> I don't know who you think "hn considers to be its audience" but the correct answer is: anyone with intellectual curiosity.
That's what the HN organizers think it is and want it to be, but I don't think it's an accurate reflection of how HN users actually behave. It's prescriptive, not descriptive.
> People in this community care about considerably more than that.
I've been here many years and that has not been my experience. I come here to look for updates on libraries and tools I use and to hear about new libraries and tools. In the years I have been here, I have found this to be the most nihilistic, false-equivocating social media site I have ever encountered. What I have witnessed all too often is that admissible HN opinion talk stops at "what makes a computer program well-constructed", and very rarely considers "how might computer programs cause harm to their users and to society". Often times when people say "hey maybe that use of technology is harmful to [group of people not well-repesented on HN]", that discussion is immediately downvoted into oblivion. When it comes to software criticism, that is, the well-reasoned consideration of how software affects society, HN gets an F. HN doesn't care. HN would look at a Java program for a police torture system and would say "it should be written in Haskell" instead of "maybe we shouldn't be building instruments of torture". Maybe a given individual user wouldn't, but that's how the votes would land.
> If you, or anyone, has a good idea about what we can do to make this place more kind, I'd love to hear it
Sure. Here's a few.
Remove all visible scores from the site entirely. The idea that a person is aware of points given to them for saying the correct thing incentivizes saying things that get points, not saying things that improve the discussion. I'm not saying that no system of tracking the success of comments should exist. I'm saying that currently, the mechanics of HN allow people to see their own karma and are rewarded for saying things within the HN zeitgeist with more karma. The karma system precludes the Overton window from shifting.
It's a discussion board. There should be no point reward for comments posted. The reward is the replies you get from others.
Experts and beginners are given an entirely equal footing, but beginners outnumber experts in every topic; that's what makes them experts. If all of the experts in a topic think one thing, and all the beginners think another thing, should the beginners always win because they are more numerous? Hmm.
One solution might be to implement something akin to pagerank, but on a topic level. E.g., if a thread is posted about Ants, a user that had participated in a lot of past discussions about Ants should have their upvotes/downvotes weighed more heavily. There are doubtless other solutions, and since I'm not in your codebase I'm not sure what solution is actually reasonable.
Separately, make posts a limited resource. The mechanics of this are, I imagine, proper difficult to get right. Very very difficult. Some ideas that would have to be tested: You can only post if you have a post token. You're awarded a post token every six hours, even when you're gone. You can hold a maximum of four post tokens. Add in some mechanic where users can cause other users to gain post tokens. Some concepts along that line: When you reply to someone, they are awarded a post token (or a portion of a post token). Upvotes grant either post tokens or portions of post tokens. If a user really loves a comment, they can give one of their own post tokens to the person that made that comment. Users in their first week are given only 1 post token a day.
"What I have witnessed all too often is that admissible HN opinion talk stops at "what makes a computer program well-constructed", and very rarely considers "how might computer programs cause harm to their users and to society". Often times when people say "hey maybe that use of technology is harmful to [group of people not well-repesented on HN]", that discussion is immediately downvoted into oblivion."
Could you cite some specific HN submissions where you've observed this behavior? I honestly cannot recall a single one.
That's what the HN organizers think it is and want it to be, but I don't think it's an accurate reflection of how HN users actually behave. It's prescriptive, not descriptive.
> People in this community care about considerably more than that.
I've been here many years and that has not been my experience. I come here to look for updates on libraries and tools I use and to hear about new libraries and tools. In the years I have been here, I have found this to be the most nihilistic, false-equivocating social media site I have ever encountered. What I have witnessed all too often is that admissible HN opinion talk stops at "what makes a computer program well-constructed", and very rarely considers "how might computer programs cause harm to their users and to society". Often times when people say "hey maybe that use of technology is harmful to [group of people not well-repesented on HN]", that discussion is immediately downvoted into oblivion. When it comes to software criticism, that is, the well-reasoned consideration of how software affects society, HN gets an F. HN doesn't care. HN would look at a Java program for a police torture system and would say "it should be written in Haskell" instead of "maybe we shouldn't be building instruments of torture". Maybe a given individual user wouldn't, but that's how the votes would land.
> If you, or anyone, has a good idea about what we can do to make this place more kind, I'd love to hear it
Sure. Here's a few.
Remove all visible scores from the site entirely. The idea that a person is aware of points given to them for saying the correct thing incentivizes saying things that get points, not saying things that improve the discussion. I'm not saying that no system of tracking the success of comments should exist. I'm saying that currently, the mechanics of HN allow people to see their own karma and are rewarded for saying things within the HN zeitgeist with more karma. The karma system precludes the Overton window from shifting.
It's a discussion board. There should be no point reward for comments posted. The reward is the replies you get from others.
Experts and beginners are given an entirely equal footing, but beginners outnumber experts in every topic; that's what makes them experts. If all of the experts in a topic think one thing, and all the beginners think another thing, should the beginners always win because they are more numerous? Hmm.
One solution might be to implement something akin to pagerank, but on a topic level. E.g., if a thread is posted about Ants, a user that had participated in a lot of past discussions about Ants should have their upvotes/downvotes weighed more heavily. There are doubtless other solutions, and since I'm not in your codebase I'm not sure what solution is actually reasonable.
Separately, make posts a limited resource. The mechanics of this are, I imagine, proper difficult to get right. Very very difficult. Some ideas that would have to be tested: You can only post if you have a post token. You're awarded a post token every six hours, even when you're gone. You can hold a maximum of four post tokens. Add in some mechanic where users can cause other users to gain post tokens. Some concepts along that line: When you reply to someone, they are awarded a post token (or a portion of a post token). Upvotes grant either post tokens or portions of post tokens. If a user really loves a comment, they can give one of their own post tokens to the person that made that comment. Users in their first week are given only 1 post token a day.