

Open-letter: Did hackernews become hateboard? - devrim

Anytime I come to hackernews, reading about a new startup, a new programming language (e.g. go), or a new concept (e.g. dotsies) to name a few, all i see is negative comments. We got our fair shares of them for our startup too.<p>I came to this conclusion, let me know if it makes any sense.<p>When there is something new, haters comment on it almost immediately. Sometimes, if you look at the time of the entry, you know, it's almost impossible to form any kind of opinion in that little time that the hater hated the whole thing already.<p>Sad part is, (inserting my analysis) if anyone actually has a few good things to say, they pass,<p>1) because then they would also be attacked by the same folks who just hated the original content. Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish kind of thing.<p>2) (scientific/logical/rational) quality of hating content is so low (sometimes downright ridiculous), it makes smart ones refuse to take part in such thread. You know this, when that weird dude comments on your facebook status, makes everyone else dissipate.<p>This situation makes hackernews a place where everything is mostly hated, not renowned or embraced. A few years back, hackernews was definitely not a hateboard - it was a great source of high-quality information.<p>These days I come here saying to myself "let's see how much sh*t this will receive on hackernews". It makes me sad, seeing one more platform that I respect, is taken away from me.<p>Do you agree? Or did I happen to see the bad ones? (http://d.pr/1wCv http://d.pr/j614) If yes, how do you think this can change ? Not asking for how we can fight against, "i know it all" guy, "every new thing is worse than what i know" dude; if what I'm saying is true, there are ways that system can fight to balance negatives and positives, maybe like stackoverflow does.<p>What do you think?
======
_delirium
I did a spot-check of what's currently on the frontpage of HN, and where there
are clear sentiments expressed about a project, they seem to have a reasonable
distribution of positive/negative, with more positive. Obviously this probably
varies day to day, so more data would be needed to draw conclusions.

Projects with mainly positive comments currently:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755656>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754561>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754108>

Mixed comments on this one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755276>

Mainly negative:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3752447>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755574>

~~~
devrim
i also don't think everything gets negative comments.

it's the 'new' stuff (idea/startup/concept, not funny/interesting links). just
based on your links, you'd notice 'mainly negative' ones are 'new' stuff.
positive ones are bash, excel spreadsheet, notepad++ etc.

if PG built and posted one of his 'ambitious ideas' here (<http://d.pr/if1q>),
say he made his new email program, i bet the most upvoted comment would be
like;

"... gmail does many of those things and already has X,Y,Z ... do you have any
brains at all to understand email protocol is A,B,C ... you better spend your
time doing research/study/..."

this is what i'm seeing over and over again.

------
pg
It's a problem. I was just thinking about ways to mitigate it as I was driving
home from YC. I'll spend more time on this problem between batches.

~~~
seeingfurther
I'd be interested to hear what percentage of active HN commenters have also
applied to YC. I'm not an active commenter on HN (or any other site) but if I
was to be more than a lurker I wouldn't want my reputation for snarky comments
to impact future opportunities with YC or any other startup group. HN/YC has
the potential to back into a professional hacker reputation system in a
similar way that Facebook has done socially. e.g. block commenters who haven't
submitted a YC app... of course if the % of HN commenters to YC applicants is
low this idea is dead on arrival.

~~~
ig1
The reality of modern HN is that many people here don't even know what YC is.

------
kristenlee
I agree with the OP, the level of negativity on HN is striking, if you peruse
through the articles on the first page on any given day at least half will
have some negative "hater" comment as the one with the most votes. You saw the
same type of negative behavior on Techcrunch before they transitioned over to
the Facebook commenting system, maybe there's something about anonymity that
brings out the worst in people.

~~~
polyfractal
I think this goes hand in hand with the decrease in front-page quality. It has
become normal to see a link-bait title voted to the top...and then the first
ten comments lamenting about how horribly linkbaity the title/article is.

A lot of the times the article is only tangentially related to the
sensationalist title and this irks a lot of people.

------
viraptor
I get the impression that this is supported by hn to some extent by the "don't
comment with me-too, or cool-stuff" kind of rules. If you see something that's
actually new to you, you'll usually have a response like: this is good (up
vote), disagree (comment), know something more (informative comment), know
something related / similar (start slightly off-topic but related comment
thread). And these are all useful comments to some extent.

If it's really news to you, the comment is really unlikely to be informative
or deep. Actually there are people who are almost always in disagreement with
news on some topic, but I don't think they're bad (see tptacek on every
homemade-crypto related article).

I think the general negative response is just a result of the news themselves.
Before you really get to understand/apply/have fun with some of the stuff, it
will be far away from the front page already. But as long as there's at least
a bit of constructive criticism in the negative ones, I think I'm fine with
it.

~~~
DanBC
There's a big difference in constructive criticism and some of the more
vitriolic comments that have been around more recently.

I agree with you that the system invites comments that tend disagree.

------
codeonfire
"Did hackernews become hateboard?"

No. you're just upset because you're afraid HN is losing its hip factor. Your
links don't point to examples of negative comments, they point to images of a
couple of people making negative comments about HN.

There is nothing wrong with the comments on this message board, and attempts
to censor just to meet your ideal comment is stupid and wrong. The correct
course of action for you is to start a new, hipper message board where you can
post all you want about how awful the old one was and how you knew about it
when it was still good. Please do this (hipsternews.com is taken).

~~~
devrim
thanks for proving my point.

~~~
codeonfire
It proves none of your point. Your links don't prove your point either. You
link to some tweets where people complain about HN, not to examples of
supposed 'negative' posts. You are clearly worried about what others think of
hacker news.

While the start-up biz may be all about pr, image, and hipness, Hacker-ism is
about keeping the truth and contempt for authority. If HN needs to be
sanitized for the sake of some software personalities sticking around, then
maybe users were mistaken in coming here because the site is named hacker news
not hipster scene start-up pr news.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore>

~~~
devrim
the whole problem i'm describing here is you (codeonfire). and it doesn't
surprise me that you don't see it. let me try to show you.

you've wrongly (psycho)analyzed me/my viewpoint (i'm upset HN losing it's hip
factor), misrepresented my proposal (censorship), then took your own analysis
as a fact, and called me/my opinion "stupid" and "wrong" based on that.

of course, you didn't stop there, to add a bit of sarcasm and humor, you went
on and checked the domain name that would remedy my non-existing problem.
that's why i thanked you for proving my point.

this is a great example of low-quality hate content. it almost is a template,
we can write a bot that exactly does what you do.

i'd normally not write back and pass, like many others, but just for this
post's sake, i'm keeping this conversation on. also you said my links were
pointless, let's put some other links here, quick glance at your comment
history:

<http://d.pr/CChr> <http://d.pr/IUYL> <http://d.pr/Hk9d>

just to clarify, despite of low quality content you produce (to be fair, i
also saw neutral ones) i'd never ban you, wouldn't try to suppress anything
you want to say. i respect your viewpoint as much as you disrespect me and
others.

i'd just like this system to put some measures so you express them
respectfully. that's all.

~~~
codeonfire
"called me/my opinion "stupid" and "wrong" based on that"

Lets be clear. I never made any personal comments, and you didn't really offer
an idea except to say that your goal is to "balance negatives and positives" I
said any attempts to censor comments to meet your ideal comment is stupid and
wrong, and whether or not censorship is what you want, I don't see why someone
would disagree with this. If you start removing comments that one person
doesn't like, then a forum becomes a simple pr blog.

"despite of low quality content you produce..." "i'd just like this system to
put some measures so you express them respectfully..."

in the interests of moving on, i won't comment on these.

------
Suncho
I think it's ironic that if I disagree with your post, I'll just be proving
your point. Usually, I don't read the discussions as much as I click on the
links to the articles. There are around two or four per day that look
interesting to me (congratulations, by the way). Sometimes, I save articles to
read later, so by the time I get around to reading an article, it's not being
discussed on Hacker News anymore.

Maybe when I accumulate enough karma to down vote, I'll down vote some stuff.
That's the most efficient way to hate. ;)

~~~
devrim
disagreement, is a very respectful thing, when done like you did. thus we
sometimes respectfully disagree.

however you'd agree that calling people names, injecting malice is not ok. a
comment like this, would add value to the argument, as i'd happily go ahead
and say "i hear what you say, however ..." just like i did here.

but if you call me retarded, my idea stupid, there's no room left neither for
me nor anybody else to take it any further. (thanks for kudos btw :))

~~~
hobin
I have a question.

You see, sometimes debates can get a little heated. I'm sure you've
experienced such debates yourself. Are you also talking about these debates,
when people say something is 'stupid' but are still capable of having a
rational discussion, or are you mostly annoyed by plain old hating?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm relatively new to HN, and thus can't really
comment on any changes. However, I also think that in the time I've been here,
I've seen _some_ hatin', but definitely not a lot of it. Again, this could
simply be because I'm used to communities where this is much more common, and
haven't been able to see changes in HN itself.

~~~
devrim
i think this is more about who is saying "stupid" and how generous they feel
about it. there are a few things

\- if paul graham says it's stupid it's different than somebody who calls
everything stupid.

\- calling the owner of the idea stupid.

\- plain old hating.

\- saying 'stupid' can also be a part of the debate, that's natural.

this is a hard problem to solve, that's why i brought it up. there is
definitely not an easy way of saying this is right or wrong, but if community
sets its tone, i think participants will try to be a part of that commonality.

and hopfully HN stays 'objective' and within 'reason' with polite, kind,
constructive comments. when there are no rules, haters win.

------
chc
The fundamental problem is that the easiest non-fluffy response to something
is to object. If you read an article and agree but don't have anything
personal to add, posting "This is correct for the reasons stated" is a waste
of time, so you probably don't (and should't). But if you read something and
disagree, you can simply write "This is not correct because X and Y" and
you've added something (though not something very worthwhile most of the time,
as X and Y tend to be knee-jerk emotional reactions).

~~~
trogdoro
Great point. "This is correct for the reasons stated" comments are almost as
annoying / spammy as the shallow negative comments, which makes it a tougher
problem to solve.

------
pclark
I would have a check box next to the add comment button that says "this is a
nice comment" and if someone posts without ticking that box, redirect them to
a page on civility.

If nothing else it'd be interesting to see if people tick it and still comment
mean spirited things, this way they actually have to acknowledge they are
flying in the face of Hacker News every time they comment.

------
dirkdeman
Maybe it's me, but I don't think it is that bad. Yes, you see the occasional
trolls, but it's nowhere near as bad as Techcrunch or Reddit or whatever.
There was a post about some guy wanting to move to SV asking for a place to
crash, and he'd get the most wonderful comments and offerrs. I think HN is a
nice community with a few newcomers who still have to learn that there is
actually something like being nice to each other on the internet.

I'm sure things were different, more intimate and friendly a few years back,
but that's more of an issue with becoming more mainstream. To me it doesn't
matter, just ignore the haters and remain constructive, helpful and friendly.
Well, I try to, at least!

------
brudgers
Negativity can be bad. Grinfucking always is.

HN offers a certain type of feedback for new ideas. When it was a smaller
community, it offered a different type. This probably had some advantages when
someone needed encouragement. The downside was that feedback was closer to the
fiends and family end of the spectrum. Now a shared idea will see a broader
range of opinions, and this probably means more people who will see the idea
as pointless, trivial, or just plain dumb. The upside is that the idea will
see more diverse debugging.

The issue with many "new idea" posts is that there doesn't seem to be a
specific purpose behind them. So many are, "here's my site" followed by "yeah,
I know the landing page sucks" and "thanks for letting me know that not
everyone wants to log in with Facebook."

General requests for feedback illicit general responses.

Sometimes, I read "My great idea" threads and my impulse is to debug it. That
means ruthlessly pointing to problems or possible problems - e.g. the person
whose "startup idea" is a lifestyle consultancy which doesn't scale well and
probably will never attract outside investment.

While one of the things I appreciate about the HN culture is "think about what
you would say face to face," there's a certain way in which it doesn't apply -
in person, I would know if sandwiching was productive, online, I assume that
it isn't.

The reason I assume it isn't is because online comments are not just for the
individual who asks the question -- this comment doesn't start "Dear Devrim."
This comment is more or less standing on a soapbox in the public square, as
are most in an online forum. In a public forum sandwiching adds noise and
tends to ignore the context.

------
chris_dcosta
I was was thinking of leaving HN for exactly this reason,

I'm not long here but I already noticed that I often receive downvotes for
being positive or having a social conscience, and oddly on the one occasion I
expressed a controvertial (and negative) view I received a significant amount
of upvotes.

I had always thought HN was about open, free and frank discussion where
everyone's view counts, but unfortunately I'm afraid to say, I'm not getting
that vibe at the moment.

------
mootothemax
I've never been a major contributor here, but I've definitely commented less
over the past six months. This is mostly due to dropping in on a few stories
when they're at the 50-comment mark, and seeing the top-rated comments
containing negative sentiments.

The annoying thing is that the best way to help fix this would be to comment
_more_ , rather than less. Basically, try and beat the demotivating effects ;)

------
staunch
A Slashdot style moderation system is probably the only real answer. Let some
subset of users mark comments:

    
    
      [informative] [snarky] [humor] [question]
    

Then take that into account when ranking comments.

------
geoffsanders
Being negative and being an asshole is not synonymous!

Believe it or not, it is completely possible to disagree and/or be critical of
someones idea without being a jerk or an asshole. As we all know, emotion,
intention, and connotation are all hard to convey in a text-only medium. Take
a bit of extra time to ensure your comments are polite and respectful, and
always keep in mind - PERCEPTION IS REALITY.

~~~
devrim
100% agreed. being an asshole is one problem, thinking about what's shared,
and like you suggest, taking a moment to make sure if our message will be
perceived as we intend is another.

i enjoyed this article a while back, it touches on the stuff we'd do better
even if we are polite and respectful on the surface.

<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes>

------
tgrass
Is there any experience with merely hiding abusive commenters. That is, I'd
like the option to be able mark an individual as hidden so that I don't have
to read his comments again; the individual is still public to anyone who
hasn't marked him. Over time it seems there could be multiple self selecting
communities within the same comment section.

~~~
DanBC
Personal "kill files" would be handy.

Perhaps a third vote button - "this might belong on HN but I hate it".

------
trogdoro
OMG, this thread is so stupid. This is such a dumb idea. (That was a joke, get
it? :)

~~~
devrim
dude.. it's your wonderful idea that made me write this post.. it took me 25
minutes to learn i can in fact 'read' using dotsies, it took 30 seconds for
the first hater to teach you (us) a life lesson.

"If this were going to work, Braille would be a lot more popular among sighted
folk." dsr_

"Not to mention another big flaw. It's nearly impossible to differentiate
between A, B, C, D, and E as individual letters since they are all represented
by one dot." csytan

this seriously needs to be discouraged.

~~~
trogdoro
Just... your idea will never work!!

K, joke over for now :)

I agree. There have got to be a few clever / simple ways of discouraging low-
quality hate, without discouraging high-quality hate or moving in the
direction of censoring or complexity. By "low-quality" I mostly mean the
derogatory and/or superficial ones.

Just throwing some out there... Ask people to voluntarily check a "this is
negative" checkbox when submitting, and if they have too many of them show a
"curmudgeon" badge next to their name. Or, let the poster have a limit number
of "this is infair" or "disputed" points they can assign, that will mitigate
the benefit to someone's karma, or ding/label the person if too many people
accuse them of being unfair in proportion to their number of comments.

I know, I know, these ideas are stupid, and dumb, and idiotic, and so am I for
having had them, and so is anyone within a 10 foot radius of me at the time I
posted this, by proxy. Glad we got that out of the way.

Re comments with high-quality hate, they are a strength of HN. I suspect many
of the more shallow comments tend to keep them away (people might be less
likely to add a thoughtful / informed criticism to a thread that already has a
bunch of jabs).

No doubt the future will bring some innovations for dealing with crappy
comments. It would be nice if they happened on HN because it's still a great
site.

If Dotsies does get anywhere, I may individually contact many of the haters on
that thread, just to say "remember this bitter comment of yours that
discouraged people from giving it a fair shot?" :)

~~~
devrim
these are as stupid as dotsies :) such that i'd love some of them get
implemented to hackernews. "curmudgeon" badge would be very useful in fact.
not to belittle people, but to encourage them. as long as we know that person
has that tone of voice in general, nobody will judge the content by that. and
the person will be free to express himself in anyway he/she sees fit.

------
grabastic
haternews. I couldn't agree more.

~~~
devrim
:) wish i came up with this one )

