretty shrill
stuff in there. The 1828 election in particular was really nasty. And people
regularly fought duels---actually shot each other---over politics. Political
brawls were not uncommon. A Congressman beat one of his colleagues with a cane
on the floor of Congress itself!

Even today, offline culture somehow seems more nasty/violent to me than online
culture. It's not only in movies that people get into bar fights over stupid
things. They not only yell at each other, but actually punch each other, and
occasionally stab or smash bottles over each others' heads. It's a crazy world
out there.

~~~
jbooth
Yeah, things used to be rougher, but they also used to actually get something
done on occasion. Can you see the current congress accomplishing that?

~~~
wanorris
The current Congress can't get anything done because one of the political
parties has decided that it isn't in their interest to get anything done, to
keep the other party from getting credit for it.

I don't mean to call out the Republicans for being uniquely unpleasant in this
regard -- there have been periods when the Democrats have been just as
calculatingly obstructive.

~~~
anamax
> The current Congress can't get anything done because one of the political
> parties has decided that it isn't in their interest to get anything done, to
> keep the other party from getting credit for it.

Hmm.

The House passed a budget this year. The Senate hasn't for almost three years.

The House passed an extension to govt financing/ operations. The Senate
hasn't.

The House passed an extension to the payroll tax cut. The Senate refuses to
even vote on it.

I wonder which party controls which branch of the legislature.

~~~
wanorris
Absent a 60-member supermajority, passing a bill in the Senate requires both
parties to at least agree to let it come to a vote. Passing a bill in the
House does not require it to be palatable to the other party, the Senate, or
the President, nor is it required for it to have any realistic hope of ever
becoming law.

I didn't really mean for this to be an unpleasantly partisan post, just a
statement of facts about the situation in Washington as I see it. The current
Democrats in power have many flaws, but I see no reason to think their goal is
to avoid action, because a lack of action would provide no benefit to them.

To argue that the House has genuinely tried to get things done during this
session, I would think you would have to assent to one of the following two
things:

1\. Even with a divided Congress, it is not required for both parties to work
together in a bipartisan spirit of compromise to pass meaningful legislation.

2\. The current House of Representatives has genuinely tried to work closely
together with Senate Democrats and the President in a bipartisan spirit of
compromise to pass meaningful legislation.

Do you believe one of these things?

~~~
anamax
The Dems didn't even bring any of those things up for a vote (even on
cloture), so how did the Repubs keep them from passing? (Actually, there were
two Senate votes on budget proposals. One was an Obama proposal and it went
down something like 97-0. The other was what passed the house, and it went
down 47-53. Yup, the Senate Dems haven't voted yes on a budget proposal for
three years....)

> a bipartisan spirit of compromise

I see that the repubs have given the dems some things that the dems want and
the dems have refused "the deal" because they didn't everything that they
wanted. How does that translate to "the repubs won't compromise"?

For example, the Dems claim to want an extension of the payroll tax reduction.
The Repubs gave it to them. Is it unreasonable for the Repubs to get something
as well?

I'm not saying that the Repubs are blameless, but it's absurd to claim that
they're the only ones to blame.

You disagree, so please define this "bipartisan compromise" that the Dems are
(at least somewhat) willing to do and that the Repubs are unwilling to do. Do
you agree that this definition should be somewhat symmetric?

Note that the payroll tax extension package that passed the House did get some
Dem votes. Do you interpret that as "some Dems were willing to compromise" or
"Repubs offered a package that was acceptable to some Dems"? How, exactly, did
you come to your conclusion?

~~~
jbooth
The idea that Republicans are "compromising" by passing a tax cut really says
it all here.

~~~
anamax
> The idea that Republicans are "compromising" by passing a tax cut really
> says it all here

You're not paying attention. Obama and the Dems DEMANDED a specific payroll
tax cut, which the Repubs provided.

------
boredguy8
I think one particular line got me thinking:

    
    
      Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want 
      to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally 
      making a mark on the world.
    

Paul Graham has to make a caveat because it's too easy for someone to say,
"WELL, sir, you have clearly missed that some graffiti is amazing. Banksy!"
But there's a very important filter that should kick in: "Can I trivially
amend his point in such a way that his argument still holds?" It turns out
that I can, and PG should never have need to caveat his statement.

Let me propose, for what it's worth, that a "Banksy!" reply to a statement
like the one above is the sort of accidental troll that invites the slow
degradation into real trolls. Whether or not Banksy is graffiti or whether or
not graffiti is art: these aren't the question of the submission. This isn't
to say that tangents are always bad. It's rather that these sorts of
discussions quickly turn in to "what color should we paint the dog house?"*
That is: lots of firmly-held beliefs with little that can dissuade someone.

So: when posting why someone is wrong, first see if there's a small or trivial
way in which you can 'fix' their point. If you can, their point wasn't really
broken in the first place.

*I've long been trying to find the original 'why meetings go bad when you're talking about something everyone has an opinion on', but I can't. If anyone can help me out: much appreciated.

~~~
kd5bjo
<http://bikeshed.com/>

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Trivialit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality)

------
pg
"But we still only have about 8,000 uniques a day."

Wow, now it's more like 120,000. If I was already worried about the problem
then (which I must have been if I took the time to write about it), I'm
surprised the site is even usable now.

~~~
pgsucks3
interesting...

------
rjd
There is a couple more cases which add to the mix.

1) Devils advocate. People that interject with an opposing view, even one they
don't believe. I often do this one myself cause another poster to go into
deeper description. Often just asking for an deeper response will be ignored,
but opposing a view will always bring out an argument.

2) Denial and Righteousness. Essentially nasty fan boys. People who have
brought into a belief and refuse to acknowledge any second point of view at
all. I had this explained at a trolling seminar at a hacking conference quite
well and they picked on the audience themselves to explain how to manipulate
IT people.

With most IT people they have the myers-briggs archetype finishing with --TJ.
This means they are thinkers and judgmental. They will look at a problem, find
the evidence, evaluate it, and make a judgmental decision on what is correct.
The facts don't lie.

However the facts can be like quantum variables, you chang angles and then
entire structure changes. Making judgmental calls leads to obvious one set of
true factual analysis being completely wrong in another setting.

Challenging a judgmental person is challenging there core makeup. Saying they
are wrong undermines there very basic personality, drawing on the opposing
variable to "thinking" on the myers-briggs scale "feeling". So intelligent
people do not react with intelligence first.

Instead of reacting with an "oh ok I didn't realize that was the case in your
area" they respond with a protective "I don't think so Tim" and things go down
hill from there, especially if the second person is also judgmental.

3) Tribalism. This is the us vs them mentality. Either you are with us or
against us. A non ordained view/comment against a group of people who maybe
self validating can be seen as a extremely contrasting. Becomes the group has
created a false sense of security it can draw out primal responses (like
feeling over thinking mentioned above) when that sense of security is
threatened.

Many groups become polarising and when confronted with opposing views become
more and more fundamental, close ranks. This often forms tight knit groups but
also leads to a side effect of making everyone an enemy, including people with
in the group who aren't are right as they should be, or people with neutral
opinions.

There was an article I read a week or two go about how to talk skeptically to
people. If I can find it I'll post it. It addresses how to oppose a view and
avoid the bottom two responses.

~~~
3pt14159
Sort of meta-related (in that I'm disagreeing with your facts, and therefore
the judgement changes):

I disagree that most hackers are --TJ types. They are more likely to be -NT-
with a bend towards INT-. The N is _the_ trait that tends to abstractionism,
so it would make little sense for a hacker to be -S-- at all. If you look at
the polls here it comes out in spades:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722>

The reason that we argue is that as Rationalists, the truth is more important
than anything except for the fact that there is a truth. It is why
Rationalists are likely to pick up an Aristotelian view of the word (though
that might be a tautology since I think it is an axiom of that worldview).

There is a reason why people are not usually grouped in the --TJ category (the
broad categories being -NT-, -NF-, -S-J, -S-P). The reason is that the most
important variable, the one that correlates to income, happiness, intelligence
is the second letter. It fundamentally effects how you approach the world.

~~~
jacques_chester
Meyers-Briggs is not a respected test of personality in psychometrics circles;
it was invented based on an amateur's reading of Jung's theories of
personality.

Insofar as people say a pop personality test describes them, it's likely due
to the Forer Effect (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect>).

~~~
3pt14159
I've heard this plenty of times, and I know this anecdotal, but it does
predict things. Every developer at FreshBooks when I was there was the same
type. Every one of my girlfriends (that I got to take the test long after we
broke up) is the same type.

There are correlations with IQ, with employment, with other accepted tests.
The primary weakness of MB is that results are normally distributed across
each letter, so a majority of the population is not strongly correlated with
each letter. Just look at the hacker news response. I know it is self
reported, but I don't buy that the two of the least populous types self
reported themselves by a factor of 1000.

------
scrrr
Interesting post.

I find unsubstantial / uninteresting / obvious / superfluous comments (like "I
love it!" <send>) worse than very controversial or insulting comments. As long
as the general information in the forum stay interesting and enjoyable.

Also isn't the "naughtiness" (some pg essay used that word I think) part of
what some of the best contributors here have in common? And aren't
entrepreneurs trolls, too, according to the OP's definition?

They disagree with something, they choose a path that is more fun than an
ordinary life, they want to leave a mark.

~~~
scott_s
Trolls try to undermine a working system solely for their own enjoyment. That
has only a superficial relationship to entrepreneurs, who try to create a new
business.

~~~
joelhaus

      > Trolls try to undermine a working system solely for their own enjoyment.
    

This is the most concise and accurate description of a troll on this thread
(so far), thank you! As you state, this can result in undermining a working
system, but more specifically, this selfishness and lack of empathy inevitably
leads to:

 _poor communication - > negative emotions -> unconstructive conflicts_

Selfish enjoyment really does get at the root of a trolls motivation,
otherwise, "controversial" comments supported by sound logic, factual evidence
and a genuine desire to get closer to the truth actually do add to the
discussion. The real problem for a moderation system is determining if the
motivation of the contributor is in line with the values of the community[1].

HN's rise in popularity and decline in quality commentary demonstrates how
difficult it is to maintain the values of a community in the face of fast
population growth ( _this just began to sound a bit too similar to arguments
you hear in the immigration debate_ ). If it's important to maintain your
values, then it might also be important to mandate some level of assimilation
in order to acquire certain privileges. The stackexchange sites have a fairly
complex system for this and I rarely see trolls there, maybe HN should
implement something similar?

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>, HN's Values

------
hooande
I think the reason that troll behavior seems so much worse online is because
most of us spend our time in environments where trolls are self-selected out.
Assuming that most of us don't regularly deal with assholes in our work and
home life, the place we're most likely to interact with them is online forums.

I'm not sure that anonymity or distance are the driving factors in online
trolling. Most of the assholes I know have no problem saying mean spirited
things when they're standing right next to me. I think the bigger issue is
that it's easy for me to avoid those assholes in real life. In an online
setting, I can't see them coming and they are Legion...for every one that we
vote down, two more will rise up to take its place.

I understand Paul's frustration, but I don't know if we'll be able to find a
technical solution. I think this is just one of the drawbacks (balanced by
many benefits) of unfiltered communication.

~~~
troll24601
I've trolled. I blame two things: frustration, and myself.

I would get frustrated that there was no reward (and often there was
punishment) for correcting errors in others posts. It's incredibly rare to see
a rebuttal followed by the original poster simply saying "I was wrong about
that, thanks for the information." It's far more common for the OP to simply
insult you, or mischaracterize your argument, or otherwise engage in nonsense
as their response.

I would get frustrated that comments and posts are promoted on style, not
substance.

I would get frustrated that substance was judged inaccurately; often resulting
in people whose knowledge was either entirely absent, or only Google deep
arguing fiercely with people who'd worked and studied the topic for years.

I would get frustrated at the general lack of respect for truth, for civility,
and for each other.

I would get frustrated at pedantry.

I would get frustrated at double-standards and hypocrisy, with people posting
uncited nonsense, but demanding citations from their opponents.

I would get frustrated at debate opponents who would willfully misrepresent
their opponents side in the argument.

I would get frustrated that semi-plausibly-deniable passive-aggressiveness was
accepted by moderators, but direct responses to that aggression were not.

I would get frustrated that sticky lies beat dry truth every time, in votes
and moderation.

And once I got frustrated, I lost respect for the forums, but I didn't leave
them. I liked what they could be, but not what they were.

So I trolled. I disrespected people who, I felt, were being assholes in one
way or another and thus "had it coming".

This wasn't a great response, and for this I blame myself.

I should've done something more constructive with my time. The forums are
going to revert to the mean with or without my help; there's no need for me to
accelerate the reversion.

------
jvandenbroeck
Well because down voting influences karma I'm probably posting 70% less than I
would. I see HN more like a news site in which I sometimes share my view on
something but not to comment or to discuss something (sadly).

First I saw HN as something to have an intelligent discussion, but after a few
"controversial" posts, and having negative karma, I don't bother. I only post
something when I think it's "safe" to post, or when I have time to write a
detailed essay.

I think some people can have an intelligent discussion on HN, not for me,
maybe because of my dyslexia I'm bad with words. But then again, maybe that's
the price to pay to keep the trolls away.

~~~
nickik
Well I think on a blog post with the title 'php suckx!' there want be an
intelligent discussion but when there is something about a cool project you
sometimes get good discussions. For example the resent post about the Facebook
Jit: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3348853>

------
DanielBMarkham
_One might worry this would prevent people from expressing controversial
ideas, but empirically that doesn't seem to be what happens. When people say
something substantial that gets modded down, they stubbornly leave it up. What
people delete are wisecracks, because they have less invested in them._

I am not seeing this any more on HN.

This is the second time I read this essay, and my concerns are still the same:
people who have minority opinions might not be able to express them in such a
polite way as to be considered "thoughtful" by the majority.

I'm a bit of a contrarian commenter. That's because forums such as this one
naturally gravitate to extremes. The programmer who lost his dog, and suddenly
everybody is looking for him. The news story that causes us to be concerned
about an intrusive government, and suddenly everybody sees Nazis everywhere.

People in groups naturally gravitate towards extremes. Whether they are right
or wrong, other people may choose to try to persuade them of their error (and
most times, the crowd is wrong because it takes things too far). In a highly-
emotional discussion, it is almost impossible to convince the crowd that they
might be wrong, no matter how you phrase it. People who try this are called
trolls by the definition I see here, and they don't belong in the same
category as folks who aren't part of the group but drop in to throw rhetorical
hand-grenades at the rest of us. Quick test: if there were topic on HN titled
"Final proof that the Earth is Still Flat" that linked to a reputable source
and all the commenters were in agreement (stretch your imagination a bit)
could you comment in such a fashion to show thoughtful consideration of the
majority's opinion yet ask for people to really think this over? If you can
follow along in my thought experiment, you'll find this is not a very easy
thing to do at all. Most folks would just throw out a snarky rejoinder.

In my opinion a bit of nuance is required in this essay which is not present.
EDIT: J.S. Mill, is on the money here: "...He argued that even if an opinion
is false, the truth can be better understood by refuting the error..."
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Views_on_freed...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Views_on_freedom_of_speech)
Note the conflict between how the real world _has_ to act, and how the online
community is _desired_ to act by the site owner (and the majority opinion) The
short-term interest of the site, perhaps "a happy majority pushing forward to
a new understanding in a specific field of study" and the strategic interest
of a well-functioning society are very much in conflict here. This is a hugely
important point, and in my opinion PG does not recognize this except in
passing.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Contrarians _should_ probably be held to a higher standard. It is indeed
hard(er) to write a comment for a somewhat hostile audience; but if you can't
actually make the audience think, at least for a few seconds, does the comment
really add value? In fact, a weak argument against a beloved-but-false
position may make people believe _more_ strongly - bad comments don't help
your cause!

------
mcrittenden
OP, you might want to change the title to show that this article is from 2008.
That was confusing to me, and a few other people in this thread.

------
chrishenn
I hope that trolling can be kept out of HN by the simple goodwill of the
people using the site. I can't think of many forum systems that can
effectively remove the incentive to troll.

I put up a forum online for people in my journalism class. They're nice
people, but something about the fact that the conversation was online turned
the discussion into something pretty dumb.

My hope is that people who grow up with the internet their whole lives will
realize that you still have to be civil online. It's no different than real
life, yet no one is teaching you manners online.

~~~
watmough
I've seen some relatives' kids accounts on Facebook. I'm not sure I can be as
optimistic as your last paragraph. If anything, I'm pessimistic that many kids
are writing utter utter trollish garbage online that may never ever go away.

Of course, there will be kids that are smart and don't do this, but kids that
want to 'fit in' or 'be popular' may well end up rolling with the crowd and
posting things that will hurt them later on.

As parents, we should be looking out for our kids, both in real life, and
online.

~~~
chrishenn
This may fit into the same category of way too optimistic, but I think it
should be something that's in school, from an early age. My high school has a
mandatory computer literacy test, but it only tests a few skills like MS
Office or "What is an ethernet port?"

It'd be nice if it taught stuff like "how not to be an idiot on the internet."

------
robbrown451
I think the fact that you don't allow downvoting posts contributes to this. I
get that you want to keep things positive. But when you don't provide an
outlet for people who want to simply disagree without forcing them to come out
of the woodwork and defend their position, it is inevitable that some people
will come out with a lot of ugliness.

I think there are a whole lot of reasons internet forums are different than
real life communication. I think there are technical solutions that can change
the balance. We all know there is a big difference between, say, the comments
on YouTube and the comments on Slashdot. Do you think it is all "culture"? I
don't. I think it is mostly that Slashdot has technical solutions that
discourage trolling (and substanceless posts, etc), while YouTube doesn't. If
the culture is different, it mostly _because_ of the karma system (or lack
thereof).

~~~
scott_s
Users can downvote posts, but only users with karma above a certain threshold.
No user can downvote a _submission_ , though - you can only flag them.

~~~
robbrown451
Yeah, well probably most trolls don't ever get that karma, so they troll
instead.

Also karma doesn't count for a lot here (that being one exception).
Ultimately, a good karma system should simulate the what happens in the best
real world environments....where there is a very complex feedback loop that
reinforces the sort of behavior we want and suppresses that which we don't
want. In my opinion Slashdot comes kind of close, but it has huge flaws
itself.

------
hansy
This is an interesting article that sort of answers a question I've had for a
while: would the quality of Hacker News remain the same without the novelty of
individual karma points?

PG mentions that people seeing "...their reputation in the eyes of their peers
drain away..." is motivation enough to keep delivering high-quality content.

~~~
larrys
'PG mentions that people seeing "...their reputation in the eyes of their
peers drain away..."'

I think part of the lure of karma is simply getting affirmation that what you
are saying is accepted by others.

In this case the "others" are not people you know but people you respect in
many ways because of the intelligent way they write or some other power they
have. Or how they appear at least to be accepted by the group.

In a sense it becomes a challenging game to write something striking a balance
between sharing some knowledge or opinion and not ticking off others by going
to far out of bounds with what you are saying.

"quality of Hacker News remain the same without the novelty of individual
karma "

I don't think it would at this scale. On a smaller scale though it might.
There is a wide range of topics and people here. On a smaller site (AVC.com
comes to mind with usually 1 idea a day posted) it is a core of users and
while there is karma and likes it is far less important than on HN.

------
mindstab
Do we have any more recent stats about the viewership of HN now for 2011? How
big is it, and more subjectively, how do people feel we are doing with trolls?

I for one think on the whole conversation is still good and worthwhile
checking out :)

~~~
karlzt
<http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#5oct2011>

_"Also, a traffic update: HN now gets over 120k unique ips on a weekday, and
serves over 1.3 million page views."_

------
zerostar07
Downvoting is a sort of trolling too. People don't like unconventional
opinions here. Say something bad about the late S. Jobs and you re certain to
be buried. Even scientifically proven facts get buried sometimes. The problem
is not solved. Let's try something radical, like, ban all adjectives.

------
daenz
The fact that official moderators (read: people with super-user powers) are
needed on a forum indicates that the regulating powers are broken by design.

Back in late 2009 I built a forum that allowed every user to temporarily ban
any other user. There were restrictions... bans lengths were temporary (and
voted on democratically), expiring after the voted time limit, you could only
ban a person you replied to, and everyone would be able to see that you were
the person who banned the parent post. Other than that, the forum was
completely anonymous, and it was able to regulate large numbers of trolls
(mostly from 4chan). They seemed to appreciate the equality and the natural
regulation.

------
zobzu
The issue with votes is that they don't fix all that much. People often
downvote other people they simply disagree with. In fact, most often do that.

So it does not just shut off the "trolls" as in the "assholes". It also shuts
off any unpopular opinion.

That is sad, because unpopular opinions are generally interesting by nature,
and sometimes insightful. That is because popular ones are well-known, thus
cannot be "interesting".

For example, if you bash a popular company by saying what they do is wrong
(whichever it is, Google, Apple, you name it), you will get down voted a lot.
No matter how insightful and righteous you were.

~~~
billpatrianakos
I was trying to say the same thing in my previous comment above. Thank you for
being able to put it this way. I think the downvote button should be reserved
for off topic/trolling posts. If you downvote out of disagreement or boredom
you risk actually turning that person into a troll later on. The newbie who
writes a sincere but boring comment and gets downvoted doesn't learn how to
better contribute. He just gets alienated. On the other hand, the newbie who
writes a few boring comments, gets no up votes and then finally gets an up
vote or two for a good contribution learns more about how to be a better
contributor than if he had just gotten downvoted for what may seem to him or
her, no reason at all.

~~~
einhverfr
I agree with you. It's far better to upvote than downvote. I dunno about
others but I am willing to upvote people I disagree with. those who just
repeat stock they have been told by others I don't downvote. It's only those
who entirely detract from conversation....

I find the downvoting due to disagreement to be amusing here. Sometimes I read
downvoted comments just to get a different viewpoint.

What I do find disturbing in this discussion are people with substantially
high karma who have been hellbanned. That strikes me as dangerous. I have seen
at least 4 hellbanned people on this forum and I would have disagreed with the
banning of two of them (the other two were clearly trolls by any definition).

------
TomGullen
I'm quite a big fan of a well placed witty troll. It's one of the most
delicate, subtle and hilarious forms of humour. That's when it's done well
however, not all trolls are like that.

Some of the heartiest laughs I've ever had are sourced from trolls.

My troll spotting ability is falling at the wayside though. I used to be
really good at spotting trolls, nowadays I come across something every now and
think, "Is he trolling?". And that's the beauty of the best trolls, they
border on insanity but keep it just within the realms of believability.

------
tripzilch
This article sounds like someone that doesn't understand trolls, trolling, or
how to deal with them. Which is strange because he does mention the origins of
trolling on Usenet in his footnote.

Anyway, he's wrong on several accounts:

> Trolling tends to be particularly bad in forums related to computers

This really makes me wonder what other forums that aren't related to computers
PG frequented, probably not very many. Let's see, there's forums related to
wicca, libertarians (the nutty kind), religion/spirituality, failed startups,
"magick", seduction, conspiracy freaks ... _all_ those topics attract
significantly more trolls than computer related forums. Both of the "broader"
definition ("assholes") and the sports trolling type.

> There's a sort of Gresham's Law of trolls: trolls are willing to use a forum
> with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing
> to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it.

This is just false. Of all the forums I've seen, the two most thoughtful and
intelligent communities just _happened_ to be largely made up of trolls and
people very familiar with trolling. It's because they won't stand bullshit and
call people on it. Regular forums or forums that can't really deal with trolls
always tend to plateau on a certain level of intelligence and thoughtfulness,
which can be high, but limited. This is not at all a rule btw, most trolls
anyone is going to find will be forums filled with screaming kids, obscenities
and bug porn.

I just mean to say this "Gresham's Law" thing is false, sometimes the trolls
_are_ the thoughtful people and the ones that get driven away are good
riddance.

------
mixmax
_Technical tweaks may also help. On Reddit, votes on your comments don't
affect your karma score, but they do on News.YC. And it does seem to influence
people when they can see their reputation in the eyes of their peers drain
away after making an asshole remark._

After points stopped being shown on comments this point seems ironically moot.

Any chance of getting them back? Personally I think it's the worst decision in
the history of HN.

------
cwilson
I'm curious if anyone else is seeing a trend of passive aggressive, or light
hearted, "trolling" on social networks with family and friends.

For example, on Facebook, a troll might play out like this:

Sarah posts "Having the worst day ever, ugh!"

David "likes" this post.

Link baiting, tagging people places they are not actually at, and other forms
of this exist as well. At least in a few of my friend circles they do. In
fact, at one point, one of my friends and co-founders created a Facebook group
called "Operation Troll Cullen". He invited around 20 of our mutual friends,
and the idea was to respond to anything I said or posted with extremely
positive messages. "You're doing so great Cullen! Well done!" or "This was the
MOST insightful, amazing, article I have ever read. Thank you so much for
sharing Cullen, you're amazing!" would be two examples.

I of course had no idea this was going on, but suspected something was amiss.
It was quite the week for me, to say the least (and I did find it quite funny,
after the fact).

------
Sukotto
My go-to commentary on this general topic is the classic penny-arcade comic
"John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory"

(Normal Person) + (Anonymity) + (Audience) = (Total Fuckwad)

<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/>

~~~
psn
I hate this cartoon. it leads real name requirements on sites, in the hope of
removing anonymity. This hurts all sorts of groups (see the google+ real names
saga for a long list) but doesn't really slow down trolling. You can and do
see people making racist / sexist / whatever comments with their real name.
Possibly the trolls know that there are many John Smiths in the world. Its a
"theory" thats been disproven by this point.

------
DiabloD3
Being a recent "victim"[1] of trolling here on HN, I understand pg's
sentiment. However, the question is, has HN (since 2008, anyways) fallen into
the pit with the trolls?

For example, recently there was the thing with Rob Malda's resume. The entire
thread on that was rather derailed into either sucking up to Rob, or saying
Slashdot is full of trolls.

Or rather, it had a rather unfavorable signal to noise ratio. I tried to vote
comments accordingly, but it didn't really seem to help.

[1] Tried to stick up for FOSS and expose Microsoft/Mono for what it really
is, got downvoted for doing the right thing. Oh well, the trolls got me, not
really a big deal.

~~~
burgerbrain
In that discussion they were not trolling you, at least not intentionally.
Instead you were seeing what happens when you combine a strong dose of
cognitive dissonance with the ability to downvote.

This is a common effect in HN and other so called "enlightened" communities
because they _do_ have higher concentrations of honestly intelligent people,
people particularly susceptible to cognitive dissonance.

When you say something truthful that a "normal" person thinks is wrong, 9
times out of 10 they will ignore you, because they "know" you are wrong. Not
so with intelligent populations.

~~~
eropple
Alternatively, he was saying things that were out-and-out factually untrue.

Which, you know. He was. HN voters have this tendency to downvote posts that
sound like crazy-person conspiracy theorizing, for some strange reason. (I
downvoted him because he was maliciously inaccurate--mistakes happen, but that
wasn't a mistake. That was fabrication.)

------
firefoxman1
I was thinking along the same lines yesterday about why there are so many
negative comments online and not offline. I think one of the main reasons
(that PG didn't cover) is that in the real world, people associate together in
groups.

Nobody wants to be around a negative person, so not only does the negative
person have a minimal negative impact on the people around him (since no one
will listen), but the main problem arises when he gets online. Not only is
this troll frustrated that no real people will listen to his negativity, but
when he jumps online he's equal to everyone else. There are no groups. Nobody
looks at his username like they would his face in the real-world and says "oh
he's an ass, don't listen to him." I think it's partially because faces are
easier to remember than usernames, and partially because we associate a whole
personality with a face so we can avoid this person next time.

When everyone's equal they each have the same impact. This would be a
beautiful system if there was 0 negativity online because the new guy with
great ideas would be heard just as well as a 10-year online veteran. But in
the online social world its strength seems to be its weakness. How am I
supposed to know if the person commenting is a really cynical person or a
constructive criticism-type person until I've fully read his comment, and by
then he's already made his impact on me.

I don't think modern social networks have this problem as much though. I only
socialize with my real friends on FB, Twitter, and G+.

------
alexcharlie
Facebook has an interesting solution to the content quality problem, and
trolling is a very specific type of content quality problem. Positively
reinforce good content and HIDE everything else. The "Like" button
accomplishes this well.

If you've used facebook for a few years, you might remember the introduction
of the "Like" button. Facebook before the "Like" button was very different
from a UGC perspective. People did a lot more bitching and moaning. People
posted much more inane ramblings about what they ate for lunch lunch or random
happenings in their day. The "Like" button created a positive reinforcement
loop and consciously or not people started to try to post content that would
get more likes. Someone being emo about their shitty boyfriend or girlfriend
is probably not going to get likes, probably wont get surfaced in the news
feed and will never be heard. Eventually when people stop seeing those posts
they are less compelled to post those things themselves. Facebook describes
this as the virtuous cycle of sharing. Someone posts something, they get
patted on the back. YOU see their post and their pats on the back and you tend
to want to do the same thing. If you have friends on twitter and friends on
facebook, just put the two feeds up next to eachother. You'll see a HUGE
difference in the types of updates that people post.

------
anonymoustrolol
With the recent adoption of voting systems in forums (like this one) we are
seeing troll comments often buried, and this will perhaps continue to
discourage that behavior. On a bigger note, articles that draw clicks with
bold conclusions or headlines (like that nerd baiting article we saw on
Gizmodo) are still grabbing eyeball share and thus will continue to propagate
instead of real news/information. How that fight for eyeballs is resolved is
one that I don't really see a solution to yet.

------
int3rnaut
I wonder if there's an age and cultural divide when assessing trolls on the
internet.

I say this in that reading the post, and then the comments from you all-- I
see a bit of disparity between philosophies. I mean, for the most part I think
from it's very root, trolls are trouble makers, and we can all sort of agree
on that. But, there are people here who revel in that, see a symbiotic nature
(good needs evil), people who think trolls are important, and that they keep
things interesting--people who've even been trolls (full disclosure, when I
was younger and immature I partook in such acts...nothing malicious, but acts
none the less). When I read things like this I wonder where and at what time
these people were introduced to the internet and forums and the like. A lot of
younger people (at least the ones I know) are familiar with the trolling
culture, and share many of the same previously mentioned opinions, however
when I think of my Dad who was introduced to things much earlier when the
internet was much more "pure", he loathes such things, "there's no place for
that".

As a non-formal study, purely for my curiousity would anyone interested write
down their age, the time when they were introduced (ballpark it) to the
internet and forums, and their stance on trolls.

------
nodesocket
Love what Ryan Dahl has to say about being humble.
<http://youtu.be/SAc0vQCC6UQ?t=55m58s> Honestly, happens almost daily,
especially in SF. We meet awesome developers, but they are frankly arrogant
assholes. This sort of entitlement results in those people trolling and
flaming. Be humble, there are many smart people in the world; you're not that
awesome.

------
sytelus
Currency in the economy of trolls is attention. When forums are small,
trolling is much less rewarding and vice versa. Troll economy also feeds on to
itself and upvoting/downvoting/karma mechanisms would be less and less
effective as forum membership grows. To boost the attention economy, trolls
would resort to upvote each other more frequently eventually outweighing votes
of others.

From theoretical perspective this is very similar problem to links and
webpages. A troll is equivalent to a spammy web page. Upvotes/downvotes are
equivalent to traffic you get on your web page. When UserA upvotes UserB, a
link is created between two. The goal of a troll is to get as much traffic as
possible. They are incentivised to give each other upvotes in the hope of
return favor, or in other words, create as many links to each other as
possible. It would be mistake to think that few "good guys" can be used as
gate keeper to protect the system against these trolls. In nutshell that is
the hope and approach many early search engines had and they failed as the
size grew out of their hands. The solution has to be technical and automated.
Algorithms like PageRank or machine learning models is highly applicable to
trolling issue. For instance, the real value of karma should not be a naïve
count of upvotes (in the same way that real important of the page is not how
many other pages points to it) but rather who has upvoted it. I think
algorithms like PageRank can be easily applied to calculate the value of
karma. If trolls upvotes each other 1000 times, their net karma would be much
less than 1000 de- incentivising them for putting in the efforts for upvoting.
Of course, there are many ways to fool PageRank and but I think algos like
this should be sufficient for forums were you don't have to deal with more
sophisticated folks like search marketers.

------
antirez
There are much better trolls than the one described here, that are guys using
trolling to show a point about a controversial subject. For instance the
flying spaghetti monster thing is a form of trolling, and it is a good one.

I think that in programming forums the biggest source of trolling is due to
clueless people that still want to say something... in the real world they
would be put at the door, but you can't do this in a forum, and even after a
ban it is too simple to re-enter.

The simplest form of protection about this is to associate a cost to username
creation in a forum. Even 5$ is enough. This time the ban is a real cost for
the troller that will likely stop after the first 5$ rounds.

Another widely used form of "cost" is badges, that is, you start with an
account that can do very little and it takes time (and a good comportment) to
grow in features. However there is the risk of trolls opening N accounts in
parallel just to have reserves of usernames, so it is also very important to
penalize non used accounts.

------
guscost
There are few feelings on this Internet better than the one you get while
"spending" points on something that needs to be said.

------
metachris
_Which means that once trolling takes hold, it tends to become the dominant
culture. That had already happened to Slashdot and Digg by the time I paid
attention to comment threads there, but I watched it happen to Reddit._

Reddit actually has a fascinating, rich culture. Trolling is just a part of
it, but the community seems to be managing.

~~~
iambvk
Yes, I think reddit is not as bad as many think. Given the huge size of reddit
community, I guess, reddit has managed to retain a high quality humor and
knowledge (eg: r/askscience). Their fu is one of the best source of innovative
comics I ever found.

------
sukuriant
Personally, I "troll" in real life. It's usually among friends and just
taunting them, lying to them, etc, for the purpose of teasing them. They're
trolls too, and it's a bit of a game between us.

Really, in communities I frequent, there are so many trolls, we troll them
back. Perhaps we're using the term differently from how pg is?

~~~
re_todd
I went camping with a group of lawyers once, and they were a lot like this
too. They wanted to constantly argue and debate. They would even assert things
that I knew they personally disagreed with, just to start an argument. If
nobody was arguing, they'd get kind of tense and nervous as if some calamity
was about to happen, and then starting a debate seemed to relieve everyone's
tension. Seemed strange to me.

~~~
ericingram
That sounds like fun, I love debating

~~~
shasta
I bet you're a master.

~~~
ericingram
I'm OK at it, but it's the practice I enjoy.

~~~
nickik
Agree, I hate nothing more then ChitChat. Sometimes I hear people talking in
the train or something and the say nothing of substence.

------
oscilloscope
That's 8,000 unique _visitors_ per day? Didn't realize HN readership was so
small. I catch people in San Francisco scanning new articles, but it must be
location bias.

<http://www.google.com/trends?q=hacker+news%2C+reddit>

Edit: That number was from 2008

~~~
memset
This essay was written 3 years ago; readership has soared tremendously since
then, to the point that sometimes PG's innocuous comments on the site are spun
into Techcrunch headlines.

------
pvillega
Someone should send the first part to stephen colebourne, as an explanation on
why spreading Scala FUD and acting like a victim will only spread hate about
his behaviour.

Yes, I should write this, but I'm not smart enought to stop myself to type it.
After reading the definition my mind instantly draw his face...

~~~
gtani
Any PL that is widely adopted is going to have a lot of critics, including
some from the angry agenda school. The compiler writers need to weight all the
inputs so they know what to focus their copious spare time on.

This was entertaining:

    
    
        "He's like Goldilocks, scala's too complicated, fantom's too simple"
    

<http://www.scala-lang.org/node/7698>

------
kin
I definitely feel like the term isn't used correctly in the context of the
article but in any case there is definitely a certain attitude of nastiness on
HN that I experience all the time. I always find myself carefully choosing
words and being incredibly specific because any amount of vagueness can lead
to flags on my comment. Sometimes I just delete everything and say "I agree"
or "Congrats!" or "Good work" and I get a few points. Toss in a "but..." and I
get flagged. How about reply to my comment and ask my why I said what I said?
And actually most of the time I say something I say why I say it and I still
get a backlash.

Anyway, it doesn't happen all the time but it's definitely out there.

------
phzbOx
There is a difference between trolling, making a funny statement and saying a
contrived opinion. On HN, all of these get down-voted equally.

Often time, I find something funny, say it as a comment, and get down-voted.
It's not a stupid joke or something inappropriate, just a comment that'd make
the reader smile. And I know it's hard to judge because I keep saying the
score of these comments oscillating (I.e. people upvote it because it's funny,
and people downvote it because it's funny (or they don't find it funny.))

About contrived opinion, that one is sad. There's a difference between
something _wrong_ and saying your opinion. For instance, someone saying "I
don't like Backbone.js because x, y, z" will get on average a really small or
negative score. Why? People who agree with this statement in small minority
+x, people who disagree with this statement but agree that it was some good
arguments and points: +y, majority of people who disagree with the statement
-z. It just so happen that z>(x+y) with controversial statements.

Lastly, trolling is more about searching for trouble or pissing of people. For
instance, they'll say "Wtf, stop wasting your time with perl. It's a DEAD
LANGUAGE, WAKE UP". _This_ kind of posts should just get deleted and the user
warned and then banned from HN imo. Note that there're a couple of wrong
things with this statement. First, it's extremely aggressive and provocative.
Personally, I hate this but some well known people act like that and are
really appreciated so I won't judge. Secondly, there's no argument or fact..
it's just trash talking without ground to base yourself on. Lastly, there's
usually lots of words in caps and 'wtf' 'lol' 'trololol' which make it look
unprofessional for readers of HN used to read well written text. (Ironically,
I know this current text isn't well written but it's because english is not my
main language, not because I'm trying to skip words or be unprofessional).

Anyway, what I'd suggest is to have a way to differentiate between theses. 1-
A 'flag as spam/troll/non-respectful'. 2- A +1 (like what we have) to say this
is an interesting post/comment. 3- A Agree/Disagree button to express your
opinion.

So basically, someone saying "You guys are fucking stupid; 1+1=2" would be
flagged as unrespectful but could still be valid and agreed by the majority.

But in the end, is it worth it? As they say in engineering, it it works, don't
fix it. HN is not perfect, but I still enjoy reading the comments and I learn
quite a lot.. is it worth trying to fix it for a minority of trolls or
disrespectful people?

~~~
skybrian
Even if they're funny, posts that consist only of a joke generally aren't
allowed. They'd be more appropriate for Reddit. Hacker News posts are supposed
to have some substance to them.

(You're seeing fluctuations because not everyone knows this.)

~~~
dasil003
I'd amend that to say you have to say something really fucking hilarious and
you'll do okay. And that's fine, we just can't allow average jokes because
otherwise you end up with reedit where a 30-level deep joke thread is at the
top of every single post.

------
_pius
Please add (2008) to the headline.

------
VonGuard
I dunno guys, there seems to be a big worry here about HN degrading, or
trolling being more prevalent and mods banning non-troll entities...

If you've been to Reddit recently and tried to engage that community, you
might not be so worried about things here at HN. It's like hot and cold
running compassion/rape over there. They either flood you with love, or
ransack your house and ruin your life. Dangerous stuff, that Reddit Hive Mind.

It's just something that happens on the Internet: more people = more trolls
and perceived-but-not-really tolls. I wonder if someone could do a paper on
the average parts per million for trolls in any mass of words on the Internet.

------
sambeau
I wonder how much worse road etiquette would be if we had no license plates? I
suspect there is a reasonable argument against net anonymity hidden in the
history of the motor car.

Does anyone know what the tipping point for license plates was?

~~~
cobrausn
License plates came into existence in the early 1900s in Massachusetts when
they needed a way to tax people to repair and maintain their roadways, and
vehicle registration was the way they decided to accomplish it. It was also
proposed as a way of linking drivers with actions, as there was a rapid
increase in the number of roadway accidents about that time.

<http://www.mass.gov/rmv/history/>

~~~
sambeau
The French had them long before that (in fact they had them before the
automobile). But I suspect you are right: it was tax to maintain the roads
that required each automobile to be numbered and registered.

------
peter_l_downs
Top sentence according to bookshrink [1]:

> There's a sort of Gresham's Law of trolls: trolls are willing to use a forum
> with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing
> to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it.

I think that pretty much sums it up. Trolls are attracted to the forums with
the most interesting/intelligent users (the "best" forums). I think that
news.yc has been very successful in terms of the amount of trolling that takes
place, especially since:

> The core users of News.YC are mostly refugees from other sites that were
> overrun by trolls.

[1] <http://bookshrink.com>

------
baby
I feel like some people here are going to say that it went downhills. I
personally find HN to be the one of the most civilized and the most
interesting (in terms of discussions generated) place I visit.

------
biznickman
Really only 8,000 a day? I've received 10,000 visitors from a single post on
hacker news ... am I missing something? I definitely do agree however that the
conversation on this site is top notch.

~~~
Achshar
It was written in 2008 :) now the latest we have is about 120k i guess.

------
wpeterson
Trolling is the spice or salt that keeps things interesting.

Too much can definitely turn everything brackish.

But seeing some humor/sarcasm even if it's pointed mixed in with all of the
serious discourse keeps it all manageable.

~~~
Tomis
You shouldn't have posted something positive about trolling. Now mind the
downvotes.

This reminds me of an old phrase - "fish swimming against the current gets
electrocuted".

------
adnam
I used to be able to "flag" posts on HN, but a few weeks ago that right
appears to have been revoked. No idea what I may have done wrong; perhaps I'm
a "troll" and I don't know it?

~~~
burgerbrain
I flagged every single steve jobs article the day after his death... which
happened to be _every_ article.... My ability to flag articles has since been
revoked.

To be honest, it felt good. Made me feel like I had been heard. Shot down,
sure, but still heard.

~~~
adnam
Actually, I think this is exactly what happened to me!

------
eric-hu
Almost every day I use HN, I wonder why it hasn't implemented collapse-able
comments, comment sorting by rank, and auto-collapsing comments.

I understand this could introduce agreement bias, but I feel like that's
something that could be fixed by tweaking the numbers (i.e. only auto-collapse
comments with -20 votes).

As it is now, it's easy to game the comments thread by piggybacking off the
top comment of a post. This can be abused for trolling or just plain
discussion visibility (unfairly, IMO).

------
realschool
There is something about the hacker news community, people here are a little
less 'cordial' sometimes. It probably has something to do with the way people
who are technological have to deal with regular people (when it comes to
technology) and then how they feel they can deal with people who are peers.

This is good when it allows honest feedback about an idea and products, but
can also come across as coarse sometimes.

------
scottmcleod
Trolls can play an important role in discussion but often only when they play
devils advocate. I think 75% of trolling is bruised ego's lashing out.

------
chris_gogreen
Sometimes the trollish comments on articles/threads/posts are more
entertaining and enjoyable that the content itself.

------
angus77
I hate it when I don't know why I'm being downvoted---did I make some kind of
error? did I word things wrong? or do people just disagree with me?

What if there were a separate "flag" that people could click for trolls and
spam, but when you downvoted someone, you were forced to post a reply
explaining why?

------
switz
HN is great because you can say controversial things and still get voted up.
Most comment voting systems are often: agree (vote up) or disagree (vote
down). HN seems to be more along the lines of: Does this comment make
empirical sense or is this person talking out of their ass.

~~~
zhazam
What about HN voting specifically prevents the first case (agree/disagree)
from happening?

------
joejohnson
>> I've thought a lot over the last couple years about the problem of trolls.
It's an old one, as old as forums, but we're still just learning what the
causes are and how to address them.

That's crazy. We still don't know what causes Trolls?

~~~
joejohnson
Ah, never mind: this article is 3 years old.

~~~
finnw
Does that make a significant difference? What have we learned about trolling
in the last 3 years that we had not already learned in the previous 15 years?

~~~
joejohnson
I don't know. I'm not sure if there have been any break throughs recently
determining where the trolls came from.

------
TechboyUK
This reminds me of the Gardening Trolls of Pennadomo, Italy

[http://blog.techboy.co.uk/the-gardening-trolls-of-
pennadomo-...](http://blog.techboy.co.uk/the-gardening-trolls-of-pennadomo-
italy/)

------
oacgnol
When it comes down to it, many trolls feel the need to bash another language,
OS, etc. because it's a form of self-validation: your choice says something
about you. You'll see the same kind of thing with the "wars" over PC/Mac,
Xbox/PS3, Emacs/vim, etc., even if the person doesn't really understand the
differences: picking sides just seems to be natural.

Unfortunately, as the article says, the anonymity of the Internet allows these
thoughts to rapidly bubble to the surface, where in most cases there's little
repercussions for posting whatever the hell you want. I've encountered very
little of this attitude when it comes to meeting people in real life. For most
people, it's hard to be a dick in front of a real life person.

~~~
ericingram
I would say "fortunately" rather than "unfortunately", because it is the very
mechanism that allows these ideas to bubble up that also allow very good ideas
to bubble up rapidly.

We don't need repercussions for posting bad content, as we will evolve
powerful judgment to filter it. This is a natural market mechanism I think.

------
chris_gogreen
Does PG see trolls today in the same light as he did in '98?

------
rjurney
Hacker News lacks a feature that would 'close entire thread,' and so the top
troll comment is disproportionately rewarded with attention.

You could fix this with a simple feature.

------
efsavage
"The conversations on Reddit were good when it was that small."

When reddit was small, it was full of, and dominated by, crackpots. It was
barely even at the level of being entertaining, and I'd hesitate to call it a
community at all. Intentional trolls generally don't mess with crackpots, for
some reason. I don't know if it's because it's too easy or unsatisfying, but
the trolls usually come with mainstreaming.

(There are still lots of crackpots there, but it's gelled to a far more
coherent community that is much more fun to incite).

------
tle9
I love reading Graham's essays. Wealth and Why to not not start a start up

------
theviciousfish
examples of trolls in teh wild:
<http://animalsbeingdicks.com/post/12195340657/troll-cat>

------
interlagos
I've been hellbanned here on HN on at least three different IP addresses and
accounts...that I am aware of. Probably more.

In each case nothing I'd ever said would be considered trolling by any
rational observer. Here on HN, however, as with most communities where you
start to recognize the _regulars_ (tptacek, raganwald, etc), "trolling" is
redefined to simply mean "going against the grain".

There was one discussion that I participated where I predicted that Apple
would see declining profit margins due to increased competition. Remarkably
this completely benign, seemingly _obvious_ observation saw me declared a
troll, and shortly thereafter yet another account was hellbanned from HN
(whatever the mechanism -- is this the verdict of a bored PG, or has he
anointed some particularly under-employed members to apply it? -- it is
horribly broken).

Troll is, more often than not, a term used to circle the wagons.

~~~
vaksel
what does hellbanned look like on HN? Can't login? Can't post? Can post, but
noone can see it?

~~~
kstenerud
Anything you post can't be seen by others unless they've turned on dead posts
in their configuration, in which case anything you post has [dead] prefixed on
it.

Though it happens less than in other forums, wagon circling is definitely a
persistent problem on HN. I believe it's only further exacerbated by the fact
that downvoted comments are displayed in a difficult to read color, meaning
that downvotes can effectively censor things the majority doesn't like,
regardless of the merit of the argument. It's not as bad as on Reddit, where
groups of people form downvote cabals to actively censor specific users or
ideas, but it's still problematic.

~~~
billswift
Interestingly, since it is easy to highlight and read them, I almost always
read downvoted comments. Even in a post, like this one, with lots of comments,
where I start to skim them, but I still read most of the downvoted ones.

~~~
kstenerud
I do too; it's just annoying to have to manually highlight something in order
to read it.

In general, a 1-line downvoted post is downvoted for good reason. For
multiline posts, it's far more often a good post that people didn't like for
other reasons. Those are the ones I take steps to manually highlight and read,
and then upvote if I think it was downvoted for the wrong reasons.

------
billpatrianakos
I like the measures HN has in place to combat trolling. Karma, up/down votes,
the downvote threshold, dead links, etc. are all really good and seem to work.
The biggest thing though is just making sure everyone understands the kind of
unspoken spirit of the site. I'd also argue that we want to keep this place
kind of hushed as not to attract too broad of an audience.

What I don't like that I have seen a lot of, is what I like to call "karma
police". People who abuse the downvote button to silence perfectly valid
comments that they just happen to disagree with. That's a problem. I think we
need to be more judicious about the up and down votes. It's easy to just up
vote something with a title we agree with but does it really call for it? I
liken it to how easy it is to press the Facebook like button everywhere. As
for downvotes, that button should be reserved for off-topic, vulgar, or
otherwise obvious trolling cases and not just because "I didn't like what he
said, he's stupid, or whatever".

~~~
JoshTriplett
The downvote button means, literally, "this comment should appear less
prominently, and its author should get a very small penalty for having written
it". Similarly, upvote means, literally, "this comment should appear more
prominently, and its author should get a very small reward for having written
it".

With that in mind, "perfectly valid" takes on a different light. While
sometimes downvoting does get used to reinforce groupthink, sometimes it just
thwacks a comment with incorrect but authoritative-sounding information, or an
off-topic comment, or a rehash of an well-known unresolvable debate (valid or
otherwise), or in general a comment which will produce more heat than light.

In this case, I disagree with your comment, but I've upvoted it because I
think it deserves more prominence and more discussion.

Can you give an example of the kind of comment which you think received
unwarranted downvotes?

~~~
billpatrianakos
Sure, the examples I remember usually come up whenever there's a discussion
over copyright and piracy. What I'll see is a discussion about whether piracy
really hurts anyone with people arguing that it's free marketing and people
who pirate wouldn't buy anyway. Then someone comes along and the subject moves
on to open source vs free software. Someone says piracy is good because all
software should be free. Then a bunch of people pile on and agree. Then one
guy comes along saying that software companies aren't evil and developers
should be able to charge for their work and piracy is bad. He is then
downvoted to hell not because he said something off topic but because he held
an unpopular opinion.

I actually totally agree with you and the other responder to my comment. Now
that you guys have said something I feel like I should rhrase and simply say
that sometimes I feel like the up and down vote buttons are sometimes abused.
I hate to see group think win the day. I really think the downvote button is a
great way to show people that what they're saying isn't okay around here.
Downvoted comments get frayed out and are almost unreadable. That's a signal
that the comment isn't worth reading at all more so than "it deserves less
prominence". So instead if we just up vote the good stuff, ignore mediocre
stuff, and downvote bad stuff, then I think we'd be helping to show
participants what kind of community this is in a better way. The real trolls
get punished. The guys who are boring won't be offended and will be more apt
to contribute better stuff next time if you just give them no points at all.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Your example, to me, falls more in the category of "downvoted for retreading
an old and tired discussion" than "downvoted for going against groupthink".
Or, quite frequently, "downvoted for using HN as a soapbox rather than trying
to contribute to the discussion". I find that the best comments in a
discussion typically have at least some connection to the posted article,
beyond simply discussing the same topic. The old and tired comments would work
equally well in any number of other threads on different articles.

I don't tend to see groupthink as a problem in a community like HN. Sure, we
tend to think about many things in the same ways (the ways we'd consider
obviously _right_ beyond any need for discussion, of course), but those tend
to represent the boring topics anyway.

I do tend to follow the model you mention, ignoring mediocre stuff, rather
than voting on everything. When I downvote things, I do indeed intend to
suggest that people shouldn't bother reading it.

~~~
billpatrianakos
Fair enough. I'm not exactly an old hat myself. My account's less than a year
old so maybe I'm totally off on this and it's me who should keep my mouth shut
and learn a bit more. That said, I still think there's enough people who are
karma police in that they hoard points and use the up/down vote system in not-
so-honorable ways to merit some discussion about that. I also think there's
enough group-think going on to merit mentioning too. I'll admit my example
wasn't really solid but, hey, now that I said it maybe you'll be able to spot
it next time and be able to come back and say I was right. Or wrong. But I'm
decently confident it's prevalent enough to spot easily and quickly.

------
cq
Trolls are an important part of anonymous communities. They prevent people
from having their heads so far up their asses that the community becomes an
echo chamber. Too much moderation will contribute to echo chambers, as well.

