I really want to have intelligent discussions, but everyone over there just posts stupid personal attacks when they disagree with you. If I'm going to spend the effort composing a post, I want people to read an think about it, not just make a snide attack. (FWIW, I am guilty of making TONS of snide personal attacks on Reddit. The community rewards it.)
The thread that made me quit Reddit for good is this one:
My post is definitely on the sarcastic side, but it did take me some time to think about and compose. I just wanted to show that people aren't "idiots" for using an ORM. In return, I get a personal attack from someone who has probably never written a line of code in his life.
This just doesn't happen on HN. There are people with ideas that I disagree with, but at least they have something more intelligent to say than "your dumb".
So since I only have a finite amount of time, and I spend too much of it replying to social news sites, I figured I'd give up the stupid one for good. We will see how it goes.
BTW, I don't think everything on HN is intelligent... but it is several orders of magnitude better than Reddit. (I wrote a bit about this last night, as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473023). Also, I'm sure I make stupid comments from time to time... but hey, nobody's perfect :)
That guy on reddit is a troll, and his comment was modded down. No free social site will ever be invulnerable to trolls, but they must be ignored.
I post on both reddit and here, and I think your generalization that "everyone over there just posts stupid personal attacks when they disagree with you" is not constructive. Your original comment about how you refuse to comment on reddit added zero value to the conversation about a telephone company from 2000 - all it did was start a thread attacking a competing website. Doesn't this break the spirit of hackernews's rules on civility?
The mentality I sometimes see on here that "we are smarter than them" doesn't make a better site. Do it, don't say it. Threads like this aren't "intelligent," they are mean-spirited and off-topic.
Sorry, but the comparisons to reddit have been bugging me. I really want to be a member of this site, party because I think its foundation of intelligent and civil conversation is a great idea. But I see way too many comments that wouldn't even be kosher on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7necx/heres_a_th...
> No free social site will ever be invulnerable to trolls.
I disagree. I have noticed a lot of troll comments on HN. A few minutes later, I come back, and the comments have been killed (or even deleted entirely).
This is the way to deal with trolls. Instead of wasting my time getting upset or composing a reply, I just never see the comment, and can focus on something else.
> But I see way too many comments that wouldn't even be kosher on reddit.
Well, by those standards, I've never seen a comment on Reddit that would be "kosher on Reddit".
HN is definitely not perfect, but I have a social news addiction and (compared to Reddit) HN makes me want to kill a lot fewer people after reading it. Metafilter actually makes me like people (although there is really no technical content there, so I need something else for that).
Social news can be done right, it's just that Reddit's community failed to do that.
Edit, replying to this:
> Doesn't this break the spirit of hackernews's rules on civility?
HN has rules, but let's face it, no community ever follows the rules. The main (unwritten?) rule here is "explain your thoughts in more than 3 words". If you actually take the time to explain your thoughts, you are much less likely to upset anyone, and other people are much less less likely to regret reading the site. That is the most important thing for me, and I think others might agree.
I agree that this rant is attached to the wrong article, but that's how conversations go -- sometimes you digress. The level of discourse is high, however, so I don't think anyone is at all upset by this.
I think as HN gets bigger, it'll become more and more like reddit. You either have to learn to live with idiots (like me, I'll admit) or you gotta keep island-hopping.
A secondary issue was the time investment. Now that I no longer care about trying to educate Reddit, I have time to ... not do that -- there is always something better to do than to converse with people that don't want to converse with you.
If HN "goes to shit", you can bet that I will get fed up and leave. It doesn't bother me much -- the people that I like on HN will probably go to the same place.
(Plus, HN does good things like completely deleting comments that are just going to attract flames. Censorship sucks, but if you want to talk without being deleted, get a blog. Hopefully HN's aggressiveness here will ensure that it remains the "island" to hop to for a few more years.)
I don't think everything on HN is intelligent... but it is several orders of magnitude better than Reddit.
I second that. In fact, I couldn't click that link because I set my HOSTS file to block reddit.com from my work computer. I was spending way too much time on that site having stupid arguments.
I refuse to comment on Reddit, though, so I rehashed it over here.