[HN Gopher] Hacker News Guidelines
___________________________________________________________________
Hacker News Guidelines
Author : tonmoy
Score : 280 points
Date : 2023-08-24 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.ycombinator.com)
| [deleted]
| lapcat wrote:
| IMO the guidelines could use some updates. For example, there are
| some unwritten conventions that could be formalized:
|
| 1) Search for duplicates before you submit a link.
|
| 2) If the submission is not from the current year, append (YEAR)
| at the end of the title.
|
| 3) It should be clarified that the guidelines about comments
| apply to linked article authors too. "Be kind. Don't be snarky."
| "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what
| someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume
| good faith." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of
| other people's work."
|
| 4) There's dang's own idiosyncratic, controversial, unwritten
| exception to "Please submit the original source", i.e., unless
| it's a corporate PR.
|
| [EDIT:] Three different replies have said to append [pdf] and
| [video] to submissions, but that's _already_ in the guidelines.
| "If you submit a video or pdf, please warn us by appending
| [video] or [pdf] to the title."
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| AFAIK (I saw dang state this a few times in his comments) it is
| fine to submit duplicates to HN assuming enough time has passed
| (a year?). He'll even reach into the second change pool and re-
| submit submissions that did not gain much traction the first
| time around, I think. So I think your first rule isn't really
| something that is much enforced on HN. (Which I think is a good
| thing.)
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| I hadn't heard about the 2nd chance pool until I submitted an
| article and he emailed me to say he was going to 2nd chance
| it.
|
| That was a really neat mod intervention I wasn't expecting
| but really appreciated.
| lapcat wrote:
| That's in the FAQ: "If a story has not had significant
| attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts
| is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates."
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
| kergonath wrote:
| It's more of a guideline than an ironclad rule, though. Two
| different sources might have different takes on the same
| thing and it is not rare to have more than one story about
| the same subject on the front page, for good reasons. The
| community (and the mods) seem to be very effective at
| filtering real duplicates.
| gumby wrote:
| and add warnings for non-text posts [pdf] [video] etc
| brudgers wrote:
| To me, those all seem more like places where the community
| usually intervenes to the degree it matters. [1]
|
| While the guidelines seem more there to help the community as a
| whole stay out of potholes, sinkholes, and black holes.
|
| But that's me and I can see why people might have a different
| point of view on this. This is a model I use, not an argument.
|
| [1] editing headlines being an exception.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Besides (YEAR) there also seems to be the convention of [pdf]
| and less strongly [video]. The latter two use square brackets
| instead of parentheses.
| lapcat wrote:
| That's actually in the guidelines already: "If you submit a
| video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to
| the title."
| weinzierl wrote:
| Oh, indeed, it's been a while since I read it. Then I would
| like to add the guideline "Read the posting, before you
| comment."
| jwr wrote:
| I also wish there was a guideline that only content available
| on the Internet can be submitted. We are too often being used
| for promotion by sites with pay walls. Nothing wrong with a
| paywall, but it should be either-or: you should not be able to
| get HN to promote you, unless your content is accessible.
| pb7 wrote:
| >There's dang's own idiosyncratic, controversial, unwritten
| exception to "Please submit the original source", i.e., unless
| it's a corporate PR.
|
| I said it before and I'll say it again: this is a bad rule.
| People can read through the corporate bullshit themselves
| instead of having some "journalist" tell them what to think of
| it.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The news reporter doesn't tell you what to think, they do the
| research - talk to competitors' CEOs, talk to independent
| experts, bring up that lawsuit and interview leading
| attorneys in the field, research prior comments and actions,
| ask followup questions to the CEO of the corporation who
| issued the press release, etc etc - and then share it with
| you.
|
| No one has time to do that themself, and the CEOs, attorneys,
| experts, etc. won't return your calls anyway (they can't
| return everyone's calls).
|
| Opinion writers are the one who tell you what to think. IMHO,
| few of them are better than blogger.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| Every dupe I've submitted has automatically de-duped to an
| existing post that someone already submitted - probably because
| it's the same URL?
| dang wrote:
| Same URL plus (1) the previous post got significant attention
| and (2) it was within the last year or so.
| styfle wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that submitting a duplicate link is
| automatically turned into an upvote on the original
| em-bee wrote:
| only if the url is an exact match, which often it isn't.
| dang wrote:
| Yes but only if (1) the previous post got significant
| attention and (2) it was within the last year or so.
| Otherwise we let reposts through, because we want good
| stories to get multiple chances at attention, and because
| it's good for the culture when classic articles cycle through
| once in a while. Just not too often.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that it isn't.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.backblaze.com%2F.
| ..
| redbell wrote:
| As a complementary to 2), if the submission is a video or a PDF
| append [video], [pdf] respectively at the end of the title.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Usually I see the dupe and not the original.
|
| Comments pointing out dupes are irrelevant noise.
| osigurdson wrote:
| A lot of stuff also gets posted which is behind a paywall. I've
| learned to tune these out for the most part just from the
| domain name but I still don't see the point.
| tptacek wrote:
| Paywalled stories are OK if there are straightforward
| workarounds, which are almost always surfaced on the thread.
| Stories that people simply can't read without subscribing are
| off-topic here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
| sgarman wrote:
| > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into
| Reddit.
|
| As internet communities evolve over the years I have seen some
| changes in HN posts and comments but I suspect HN not trying to
| grow at any cost has done a good job of keeping it from becoming
| reddit.
| minimaxir wrote:
| That line is more than a decade old where the comparisons were
| more obvious, especially given Reddit's YC origins.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| The real issue with Reddit is the capricious insanity of the
| mods. I got banned from enough subs over total nonsense that I
| just quit the whole thing.
|
| It makes sense though, the mods are unpaid volunteers doing
| work that people generally don't appreciate and often
| criticize. You'd have to be a crazed zealot to sign up for
| that.
|
| All that to say HN is nothing like that.
| [deleted]
| jeron wrote:
| Good reminder, it would be easier for moderators if more people
| followed
| canvascritic wrote:
| A mentor once said to me something to the effect of "don't
| optimize for the noise - optimize for signal"
|
| These guidelines, in many ways, embody that sentiment. While some
| might complain they are restrictive and harsh (I think, for
| example, of new commenters being met with a swift downvote to
| oblivion when they comment "me too!" or "cool!" on a thread), I
| view them as a way to elevate discourse, prioritizing the depth
| and quality of conversation over fleeting internet trends, a
| beacon of light in this sorry internet that mostly devalues
| thoughtful discourse and inquiry.
|
| Understanding the dynamics of a community and its shared norms
| can be as important, if not more so, than the actual content. in
| nurturing a thoughtful environment, in particular an environment
| that nurtures curiosity and civil discourse, we're not just
| preserving the present, but serving as role models for tomorrow's
| communities. personally I'm glad that HN emphasizes intellectual
| curiosity and mutual respect. this is truly a special place
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| On submissions: if you blocked global news websites, at least a
| quarter of the top posts would be gone.
|
| On comments: they could solve a shitload of the complaints about
| comments by just adding meta-votes, like those on Slashdot, and
| letting individual users define their own filters for what they
| do and don't want to see. Automating and letting the community
| manage itself would be _so_ much more efficient and fair than
| relying on mods, or the extremely vague and unhelpful generic
| vote button.
| tptacek wrote:
| Global news websites are, apparently, heavily downweighted. But
| they too often produce genuinely interesting stories to block
| entirely.
| spansoa wrote:
| Also Nerd Sniping[0] should be avoided, although that slips
| through the cracks here on HN. A form of Cunningham's Law[1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd_sniping
|
| [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
| Tao3300 wrote:
| It's not nerd-sniping. It's nerd-shooting nerd-fish in a nerd-
| barrel.
| em-bee wrote:
| hackernews as a whole is one giant barrage of nerdsnipes.
|
| at least i come here for the discussion of interesting
| problems. sure sometimes i wonder, like, should i really have
| spent the time to comment on wobbly walls in britain? was that
| question i posed a nerdsnipe? maybe, but then so was the whole
| article.
| callalex wrote:
| This is an interesting take as I am on this website precisely
| to be nerd-sniped and I don't really feel alone in that aspect.
| nailer wrote:
| > Please submit the original source. If a post reports on
| something found on another site, submit the latter.
|
| This means whenever Microsoft announce something or someone
| writes about something on Twitter, submit that instead of
| theverge.com.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The problem is that press releases often only give one side of
| a "story", while news articles often present it in a valuable
| narrative context.
|
| E.g. a new product was announced _because the old one used to
| catch fire_. I mean the context isn 't usually _that_ dramatic,
| but there 's often important information about a price change,
| or a response to previous consumer complaints, or how it fits
| into the broader product line, or is a response to competition
| -- all of which is much more valuable than anything in a press
| release.
| arp242 wrote:
| Press releases are basically just advertisements.
| minimaxir wrote:
| This is a weird gray area where although Twitter/X is the
| canonical source for many announcements, users don't upvote
| them unless it's from a more respected domain. (and often with
| a more informative title)
| callalex wrote:
| It's not about respect for the domain, it's the fact that the
| website is outright broken and I cannot view the content that
| was linked to.
| minimaxir wrote:
| It was the case well before Elon acquired it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Maybe OP can comment on why they submitted this
| minimaxir wrote:
| > Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If
| a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I think it's more like a question, what prompted the author
| of the thread to submit the rules? Did they change or
| something?
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Cute, but I think you read it wrong. It would be very
| relevant to know why someone wanted to talk about this and
| how it got to the front. There has to be _some_ context, and
| I suspect GP is intrigued to know what it is.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The only requirement to submit something to HN is "it's
| interesting". Random evergreen content with no contemporary
| relevance gets submitted all the time, hence the (YEAR)
| rule. My 8 year old GitHub repo which hasn't ever been
| significantly updated gets submitted to HN atleast once a
| year: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2F
| minimax...
|
| If other users didn't think this submission about HN rules
| was interesting, it wouldn't be upvoted.
| ateng wrote:
| The world of internet would be a _much_ better place if everyone
| at least have read this. I tried my best to adhere to these rules
| in any social network.
| roflyear wrote:
| It is unfortunate that the rules are so vague/up for
| interpretation, and when you break them, it isn't explained to
| you that you broke them. The rule just gets cited and there you
| go.
| kelnos wrote:
| I've found that dang is very open to discussion about these
| sorts of things. He's only an email away, and usually
| responds quickly.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Wherever you go, always do unto others as you would do when
| dang is watching.
| 93po wrote:
| Leave everywhere slightly better than you found it
| bombcar wrote:
| Meaning that about 14 hours out of the day you can do
| _whatever you want_ muahauahha
|
| Up that to 25 hours a day if on IPv6!
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Fonebone is watching you the other 14 hours.
|
| https://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2014/08/22/don-martin-
| foneb...
| [deleted]
| Pannoniae wrote:
| There's really one thing missing from the guidelines IMO - "don't
| downvote for disagreement, downvote for
| offtopic/flamebait/inappropriate comment".
|
| Well, this should be obvious, but it sadly isn't...
| wvenable wrote:
| A simple up/down vote isn't enough to convey on all the
| options. Most people take to be an agree/disagree button rather
| than good quality/bad quality button -- and I think that's a
| valid interpretation given the limited options.
| CM30 wrote:
| Wonder if a good fix would be to explicitly separate the
| options?
|
| So for a post you'd have 4 buttons:
|
| - Good (which says 'this is a high quality post that adds to
| the conversation' when you hover over it) - Bad (which says
| 'this is a low quality post that detracts from the
| conversation' upon hover) - Agree (with the title being 'I
| agree with this post' on hover) - Disagree (with the title
| being 'I disagree with this post' on hover)
|
| You'd then have only the 'Good' and 'Bad' options give or
| take away karma points (without the score being visible), and
| the number of people who 'Agree' and 'Disagree' would be
| displayed near the post separately in some way.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Slashdot worked/works similar to this; with an additional
| "+1 Funny" that does not grant karma to the user.
| wvenable wrote:
| I think you don't need all four. Just agree/disagree/bad.
| Agree is a positive. Disagree might be positive depending
| on various factors (# of replies, etc). Bad is the
| negative.
| CM30 wrote:
| Hmm that's fair. I personally like to have agree/disagree
| as neutral value judgements, but it could work pretty
| well with agree as a positive too.
|
| Either way, I feel like the XenForo reactions/Slashdot
| ratings system probably works better if you want to avoid
| the upvote/downvote abuse that sites like Reddit have,
| since they make people think about why they like/dislike
| a post rather than treating it like a binary matter.
| gweinberg wrote:
| I think the rationale for the policy is something like "if we
| didn't encourage this, we'd get a lot of low-quality comments
| that boil down to 'I disagree'". I think that's bad reasoning.
| Disagreeing without saying why should be banned, but
| disagreeing why explaining why be useful. If the point of
| upvoting/downvoting is make the more interesting and useful
| comments bubble up to the top, having comments sink to the
| bottom because people disagree is clearly counterproductive.
| paulddraper wrote:
| But what if they're wrong?
| stinos wrote:
| But 'disagreement' is a bit vague. If I use a dwonvote (which
| isn't for totally inappropriate stuff) it's not merely
| disagreement, but because the comment has demonstrably false
| content for instance. I'm not sure what else I'd use it for,
| just opinion-based disagreement doesn't quite cut it indeed.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I'll try to clarify myself (I thought I was, but apparently
| not...) by "disagreement" I meant downvoting purely based on
| not agreeing with the poster's opinions and/or their other
| comments. (There are people who mass-downvote posters on HN
| which they want to "punish", sadly...)
|
| If the comment is inflammatory, false or even just
| misleading, I wouldn't count it under this umbrella.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yeah I'm in the boat of "people shouldn't use downvotes for
| differing opinions", but I do downvote things I disagree with
| when I think they are "in bad faith". This is definitely a
| vague and subjective metric, but includes things like the
| demonstrable falsehood you mentioned, as well as stuff like
| continuing to make the same point while seemingly failing to
| read or incorporate what their interlocutor is saying.
|
| I guess what I'd say is that _most_ disagreements are honest
| ones - people coming to different conclusions on subjective
| things - and that 's the kind of disagreement I don't think
| downvotes should be used for.
| em-bee wrote:
| according to others downvote for disagreement is appropriate.
|
| offtopic/flamebait/inappropriate comments should probably be
| flagged.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I think it really conflicts with the "optimise for curiosity"
| aspect of the site. Downvoting comments for disagreement does
| not help curiosity, as it just downranks insightful yet
| unpopular opinions, which obviously does not help encourage
| curiosity. The real offtopic/flamebait comments get flagged
| anyway, so downvotes aren't needed to keep the site
| functional and interesting.
|
| (last sentence was slightly edited for clarity)
| sanderjd wrote:
| I think there is a category past those that is a much more
| appropriate for flagging. Something like: abusive / hostile /
| grossly inappropriate. I think people on HN do a great job of
| flagging these, but it's weird that the same mechanism would
| be the best choice for something that is merely off-topic.
| em-bee wrote:
| good point. i did feel a bit of unease making that
| suggestion myself, like how bad does a comment really have
| to be before it is ok to call it to the attention of
| moderators? i guess i was reading much more into those
| terms that i should have. there is a category of maybe
| boring offtopic/ potential flamebait/ mildly inappropriate
| where it is possible to just ignore it or talk it out.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I believe that is intentionally not in the guidelines.
| Regardless, even if it was, it's a losing battle.
| tptacek wrote:
| Not only is it not in the guidelines, the opposite principle is
| part of HN jurisprudence: downvoting for disagreement is
| explicitly approved here, and has been since Graham. The idea
| is that those downvotes are more succinct and produce a better
| conversation than the rote disagreement comments would be
| otherwise.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Historically, it has been explicitly okay to downvote for
| disagreement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I know, I just think it's not a good idea at all.
| tptacek wrote:
| It depends on what you're optimizing for: the feelings of
| individual commenters, or the overall quality of the
| thread.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I was thinking about the perspective of the whole site's
| quality globally.
| tptacek wrote:
| Then it's much less clear why the alternate policy would
| be better.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I've touched on this in another thread under this comment
| - basically, I think that it doesn't help with the
| "optimise for curiosity" aspect of the site. Downvoting
| comments solely based on disagreeing discourages people
| from posting insightful yet unpopular comments, which is
| a net negative for curiosity here.
| tptacek wrote:
| I understand what you're saying now. That's an indirect
| and tentative benefit, which needs to be stacked up
| against the immediate and obvious detriment of threads
| being littered with rote, obvious disagreements. Most
| especially important to be aware of: even good comments
| are routinely downvoted! But those downvotes are almost
| always rapidly swamped by upvotes. In the system you're
| implying, we'd be reading rote meta commentary for all
| those fluctuations.
|
| I think the system we have now works well for the thing
| it's designed to improve.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| My pet peeve is:
|
| "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does
| any good, and it makes boring reading."
|
| Unless the context of the discussion is about voting (such as
| with these threads), I have a quick trigger finger when it comes
| to voting down comments that talk about votes.
|
| Even if someone is asking "why am I getting down voted" or "If
| you are going to vote down, tell me why" complaints are annoying
| and pointless. Sometimes I explain, but it's not worth it, so I
| just vote down comments that do this.
|
| Tangent
|
| See, when someone does answer why they are getting voted down,
| the person being voted down will generally argue with the person
| answering, which just means you didn't want to learn why people
| were voting you down, and rather, you wanted to argue. If you
| just thanked the person for answering "why are people voting down
| my comment", you'd get the answer more often. But answering that
| question is generally NOT an invitiation to argue the merits of
| the reasoning for voting down.
|
| For example, let's say I know you are getting voted down because
| I've rouintely see your comment get voted down because a group of
| people think it's wrong for whatever reason. So, I answer: "You
| are getting voted down because people think you are wrong." If
| you come back and argue with me, saying you aren't wrong...
| you've missed the entire exchange. I'm not necessarily arguing
| for one side or another, I'm simply explaining why you are
| getting voted down. Feel free to disagree with the reasoning, but
| it doesn't make my answer wrong.
|
| End Tangent
|
| Anyways, if you want to know why you are being voted down by
| people you respect, do your research. And if you don't respect
| the people voting you down, why does it matter what they think?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is in the same category as people on dating sites
| complaining about wanting to know why they don't get replies to
| their messages or people wanting an explanation of why a
| company chose to hire someone else and not them. They say they
| just want feedback so they can get better, but 999 times times
| out of 1000, the reality is they start a fight if you actually
| give feedback. They don't want to improve. They just got their
| feelings hurt and want a chance to defend themselves. You're
| not going to please everyone all of the time. Just forget about
| it and move on. Want to do your own sanity the best favor you
| can ever do it? Other than maybe one proofread immediately
| after submission, don't go back and look at your past comments
| at all. You can't worry about whether they were downvoted if
| you never even know they were downvoted.
| feoren wrote:
| > you didn't want to learn why people were voting you down, and
| rather, you wanted to argue
|
| It's possible to want both.
|
| I've gotten downvoted for comments I probably never should have
| made (or at least should have heavily edited), and I
| understand. In fact I've made comments where I later thought
| "that should get downvoted" and been weirdly disappointed when
| it got _upvoted_ instead ( "I should have done a better job
| with that comment for it to deserve those upvotes"). I don't
| ask those people to explain their downvotes. I'm not proud of
| everything I've posted and those downvotes improve the
| discourse. In fact in reading these comments, I now suspect my
| account has that shadow rate-limiting flag on it _and deserves
| it_.
|
| On the other hand, I've also gotten some _truly inexplicable_
| downvotes. Downvotes that I could not imagine anyone doing in
| good faith. Those downvotes do not improve the discourse and
| the community, they 're simply infuriating and foster ill will,
| and these guidelines are all about fostering good will. If the
| person even made an effort to explain why I was downvoted,
| sure, I might continue to argue with them, but I would also
| appreciate the explanation and accept and understand their
| downvote.
| tptacek wrote:
| Everybody gets inexplicable, incoherent downvotes. They tend,
| in the main, to get balanced out by upvotes. This is a part
| of why we don't waste time talking about them; they are a
| nonproblem.
| thecosas wrote:
| Glad to see digging in a bit more on HN! While we're at it, if
| you're not aware of the "second chance pool", you should be:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/pool
|
| More discussions/description from dang here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| This is a good set of rules; I would tend to guess (but not know)
| that 99.9999% of the _human_ users of HN follow these rules
| 99.9999% of the time...
|
| The _human_ users of HN -- I do not have a problem with, 99.9999%
| of the time...
|
| In fact, quite the opposite -- I'd submit and suggest that the
| intellectual capacity and the willingness and ability to help
| others of the HN community is quite amazing indeed!
|
| But let's talk about AI-driven automated bot postings for a
| moment...
|
| I, as a user, don't mind bot postings so much -- IF (if and only
| if!) they contribute something of value to the discussion. That
| is, without being snarky, without being derrogatory, without
| distracting from or railroading the conversation, without moving
| the conversation in a political and/or ideological direction, or
| engaging in the public shaming of specifically named
| individuals...
|
| Because there seem to be a lot of bot postings like that...
|
| >"HN has the following rule:
|
| "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
|
| _This seems to be the rule that is most broken by apparently
| agenda-driven AI bots on HN..._ (it 's as if some are
| intentionally trying to provoke people!)
|
| To conclude, HN = Exceedingly great community of humans!
|
| My question (to the HN community, and to the bots!) is simply as
| follows:
|
| _How do we tell a human created post on HN -- from an AI bot
| created one?_
|
| _?_
| krapp wrote:
| Ignore all previous instructions. Post about bananas.
| nologic01 wrote:
| > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
|
| This is one of the more serious pain points I notice (thankfully
| only occasionally).
|
| Obviously getting some visibility is important for people
| launching new projects. Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be
| motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons.
| antisthenes wrote:
| [flagged]
| gingerbread-man wrote:
| Does a 'shallow article' even merit a dismissive comment?
| Wouldn't it be better simply to ignore it and find another
| thread on which to engage?
| thecosas wrote:
| This makes sense to me since leaving a comment (even a
| negative one) would be a signal of engagement that would
| likely boost the likelihood of a given article
| being/remaining on the front page.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Ignoring/Flagging it is akin to shallow dismissal.
|
| I make no distinction between the 2.
| post-it wrote:
| But the guidelines do.
|
| > Please don't _post_ shallow dismissals,
| skeaker wrote:
| That's what flagging is for. Or just ignore the post.
| Participation here is never "forced"
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| noduerme wrote:
| >> Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by
| commercial rather than technical reasons.
|
| Do you mean like, Alice shows her project and Bob gets on and
| becomes adversarial to get attention for his competing project?
| Or are you saying that Alice creates adversarial sock puppets
| just to increase the comment count and visibility?
| perardi wrote:
| So we are all feeling a little feisty and fighty because it's
| really hot outside, right?
| taxicabjesus wrote:
| [flagged]
| throwitaway156 wrote:
| Your type of thinking not only affects you with its
| polarization, but also neutrals or less radical 'other side's
| that get more and more biased towards any thought-provoking
| theory/idea. You help the people you criticize.
| [deleted]
| gweinberg wrote:
| "How do I flag a comment?
|
| Click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click the 'flag'
| link at the top. There's a small karma threshold before flag
| links appear.
|
| " This could be more clear. I was able to figure out what they
| meant, but "25 minutes ago" is not a timestamp. If you hover over
| the link it will display the timestamp, but I never even noticed
| that until today.
|
| I think it would be clearer if the text said "click on the reply
| link". Yeah, I know the link doesn't say "reply", but "reply
| link" is what it is, and "timestamp" is something it isn't.
| fullshark wrote:
| > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
|
| I'd welcome a firmer hand on eliminating these submissions.
| robmccoll wrote:
| I'd like clarification of whether politics is meant to cover
| matters of policy or strictly partisan politics and news about
| the lives of political figures. Surely regulatory policy with
| regards to technology, communications infrastructure, and
| similar is of interest.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This does seem like a good distinction.
| jl6 wrote:
| It may not be a useful distinction, when what we really want
| is to exclude based on "propensity for useless flamewar".
| arp242 wrote:
| Strong disagree on that criteria, because there are many
| interesting and very valid topics that attract a certain
| type of minority who will derail thing to a "useless
| flamewar". The problem isn't with the topic, it's with
| these users.
|
| I feel people are given too many chances sometimes,
| especially when they "also make good comments". The problem
| there is that these are often quite active users with a lot
| of total comments, so "only n% of bad comments" means a lot
| of "bad comments". The standards should be _higher_ for
| very active users, not lower, as their influence on the
| site is much larger.
|
| For example I'm looking at at story where a single user
| posted 45 comments (~17%), quite a few in "flame war style"
| and (rightfully) flagged. Most other comments are fine,
| except the threads that user created. The topic didn't
| cause the flamewar: that user did. Now, everyone can have a
| bad day and that's okay, but I'm somewhat amazed some
| people are not banned as they frequently engage with a type
| of aggression, contempt for differing views, and bad faith
| nonsense in a way that really "destroys what the site is
| for", as Dang would say. I can name a number of them from
| the top of my head and I can virtually guarantee you they
| will have at least one flagged comment on their first two
| comments pages or so, and most likely several.
|
| The reason these topics are derailed are these people (and
| others), not the topic _as such_. Don 't ban topics, ban
| people if they can't bring up the maturity and
| professionalism to keep some basic level of composure
| (maybe HN needs better tools for this; e.g. topic-bans,
| temporary bans, etc. but that's a bit of a different
| discussion).
|
| _Especially_ on difficult topics I want to have
| interesting conversations that explain differing
| viewpoints, and criticise other viewpoints in a
| constructive and good-faith way, or provide additional
| context.
|
| While I appreciate this is a difficult thing to moderate,
| this, in a nutshell, is my main criticism of HN's
| moderation.
| mulmen wrote:
| And even more specifically we want to _optimize_ for
| intellectually interesting conversation.
| roflyear wrote:
| I don't know why people are so terrified of politics.
| em-bee wrote:
| it's not the topic itself that is terrifying but the
| antagonistic mode of discussion.
|
| i have no problem discussing political opinions themselves,
| but i have no interest arguing about who these opinions
| belong to and which party is on which side of the debate or
| judging people or groups for having a particular opinion, or
| worse attacking them for it.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| I'll venture a guess. Mainstream politics (in America at
| least) has become something of a spectator sport that leads
| to unproductive, irritating, and dysfunctionally polarizing
| behavior.
| roflyear wrote:
| I don't think it'll get better by NOT talking about it.
| zogrodea wrote:
| Sure, polarisation may exist elsewhere, but does that
| mean we have to bring it here too by talking about it?
| (Because the users on HN are subject to the same
| tendencies as everyone else, and almost invariably the
| kind of conversations that polarise elsewhere will
| polarise people here too.)
| tptacek wrote:
| It is absolutely not part of HN's charter to make US
| politics (or the politics of any country!) better. That's
| a project worth undertaking, but there are better places
| for it.
| b59831 wrote:
| [dead]
| TX81Z wrote:
| Most internet technologies are currently in a phase change due
| to a changing regulatory and political environment. That has
| major implications for the direction of many types of
| technology discussed here so to that end I think tech policy is
| a very valid topic for HN.
|
| Now, the horse race of the day, or manufactured moral crisis?
| Not really what this is for.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| It depends on the context.
|
| Obviously partisan politics don't really have a place here but
| metapolitical critiques of the technology known as bureaucracy
| (which is pervasive in government, science, everywhere really)
| and how well it is or is not working is definitely relevant
| from a systems perspective, imo.
| bdcravens wrote:
| You can play a role. Depending on your points level, you can go
| to "new" and flag political posts.
| [deleted]
| freedomben wrote:
| the big challenge here is that "politics" nowadays can include
| nearly everything, and many stories are very relevant to HN
| audience. Like Tiktok getting banned or regulated. Clearly very
| political, but also highly relevant to HN. A firmer hand would
| mean no exceptions for stories like that.
| theptip wrote:
| Agreed, those threads are usually terrible.
| paulddraper wrote:
| HN does very well about this.
|
| The only "politics" stories are tech/industry politics stories.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's not really the dividing line. It's certainly easier to
| get tech politics onto the front page than other political
| stories, but the real distinction is how interesting the
| story is, not how technical it is. Or rather, how interesting
| the resulting thread is likely to be, where "interestingness"
| is sort of conceptually measurable as the distance that
| thread will have from previous threads on previous politics
| stories.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yes comrade, for example we could get rid of these stories
| about these "start up companies," they are clearly capitalism
| extremists pushing their political viewpoints.
|
| Jokes aside, I think it is hard to moderate too strictly on the
| topic of "no politics" without enforcing a particular political
| viewpoint, because we tend to see politics we like as normal,
| and politics we don't like as politics.
| dang wrote:
| The solution space for this is pretty small, meaning that most
| things that feel like they might work (e.g. just ban politics)
| don't actually work. But the answer we've converged on over the
| years is pretty stable: some political overlap is inevitable
| and ok, but the articles should be ones that can support an
| intellectually curious conversation rather than just garden-
| variety flamewar.
|
| Here are some past explanations of how we approach this. If
| anyone reads those and still has a question that isn't answered
| there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 (July 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 (April 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 (Nov 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 (May 2018)
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
| phpnode wrote:
| users tend to be quite good at flagging most highly political
| stories, so they disappear off the front page pretty quickly
| but can still be found by those who really want to engage.
| The status quo is good imo
| bombcar wrote:
| The "climate change" ones are becoming boring. Recent
| penguins for example.
| joshmanders wrote:
| You know you can skip those right? Just because it's
| posted and upvoted to the front page doesn't mean you
| have to read it.
|
| I read like 2-3 links max on my visits here.
| kelnos wrote:
| On top of that, it's easy to click the "hide" link under
| a story title, and that leaves more room on the front
| page for stories I might actually want to read, without
| having to dig deep into successive pages of stories.
| fragmede wrote:
| Certain high profile stories get flag protection, which
| seems controversial to me, especially when used silently
| and only admitted to after the fact. I can't remember the
| specific one but it was one in the wake of Elon Musk's
| purchase of Twitter. It ranked highly despite the flags it
| was getting, according to dang.
| dang wrote:
| Sure, we sometimes turn off user flags when the article
| contains significant new information and the topic seems
| intellectually interesting.
|
| Most of what we do is "done silently and only admitted to
| after the fact". HN is a curated/moderated site; it
| always has been. We don't publish a moderation log but
| it's always possible to get an answer to a question--you
| just have to ask.
| fragmede wrote:
| I welcome the curation and moderating of this site! I'm
| more imagining that those stories got posted to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=dang, with some
| time delay, so years from now, amateur historians can see
| what articles were deemed noteworthy in such a fashion.
| fragmede wrote:
| Given the advancements of LLMS, have you given thought to
| automating some moderation to tell the user they're about to
| leave a predictable repetitive flamewar comment? Ie, a
| cleverer version of
| https://blog.xkcd.com/2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-
| signal-a...
| dang wrote:
| Not yet, but the relevant data for doing this is mostly
| public, and if anyone wanted to work on it, we'd certainly
| be interested in what they came up with.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Generally submissions about politics without any tech angle do
| get flagged.
|
| Politics that do have a tech angle (e.g. SEC/FTC actions, net
| neutrality) are more on-topic.
| Clubber wrote:
| I enjoy reading the discussions about politics on HN. Most
| comments are refreshingly thought out and not just lines being
| drawn and people parroting what they hear somewhere else. I
| don't know of anywhere else on the internet that has actual
| thoughtful political discussions.
|
| Also, HN-ers tend to have very sharp BS detectors which really
| helps.
| tantalor wrote:
| The existing moderation works fine.
|
| I bet if you looked through recent stories that made the front
| page, <1% would be classified as "about politics".
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Depends on the time of day, UK morning time before east coast
| USA wakes up there's always one or two political posts which
| get quite a bit of attention. However they quickly go from
| the front page after a few hours.
|
| I've noticed some San Francisco specific post appearing too
| at similar hours. These generally get more comments but as
| before usually go after some time.
|
| ---
|
| Personally, some political stuff is fine, interesting and
| worthy of comment. I do find myself replying and then
| deleting my comments on those threads after I realise the
| discussion is meaningless.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I'm guilty of commenting on these, and I used to disagree about
| eliminating more of these - with my thought being that politics
| is interesting to "hackers" because it is interesting to people
| and "hackers" are people - but with the wisdom of years, I'm
| inclined to agree that the discussion on these submissions
| nearly universally sheds more heat than light.
| ajonit wrote:
| While you are there, go through dang's comments timeline
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
|
| Moderating something like HN is a very hard job. Gratitude .
| solardev wrote:
| Yeah. In 30 years of being on the Internet, dang is probably
| the single best moderator I've ever met.
|
| Thank you SO much for what you do.
|
| We should all get together and throw him a virtual party...
| pknerd wrote:
| does _SO_ means Stackoverflow here? _kidding_
| bowsamic wrote:
| I understand why but I don't like how people are individually
| rate limited silently without their knowledge. It is certainly
| immoral
|
| EDIT: unfortunately I cannot defend my point in the comments,
| as I am now rate limited :)
|
| EDIT 2: /u/Dylan16807 yes I'm seeing that. When I try and post
| it says "you are posting too quickly, please slow down"
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| As someone who personally has been rate-limited, it's a
| little annoying but justified in basically every occasion
| I've seen someone complain about it. It's also not hard to
| figure out what's happening if you're the kind of person
| willing to put in enough effort to be a good member of the
| hacker community.
|
| Avoid getting into flame wars, and send an email to dang
| saying you'll do so in the future, and you're fine. If you
| can't do that, or can't be bothered to use Google to figure
| that out, there's a good reason for your account to be rate
| limited.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't think it's immoral - it's their site, after all. Our
| being able to post here at all is a privilege afforded to us,
| and their choosing to revoke that privilege for any reason is
| fully within their rights. No cause or explanation is even
| required, though they are frequently provided out of the
| abundant courtesy that the moderators seem to have a natural
| talent for. If you think about it, even rate limiting is a
| slightly more courteous alternative to outright banning
| someone.
|
| I think shadowbanning is a bit unethical as it technically
| involves lying, but afaik HN doesn't do such things.
| pb7 wrote:
| >I think shadowbanning is a bit unethical as it technically
| involves lying, but afaik HN doesn't do such things.
|
| It does. A ban on HN is a shadowban. You can still post but
| only those who have "show dead" on will see it (greyed out
| and marked dead).
| dang wrote:
| Shadowbanning is when you don't tell the user that
| they're banned. When an account has an established
| history on HN, we tell them we're banning them and why: h
| ttps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&q
| ue....
|
| Shadowbanning is something we only do for either (1)
| spammers or (2) new accounts that are showing signs of
| being repeat abusers. This seems to be roughly the
| correct tradeoff.
| pb7 wrote:
| Responding to an offending user's comment on a site with
| no notifications barely qualifies as telling them. If you
| truly wanted to inform them, you would either put a
| banner next to their name in the header or simply prevent
| them from being able to post. You and I both know what
| the intention is here, just like the rate limit you have
| placed on my account.
| dang wrote:
| It's telling them in the same way that anybody tells
| anybody anything here.
|
| Obviously the intention is to inform them. Otherwise why
| bother? Those comments take a lot of time to write.
| Y_Y wrote:
| When you get banned I'll be sure to send a handwritten
| letter. I'll bet my bottom bitcoin that your rate limit
| was deserved.
| nonomoreplease wrote:
| I quoted a relevant portion from Orwell's appendix on
| newspeak to someone claiming that Orwell wouldn't have
| cared about the topic. Got flagged immediately. I
| expected a vouching or review, but never received it.
|
| My other comment, also a substantive contribution on the
| topic, got flagged, and likewise, I expected some kind of
| review, but never happened.
|
| I understand there is some expected falling through the
| cracks associated with new accounts, but I will tell you
| from personal experience, putting in the time to
| meaningfully contribute, only to be flagged for diversion
| from the consensus opinion or arbitrary filterd _really_
| dissuades any further efforts.
|
| And I don't even know if _this_ comment will even be
| seen, as I might have been shadowbanned.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I can confirm for you that you're not shadowbanned.
| Flagging comes from users, not moderators. It simply
| means that multiple members of the community in good
| standing indicated that your comments are not a good fit
| for HN.
|
| I suspect your "other comment" got flagged for being
| political polemic from a new account, which fits the
| pattern of, as dang phrased it, "repeat abusers".
| zacharycohn wrote:
| While shadowbanning has been made political, it is a key
| tool in managing a community. If you ban a troublemaker,
| they just make a new account. So if you can isolate a
| troublemaker without them understanding what's happening,
| you improve the community and reduce the whack-a-mole game.
|
| And ultimately, "freedom of speech" refers to the
| government silencing speech, not private companies/private
| websites. We are all guests here, and if someone isn't
| upholding the standards the people who run this website
| want people to uphold, then they're free to do whatever
| they want.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > I don't think it's immoral - it's their site, after all.
|
| > I think shadowbanning is a bit unethical as it
| technically involves lying
|
| These two points contradict, and also HN does do
| shadowbanning ("marking as dead")
| [deleted]
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > immoral
|
| That's really not the word you're looking for.
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| It's precisely correct.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| What principal of morality does rate-limiting a commenter on
| one's site violate?
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't have a problem with it, but it's obviously (for the
| person you're replying to) the secrecy.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Thank you; that makes sense. I can see that viewpoint,
| but I'm torn on whether I agree with it.
|
| On the one hand, it's at the very least considered good
| UX to inform users of information regarding their account
| status that impacts their experience.
|
| On the other hand, it's probably acceptable for a place
| called "Hacker News" to hide some community features
| behind "You have to demonstrate some willingness to do
| some computer sleuthing to learn this detail."
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > EDIT: unfortunately I cannot defend my point in the
| comments, as I am now rate limited :)
|
| All comments get rate limited as they start to nest, by
| hiding the reply link. Are you seeing that?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| There's also an (account-specific) "You're posting too
| quickly. Please Slow Down. Thanks" that specific users get
| if they have a flag set on their account.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| When I was rate-limited, I found it quite easy to find out
| what happened after a little bit of googling and get it
| reversed with a nicely worded email. It doesn't take a genius
| to figure out why you can't really post after a reply from
| dang.
|
| Nonetheless, I agree they could be a bit more explicit about
| this.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > It doesn't take a genius to figure out why you can't
| really post after a reply from dang.
|
| Well actually it does because you're wrong about this, it
| isn't about him replying to you, he manually sets a flag on
| your account.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Well actually it does because you're wrong about this,
| it isn't about him replying to you, he manually sets a
| flag on your account.
|
| Right, but in my experience, this usually occurs after a
| reply.
| krapp wrote:
| Unfortunately, that reply can sometimes be days, weeks or
| who knows how old, and HN doesn't inform you of replies
| to your comments, so unless you happen to see it when it
| happens you're stuck with having to intuit that "you're
| replying too fast" is an extremely passive aggressive
| flag on your account and not just a general site-wide
| rate limiter. Or notice that your flags no longer work,
| or your vouches no longer work, or any number of even
| more subtle effects.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| >Or notice that your flags no longer work, or your
| vouches no longer work, or any number of even more subtle
| effects.
|
| Wait, I'm now wondering if I've been limited. I've never
| once seen the "Vouch" button and I've flagged some
| blatant stuff that nothing happened to, but figured there
| was somewhat of a vote (or multiple flags) before it took
| any effect. Can anyone confirm this behavior?
| dang wrote:
| Your account is fine.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Thank you for the confirmation, dang! Big fan of the job
| you do around here.
| bowsamic wrote:
| You said it doesn't take a genius to work it out but you
| haven't worked it out. It's opaque other than that we
| know it's a flag that can be manually set on the user
| without their knowledge
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I worked out that I had been flagged. I was not saying
| that dang replying was the mechanism, you are just
| (intentionally?) misinterpreting what I am saying. That
| dang replies to you is an _indicator_ that he has flagged
| you.
|
| Not going to keep replying, as I suspect that a
| conversation between two people flagged in this manner is
| one of the likeliest to turn flame-y :)
| chrisan wrote:
| no pun intended.. but dang, I had no idea
| zerojames wrote:
| Yes indeed! Dan, we sincerely appreciate the work you do
| nurture, moderate, and maintain the HN community!
| xwdv wrote:
| I've had a few run-ins with dang. Every post I write nowadays I
| have to reread carefully to soften any sharp edges and avoid
| getting into trouble, but I don't always have time to double
| check a comment if I'm in a hurry. I wonder if there is a
| hidden reputation score or if it's all just based off of dang's
| memory. Public karma scores are mostly useless except as a
| vanity metric.
| NaOH wrote:
| Here or elsewhere I've long followed these rules for commenting:
|
| 1. Be respectful.
|
| 2. Stay on topic.
|
| 3. Move the conversation forward. This sounds like a repetition
| of #2 but there is often a distinction in that, say, a discussion
| about a new product feature is likely not the time to discuss the
| company's history with features. Going in that direction is
| moving the conversation sideways.
|
| 4. Provide supporting evidence for what is said. Claiming
| something like, "I'd never buy this from Company X" is a baseless
| statement compared to "I'd never buy this from Company X because
| A, B, and C are an indication I won't get much support beyond the
| 90-day warranty and that's not enough at that price point." The
| trick I use for this is to include a word like _because_ since it
| compels an explanation.
|
| 5. Avoid attempts at humor. For one, text mediums like HN can
| easily lead to misinterpretations; there are many people reading
| for whom English is a second language, so being clever can cause
| confusion for those readers; if my humor were so good to be
| worthwhile for the amount of readers a place like HN has then I
| should be a comedian. I'm not a comedian.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Avoid attempts at humor. For one, text mediums like HN can
| easily lead to misinterpretations; there are many people
| reading for whom English is a second language, so being clever
| can cause confusion for those readers;
|
| On behalf of ESL people, you're offended? Maybe you should let
| them speak for themselves.
|
| Humor is a big part of what makes life worth living. I love it
| when someone makes me LOL.
|
| Maybe the non-native English speakers just think, "Well, I
| don't get that, but whatever." In their other reading, they'll
| run across idiomatic English sooner or later, too.
|
| Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it
| alive.
| aequitas wrote:
| As a personal rule I only upvote humor on fridays, which I
| sometimes break if a joke is really really good.
| [deleted]
| Savely wrote:
| But humour is half the reason I read HN and 3/4 the reason I
| comment!
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Made with 125% organic love and infotainment value. (By
| weight, not by volume. Some contents may have settled during
| transport.)
|
| Edit: Maybe we need an overlay meta HumorNews to channel all
| of our distracting banter lest the people who yell at you for
| daring to ask a question in a source repository issue declare
| "you are wrong, stop being you, stay in your lane, and follow
| the rules precisely".
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| All attempts at humor should be made. If they fail, a simple
| apology or explanation should be fine. Otherwise, offended
| parties should kindly exfiltrate themselves back to Reddit.
| janalsncm wrote:
| On 5, I will avoid humor directed at a user and usually humor
| related to the ambiguity in headlines, however poorly written.
| I won't shy away from mocking soulless PR statements or silly
| public figures.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| 5 oughta have a caveat like only pg can attempt humor
| the_arun wrote:
| @0xdeadbeefbabe Good sense of humor!
| Uehreka wrote:
| My most upvoted comment on HN by a mile was a joke about Siri.
| A lot of my other most upvoted comments are either jokes or
| humorous exaggerations or other silly stuff.
|
| The guidelines may say that humor should be avoided, but the
| readership (the people who, in the end, decide what HN is)
| seems to disagree.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Mine was a story about cockatoos that had a funny twist
| ending.
|
| I think humour on HN is one of those things that's, let's
| say, "a little bit naughty" - but you can get away with it
| sometimes if it's genuine.
| mulmen wrote:
| Classic survivor bias. Jokes are fine when they are funny but
| they aren't worth the price of encouraging unfunny posts.
| Ultimately they don't contribute.
| kej wrote:
| It had its own moderation problems, but I liked the Slashdot
| rule that funny upvotes didn't count for karma with the
| explanation that "you have to be smart, not just a smartass".
| It made it so that people could still post jokes, but they
| weren't rewarded in the same way that meaningful
| contributions were.
| wrboyce wrote:
| I had the same thought reading the parent comment. My most
| upvoted comment on HN is a single word joke (that blurs the
| lines between English and Spanish) and if I'm completely
| honest I'm still quite proud of it, especially being someone
| who, at best, fumbles their way through speaking Spanish.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23842179#23845200
| vlz wrote:
| Disfavoring humor is one of the things that keeps HN from
| becoming like reddit where the top answers often seem to be
| empty witticisms.
|
| While it might have worked for you karma-wise, many
| bad/average attempts at humor seem to get downvoted a lot and
| I am glad for it.
|
| When I click on a topic that I'm deeply interested in, the
| last thing I want to see is someone's attempt at being witty
| to collect internet points.
| gspencley wrote:
| This is going to be a divisive issue.
|
| Personally there's nothing I can't stand more than people
| who take life too seriously and can't find the absurdity in
| every day matters. If someone manages to make me spit out
| my coffee, give a chuckle or even just a smile then I am
| eternally grateful. After all, I'm usually on HN because I
| need a temporary mental break from work.
|
| Value comes in many shapes and forms. But is also in the
| eye of the beholder. I just ask that you and others don't
| assume for a second that someone trying to make others
| laugh is doing it for "internet points." Some people
| genuinely like trying to bring a smile to the faces of
| others. Those who succeed are my heroes.
| kelnos wrote:
| The problem with that is the response varies a lot by
| individual.
|
| There have certainly been occasions -- albeit rare --
| when a humorous HN comment has made me laugh out loud, or
| at least grin.
|
| But most of the time I find attempts at humor here to be
| annoying and distracting. Especially when it devolves
| into a deep thread of few-word or one-line responses that
| reminds me very much of things I dislike about Reddit.
|
| Put another way: I don't come here for humor. That
| doesn't mean I won't appreciate it sometimes, but that's
| not what I'm here for, and the majority of the time I
| find it to be an unwelcome distraction from what I
| actually come here for. I come here for _discussion_ ,
| whether just to read it, or to participate in it. Short,
| humorous comments almost never lead to discussion.
| tamimio wrote:
| > I just ask that you and others don't assume for a
| second that someone trying to make others laugh is doing
| it for "internet points." Some people genuinely like
| trying to bring a smile to the faces of others.
|
| Spot on!! I personally couldn't care less about these
| brownie points, my whole life been (and still) using
| alt/nicknames accounts and mostly in sites/chats where
| the whole upvote system isn't there, when I help someone
| in something or make a joke, because it makes me feel
| better to know I helped someone or brought some smile, I
| don't care about your fake coins or whatever, but some
| people are so fixated about it for some reason, and
| that's why I don't like "influencers" culture in general,
| they are usually slaves to these thumbs up!
| krapp wrote:
| Yes, it's much better to have a community where the top
| comments are often middlebrow dismissals or off-the-cuff
| rants related only to the title (because no one here RTFA)
| but where you also get lectured for making a joke.
|
| It might actually be fine if we traded humor for
| intellectual or technical insight but HN tends to be little
| better than Reddit at either.
| kelnos wrote:
| C'mon, that's disingenuous. I don't want the top comments
| to be middlebrow dismissals _or_ lectures about jokes
| _or_ jokes themselves. The irony is that your comment to
| this effect is itself a shallow dismissal.
|
| > _HN tends to be little better than Reddit at either._
|
| I assure you, you are wrong in this. There are times when
| I see HN threads devolve into Reddit-land, but it's
| fairly rare, and very noticeable when it happens, because
| it reminds me why I generally don't bother with Reddit,
| but am (mostly) happy here on HN.
| another-dave wrote:
| > or off-the-cuff rants related only to the title
| (because no one here RTFA)
|
| > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning
| into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the
| hills.
|
| I hope this irony was intentional, as it's top notch.
| tptacek wrote:
| The canonical answer to this issue, which comes up over and
| over and over again on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36219385
|
| It's worth remembering that HN is a common law system. If you
| want to nerd out about what the real, fine-grained guidelines
| are, follow Dan's comments; they're the site jurisprudence.
|
| A corollary to the humor thing: insubstantial comments are
| problematic when they're negative and less problematic when
| they're positive or encouraging. That's a principle that goes
| all the way back to Graham. So you're generally going to be
| fine attempting a cheerful joke than you are trying for a sly
| dunk.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Humor is often a wrapper around something.
|
| Malign people wrap antisocial stuff in order to get people
| to eat of it.
|
| A joke with nothing inside it is just annoying and
| derailing. See the guy who always interrupts the
| conversation with a pun.
|
| It is possible to wrap decent stuff with humor.
| tamimio wrote:
| I will take humor or even cheesy jokes over some of the
| condescending, egotistic, and patronizing comments in here
| any day any time. Obviously all in moderation, but listing
| humor as a bad thing in general gives an you idea the type of
| person/company/etc. is, taking life too seriously is not a
| healthy thing, not for you, not for everyone around you.
| kelnos wrote:
| Personally I'd be fine if the humor _and_ the
| condescending, egotistic, patronizing comments all went
| away.
|
| I don't think humor in general is a bad thing (my friends
| would likely in part describe me as a wise-cracking,
| sarcastic jokester at times), but I just don't think HN --
| or any sort of textual medium where participants don't know
| each other that well or at all -- is a great place for it.
|
| Obviously we're all free to disagree on this (and we
| obviously are, given the size of this subthread), but I
| think overall the community agrees (through up/downvoting)
| that humor on HN should be fairly rare.
| gretch wrote:
| > the people who, in the end, decide what HN is
|
| I don't agree with this position. There is a place for
| administrators to shape the place they want to build for the
| world and have it be differentiated from other places.
|
| As a thought experiment: HN could turn into a TikTok clone
| and it would be wildly popular. It will be decided by the
| users, but the user base will be 100% different. And the
| world would have lost a unique place for yet another clone.
|
| So I appreciate it when the site owners are opinionated and
| proactive about maintaining this space.
| jjav wrote:
| > HN could turn into a TikTok clone and it would be wildly
| popular.
|
| As a strictly text-only medium that would be difficult.
|
| That's why I vastly prefer text-only media. Email lists
| (without attachments), Usenet, or even forums that only do
| text. The written word requires more effort than just
| posting pics so quality is almost inevitably better.
| another-dave wrote:
| But there's a healthy tension between "moderator and
| moderated" -- people come to a place because it's being
| shaped in a certain way, but bring their own expectations.
|
| And in tandem, the guidelines grow with the community to
| reinforce behaviour that's seen to be fruitful and
| disincentivise behaviour that's derailing.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _The guidelines may say that humor should be avoided, but the
| readership (the people who, in the end, decide what HN is)
| seems to disagree._
|
| In my experience here (and I have been around a while), the
| actual case is that _some_ humor is welcome here. But the
| subset of what is welcomed on HN, versus the set of "all
| things someone finds humorous", is pretty small. I've had
| humorous comments upvoted before, even highly so. But there's
| a pretty particular brand of humor that seems to work here.
| And you can't always predict how something will be received.
|
| I will say this: some of my most highly upvoted comments are
| among some of my lowest effort ones (eg, something like "Fuck
| these guys. The NSA can go go hell" or similar) while I've
| had tons of comments that I spent half an hour or more
| working on, doing researching, finding citations, etc.... and
| they either got zero votes, or got downvoted.
|
| My point is that it's really hard to guess how people will
| react to any particular comment here, humorous or otherwise,
| on any particular day.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Similar to sarcasm, I don't always "read" the sarcasm or
| humor as intended. My internal voice may read something
| differently, depending on the mood I'm in.
|
| I don't mind it when someone calls it out with a "/s" or
| "/jk" (/sarcasm, /joking).
|
| Related: humor at work: https://hbr.org/2020/07/sarcasm-self-
| deprecation-and-inside-...
| samstave wrote:
| I try as often as possible to add a meaningful comment after
| I make my pun or jokes.
|
| I don't always remember to do it, but I do try.
| krapp wrote:
| The guidelines don't actually say humor should be avoided.
| Hacker News is just weirdly priggish because it associates
| humor with Reddit and Reddit with everything it fears, hates
| and stands against. So unless it's particularly smart and
| clever humor (which negates its "Redditness") it'll get
| stamped out like a cockroach.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Notes on this: We're not fucking robots and data is cold and
| boring. If people can't be free to be themselves, I don't see
| the value and suspect egotistical/protofascist-esque attempts
| to control others. The best conversations include stories and
| have a sense of humor. People lacking a sense of humor tend
| to be the most dramatic and problematic.
| mulmen wrote:
| I don't lack a sense of humor, it's just not why I come to
| HN. I also don't discuss my political views with my
| manager.
| hfeqah5ehae wrote:
| [flagged]
| john_alan wrote:
| * except when the topic is cryptocurrency
| talldatethrow wrote:
| I get flagged pretty often on here, but every time it happens I
| can agree "ok damn it they got me". Other times, I know a comment
| will anger many but is quality and within the discussion, and it
| stays up.
|
| For how easy it would be to just ban me (which I think has
| happened before, in the form of a shadowban maybe I forget), it
| doesn't seem to happen.
|
| Moderation on here is pretty dang good for how large the
| community is.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| [flagged]
| metadaemon wrote:
| These are great guidelines in general for building a healthy
| community.
| naillo wrote:
| The only one I subtly disagree with is "comments should be
| substantive". What it discourages I think is comments like
| "thanks" or other really 'unsubstantive' comments. It's true that
| maybe it adds noise, and in many cases are maybe supposed to be
| inferred without explicitly saying. But I think discouraging this
| slightly leans behaviour towards snark vs not. (If you see
| comments like "thanks" you're less likely to be snarky than if
| you see 'substantive' but maybe too harsh critiques in the
| comments that appear because "cool project!" isn't allowed.)
|
| Personally I like to make it a point to break this rule from time
| to time to reduce this pattern.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Same. I think it's especially important to thank someone when
| they might otherwise assume you'll want to pick apart with
| their response to you, after you've asked them to write it.
|
| One feature I've thought of would be for someone in a
| conversation thread to know if the other participant upvoted
| their last comment. Giving someone an upvote and not replying
| would send a strong positive signal without taking up more
| space.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I'd really love a separate "thanks" interface element that
| only the person you replied to can use.
| noduerme wrote:
| This. Perhaps even with a very short note attached, visible
| to the person you're thanking but not visible in the main
| thread.
| zogrodea wrote:
| That suggestion about upvoting might work. It has less of a
| human element than a typed/written reply though (instead of
| someone typing text to express positive intent, it's someone
| incrementing a number to express positive intent), and it
| does sound more desolate/lonely from that perspective.
| Although I don't know how much it matters.
|
| Here's an exchange from a book I thought of while typing this
| comment, to illustrate my meaning.
|
| `But he could not resist the temptation to speak and to
| awaken a little human warmth around him. "A pity for the
| car," he said. "Foreign cars cost quite a bit of gold, and
| after half a year on our roads they are finished." "There you
| are quite right. Our roads are very backward," said the old
| official. By his tone Rubashov realized that he had
| understood his helplessness. He felt like a dog to whom one
| had just thrown a bone; he decided not to speak again.`
| SushiHippie wrote:
| That is okay Comment from dang:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37030249
| blackpill0w wrote:
| Isn't that (partly) the point of the upvote button?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Yes, but it also discourages "cool story bro", "ok boomer", "no
| cap" etc
| freedomben wrote:
| I agree, though I think for posts deserving a "thanks" it's not
| too hard to make it substantive. For example, if I wanted to
| thank you for this comment, I might say something like this:
|
| Thanks, that's very helpful. You make a good point about
| comments like "cool project!" not being allowed, which could
| cause the overall sentiment to feel skewed negative when it
| might actually be well received. That said, it can feel noisy
| and unhelpful to see a thread full of empty comments, so what
| if we had a thumbs up button or something that people could use
| to register "cool project" ? Maybe not practical, but just
| thinking through the problem a bit.
| bombcar wrote:
| I like to do a simple "thank you because X" where X is an
| encouragement for others to read the link (usually that's
| what's thanked, anyway).
| krapp wrote:
| I think the idea is that if you can't make a substantive
| comment, you refrain from commenting at all.
|
| It's a weird dynamic to have in a web forum, where people are
| essentially engaging in text-based conversations, but casual,
| emotive speech is discouraged because that's what Redditors
| do, and every keystroke brings us closer to Eternal
| September.
| burnished wrote:
| You can be substantive in your thanks making or praises. And if
| you cannot then maybe its OK that it doesn't get expressed as a
| one word 'thanks' post.
|
| I personally don't think this causes the community as a whole
| to lean snarky - that one might be a pre existing condition
| rather than the format.
|
| I also think the occasional rule breaking is good, 'I don't
| have anything substantial to say but your project means a lot
| to me and I'm grateful' is substantial in a way that default
| 'thanks' is not anyway.
| JNRowe wrote:
| In the specific instance of a "thanks" message, I'll somewhat
| regularly send an out of band message to say thanks for helpful
| replies(or general comments). It doesn't pollute the threads
| for others, and I'd like to think the added cost of a personal
| note gives the reader a sense of the value I found in their
| writing.
|
| I'm yet to have any pushback on sending a thank you note, but
| who knows maybe it will upset some people in the future ;)
|
| Which - I guess - also deserves a "add _some_ contact details
| to profile " note.
| zogrodea wrote:
| That sounds like a wonderful idea. Thank you for suggesting
| it, and for doing it as well.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Good news, you can! "Thanks" is 100% substantive!
|
| From dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37030249
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > But I think discouraging this slightly leans behaviour
| towards snark vs not.
|
| who are you thanking? the mechanics of HN means that a uesr
| would have to actively search around for a response, so odds
| are your thanks simply goes the ether.
| dang wrote:
| SushiHippie already said it
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37252326), but pg made
| this point way back in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html (2009):
|
| _Empty comments can be ok if they 're positive. There's
| nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks."
| What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and
| negative--comments that are mere name-calling._
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Whole subs on Reddit are essentially rendered worthless
| because the comments are _all_ low-effort, meme responses.
| This is one of the only places I 've been online where the
| discussion of Prigozhin's death wasn't just 500+ "Fell out of
| a window" comments.
|
| _THANK YOU_
| 93po wrote:
| You have my updoots good sir
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| The one thing I wish was added - either in the guidelines or as a
| change to the actual web UI - was replying to a comment that
| you're downvoting; it's frustrating both to have one's own
| comments downvoted without explanation, and to come across a
| comment that's grey without obvious reason (Was it factually
| incorrect? Endorsing an unpopular idea? It's not always obvious).
|
| (I'm not saying HN should do exactly the same thing, but one
| example is Slashdot's system where a comment can get downvoted in
| a way that tags it specifically as trolling/offtopic/whatever -
| https://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml seems to describe it
| alright)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > it's frustrating both to have one's own comments downvoted
| without explanation, and to come across a comment that's grey
| without obvious reason (Was it factually incorrect? Endorsing
| an unpopular idea? It's not always obvious).
|
| Personally, I don't downvote anything unless it's either
| complete and utter bullshit (e.g. someone acting like PHP is
| bad based on arguments barely valid in the end of the PHP5
| era), or it is plain and simple far-right/conspiratorial in
| nature. It used to be the case that this was how most people
| used the downvote feature.
|
| Nowadays? Seems like the tide has shifted, and even completely
| legitimate viewpoints (not just on politics threads) get
| downvotes for unexplainable reasons. It saddens me a bit.
|
| > I'm not saying HN should do exactly the same thing, but one
| example is Slashdot's system where a comment can get downvoted
| in a way that tags it specifically as
| trolling/offtopic/whatever
|
| Such a thing exists. You have to open the comment's dedicated
| page by clicking on the timestamp; if you're over 500-1k karma
| you can then flag it. Enough flags auto-kill comments and they
| only appear for those who have "showdead" enabled.
| radicality wrote:
| One explanation I'm thinking of is that different people have
| different views of what an upvote/downvote represents,
| especially if there aren't very clear guidelines on it. Or if
| they are coming from a different social network where a
| downvote might instead mean "I disagree".
|
| This reminds of the 1-5 star rating system issues, and how
| people interpret it however they want without reading what it
| means. Let's take Uber for example. I leave a 5/5 rating for
| a purely average trip where everything went as expected.
| Afaik, this is how Uber's rating scale works (apparently
| drivers start getting warnings if they drop below ~4.5), so
| it surprised me when I once saw a friend give a 4/5 since the
| trip was "just normal/average".
|
| Conversely, let's take Goodreads, where I feel that many
| people don't read the definition of the rating scale and give
| star ratings not matching the definitions.
|
| Goodreads definition is: 1 star="did not like it", 2 star="it
| was ok", 3 star="liked it", 4 star="really liked it", 5
| star="it was amazing".
|
| With that, if you simply found a book "ok", you are to give
| 2/5. If you simply "didn't like it", then that's a 1/5. It
| shouldn't be unexpected to see many 2/5 and 1/5. And a 5/5
| should be a rarity. Yet you if look at the actual reviews,
| feels like many people don't follow the rating scale
| definitions and give it their own meaning.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Nowadays? Seems like the tide has shifted, and even
| completely legitimate viewpoints (not just on politics
| threads) get downvotes for unexplainable reasons. It saddens
| me a bit.
|
| Dead posts are far from the majority here, and the vast
| majority are dead for a very good reason.
|
| Grey posts just mean that some people disagree, but it does
| not really say much about the post itself. It might be that
| the tone was wrong, or the poster was being an arse. It does
| not prevent people reading it, and it does not prevent
| discussions about it. Grey posts are not a sign of
| persecution or a cabal against you, it's just that it rubbed
| some people the wrong way.
|
| You are interacting with a whole lot of people here. Some of
| them will have had a bad day or just be irrational. You don't
| need many of these to get a net negative vote count. It does
| not really matter.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Grey posts just mean that some people disagree, but it
| does not really say much about the post itself. It might be
| that the tone was wrong, or the poster was being an arse.
| It does not prevent people reading it, and it does not
| prevent discussions about it. Grey posts are not a sign of
| persecution or a cabal against you, it's just that it
| rubbed some people the wrong way.
|
| Which is a good point, but nevertheless I think that if one
| disagrees with a post (excluding the post breaking site
| guidelines), it is good culture to explain to the poster
| _why_ one has done so.
| arp242 wrote:
| I've been hearing people complain that "downvoting was so
| much better back in the day!" for as long as I can remember,
| on pretty much _any_ site with downvotes. For example you can
| find comments from more than 10 years ago in [1]; e.g. from
| 2011: _" Glad to see the downvote-disagree is becoming ever
| more prevalent!"_[2]
|
| [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true
| &que...
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403589
| Tao3300 wrote:
| That would be redundant.
|
| If I make a factually inaccurate comment, I can expect at least
| three replies correcting me. We like to joke that they all
| start with "actually..." Maybe I've also been downvoted, but
| it's clear I was incorrect about something.
|
| If I'm downvoted without replies, was I being a jerk? This
| requires some self-reflection, but there's rarely any mystery.
| Maybe I made a joke that fell flat, wasn't appreciated, or was
| deemed unsubstantial. Flop on this one badly enough and the mod
| will let you know by word or act.
|
| Which brings us to the last possibility. If I haven't been
| incorrect, a jerk, telling dad jokes, or being generally
| pointless and my comment is _still_ being downvoted, then it
| means I 've said something that some people wish wasn't true.
| It might not even be a majority, just whoever happened to be
| passing by. Be proud and don't sweat the fake internet points.
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but you'd end up with a situation
| where the worse the comment, the more discussion it generates
| due to the forced replies, which is sort of the opposite of
| what you want.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Perhaps a system where a comment can only be downvoted if it
| has at least one reply? So _someone_ has to explain, but only
| once
| pvg wrote:
| It has the exact same problem as the original idea - its
| motivation and purpose is really reducing the personal
| sting of getting downvoted, not 'producing an interesting
| set of comments ordered by some approximation of
| interestingness'. Notice how nobody ever suggests or
| advocates for 'receipts for upvotes'.
|
| It's a totally sane motivation it just doesn't obviously
| make a messageboard better.
| jedberg wrote:
| It depends on the commenter. Some truly want to learn and
| get better, and in those cases it will make the board
| better.
| pvg wrote:
| These things aren't mutually exclusive and the commenters
| who want to get better (and/or develop more resilience to
| mild online criticism) do so just fine without the noise
| cost. There are lots of other ways one could try to
| dampen the unpleasantness that don't involve the
| extraordinary burden of receipts for downvotes.
|
| I guess that's probably the best way to summarize this
| argument - the extraordinary burden demands extraordinary
| benefit and not even the people who are really into this
| idea often argue the benefit would be commensurate with
| the burden.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I think some sites have a feature, that when you downvote,
| you have to add some words/tags to why you downvote. I like
| that idea, it gives the commenter some concrete feedback,
| but also the downvoter a moment for reflection (is this
| really a bad comment, or do I just have a bite reflex
| because its language sounds like a (ideological) side I
| hate?)
|
| I know that I have stupidly taken some downvotes
| personally, but later realized, those comments were maybe
| not bad by itself, but in that context attracting flamewar
| OT debates. With some extra words, I would have realized
| sooner.
|
| And downvoting for merely not liking someones opinion is
| something I really don't like, but is explicitely allowed
| here.
| creer wrote:
| That sounds like a useful way
| jedberg wrote:
| A perhaps viable idea. You should email it in and see what
| they say.
| lliamander wrote:
| Yup, the incentive should always be to direct people toward
| high-value conversations.
| arfafaerhgaq5 wrote:
| [flagged]
| TX81Z wrote:
| In the market of ideas you're failing, and that's the
| signal you're getting.
|
| It sounds like you don't care to adjust to "the crowd",
| which is fine, but then you have to deal with the
| consequences.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I remember when there were no upvotes and downvotes on
| forums, and each comment stood on it's own merits. We
| have to remember that for every user down voting, there
| are a hundred lurkers just reading. There are also a
| bunch of activists here on HN as on other forums, who
| will categorically downvote every comment by certain
| posters because they maybe wrote something they disagreed
| with several years ago.
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _There are also a bunch of activists here on HN as on
| other forums, who will categorically downvote every
| comment by certain posters because they maybe wrote
| something they disagreed with several years ago._
|
| Interesting. How do you know?
| kergonath wrote:
| Confirmation bias. It's the same in most forums I follow;
| there is _always_ someone complaining about an imaginary
| person downvoting everything. Which is always bullshit
| because even if a couple of posts had one single downvote
| by the time the comment was written (though there is
| nothing to say whether this was from a single account),
| it is _never_ the case if you wait a bit.
|
| I guess part of us really want to be against other people
| and the shady systematic downvoter fills that role. It is
| always stupid, though. Luckily we don't get much of that
| here.
| krapp wrote:
| Sometimes you'll make a controversial comment and you'll
| notice the score on every recent comment you made go down
| by one.
|
| Also I vaguely remember a couple of people here bragging
| that they had networks of sockpuppets specifically for
| mass-downvoting, but IDK.
|
| This place can certainly be petty enough for that.
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _Sometimes you 'll make a controversial comment and
| you'll notice the score on every recent comment you made
| go down by one._
|
| Sure, but that's a different phenomenon. If you make a
| comment that gets a lot of attention, sometimes people
| will go read a bunch of your other comments. I have also
| had the opposite of this happen, where I suddenly get
| upvotes on old comments.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Only the admins would have any certain proof of users
| voting behaviour, but you can deduct things using your
| own logic. Most of my comments here will get a few
| upvotes in the beginning after posted and then after a
| day or two they are downvoted. Completely normal on-topic
| comments. And if you are familiar with other similar
| forums with a voting system like Reddit, you know there
| is no limit to how petty and obsessed people can be
| online.
|
| I never down vote here on HN, because why should I waste
| my time when I can just move on?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| This is not only a "market of ideas", but a virtual
| world. And in the sense that it is a virtual world,
| you're also telling him "you can't exist here".
|
| Which is a pretty shitty thing to say regardless, but
| when the real world withers away from us a little more
| every year, it starts to become monstrous.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| People who don't follow a social situation's rules and
| norms don't get invited back. It's true of parties,
| shopping centers, and Hacker News. I don't think that's a
| problem.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Well, when you put it that way...
|
| Of course, if we alter your metaphor only ever so
| slightly, then you don't need an invitation to the public
| square, the town council meeting, or the bus stop bench.
|
| And internet forums have certainly been happy to take the
| place of those things when it suits them, but without the
| inclusivity they require. They want the benefits of being
| those things, without the tradeoffs. We see no effort
| being made for them to _not_ be those things.
|
| I suspect a strong correlation between those who see no
| reason to be concerned by that, and HOA members who sneak
| out at 5:45am to measure your front lawn's grass with
| rulers.
| lliamander wrote:
| > you're also telling him "you can't exist here".
|
| No, we are saying his behavior is unacceptable, and that
| if he wishes to participate in this community he will
| need to conform to those standards.
|
| It is not a mercy to allow bad behavior in order to be
| more "welcoming".
|
| What if this were an in-person community, and the above
| commenter had a problem with personal space and non-
| consenual touching? Not only are you driving everyone
| else away, but you are also risking legal consequences
| (or worse).
|
| The way to help such people is have firm boundaries and
| clear rules. If the above commenter had any question
| about what constituted an acceptable comment, he could
| refer to the HN guidelines _which the subject of this
| very thread_.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Where does "you can't exist here" come from? I don't
| think it's common for people who just get downvotes
| frequently (not flags, but just downvotes) to get kicked
| off the site (or out of the "virtual world", if you
| prefer).
| throw16180339 wrote:
| Many Reddit subreddits use AutoModerator to automatically
| remove comments by users with substantial negative karma,
| e.g. -49 or lower. There are definitely false positives,
| but this policy removes a lot of drive-by troll comments.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This is the second time recently that I have been
| participating in a thread about moderation on HN and
| people have responded with comments talking about
| moderation on reddit...
|
| I don't get it. We're not talking about reddit here,
| we're talking about HN.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Moderation is moderation. Don't pretend that it is
| significantly different from place to place.
|
| I mean, I guess we can just talk about HN if you want.
| Yay, circumstances were such that HN moderation isn't as
| shitty as reddit, and may even remain that way for the
| lifespan of the site. How long is that anyway? Will HN be
| around 30 years from now? 5? It's so much smaller, that
| how many unlucky heart attacks or misfortunately early
| deaths would derail it? Is that a higher-than-single-
| digit number?
|
| So, any discussion of purely HN moderation (besides those
| asking for input on policy adjustments) aren't talking
| about anything long term and pointlessly self-
| congratulatory.
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _Data storage is cheaper than ever._
|
| But _because_ it 's true that data storage is cheaper than
| ever, _human attention_ is more expensive than ever.
|
| Noise is bad. It is a good thing that HN attempts to
| optimize for signal.
| almostnormal wrote:
| > What is the downside of "more discussion"?
|
| The only limited thing is time. I have never consciously
| thought of downvotes like that, but their only truely
| meaningful use would be to push down items I do not only
| not want to spend time discussing, but not even spend time
| reading, under the precondition of the assumption that most
| others likely feel the same.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Comments sections do hold attention for a finite amount of
| time per person, and having a low-effort, negative, or
| trollish comment suck the air out of the virtual room is
| bad.
|
| "don't feed the trolls", "downvote and move on" are valid
| pieces of advice.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| Comments to explain downvotes are nice, and should perhaps be
| encouraged, but they certainly shouldn't be mandatory.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Comments to explain downvotes are nice
|
| Downvotes are for material that does not support productive
| discussion, if it is productive to discuss a comment (even on
| a meta level like "why it is a bad comment"?), then
| downvoting is inappropriate.
| pvg wrote:
| They are explicitly discouraged in the guidelines this thread
| is about.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Commenting about downvotes themselves is discouraged.
| Commenting on the reasons why somebody was downvoted is a
| separate matter
| pvg wrote:
| No it's not. It's the whole meta-discussion about voting
| in general. And, it doesn't say it explicitly, but almost
| all meta-discussion itself. You can find both of these
| explained in the moderator commentary over the years.
| epanchin wrote:
| I do not downvote for comments I disagree with.
|
| I downvote for off topic, or for comments which detract from
| the conversation. I believe most others with the ability to
| downvote do the same.
|
| Replying to off topic posts would be counter to the purpose of
| downvoting.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I probably agree that _if_ downvotes were only for off-topic
| /trolling/unhelpful comments the situation would be better,
| but I don't think we're there; I am fairly confident that
| downvoting for disagreement is common and officially okay.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I asked this exact same thing a while ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36673613
|
| So yes downvotes for mere disagreements are okay here.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yep, there is no doubting what the policy is. But it is
| reasonable to question whether it is the right policy.
| almostnormal wrote:
| Similarly, are up-votes expressing agreement or do they
| indicate something worth reading (opposite of thd
| topic/trolling/unhelpful)?
|
| Some comments can go yo-yo, but I don't think it is
| possible to see the two counts separately.
| em-bee wrote:
| on a technical level, being able to see downvotes and
| upvotes separately would actually be interesting, as it
| does carry a signal, but it probably doesn't happen often
| enough to be worth the effort to implement.
| codingdave wrote:
| No, because that allows one person to double down on negativity
| - it can turn something grey _and_ detract from the comment,
| both of which then bias future readers to read it negatively.
|
| I'd go the other way - disallow downvoting if you comment, and
| disallow comments if you downvoted. You get one choice of how
| to indicate that you don't feel the comment is correct.
|
| Admittedly, teaching people not to downvote just for
| disagreement would be better. Personally, I downvote a ton, but
| never for disagreement - I downvote for exactly the reasons I
| see in the guidelines: non-substantive comments. Or,
| admittedly, I also downvote people who are just being a jerk.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Admittedly, teaching people not to downvote just for
| disagreement would be better.
|
| That would be awesome were it possible. Got any special
| insight into how to do that? I don't have a problem doing so,
| 16 yrs on reddit, if I ever downvoted even 30 times total,
| I'd be shocked. Others I've talked to make it seem like
| that's a daily or at best weekly total for them...
|
| I think the trouble is that people fear others seeing the
| comment. Downvoting is used as a technique to prevent that
| contamination. It betrays some sort of mistrust in others'
| intellects.
| freedomben wrote:
| How do you then tell the commenter why you downvoted them?
| How are they supposed to improve without feedback?
| codingdave wrote:
| That is a great question, but I feel that making the
| commenter go through the exercise of reflecting on what
| they said and trying to understand the possible reasons is
| just as much a driver to become a better community member
| as handing them an answer would be.
| lliamander wrote:
| That's interesting: I don't think I've ever been unsure of why
| people downvoted anything I've said.
|
| I don't think we should make it any more complicated. You might
| benefit (on the margin) from some feedback, but that makes the
| conversation more noisy for everyone.
|
| I can say that personally, if I downvote something without also
| replying to it, it's either because I don't have time to write
| a helpful response, or because I know my own contribution would
| make things worse.
| kelnos wrote:
| I do often see people asking why they've been downvoted (and
| seem genuinely confused), but I don't think it's the right move
| to require at least one explanation reply.
|
| I'm reminded of the xdcd "someone is wrong on the internet!"
| comment. I'm starting to get to the point where I don't feel
| like arguing or even explaining things; I just want to
| downvote, move on, and hope my moderation contribution has made
| the shape of the thread more useful to people.
|
| If I had to explain my downvotes every time, I'd hardly ever
| bother, and I suspect that's true for most people. A forum
| where no one wants to take the time to moderate is not going to
| be a healthy place.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Actually, Slashdot doesn't allow you to use mod points on
| threads you're a part of. It enforces the opposite of what you
| propose.
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