
Is HN negative by design? (2011) - brennannovak
http://www.mikealrogers.com/posts/is-hn-negative-by-design.html
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kb101
I agree with the poster 100%. Originally I was very enthusiastic about the
site, and happy I had found it, but ultimately I realized that every time I
visited or attempted to add my input to a thread, I came away feeling
depressed and/or angry.

It's too clubby, it's taken the general disgust that people feel toward the
banality of messageboards that deteriorate into meme-ification or juvenile
flamewars... and turned that into a kind of snobby elitism that is just as
off-putting.

Don't say "thank you" for a useful post because it takes up too much time and
space? How utterly ridiculous. Only an antisocial or asocial nerd would come
up with such a rule and think it was a great idea, and I say that as an
antisocial nerd myself.

The system of ranking people by points, insisting that every single post be
some giant revelation of wisdom that advances the fortunes of the tech
industry and mankind immeasurably, etc. has only exacerbated people's tendency
to self-aggrandize, kiss ass, over-analyze minutiae, and constantly try to
one-up each other... all cloaked in a brightly colored cheerful passive-
aggressive candy coating, of course.

I still cruise the site from time to time because it does have great links
(one of the few things left going for it) but there is no way in hell I would
consider myself part of the community or welcome. I certainly wouldn't and
don't come here any more to ask questions or try to learn anything by exposing
any gaps in my knowledge to general ridicule and sneering.

My two cents.

~~~
mixmax
I've had an account here for more than four years, so I'd like to think I have
a somewhat informed perspective on how the community has fared thus far.

The first year or so was a private club. I knew many of the posters, and would
have great arguments, some won, some lost but it didn't really matter because
everyone shared a passion for knowledge, and would rather be proven wrong than
not learn something new. The discussion was great.

The second year I started losing track of the usernames and thus it became
less of a club of peers, and more of a regular forum, albeit a very high
quality one.

The third year the site had attracted so many users that the original patos of
intelligent discussion based on merit started to fade. Based on mere numbers
this had to be so; for any given subject there are only a limited number of
people that adhere to the standards to which we had becomme accustomed, and
new users mistook nitpicking for good discussion.

The fourth year I've more or less stopped posting and discussing here,
primarily because it's become a game of winning, and not a game of learning.
Nitpicking is a great way of winning, but terrible if you want to have an
interesting discussion. Negativity is highly correlated with nitpicking in
this respect :-)

I remember the first year here i had a long discussion with MattMaroon about a
linked story where a consultant had saved a company 100 million dollars by
changing a few bits and pieces around in the check-out process. He was
concinced the company was Amazon, I was convinced it wasn't. The discussion
dragged on, and we each tried to throw statistics, numbers and good guesses on
the table, until at the end Matt found a link directly confirming that it was
indeed amazon. He was right, and we were both happy because now we knew. I
don't see many of those discussions anymore. Unfortunately.

------
arkitaip
HN can be a very pessimistic and sad place and I honestly believe it's largely
because of the constant downvotes of jokes and other activities that build
camaraderie and understanding. I see this happen every single day and do my
best to upvote the comments but to no avail. It's the No Me Too Posts Policy
taken to the extreme and it alienates people from one another.

~~~
mindcrime
I'm sorry, but I just don't see that. Just because jokes and 'net memes get
downvoted does not mean that we don't have camaraderie and understanding here.
It just means that what we consider a positive environment here is about
something more than a skin-deep, superficial veneer of joviality and light-
heartedness.

Look at some of the threads where people have posted "Woe is me, I need a job
and my wife is sick and my dog is dying and my car just fell over" and look at
the generous offers of help and posts of support those get. Look at the "Hey,
I'm coming to SV and want to visit some people, who wants to get together?"
posts and notice how many people chime in to say "Hey, come see us." Look at
the threads about depression and related topics, and notice the people saying
things like "If you need somebody to talk to, call me anytime."

I think HN actually has (mostly) a very positive vibe, and I'm _glad_ that
jokes and Internet memes and (most) "me too" posts are downvoted. There's a
place for that stuff... that place just happens to not be HN.

Now I'm not saying HN is perfect, and I won't even argue that the level of
discourse hasn't suffered a bit the last few years. But, by and large, this is
one of the most civil and productive forums I'm part of, or ever have been
part of.

~~~
brennannovak
I definitely agree. I've seen some very humanistic threads- feedback, offers,
and connections happen here. I've also seen some roaring egos and ridiculous
flame wars that rival the dregs of 4Chan and YouTube. Sure, the HN comments
are more "intelligently informed," but silly arguments none the less. All in
all, I suppose that duality is healthy for a community. However, I've been a
member for 5 years and have only 639 karma points. I have no clue if something
I share will be wildly upvoted, flagged or just simply ignored- thus I feel
unsure if I am actually "welcome" here or not.

~~~
mindcrime
_However, I've been a member for 5 years and have only 639 karma points. I
have no clue if something I share will be wildly upvoted, flagged or just
simply ignored- thus I feel unsure if I am actually "welcome" here or not._

Eh, I wouldn't think about the karma thing to much. I have 3001 karma as of
this posting, and I still find myself surprised at which of my comments are
upvoted, downvoted and/or ignored. I just say what I'm honestly feeling,
submit stuff I find interesting, and figure the rest will sort itself out.

------
tjr
_It does require you to sign in with your real identity which curtails a lot
of spam and outright trolling,_

Is this new?

~~~
maethorechannen
It's probably a deliberate error to provoke negativity.

Or the guy was confusing HN with Google+

------
snowwrestler
I think Hacker News strikes people as negative because a wide diversity of
opinions occur here. Like all online communities it is self-selected, but in
this case only really along one criteria--coding. All the other bases for
affiliating with other people (politics, ideology, opinion, location) can vary
widely.

Whereas, social network communities like Twitter and Facebook are self-
selecting along any number of criteria--political, personal, ideological,
local, employer, etc. As a result, I bet most people don't see as much
diversity of opinion through their personal social networks as they do in
single-issue dedicated online communities like HN.

So, I'm not surprised that this author found a more positive response from
Twitter, than he did from Hacker News. The people following him on Twitter are
already people who have affirmatively chosen to hear what he has to say. The
people here have not, so they are more likely to argue, point out flaws, etc.

That can come across as negativity, sure--but is it? Is disagreement or
challenge such a bad thing?

Personally speaking, I think that one result of highly personalized social
media networks is that it leads to segregation from opposing opinions or very
different points of view. The result is, seemingly, less tolerance for those
opinions or points of view.

------
hollerith
>When open source communities figured out blogging they started to setup
planets

Although my interest in open source was very high when one of the early
planets, Debian Planet, started, I never found Debian Planet or any other
open-source planet worthwhile.

>Apache's policy to this day is that any member of the community can syndicate
the entire contents of their blog or a specific tagged feed of their blog to
the planet. It's the individuals decision how much of themselves they want to
share. Mozilla had a nearly identical debate and came to the exact same
conclusion

This policy has been tried many times, but has never resulted in a blog, feed
or form of public online discourse I want to follow.

------
brennannovak
I am curious to see if this gets downvoted, flagged or just simply what other
people in the community think!

