
Hacker News is depressing - smacktoward
http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/may/hackerNewsIsDepressing
======
DanielBMarkham
I do not read the comments on HN of the pieces I write.

I used to. I used to love hearing really smart people help out with whatever
was puzzling me. Perhaps I can get back to that.

But damn, this is a negative bunch. Whatever topic, whatever opinion you have,
it's somebody's hot-button issue and somebody else doesn't understand what the
fuck you are saying. Sometimes this is the same person. Most times this is
dozens of people.

At MicroConf a few of us were talking about the kind of junk traffic that HN
sends any more. "It's like having a bunch of angry nerds drive by in a bus
throwing food at you" one person ventured. Another had a better analogy: "It's
like having a busload of grumpy senior citizens show up at your store, picking
through stuff, complaining about the prices, going on about irrelevant things,
and generally being ornery, obnoxious and trashing everything that you've
done."

This is not a problem of individuals. HNers are some of the best folks in the
world. This is simply a problem of aggregating tens of thousands of content
consumers in one spot and trying to have a single conversation. I think HN has
scaled as far out as it's going to.

~~~
Udo
_> This is simply a problem of aggregating tens of thousands of content
consumers in one spot and trying to have a single conversation._

If I may offer a counter point. One of the complaints about users on HN is how
they treat Show HNs. The worst thing is arguably working on something and
getting totally ignored. The second worst thing is probably getting verbal
abuse for your project, from people you respect, no less.

When this happened to me (being ignored that is), I decided to try another
community for feedback. It was 4chan/g. Now 4chan has the reputation of being
somewhat of a sewer, but my experience was as different as night and day.
People were interested, and above all: friendly and constructive.

So why am I not hanging out in /g then? I believe that HN has a higher ratio
of users who are "my kind of people", commenters who I feel I have a
connection with. But as it is, this comes at a price, because HN can be a less
civil place. I don't this is written in stone, however, we can and should work
on improving this dynamic.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
What concerns me is that _the appearance of knowing what the hell you are
talking about and actually knowing what the hell you are talking about is not
that different_

An example: many times I offer startup advice. Now, if you read my profile,
you'll realize that all I can do is feebly try to repeat what I've read. I'm
nowhere near an expert. But sometimes I feel that the things that I've read
could be helpful to others. So I make what appears to be a knowledgeable
comment in the spirit of trying to help. Yes, it sounds a bit cold,
analytical, but it has that air of something that might be useful.

We got hundreds of comments like this, on any topic you'd like. Yes, we also
have some world-quality researchers that come here and help out. But to the
reader, it all looks the same.

We easily confuse the social nature of appearing to be critical and helpful --
let's be honest, looking smart to our peers -- with the actual value we might
be providing.

HN is a place to go to read really biting comments that appear to dissect
things into their core elements. But many times it's just wankers making easy
criticisms from a Monday-morning quarterback perspective.

I love the open forum, and I love the personalities and people here, but as
you grow, social posturing gets way more traction than actually providing
value, _even though both types of comments are indistinguishable from each
other_. That's just a function of crowds.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
That's probably a really important insight

We do get crap articles being posted (there is less decent meat on HN)

But we want the comments to be insightful and relevant. Which basically means
rewarding those who have domain insight / experience. Which is hard.

FOr example, if there is a thread on web security and cookies, I would like to
see tptacek's comments near the top so I can see them

But how to automate that? Its feasible I suspect but not easy.

------
RyanZAG
I find this post by Dave Winer a bit hypocritical? The reason he is writing
about Hacker News being depressing is because of the comments against his
article on Yahoo acquisitions and Marissa Mayer. As he says, he wrote it in 15
mins and I'd probably write something similar - but what he doesn't mention is
how depressing that post must have been if Marissa were to read it. He makes a
point about abuse being bad - but did he stop to consider that he wasn't being
exactly friendly in his post about Marissa? He was publicly discussing a
fairly "closed door" meeting he had and extrapolating that into a rant.

Basically, if you're going to publicly throw stones, I feel it's fairly
expected that someone is going to be throwing stones back your way. There is
nothing perfect about Hacker News - but I don't think that Dave Winer is
perfect either. Blocking off content is not the solution, however, and I'm not
sure what the solution really is. Sticking your head in the sand, perhaps? At
any rate, if there is a solution, I'm sure pg and YC will work something out.

------
danilocampos
As a top-voted dissenting opinion on Dave's piece yesterday, I find myself
compelled to chime in.

> I honestly don't care what the HN trolls, and the people who upvote them,
> supposedly "think" about me.

If that's true, why 750 words on the subject?

The issue I take with Dave Winer is that he seems to feel as though his
accomplishments or contributions somehow elevate his words beyond criticism.

I will say again what I said yesterday – his post "about" Marissa Mayer was
something I can only characterize as whiney. We can call it other things if
that's less offensive: petulant, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, perhaps.
But the sense of entitlement to the respect and admiration of other people was
something that dripped off of the post, and then off of his comments, and is a
recurring theme, to my eye, of the man's writing.

His poor rhetorical choices – name-dropping, specifically – overshadowed his
point. That's the gamble you make when writing headline-driven link bait.

But guess what? _Fuck me_ , because I'm just some guy on the internet. But
guess what else? So is Dave.

Participating in a technology doesn't afford a permanent apotheosis to all of
one's self and works. Your words must still carry their own water. There's
effective persuasion and then there's ineffective persuasion. Those outcomes
vary depending on the audience.

Now we all have a choice: we can tightly corral our words. We can be selective
in our audience, we can dole out our rhetoric with caution and precision.

Or we can blast that shit out to the whole of the world.

Now, Dave is quite excited to tell us how he helped make such a feat possible.
And the consequence of his great work is we all get to talk about it. And
sometimes we're not going to agree.

Sometimes we're not going to worship.

And that's life.

I take the point very well that HN comments can be pretty toxic. But a lot of
the dissent around what gets posted from Dave Winer seems pretty legit. Even
PG has weighed in on his poor attitude:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644147>

~~~
rockmeamedee
I'm another guy on the internet, and I just want to tell you, you don't have
to be mean to people on the internet. You don't have to write nice things to
everybody, but mean things just suck. Writing mean things just makes the world
more mean. I'd rather not read mean things, and I'm sure you'd rather not
write mean things. There's too little time in life for that.

How do you think Dave's going to take this post? He writes that HN is full of
people just attacking him. > The issue I take with Dave Winer is that he seems
to feel as though his accomplishments or contributions somehow elevate his
words beyond criticism. Bam, right in the nuts. Fuck you, and fuck your
accomplishments.

I'm sorry if my post sounds mean, I really want you to have the happiest
possible life and a great time here. But if his post is terrible, you don't
have to pollute your head with it and pollute my head by writing mean things
about it.

I don't come here to read wishy washy "great job dude!" posts, but I don't
come here to gossip about how people think they've got a "permanent
apotheosis" or whatever. He's just a dude on the internet, you're just a dude
on the internet. Be nice to each other. Life is too short to do otherwise.

Best of luck!

~~~
danilocampos
Do you think he was nice to Marissa Mayer in his post?

~~~
MartinCron
Do you think that absolves you from being nice to him?

~~~
danilocampos
Absolutely. Live by the sword, etc. And I feel the same applies to me. I heard
many candid responses. Didn't agree with all of them. Learned from some.

Which is the way it's supposed to work.

~~~
MartinCron
Another person's transgressions doesn't absolve you from being civil in
response. That's what civilization _means_.

It's not always easy, but it's an ideal we should hold ourselves to if we want
our community to be a place worth spending time.

~~~
davewiner
What transgressions?

It was just a story!

You guys are amazing to me, how you can inflate something as simple as a story
into this monumental thing.

I wrote the piece in 15 minutes. You're spending 48 hours debating every
nuance of something that means nothing.

Totally bizarre.

~~~
MartinCron
Sorry Dave, this is bigger than just you :)

I care about being a part of a community that doesn't let the escalation of
(real and perceived) slights debase the overall conversation. That's what
_I'm_ talking about. You spent 15 minutes on a story, I've spent the last few
years trying to be a constructive part of this community.

~~~
davewiner
Okay that's cool. It's just that you said some things about me that are wrong.
You seem like a nice person. Just know that I'm not who you think I am.

I get this all the time. When people hear how I talk they're suprised because
it's not the voice they hear when they read my writing. But I write just the
way I talk. Funny how that is. ;-)

~~~
MartinCron
I _am_ a nice person, and I didn't actually say anything negative about you. I
meant "transgressions" in a purely hypothetical way. Trying to make the point
that now matter how pompous some blogger is, we should all be civil to each
other here.

Don't mind me, I am just holding back the tide.

------
pg
I'm not sure what he's proposing. If he means let site owners specify that
people not be able to submit their sites to HN, I've actually daydreamed
occasionally about doing that myself for paulgraham.com. But it might not work
in practice, because determined submitters would just mirror the text
elsewhere and submit that.

He's right though that Twitter has a big advantage in that it's easy to ignore
jerks. It might be a good idea to introduce some form of following or blocking
here.

~~~
angersock
Following, perhaps, but not blocking.

One of the nice things that HN affords is that it doesn't really support
filter bubbles--at least until mods or the community downvotes you to
oblivion. Thus, there's a good chance that people at least get exposed to
ideas they might otherwise ignore.

Hell, I can think of several posts where I've strongly disagreed with somebody
else, only to be in jovial agreement or discussion a few days later. I'm not
sure that a blocking mechanism is really needed; if people are being
deliberate and abusive trolls, we have ways of dealing with that, right?

~~~
medecau
You don't block the people you disagree with. You block the jerks, the obvious
trolls, the negative shit aka noise.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I never use such features unless it is really trolling, in which case I expect
the flagging system to solve the problem or anti-spam techniques. I don't
really like I need protection from people's thoughts, not saying people who
want such features do but it's not my thing.

~~~
angersock
Exactly--the flagging feature is there to deal with real trolls.

Let's be honest--usually, blocking (in a community which has other ways of
dealing with abusive users) is just a way of helping people be intellectually
lazy and filtery.

------
Udo
I'm very sorry it has come this far.

It's easy to forget we have a tendency to make remarks about people online
that we would never bring up in a personal conversation. I'm not excluding
myself here, I too feel I'm sometimes harsher online than offline - and it
sadly also happened in the Dave Winer thread yesterday. People can come across
in a certain way through their writing that we would never attribute to them
if we met them face to face - yet that's all we have to go on in most cases.

Keeping these difficulties in mind that are inherent to all online
communities, I think this article is a damning statement about our discussion
style here specifically. It's important to acknowledge that _most_ commenters
on HN do not behave that way, but some do and they are very loud. To make
matters worse, "good" people sometimes overshoot their target because
something in a news item or an article pushes their buttons, leading to a
disproportionate response.

All in all I think HN has a lot to offer. I said it before, but it bears
repeating: I come here to have insightful discussions with clever people who
sometimes disagree with me. HN is the only community that does this for me,
because I feel there are many like-minded hackers present who have a lot of
value to contribute through both their work and their opinions.

At the same time I believe we should take a long hard look at these other
instances where we're simply not at our best. Again, this includes myself
specifically.

~~~
smacktoward
_"It's important to acknowledge that most commenters on HN do not behave that
way, but some do and they are very loud."_

I think part of this is just the dynamics of community-moderated comments. In
my experience, the way to get upvotes in _any_ such forum (not just HN) is to
express an opinion in the strongest terms you possibly can. "X is dead" gets
upvotes. "X has some challenges to overcome, and it might" doesn't. People
like and respond to simple, clear arguments that don't admit weakness or
uncertainty.

This dynamic then feeds on itself, as the people who are the best at
forcefully stating their opinions become top commenters, crowding out more
cautious voices and providing a bad role model that the next generation of
would-be top commenters follows.

How do you fix this? It's poisoned so many great communities I've belonged to,
so I wish I knew. But I don't.

EDIT: I have seen one mechanism that helps mitigate this: hide the users'
actual karma scores.

Karma is a scoring mechanism. That turns forums that use it into a video game
(of the type very well parodied by <http://www.forumwarz.com/about>).
Participants compete with each other to see who can get the highest score.
Hiding the actual numbers from users takes some of the fun out of this, which
cuts down on trolling.

Slashdot used to show your exact karma score, and they had these exact same
problems. Eventually they switched to just a text label ("Excellent", say, for
high-karma users) that indicated your general karmic position, and the
comments got a lot better very fast. Nobody's going to put as much time in to
go from "Excellent" to "Excellent" as they might to go from, say, 2,500 to
5,000.

~~~
ionforce
You fix it with heavy-handed moderation that actively punishes curtly written
content.

~~~
redblacktree
This is true. It works very well for reddit.com/r/AskHistorians. This is, by
far, one of the highest-quality sub-reddits on the site, and it's because of
active, heavy-handed moderation that enforces a strict rule set. (e.g. no
speculation)

~~~
archagon
Same for Metafilter (though the rule set is much less strict).

------
Uchikoma
Dave is the victim?

"They assumed that I was being "egotistical" for thinking that Google ever
cared what I thought, and arrogant that I think they should care what I think
now."

As this might be about me, as I wrote "No, it's typical for your ego."

Several years ago I've sent Dave mails with ideas, which one of them he posted
without attribution or credit to his blog. With some mistakes I've made
included. In an ongoing mail discussion he credited himself, including the
mistakes.

About personal attacks:

The way he handled Marissa on his blog:

"All I remember of it was there came a point in the conversation when Mayer
had had enough. She just got up and left. I think the people remaining in the
conference room were a little embarassed."

He has no problem making people look bad, especially if it helps getting
attention. Getting push back he then follows up presenting himself as the
victim. He has also no problem calling other peoples assholes

"Now I think there's a solution to letting the assholes control the
conversation..."

in a piece about discussion culture.

Google for "Dave Winer" returns a lot of stories that are similar. Before
accepting Daves view on this, I wish people would do some research into Dave
Winer.

~~~
DanBC
How he behaves elsewhere is not relevant to people here making direct personal
insults.

~~~
Uchikoma
I thought I'd respond to personal accusations.

~~~
DanBC
Respond to them how you like if you're doing it there. But here? People prefer
better conversation.

~~~
Uchikoma
We disagree that Daves established behavior in different situations is
relevant to the discussion on the submission here. I think this is relevant to
his comments about HN, you're not.

Attacking people, getting push back, getting personal and portraying himself
as a victim is a pattern that can be found over the last decade. Talking about
this pattern is relevant when we discuss the behavior of HN posters here.
Especially if Dave provokes this behavior in others with the goal of getting
attention to himself. Then people agreeing on HN behavior in the comment of
the second submission just play according to the book.

------
danso
I respect Dave but he has to realize, experienced as he is at blogging,
that...this is the Internet, where no one knows you're a dog...or even an
Internet pioneer. And he's done his fair share of rush-to-judgment
posting...my first knowledge of him was during the whole Suggested Users List
spat, in which he accused organizations, such as the NYT, of participating in
payola:
[http://scripting.com/stories/2009/03/12/whyItsTimeToBreakOut...](http://scripting.com/stories/2009/03/12/whyItsTimeToBreakOutOfTwit.html)

The Internet is no different or less immune to abusive discussion than every
other form of human communication...but at least it's one in which it's
possible for any participant, big or small, to improve the discussion, and so
keeping scripting.com (assuming that he considers his writing there to be
overall helpful) off of HN would be a disservice.

~~~
DanBC
> this is the Internet,

The Internet is a big place. If you want YouTube comments ("Lol yuo dikk yo
mama haet you die of cancer!!1!" you can go to youtube.

> at least it's one in which it's possible for any participant, big or small,
> to improve the discussion

Yes. Let's keep working at making HN better.

Comments like this (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5731152>) should be
vigorously downvoted.

~~~
bestdayever
In the same vain, why do we have random blog posts on hn. If you wanna blog,
take it to a blog. If you wanna show off some tech or code, bring it to hn.

EDIT: I'm not just talking about this specific post, I don't really care when
linus yells at somebody in a mailing list etc. If it's some opinion piece or
fluff piece I just don't really get why it's here.

~~~
shadowfox
> If it's some opinion piece or fluff piece I just don't really get why it's
> here.

Perhaps because a subset of people find it interesting/enforces their
opinions/serves as ammunation against what they dislike/etc etc ..

It might be hard to prevent.

------
jgrahamc
_So I have a suggestion for Paul Graham, the guy who runs Hacker News. Give
sites the option of blocking links from Hacker News._

That could certainly be implemented (either on Hacker News, or by the site
owner doing a redirect to a permanent 404 based on the referrer).

But that seems like a loss. It's a loss to HN if links to scripting.com were
forbidden. Also, within the thread that he is talking about there was a great
deal of meta-discussion about the way in which HN was reading the article and
reacting to its author.

~~~
itsybitsycoder
Does it matter whether it's a loss to HN? When people/groups abuse their
privileges, taking those privileges away is not a bad thing. Maybe having a
few good sites block HN would cause commenters to think more carefully before
posting vitriol, or upvoting it. I missed the thread the first time around,
but I looked it up, and it's pretty disappointing. Despite there being lots of
top-level comments about the actual content of the blog post, the highest top-
level comment is just a mean personal attack. I see it on a lot of other HN
posts too, and I don't get it. How does it contribute anything to say that
this or that topic isn't worth talking about and, by the way, the author
smells and he has a funny name?

~~~
duaneb
Linking is not a privilege. If you put your stuff out on the internet you
can't choose who gets to discuss it.

I don't approve of HN's conduct at all, it's one of the things I detest about
internet communities, and HN, though the best of them, is no exception. But
asking HN to change because someone was offended by the most predictable
behavior is silly.

~~~
itsybitsycoder
As jgrahamc mentioned, you can choose to block incoming traffic with HN as the
referrer (although this is not foolproof for a number of reasons); you do not
have the right to download other people's content without restriction. Also,
you do not have the right to have your discussion hosted on HN; if pg chose
to, he would be well within his own rights to implement a feature like this.

~~~
duaneb
> Also, you do not have the right to have your discussion hosted on HN; if pg
> chose to, he would be well within his own rights to implement a feature like
> this.

I agree; I wasn't taking a stance on whether or not HN should do so. I was
simply pointing out the irony of a blogger protesting about being linked.

------
jmduke
This is tricky.

On one hand, Hacker News, despite being one of the best of its kind, is a
programming community, and programming communities (or similarly populated
communities: online gaming, etc.) are possibly the most overwhelmingly
negative and vitriolic I find online. (Huge exception: StackExchange.) I find
it perplexing that the business & finance communities I visit are consistently
more civil and constructive. Remember the developer who got flamed for
creating (not promoting or arguing the superiority of, merely posting on
GitHub) an sed/awk replacement? Our community is an overwhelmingly mean one at
times.

(You can dress it up as engineers/developers/hackers being more honest, more
blunt, less MBA-y, whatever. It's unpleasant and hurts people's feelings.)

On the other hand, in the midst of all the ad hominem of yesterday's
discussion (you can find it here:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5738455>) there was a lot of valid
commentary which Dave Winer (whom, for the record, I have never talked to nor
do I know his accomplishments) seemed to ignore. The reasonable extrapolation
from _My One Talk with Marissa Mayer_ was that Winer felt she was an
individual whom did not respect developers' viewpoints or a more 'balanced'
view of the web. Specifically, he says:

 _All this is to say that the promises execs make on acquisitions are
meaningless. They own the thing, they will do what they want to with it. It
doesn't matter how many nice sounds Mayer makes on the deal. At the core she
cares not one bit what the users of Tumblr think. She's saying what she needs
to say to make the deal happen. To avoid a PR crisis on Day One. To make the
team at Tumblr feel like their work has value to the new owners. That somehow
this acquisition isn't actually an acquisition._

And I think it's entirely valid to say that, hey, isn't it a massive logical
leap to get here from the anecdote of the 'BlogThis!" button?

Winer seems to be asking Hacker News to be polite, which I think is important:
but I think it's better that Hacker News is _good_ , and along the way it
seems obvious that being polite is better than not being impolite.

~~~
asher
Would you mind telling me what business and finance communities you've found
interesting?

~~~
shrikant
I'm not parent, but I think /r/business and /r/finance on Reddit are quite
interesting. They're relatively low-trafficked subreddits that can still
maintain centrist (balanced) and informative discussions.

------
simonsarris
This is curious, maybe a little too reactionary[1], but I think we could use
the introspection.

On the one hand, being argued about is a problem a lot of people would like to
have. I spent two years making a large canvas diagramming library and I would
have _loved_ for it to have frontpage'd on HN, even if everyone just told me
it was terrible.

On the other hand, I do think the meanness of programming communities is a
_the biggest problem we have._ Programmer-types are just not as
supportive/empathetic as nearly everyone else I know. And I'm not talking
about criticism, I'm talking about needless mean, shitty behavior that gets
repeated and defended all too often. When the Linus/"Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK
UP!"[2] was posted to HN every single top comment was defending Linus'
behavior.

Linus' mission and position do not excuse his language. In defending users,
he's still attacking a person.

It upsets the hell out of me, and I think its a big part of why many women
(and I'm sure men) prefer not to engage in programming communities. Even on
_StackOverflow_ I see people being horrible to confused newcomers, instead of
steering them in the right direction.

I think rooting out this kind of shitty behavior is the most important thing
we can do to advance programming communities and make others feel welcome. By
miles. _Especially_ if we want to alleviate gender and general newcomer
disparities.

This article reminds me of one from 117 days ago, "What It's Like To Be
Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project".[3]

~~~~~

[1] There were some remarks in the article that just left me confused, such
as:

> They said I thought JavaScript was a bad language. How funny, because I'm
> writing almost all my code these days in JavaScript. They say I'm old and
> out of date. Funny. They're the ones who are out of date! :-)

???

~~~~~

[2] <https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75>

Some excerpts:

> Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

> It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And
> you still haven't learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance?

> If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We
> never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to understand?

> Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage
> and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously.

If you talked to your spouse like that it would be called abuse.

I was horrified by the HN reactions. You can read some of them here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4962912>

~~~~~

[3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106767>

~~~
zeteo
>the meanness of programming communities is a the biggest problem we have

Or maybe it's our biggest asset. In a world filled with bullshit (how many
people you think _really_ empathize with you - vs. just going through the
motions?), it's refreshing to have a little corner where they honestly tell
you why your ideas suck and your background is deficient. It kind of comes
with the profession, yes. Only a relentlessly critical kind of person can
effectively hunt down bugs and deal with dozens of other frustrating problems
everyday.

~~~
shadowfiend
There is no fundamental incompatibility between being honest and being
respectful and understanding.

You can tell someone “you suck, go back to the corner of the Internet you came
from, I don't have time for this”, or you can tell them “your skills don't
seem to be quite at the level where we can accept your contributions; in
particular, you don't understand X, Y, and Z very well and it shows in your
code. I'm short on time, but if someone else has time to explain why that
would be great.”

The difference is almost immeasurable between those two interactions, even
though they are saying the same thing.

I've made this point before regarding derision, which I think is the true
issue. I'll quote myself, since I've already written the thing[1]:

“Derision is not curtness. It is not impatience. It is explicit, intentional
putting-down of someone because they aren't as good at something as you are or
think they should be. And it is a poison. Unfortunately, if you take it
frequently enough, it becomes habit. It becomes second nature. And you stop
noticing it's poisonous. And so, unfortunately, it is an oft-enjoyed poison in
intellectual circles. It doesn't help anything. It doesn't help you understand
the world or other people. It doesn't really save you that much time. It
simply makes you feel better about yourself.”

[1] - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4921579>

~~~
abraxasz
I understand that this might be specific to me, but I'd actually rather have
someone tell me:

"You're useless. For god's sake stop contributing until you get your sh _t
together"

rather than:

“your skills don't seem to be quite at the level where we can accept your
contributions; in particular, you don't understand X, Y, and Z very well and
it shows in your code. I'm short on time, but if someone else has time to
explain why that would be great.”

I don't have a good explanation why that is. Maybe it's because I feel some
condescension in the second while the first one is just plain raw "I don't
have time to deal with your sh_t. You're an adult: fix it and come back
later".

~~~
gknoy
The more polite response gives at least some shred of a foothold on which the
recipient can find out how to better themselves. "Fix your shit" does't
explain how your shit is lacking, or the major things you don't understand.

e.g., if I were to post some patch that used bubble sort, one could easily say
" _This is total crap. Don't come back until you fix your shit_ ". If I were a
noob, that wouldn't help me contribute better. If one were to rather say
something like, "This is very inefficient," and then mention something about O
notation or efficient sorting, and point out that this is a performance-
critical section of the code, I might be more likely to actually take the time
to learn enough to be able to fix it.

Consider also the effect on newer programmers. They start, they commit crap,
you tell them to die in a fire. They get better, and years later decide that
they're not going to bother fixing bugs in your project because "that guy's a
jerk". Constructive criticism, or at the very least politeness, helps prevent
poisoning the well of talent that is interested in working with you.

~~~
jlgreco
Programming, more so than many other fields, has a strong tradition of self-
improvement and education. Tell any "noob" that they are an idiot for using
bubble sort and they should have more than enough resources and know-how to
figure out why they are wrong and correct it themselves. (Either they
independently invented it themselves, in which case they are at least
moderately clever and you just told them the name of what they created (what
they should google), or they googled it in the first place so they should be
able to google it again).

Is it best, in a controlled environment with both low signal and noise, to
take your time and explain things in detail in a "civil" manner? Sure. That
works great in (small) classrooms for example. In a public kernel dev mailing
lists though? No, a fuck off should suffice. If the recipient of the fuck off
wants more, they can seek it in a more appropriate place.

IRC is somewhere in the middle; usually civility or ignoring the person works
best. This is particularly true since most IRC channels are fairly explicitly
there for people who want to give or receive advice. I've only told someone
who was seeking help from me on IRC to fuck off once, and that is when he
demanded I talk with him on skype instead of IRC, and pressed the issue.

Edit: I suppose I shouldn't expect a civil response if I explain in a civil
manner why I don't think civility is always necessary. Hoisted by my own
petard perhaps?

------
vxNsr
Yikes, pg is not gonna be happy.

Honestly I feel like the only option is to just stop accepting new members at
a certain point, because above a certain tolerance it stops being a community
and becomes a city. CIP: I'm in a rural town for a couple days and everytime I
walk outside everyone I pass says "Hi" or "Good Afternoon," the first time
that happened I was kinda surprised I tried to figure out if I knew that
person from somewhere, because where I come from (Chicago) strangers on the
street ignore you, they don't wish you a good day and smile...

There's the whole "you can't know more than 150 people" study [1]. Which I
think is very apt here, obviously we have to scale that idea (as anything less
than like 5000 people means it doesn't exist when it comes to the web) but it
might be a good idea to stop accepting new members or cut the community into
chunks, if you wanna keep things from getting worse...

Finally, I've begun to really like OSC's version of the internet as presented
in Ender's Game, at least when it comes to having real discussions.

[1]<http://bit.ly/10iAy6P>

~~~
brymaster
> Honestly I feel like the only option is to just stop accepting new members
> at a certain point

Huh? So what's the cut off date then? I noticed your account was only created
86 days ago.

Making a forum an invite-only clubhouse doesn't improve discussion.

~~~
MartinCron
_Making a forum an invite-only clubhouse doesn't improve discussion_

It might, but at what cost?

~~~
brymaster
You'd get no users, content or discussion. Just look at lobste.rs

------
stcredzero
_> They say I'm old and out of date. Funny. They're the ones who are out of
date! :-)_

The kind of people I seek out on line are people who understand the truth as
something separate from them, which comes from a diverse and complicated
objective reality. The kind of people I abhor are those whose personal power
derive from punishment/reward of those around them in order to climb the
social ladder.

There are more and more of the 2nd kind here on HN. There is more short
sightedness, and _more ageism_. There is far less broad technical knowledge,
and the level of Computer Science knowledge seems to have fallen dramatically.
There are people who casually mix up "collide" with "collude" and will
downvote you for pointing that out.

HN has gotten bigger. As usual, it's gotten stupider as a side effect.

------
jaytaylor
The site seems to be struggling with the traffic spike. Here is the google
cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/may/hackerNewsIsDepressing)

------
jimmyjazz14
I don't know about depressing but the amount of drama on HN seems on the rise
lately and I don't find it all that entertaining or interesting. I guess this
old tune is played out but, I remember a time when things where better.

~~~
VLM
"the amount of drama on HN"

Is it homogenous and if not, is it still a problem?

My very quick glance at the situation looks like someone's not too happy about
getting savaged because he positions himself as a lightning rod in the past
and was writing about a fluffy social topic relating to a fluffy social issue
in a fluffy social arena. The whole steaming pile does not sound like HN-type
material. OK, I don't particularly care.

What I do care is the air is kept clean for a real "hacker" "news" technical
article like "Nimrod 0.9.2 released". I don't even use Nimrod and I found it
an interesting article and discussion. A tad flamey around the unicode spat,
but unicode is a magnet for that kind of thing and even the tiny little flame
(like a birthday candle) was vaguely technical and interesting so its at least
semi-excusable. Overall a fine quality article, perhaps because all the "yer
mom" comments fresh from 4chan were magnetically attracted to fluffy unicorn
social hour over there, keeping them away from the "real" articles.

There are numerous other "hacker news" articles I could have used as an
example of genuine hacker news. But fluffy unicorn social hour decoy articles
are fairly rare. So we're in no danger of being overrun.

The TLDR being that periodic (intentional?) seeding of HN with drama, kept
carefully firewalled away from the real articles, keeps the air clean.

~~~
jimmyjazz14
Yeah, I certainly don't think all hope is lost there is plenty of good stuff
still showing up on HN which is why I still come here but, there is a somewhat
noticeable trend towards the dramatic happening lately.

------
lquist
_I subscribe to the Hacker News feed, which does not include comments. It's
very useful stuff. So the links themselves are good._

To each his own: My HN reading favors comments over links by at least an order
of magnitude.

~~~
obviouslygreen
I'm pretty sure I end up getting more information overall out of the comments,
but if you weigh it based on uninformed vitriol versus useful content, using
an article-only feed wins out pretty easily.

------
DanBC
Not sure if it's any consolation, but some people were downvoting personal
insults, and in the few minutes I spent reading the thread some people were
calling out personal insults as a bad thing, and asking people not to do it.

More people need to downvote direct personal insults.

The author is right that it's a problem.

~~~
probably_wrong
I don't have a downvote button, probably because I'm new and I don't have
enough karma. I wanted more than once to downvote insulting comments, but
alas, I cannot.

I can upvote, however, meaning that I have both the ability to insult in
comments and upvote insults that agree with whatever I want to insult at the
time. That seems like a recipe for abuse if/when the userbase increases
unexpectedly by a large magnitude, as older users wouldn't have the numbers
for cutting down this behavior.

But other than closing down registrations and sending new applicants to
"Hacker News 2", I don't know how to fix this.

~~~
dragonwriter
The simple solution would be to weight votes (upvotes and downvotes) by a
function of karma, so that the upvotes from lower-karma new users that can't
yet downvote would be less powerful than downvotes from longer-established
users.

(OTOH, that could have undesirable side effects, as it could, outside the
domain of managing tone, result in a strong bias for older technologies and
against new technologies, if it is the case that, on average, technical folks
have a tendency to get attached to the technologies that were "hot" when they
were establishing themselves and prone to seeing newer technologies as threats
-- that's something I've seen enough to suspect it is a general, though far
from universal, trend.)

------
vertis
Not everyone here is a troll. Some of us just like to read interesting things.

------
mst
Expected WHAARGARBL, received WHAARGARBL. Entertaingly so, though.

(ref: [http://www.popehat.com/2010/03/11/racial-babyocalypse-
provok...](http://www.popehat.com/2010/03/11/racial-babyocalypse-provokes-
inevitable-whaargarbl/) )

~~~
awj
Aren't there already plenty of other places on the internet to go find that?

------
ramblerman
What depresses me is the endless introspection as displayed by this thread.
The constant need to include everyone as belonging to some enlightened
community just for owning a username.

------
SandersAK
The biggest problem with the "this is how we are, deal with it because it's
efficient and direct" is that it's just not true.

There is nothing efficient about being a dick.

There are basically two ways that being a curt dick can be functional: [1] The
other parties involved are extremely empathetic and look past the messenger to
understand the message. [2] The curt dick has enough power to brow beat /
intimidate / badger others into getting their way.

Neither of these are long term sustainable solutions, because empathy between
parties is a two-way street. Simply put, you can't sustain empathy unless the
other party grows.

Hackers pride themselves on the "fuck you" attitude that disrupts stuff, and I
get that, and I like it. But the flip side of that is that an inflexibility to
understand and communicate with others ultimately will dull your edge and
you'll wind up short of what you want to achieve.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it - not because it's a nice feel good
thing, but because how you say something is incredibly important in
efficiently disseminating your message, and often time the success of your
goals depends on it.

Writing off people who push back on you being a dick is writing off an entire
population of people who don't see the world 100% your way... you know, like
everyone besides you on the goddamn planet.

------
fmstephe
I agree with this sentiment. I was really surprised by the response to Dave's
post yesterday. It was extremely disappointing to read such vitriol over what
seemed like a fairly straightforward and useful observation about
acquisitions.

The real question is how do we fix it? I have often thought that what I would
prefer would be a fully curated news feed rather than one managed by the
upvote system. But this wouldn't seem to work well in practice. I would be
relying on the persistent effort of a small number of curators, who might get
sick or bored or go on holiday or they just might never exist in the first
place - who wants to hand curate a new feed for some other people?

But what if we provided a very simple tool for producing a curated feed, so a
curator could just right click in their browser to add a link to their feed.
What then if we allowed the readers to aggregate these curators? The
aggregation is yet another (semi)curated feed which can be followed for
further aggregated.

This could (possibly) produce a single feed very similar to HN, but it seems
likely that we could easily seek out a feed which was heavy on CS theory and
light on VC politics (or the other way around).

The biggest challenge that I see is making it engaging to the curators. Right
now we allow submissions and you get points for submitting something that gets
upvoted or for making upvoted comments. I think we can make the experience
rewarding but there are a lot of details, wherein live devils.

Maybe it sounds like I just recreated reddit, but this system would not have
any votes, just aggregation of curated feeds.

Any thoughts?

------
mwfunk
There were definitely a few overly harsh and trollish comments on the article
yesterday attacking Dave, but looking at it now it seems like 90% of the
comments were either defending Dave or attacking his critics or apologizing
for the trolls. It sucks that the comments seemed to turn into a referendum on
Dave but it was still orders of magnitude more civil and intelligible than how
it would have gone down on any other site.

I don't know that HN itself is the problem here, it's still pretty exemplary
compared to the competition. Maybe a broader point could be made that it's
depressing that the site with by far the best comments can still descend into
those kinds of discussions.

For context, it's also worth noting that Dave is no stranger to controversy
and has angered more than a few people over the years. I have no idea whether
he was right or wrong in those situations, but I'm sure that that animosity
played a role in some of the comments people made yesterday. Many of the
really negative comments didn't seem like typical kneejerk Internet comments
so much as people with grudges against him personally, and those grudges bled
out into the discussion. Again, no judgement either way here, just providing
context.

------
onemorepassword
There has been a recurring pattern of quite vitriolic ad hominem attacks on
certain people on HN in a way that I can only describe as "celebrity-bashing"
for quite while now. Other favorite targets are for instance RMS and Gruber.

This isn't just the odd troll. There's a lot of cheerleading going on in the
form of upvotes, even though the attacks don't contribute anything, and would
normally be downvoted into light grey.

------
Karunamon
Wait, i'm confused. Author brings up Twitter (of all things..) as an example
of a network where you can block people you don't want to deal with.

Okay, but then he then jumps from that to suggesting that HN implement a
feature that doesn't let people on another site talk about whatever site they
please?

That doesn't even make sense, or am I just missing something here?

------
maxerickson
There's about 6 top level comments that are negative.

In the big thread, there are 9 negative comments (the rest being sidetracks or
push back). A couple of the smaller top levels have a second or third negative
remark.

Of course these numbers are highly subjective. I wouldn't call it a torrent.
Much of it certainly served no purpose.

Was there some other negative activity?

------
tlarkworthy
I thought people were a bit harsh yesterday too

~~~
taoufix
Context? I'm not up to date :(

~~~
smacktoward
The discussion in question is here:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5738455>

It was about this post by Dave Winer:
[http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/may/myOneTalkWithMarissaM...](http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/may/myOneTalkWithMarissaMayer)

------
pbreit
I don't care if it takes 15 minutes or 15 hours, if you are going to call a
person or company untrustworthy (or worse), you better be ready for blow-
black.

------
kafkaesque
I don't think this is reactionary. I am still a fairly new user and hardly
participate for various reasons, one being that I come here for the
programming resources because I just started learning to program.

I'll preface what I think with this: I grew up with a computer since the early
90s. I used BBS's, and online communities since then. Internet culture always
seemed to me to be very abusive, with very few exceptions. And as Dave says,
there is a whole aspect of anonymity that makes people very comfortable when
saying whatever they want, since they feel there will be no retribution.

For me, HN is one of the better places when compared to other forums I visit,
such as music ones (not the technical side of music, by the way).

The one common problem I see is a user not giving another the benefit of the
doubt. When I took an online course at university, the prof sent us a link
regarding "Netiquette". It was actually very interesting. I can't find the
exact one he sent the class, but it was something like this:
[http://ctlt.ubc.ca/distance-learning/learner-
support/communi...](http://ctlt.ubc.ca/distance-learning/learner-
support/communicating-online-netiquette/)

Anyway, one thing that stuck with me is asking genuine, courteous or friendly
questions when you disagree with someone. There were many, many times when I
would read someone's point of view which I thought were absolutely false. But
I took the recommended route of asking a question to clear up some
information. This is what I mean by giving the person the benefit of the
doubt.

I think a lot of people worry that all of this is a competition and everyone's
out to prove they are right. It is difficult to admit one is wrong, I know.
But those who are sometimes right go out of their way to try and humiliate
others with snarky or sarcastic comments. I used to be exactly like that when
I was a kid participating in online communities in the 90s. Then I read
something Oscar Wilde wrote: One should always play fairly when one has the
winning cards.

It's pretty simple, but it works. You think you're right? Fine. But play nice.
It may seem disingenuous, but ask questions which you think will lead the
person to what you think is right. I've done it and many times the person knew
something I didn't. Sometimes we were talking about different things.
Sometimes I was right, but hey, at least the person learnt something new, and
I learnt how to be a better person. And, of course, many times I was wrong,
and I think to myself, "I'm glad I wasn't an asshole to him/her right off the
bat".

I think we would benefit from interacting with others online the way we would
if we were talking to them in person.

------
C1D
Reading the comments yesterday was as Dave said, depressing. I ended up
closing the window because I really didn't want read any more of the comments.
People began attacking his second name and that was when it went further than
too far.

------
Mz
The problem is he implored people to stop being "personal" while calling them
"assholes." Ad hominems and hypocrisy do not typically help if your actual
agenda is to improve the situation.

------
ajanuary
If you've got a public blog, I'd say that's analogous to having a public
twitter account (i.e. anyone can see your tweets).

On a public twitter account, if you block someone they can still see your
tweets, and they can still talk about you. You just can't see it.

Blocking a post from HN would mean people on HN wouldn't even see it or be
able to talk about it. We might be assholes, but we should still be able to
talk about stuff within the parameters laid out by HN.

Another solution might just be to disable commenting in your posts if the
referer is HN.

------
GHFigs
Compare: [http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-
ope...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-open-door-
heal-or-die.html)

~~~
WalterSear
A tale of two butthurts.

Online discourse is not in the best shape. That said, despite wanting to feel
bad for both authors, the stench of their misplaced entitlement prevents me.

------
davewiner
One thing I've learned from years online when you think you're hearing a tone
in someone's post, unless you want to be a fool, you should check it out with
the other person because you're probably not getting it.

Writing doesn't convey tone like speech does. I might be very happy yet you
hear someone that is unhappy. This is pure projection.

That is, of course, if you're interested in responding to reality, as opposed
to having some other motive.

------
mnicole
Some of the arguments here are that if you post something to the web, you
can't be in control of where it ends up. While I agree with that sentiment on
the whole, HN shouldn't be a place where you submit articles that are clearly
just somebody's snippet of an opinion, but rather actual _news_ or human
interest stories that err on the tech side. Others are suggesting that you
just avoid the thread that is about you, and I think that's irresponsible;
people have the right to correct information about themselves and their
opinions.

We've seen all sorts of ShowHNs where the person who made it wasn't ready to
post it yet, but someone got ahead of them. They rush into the comments to do
due diligence, but sometimes the damage is already done. Now if the author
wanted to post it again once it is finally complete, they'll likely end up
with comments like "Didn't we see this already?" and potentially get less
click-throughs considering. We've seen blog entries torn to shreds and the
author show up hours late to a dead thread, hoping to do any necessary damage
control or simply answer questions that could have changed the entire flow of
conversation.

Not being fully in control of where my content ends up and not being able to
be in every conversation about what I write is a big contributor to why I
don't write at all. When someone posts my content here, it's assumed that it's
to be taken seriously or that it is worthwhile. Despite that not being the
case, people respond as though it is, and thus we find ourselves in this
situation.

Even if there was some sort of tag like #nohn or something to highlight the
fact that if discussion on the issue should be kept on the site because, as it
wasn't intended to be a HN-worthy piece. That way, if it's posted anyways (as
I don't believe in blocking the URL entirely), the author's intent is clear.

------
peterwwillis
I believe this is the textbook definition of the word "flounce". The guy could
have just banned referer URLs from HN, instead he blogs just to say goodbye.
Funny stuff.

Also, what's with both his commenters and HN describing one another's
commenters? There are shitty, stupid people everywhere, folks, and nobody is
superior to anyone else. Except SomethingAwful goons, because, well... you
know.

~~~
Gigablah
His comments section is basically an echo chamber. Sounds familiar...

------
quackerhacker
First off, most of your guys on here know me now and my background with Google
not being a good one, so I don't have a bias opinion.

I think at least the devs at Google DO care and they take pride in their work
(like every damn dev should). The problem that happens when your company
(Google) services so many is that your voice isn't heard against the
noise...(I think weev felt this with ATT).

I didn't get a chance to read the comments on the Mayer article (feel free
someone to reply a HN link), but if you were getting personally attacked,
that's immature of whoever trolled you. HOWEVER.....You can't generalize your
experience with Semantics and assume that Mayer will be the same way. I think
Mayer is doing a great job, and given her position at Yahoo will lead it the
right way. (Still waiting for Yahoo to redesign that ugly homepage though,
wasn't she credited for Google's simplistic search homepage?).

Side Note: I thought I read somewhere that Google's chief PR (the decider)
went to work for the Obama Admin?

~~~
nivla
>I didn't get a chance to read the comments on the Mayer article (feel free
someone to reply a HN link).

Here you go: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5738455>

~~~
quackerhacker
Thanks nivla, I had a chance to speed read most of them. I didn't see too much
trolling other than from Dave responding to almost every comment on there
(fanning the flames).

Just like I said earlier, Dave is personalizing his past experiences and
shoving them on Mayer. The CEO of Semantics lead him on, but the BIG DIFF here
is that Mayer is the CEO and like I think the brightest comment on there said,
Mayer has to have a very thorough plan. She has alot to prove in this
position, to shareholders, to her team, the board, and to everyone pushing the
PR.

------
egonschiele
I've noticed the same thing. I wrote this post[1] a month ago. I put a lot of
time into it and posted it on /r/haskell. I got some very insightful comments
and good discussion. Two days ago it got posted to HN and the comments were
very different. Lots of people saying "I don't understand this, this post
sucks" but very few responded to me when I asked _where_ they were stumbling
so I could fix it[2].

The upshot to all this is, I got way more exposure through HN than through
/r/haskell, and a lot of people loved the post. I've gotten some cool emails
out of this. So overall, I'd say trolls sure suck but the nice emails make it
all worthwhile.

[1]
[http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_...](http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html)
[2] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5736004>

------
Pxtl
Name a community with coherent discourse (not Twitter) that does _not_ have a
problem with negativity.

------
DenisM
There are two often overlooked reasons why this happens:

1\. Thoughtful, contributing comments take a lot of effort to write, and
people who write them can do other productive things. Pretty much every time I
put effort into a thoughtful comment it gets ignored. It's particularly
upsetting when it's "ask HN" or "show HN" type of thing - not a reply, not an
up vote, do you even listen when you ask? So I stopped writing thoughtful
comments ( * ), except for my own benefit - when I need to write something
down to really think it through.

2\. With the post title like you had I assumed it was celebrity gossip and did
not even click the link. You can imagine the type of people that did click the
link anyway. By choosing a subject you're choosing the audience.

( * )Ironically, this comment took me some effort to write. :)

------
npsimons
As with anything, you shouldn't take it too seriously. Yes, it's depressing
that trolls get upvoted ("A troll is someone who, finding that no-one likes
them, decides to pretend that it's on purpose."), yes it hurts to have
supposedly intelligent people pick apart everything you say or do, but hey,
don't let the bastards grind you down. Try to remain positive; sometimes just
being obstinately optimistic will make the worst of humanity run away
screaming or quietly fume.

And yes, sometimes I've been that asshole; don't take it personally; it's me,
not you :)

That being said, just because you know a language is "bad" doesn't mean you
won't use it (that comment is directed not just at the OP but also the trolls
who assumed he was an idiot for knowingly using a "bad" language).

------
orangethirty
I'm sorry you had to deal with this.

------
webwanderings
People make their choices when they participate in HN comment streams. As far
as I can tell, there is no RSS feed for comments here and there is no advanced
way of keeping track on commenting. You have to manually browse to participate
yourself into the conversations.

Over the few years, HN has sort of become the Digg and Reddit. There are far
and few substantial conversations in visible view (yes count mine as
unsubstantial as well).

From the logical perspective, the circle of HN needs to break off from its
core and diverge into many different circles. There may already be few inner
circles (hidden from the public view) I can't tell. But it seems logical that
this big public circle is all inclusive, where everything goes.

------
mdesq
There's a fair amount of electronic bullying even here on HN, often shrouded
in politically correct techie language.

Tearing down is always easier than building up and, as others have pointed
out, as a community gets larger, the negativity tends to rise as well. It
takes a lot of emotional energy to deal with a sea of people you respect who
always have a significant portion ready to jump down your throat. This is one
problem I have with social applications that grow sufficiently: There's always
a mob somewhere large enough to lynch you. Sometimes that emotional energy
might be better spent dealing with your in-laws or a few tough but valuable
customers.

------
chrisa
I like and value most HN comments, but I agree that there is quite a bit of
negativity. One way to look at it is that if the average commenter even
accidentally makes a negative comment once per year, and if 10,000 people view
a thread, that's the potential for 27 destructive comments.

It doesn't help that negativity enforces itself, so it doesn't take long
before a thread can be inundated with a hostile attitude. But how to address
that?

I don't know how it might work, but what if there was an option for the author
to include a picture of themselves (on HN)? That might humanize the
discussion, by reminding people that they're talking to a real person...

------
tokenadult
The author of the submitted blog post writes,

"One of the main reasons it doesn't work is that people don't ask questions to
clarify. They jump to conclusions, some of which are very wrong."

I think that is the nub of the issue. People who are genuinely curious about
an issue try to find out more. I routinely upvote comments here on any subject
that ask for more information or more sources on factual statements made in
articles submitted to HN or factual statements made in comments. We don't all
have the same background in life experience and formal education, and I often
learn new facts about the world from other Hacker News participants. I can't
always assume that I understand another person's comment on the first read.
Moreover, quite a few participants here write English as a second language.
(How many Americans can write in ANY language besides English?) So sometimes
the first thing to do when replying to an article submitted to HN is to ask
follow-up questions. Another good thing to do is to point to other sources, if
you know of any, for more information.

Civility is a core value of Paul Graham, the founder of Hacker News. He wants
us to be able to disagree politely

<http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

when we do disagree, and the Hacker News welcome message

<http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>

distills the basic rules of the site into a simple statement: "Essentially
there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude
or dumb in comment threads."

Don't be rude. Don't be mean. That's not easy, but that is the community
guideline here. Or maybe not being mean or rude IS easy, if you practice it.
It's worth finding out how much we could all habituate improving our social
skills by how we behave here on Hacker News.

AFTER EDIT: It's worth pointing out that I wrote all of the above part of what
I wrote before I really wrapped my mind around the fact that, after all, the
submitted blog post comes from Dave Winer, whose blog posts I have been
reading for more than a decade. I still stand by my statement that we may all
as well be as civil as we possibly can and as factual as we possibly can here
on Hacker News. This is a community we can all improve by our individual
actions. That said, I think Dave Winer and plenty of other bloggers have
plenty to learn from the best comment threads on Hacker News, the comment
threads that most follow pg's aspirations for this site, precisely because
there is a back-and-forth in the comments and a fact-checking that many
bloggers shy away from. The difference between a blogger and a journalist is
that a journalist is a reporter who writes for an editor. Sometimes bloggers
write only for themselves, and when they do, they can learn from comments, if
only they are willing to do so. When a blogger writes about another public
figure, the blogger has to be able to take the heat, or maybe the blogger
should find another kitchen.

------
tzz
The site seems to be down. Here is cached version:
[http://realcache.com?q=http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/ma...](http://realcache.com?q=http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/may/hackerNewsIsDepressing)

------
Millennium
Talking about the technical aspects: is this really something Paul Graham can
do? Wouldn't blocking inbound links be handled on the client side, perhaps via
mod_rewrite or something along those lines? Come to think of it, isn't
scripting.com doing exactly this?

Yeah, it's not perfect: it's actually really easy to get around, because all
you have to do is copy/paste the link. But the overwhelming majority of the
abusers won't even do that much work: they'll assume the link is dead, the
nerd-rage will cool off, and they'll go elsewhere, leaving nothing on your
site but a line in the server log.

------
mpclark
Yup, I also felt bad when I saw folks laying into Mr Winer yesterday. I was
going to submit a "hey, be reasonable, lets have less of the ad hominem" but
then I saw a few people had already done that. Of course, I voted those up.

But the real problem is also one of the unique features of HN; I couldn't flag
or vote down any of the offending comments because I don't have enough karma.
That's a shame, because it feels like I just have to sit on my hands and watch
the bile flow. I think this makes the world appear rather worse than it is to
anyone watching...

------
leephillips
Many of the, probably, younger people here are understandably confused at all
the vitriol directed at this Dave Winer whenever his name comes up. It
probably seems mysterious and irrational, if you're not familiar with the
context, which is decades of behavior that simply disqualifies him to chastise
others about honesty or decency. To get caught up, start at
<http://www.mackido.com/Press/CarlsSaga.html> .

------
leephillips
I was surprised, even in the context of something as frankly incoherent as
this rant, to hear someone talk about "discourse" on Twitter. Especially
someone who recently [0] described Twitter as "grunting and snorting".

[0] [http://thenextweb.com/eu/2011/04/13/dave-winer-twitter-is-
mo...](http://thenextweb.com/eu/2011/04/13/dave-winer-twitter-is-mostly-about-
grunting-and-snorting-but-it-could-be-much-more/)

------
mmorett
Dave nailed it. It's why I rarely comment and never post. HN is one of the
most unfriendly spots on the net. It's downright hostile.

I love the curated links, but that's about it. Trying to engage in
conversation is a crap shoot. You might learn something, but you might
encounter someone just dying to turn district attorney on you and just wanting
to rip into you. I'll pass.

And God forbid you have a negative view on vi/vim.

Let the downvoting begin.

------
6cxs2hd6
Remember the two bulls joke from Colors? [1]

Think of Dave Winer as Robert Duvall. He's telling you a story about the
promises and reality of acquisitions.

Those of you complaining about him? You're Sean Penn.

Thing is, someday you'll be telling this to a young 'un, just like Penn did at
the end of the movie.

"The explanations required by the young are wearying." [2]

[1]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbUxePfsoWE>

[2]: Look it up.

------
prawn
"One of the main reasons it doesn't work is that people don't ask questions to
clarify. They jump to conclusions, some of which are very wrong."

Do people realise that Winer reads and replies on HN? Would they ask a
question to clarify if they knew he would?

Even when there is a general submission, it is not always obvious that OP or
Original Author is participating. Reddit highlights the OP in a discussion
which can be helpful.

------
tomelders
Yup, HN commenters can feel like a stampede of negativity bearing down on you
sometimes (and with increased frequency it seems). But then you can't really
post your thoughts and ideas to the web then take umbrage when _some people_
don't like it.

That said, I don't have a fugging clue why people objected to the original
article, or what the point of their objections were.

So in summary: Eveyone's wrong.

------
dspeyer
Going one level meta, there's a specific thing that bugs me in this
discussion. I'm seeing the words "abuse" and "butthurt" used a lot. Using
either word makes a claim that the negativity in the previous thread was or
was not excessive. But it doesn't make an argument to that effect. It's just
an unsupported, emotion-tugging claim. That's bad debate. Please stop.

------
ky3
Reminds me of:

"In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact,
pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited
snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at
watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only
one direction: down."

\-- James Wolcott

People will read whatever they want into whatever there is.

------
dbecker
_One of the main reasons it doesn't work is that people don't ask questions to
clarify. They jump to conclusions_

It's funny to see Winer complaining about commenters being too quick to
criticize from a limited background... when the whole issue starts from an
article he wrote "in 15 minutes" criticizing Melissa Mayer based on a single
short conversation.

------
thomasfl
I've been reading hacker news for more than 6 years, without doing any
successful projects of my own. That's depressing.

------
rayvinly
I've been a reader much much more than a commenter here. But I developed a
habit of ignoring any negativity expressed here. I think it is a skill not
less important in dealing with life in general and in organizations.

However, yesterday I was really burnt out emotionally on some personal
matters. And I've yet to fully recovered...

------
brown9-2
It's worth considering if the meaning of this article/complaint changes at all
if you replace the words "Hacker News" with "Internet messageboard".

Is this something unique to HN, or something that many popular messageboards
with anonymous posting features have in common? My guess would be the latter.

------
bld
One of the most comprehensive guides to diplomatic critiques I've seen was
written for the Critters science fiction & fantasy writing workshop. It serves
a critical need in that venue:

<http://critters.org/c/diplomacy.ht>

------
dfc
Somewhat off topic:

why does scripting.com want to load assets from localhost:

    
    
      <script type="text/javascript" 
        src="http://127.0.0.1:5337/opmlEditor/comments/button?title=Hacker%20News%20is%20depressing&editorialDomain=comments.scripting.com">
      </script>

~~~
Isofarro
He runs his own authoring system, OPML Editor (a derivative of Userland Radio
/ Userland Frontier). That listens on port 5337. So that's fetching something
local, except it will only work on his box, possibly anyone else running OPML
Editor on theirs too if there's some common shared code running in that
environment.

------
rythie
Isn't this a general problem with the internet? i.e. the authors of content
know exactly what everyone is saying about them.

This isn't a problem with offline or private discussion because authors have
no way of knowing what we said.

------
logn
I think the OP could email pg and he'd add them to the block list.

~~~
davewiner
Is there such a thing?

~~~
logn
Some domains are banned for spam. Not really the prescribed use in this case
though.

------
tunesmith
I just don't get his emphasis on outliners. You can't model any kind of many-
to-many relationship with that. Outlines don't even reflect how we think.

------
duaneb
Why blog then?

------
mechnik
this might be a good time to say good-bye to HN.

so long and keep all your rotten fish.

------
michaelochurch
I put myself on a self-imposed break (which I'm breaking now, sorry; it seems
to be more of a one-post-per-day policy) from HN because I don't want to be
contributing to the problem. But as long as the quality of my posts doesn't
degrade (flame wars do that) I think 1 per day is fine.

I think we, as a group, tend to be shitty judges of character, but our
arrogance blinds us to the need for improvement. We're cynical about "people"
in general, but we latch on too quickly to businesspeople who seem above-the-
fray or decent, often based on superficial signals. (This is like the creepy
guy who fabricates a relationship with a girl because she smiles at him.)

A consequence of this is that we can't perceive it when we the people above us
play divide-and-conquer games against us. Language wars. This team against
that team. IDE-users vs. command-line developers. Efficient but "not
dedicated" 8-to-6 family guys vs. inefficient all-nighter types. Pro-Google
vs. anti-Google. Facebook users vs. Facebook haters. Young vs. old. We've all
been monstrously played and most of us don't even see it.

Your enemy isn't the guy who wrote the shitty code. He was quite possibly
working under an obscene deadline in a job he couldn't afford to lose. No, the
enemy is the boss who mandates you use the shitty code (using the nicest
possible language, i.e. "we won't be able to deliver unless <horrible
technical compromise that damages your career>") instead of letting you
rewrite it; when he makes a common enemy out of the original architect, he's
fucking playing you.

Most of our road-wear that we get in this career comes from wrong assumptions
we make when divide-and-conquer games are played against us. We eventually
wise up to the bad character of the players, but we retain those biases for a
long time, and start saying things like "every shop I know of that used the
JVM ( _N_ = 1) was unable to hire good people"... when the real reason that
shop couldn't hire talent was that it paid poorly.

Just what I've seen. All this incivility and in-fighting comes out of our
willingness to tear each other apart based on superficial differences, and
that's something that's been inculcated in us from above. Why? Because we're
fucking easy to control that way.

------
corresation
As the author of one of the "negative" comments yesterday --
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5738748> \-- I'll scurry out of the bomb
shelter long enough to offer a counterpoint.

I view this entry as a bit of a tantrum, by someone who cares so little about
the comments on Hacker News that he has repeatedly slandered the site and its
regulars, and while encouraging others to post this very link in a comment
earlier today simultaneously demands that this site not link to him. This
strikes me as a little childish and bizarre for someone who, as I think we all
know, understands a bit about the internet.

He is attempting to bully a group, using tactics more commonly found in grade
school, and is threatening to cancel recess for everyone.

If you are a public figure, which Winer is for his contributions to the
industry, "you" become bigger than the person. You become a message bus and a
context. That comes with a lot of benefits, which includes that every opinion
gets broadly spread regardless of merit, but it also means that context
becomes a legitimate target for criticism, and a persistent wrapper around all
messages, _because_ your opinions are broadly spread regardless of specific
merit. It is not reasonable to demand that each message be evaluated outside
of that context.

And I'll reword what I wrote yesterday to fit this particular entry, which is
that many of his posts have become deeply depressing. Many follow the pattern
of aggrieved entitlement and disenfranchisement (and to repeat what I said
yesterday, fit the bigoted stereotype about older developers. As one of the
only people who even mentioned age -- and as a _40 year old developer_ \-- I
find it bizarre if Dave thought that was an insult about his age, when in
reality it was a comment about him seemingly veering towards becoming the
cliche).

It is fantastic that he is working on new, interesting stuff, but the message
that percolates out continues to be rather morose.

------
drivebyacct2
>I honestly don't care what the HN trolls, and the people who upvote them,
supposedly "think" about me.

If only that were true, I'd have spent _even less_ time this week on meta-HN-
drama.

And I reject or _seriously, seriously, seriously_ lament that "discourse has
moved to twitter". That sounds like the opener to George Orwell's 2084 or
something.

------
edwardunknown
The Internet is depressing. Let's blow it up and go play frisbee.

------
bestdayever
Why does HN even allow blog posts. If it isn't showing off new tech or code
why is it here?

~~~
DanBC
1) HN is about more than code and tech.

2a) HN wants people to link to the original source article. So, in theory,
blogs would not get posted.

2b) HN asks people not to editorialise when submitting links. Thus, if you
want to include some text about an article you're submitting you're supposed
to make a blog post, with a link to the article in the blog, and then post to
HN the link to your blog post.

At least, that's how I understand it. It feels sub-optimal.

------
meritt
Want to get rid of the majority of trolls, abuse and unnecessarily negative
behavior? Remove anonymity.

These fake points don't do much at all.

~~~
patrickmay
I think I've posted this here before, but there is some evidence that
eliminating anonymity does not improve civility:
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-
evidence-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-
that-real-name-policies-fail-to-improve-comments/)

Anonymity or pseudonymity do, however, have benefits that should be considered
before eliminating them. Whistleblowers and employees of companies being
discussed are the two that come to mind immediately.

~~~
roguecoder
I have noticed that in Anonymous and pseudonymous environments people seem
more willing to speak from personal experience and in the first person, which
enhances and personalizes discourse. Actually, my favorite environment of all
time was enforced anonymity with hiding comments that got downvoted. Without
the ego payoff of persistent identity, ignoring the trolls was actually
effective and people who's comments weren't engaged with just left. The
discussion that was left was insightful and frequently constructive.

------
lwhi
In my opinion, many people who are gifted academically suffer damage in
childhood - quite a lot of the time this damage is manifested in unfortunate
ways .. the human ego is a very active protagonist.

~~~
lwhi
On reflection, that was pretty cynical. I apologise.

