While I haven't made up my mind on this issue entirely, I am often one of the people downvoting these kinds of comments, or even flagging them if they're more extreme.
The reason for this is that I've become increasingly convinced that the health of a community, especially one that relies on a relatively poor medium (text comments), is very dependent on the civility of said community.
I'm a bit surprised to find myself believing this, as only a few years ago I would've argued that civility often gets in the way of the facts, that it obfuscates 'true' discussion and exchange of information, and 'enlightenment'.
I changed my view because I started noticing that even in 'rich' face-to-face interactions, once a certain 'detached' civility is abandoned, the more intense language almost inevitably leads at least one of the parties involved to become more emotionally invested in the conversation, and this in turn pulls a 'discussion/conversation' into the direction of an 'argument/fight'.
This is not always a problem in rich media. In the same way that a parent getting angry can sometimes be more effective than a parent logically dishing out an appropriate punishment, I've experienced plenty of situations where the visible emotions of someone I disagreed with were necessary to make me pause and reconsider my point of view (because I respected said person and/or clearly they didn't hold their beliefs lightly).
But the 'poorer' a medium, and the weaker the bonds of a community, the more important civility is. Because it's really easy to get exceptionally pissed off, misinterpret, project, or escalate things in reaction to a piece of text linked to a pseudonym.
Perhaps not, but at least from personal experience it can be made plausible. The handful of times that my actions caused one or both of my parents to 'lose their shit' (and at times even apologize for that later) are etched in my mind, deservedly so, and they kept me from ever doing that particular thing again. In contrast, the vast majority of other things I was punished for required repeat offenses and repeated and increasing punishment before I cleaned up my act.
So while I can't prove if it's true, in the same way that I can't prove a lot of things to be true, I don't think it's such an outrageous statement, both based on experience and based on logical reasoning.
I'm curious why you decided to comment on this though. Mind elaborating? Is it because anger is not generally a very good parenting technique? Because if so, I fully agree with that, and was not suggesting otherwise.
It's not necessarily outrageous, it just seems that you are basing further reasoning upon that proposition. The problem is that you can't ever verify that proposition, which means you can't ever verify any thing else that is reasoned on top of it (so, why not try to find reasonings that can be verified (or, at least, nullified)).
I'm not sure what the right answer (if there even is one) in this situation is, but one interesting thought I had while reading your most recent comment:
>The handful of times that my actions caused one or both of my parents to 'lose their shit' (and at times even apologize for that later) are etched in my mind, deservedly so, and they kept me from ever doing that particular thing again. In contrast, the vast majority of other things I was punished for required repeat offenses and repeated and increasing punishment before I cleaned up my act.
Was:
One way to resolve this with the original statement ("In the same way that a parent getting angry can sometimes be more effective than a parent logically dishing out an appropriate punishment") is to say that your parents losing their shit over your behavior was the logical punishment. :)
It was just one example, but I could name many others like it. From the discussions I've had with friends over issues where clearly my or their getting 'upset' effectively ended the discourse and made both of us 'dig in', to situations with colleagues where my or their increasingly forceful insistence only led to the opposite outcome. In most cases my experience has been, over and over again, that most of the time, once civility and a certain emotional distance is abandoned, the outcome suffers from it, often for both parties.
That said, I think you make a good point. There's a time and place for abandoning civility, and I do occasionally feel that also here on HN civility is used defensively for the wrong purposes. I'm inclined to think the dangers of abandoning this 'civility' are greater on HN and other internet forums than their benefits, in part because HN is one of the few places where I still feel there's worthwhile discussion going on, and I want it to remain that way. I've found myself reading, say, /r/programming threads where I was surprised by the high amount of memes, personal attacks and/or knee-jerk comments because I thought I was on HN. I've left a number of forums in my lifetime because they turned to shit because of toxic members. That's the main reason why I err on the side of civility.
But, again, all that said, I do agree with you, and you provided a valuable counterpoint that I haven't considered in a while. Sometimes losing your shit is the right thing, and just as much as I don't want to be a reactionary, knee-jerk, over-emotional commenter, I also don't want err toward the opposite end of the spectrum.
I agree. It's not that I prefer to validate those comments.
No, it's more about understanding. Personally, I would rather see the context and know something about the conflict than see [flagged] and see worthy rebuttals out of context.
I third this opinion. I didn't / wouldn't upvote it but primarily due to the tone: it should be edited down and a bit more civil. That's it. No major objection from me. The note from Dang is good, it can help steer the commenter for the future.
Well I strongly disagree with this. I see no reason to believe civility and meaningful communication are directly correlated. Quite the contrary. Forcing others to maintain a tone you find pleasant (poorly defined variable) strips an entire sideband from a conversation. What's up with the insistence that everyone be warm and fuzzy at all times anyway?
I agree with you. I'm not easily impacted, or offended and can easily give as good as I get.
That said, we don't do that here, and there is value to be had. Happy to comply. There are lots of places to have that kind of dialog. I enjoy them, as I enjoy it here.
One thing I have noticed is rules about civility do tend to elevate and favor people with highly toxic views. Rebutting them without violating the rules is difficult.
But, it is possible to do. There is value in that skill as well.
My objection centers on the violation and valid, compliant responses to a hidden comment. We lose something there I would rather not lose.
if you want an awful toxic place, go to any other forum on the Internet with as many readers. There you can find knee-jerk, shallow, abusive arguments from people who, actually, don't even mean it and often have nothing to say. The reason you enjoy HN is because it has rules against this kind of discourse.
jsprogrammer's reply to you is a great example: it is a very civil comment that follows the discourse here, i.e. is written in the exact opposite way from what it argues for. It would not be improved if intsead it read, in full, "only third-rate management cocksuckers need to obfuscate everything in warm fuzzies."
It's a mistake on your part to speak to what I do or don't enjoy about Hacker News or to even assume I take any kind of pleasure in the community here. That said, the comments in question, while clearly dismissive of another poster's assertions, is hardly a profanity-laden screed. It's substantially better constructed and contains more relevant information than all of the posts in response to it put together. Are you saying the odd fuck here and there in some way invalidates the content of the post, and if so through what mechanism?
Communication requires logic and logic requires the presentation of counter-examples. Wrapping counter-examples in warm fuzzies is merely obfuscation; it's a third-rate management technique.
Emotional tone is communication of values. If one does not allow people to communicate their values verbally, then they will communicate them in less productive ways. Like downvoting/upvoting people based on values. Even worse, it selects for people who argue without acknowledging their values. Even worse, personally, if one personally doesn't acknowledge their emotions and their value systems, then they risk hobbling their self-understanding. It contributes to the introspection illusion[1]. I think this happens a lot on the Internet in the 'rational discourse' communities (like HN, or LW, etc.): You can't choose not to be emotional. You can merely fail to express your emotions, which of course I believe impairs communication. After all, if I thought my own writing was objectionable, I wouldn't write it.
I think there is a similar trend in such communities (cf. Yudkowsky's Politics is the Mind Killer) to pretend to be apolitical, but insisting that one is apolitical merely obfuscates ones political values. Civil tone and apolitical politics are a popular sentiment amongst the type who seek to align their values with rationality.
You can be perfectly logical and also completely emotional. There is no antagonism between the two. Logic is emotional. One wouldn't bother writing out a logical argument without feeling it has some worth, right? Value is fundamentally emotional. Emotions are logical: They are responses and interpretations of stimuli that are predictable and behave according to rules that vary from person-to-person but have a common basis in all human beings. They have meaning, they can be analyzed and synthesized, and they can be communicated to others just like logical propositions and proofs.
Failing to communicate emotionally can lead to strong emotions on two sides of a discussion. One can think of it as boosting a signal to try to get it through. If one or both sides are unreceptive to the other's emotions, then this leads to a death spiral for the conversation. I think it is this phenomenon, the failure to communicate emotionally, which is being conflated with the presence of emotion. The solution isn't to maintain politeness and throw out emotions altogether, it is to learn how to spot breakdowns in communication and bring them into the conversation so they can be resolved.
Breakdowns in logic happen all the time. If one values rational discourse highly, then these are considered important to resolve, not ignore. God knows I've stood in front of a blackboard trying to get a mathematician to explain something to me, with the explanation failing to get through to me. I once spent 2 hours trying to construct the tensor of two vector spaces because I was a wee undergrad and constructing such widgets was new to me, but I had a patient grad student to guide me along. The breakdowns in logical communication were immense, and certainly there was communication of frustration and reassurance. Ironically in such a dry, logical matter, the emotional communication was excellent and the logical communication-- not so much.
I like this comment too, but find it a few paragraphs too long. I suggest you edit down after writing - here is a great guide: https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/King_Everything.html (Stephen King's "Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes")
After you've written all that, spend a few minutes eliminating some of it. you would be one of the best contributors after doing so. no, you don't actually need to swear but can if you want to. good luck.
Thanks. I think there is an antagonism between trying to be conversational, which entails rambling, circling back, and exposing one's thought processes to others, and writing a compact, polished piece of writing. I prefer to leave my scatterbrained thoughts in Internet comments because I see it more as verbal conversation than written communication.
While I disagree with him, I disagree with HN's censorship more. It's disgusting that posts are grayed out or flagged all the time whenever someone has a strong opinion. Should we all avoid judging anything?? disgusting
