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Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

I had thought the custom on HN was to post valuable, constructive comments, and not to find fault or to post typical Internet forum sniping and hyperbole.

Perhaps it's my impression, but I've rarely seen anything constructive recently. Almost everything in this discussion, for example, is reaction and sniping ("useless", "absurd", "stupid", etc.). It's a way to hang out and socialize online; there's nothing wrong with it. But personally, I've read enough Internet sniping for a lifetime; it's not thoughtful, informative, insightful or constructive; I don't learn anything and leave uninspired.

Perhaps it's just my impression or it's temporary; perhaps it's a bigger change (related to YC and its leadership distancing themselves from HN?). Is there anywhere online where the sniping is eliminated and the discussion more valuable?

EDIT: Sorry, I know it's off-topic, but there's no other place to post it (that I know of).

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I mostly agree. I do sometimes find valuable counterpoint in the HN comments, but most often that's on topics where the community here has actual expertise (mostly programming) and the counterpoint is pretty specific.

This has been a discussion on HN for years, though, and even has its own jargon term, the "middlebrow dismissal": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224

Thanks for the interesting link.

I think the discussions used to be much better. There was less 'noise' and some truly excellent 'signal', which made the discussions worthwhile. Recently, my impression is that the noise has significantly increased and the excellent signal has almost disappeared. But: That could be simply my mistaken impression, it could be just normal variability, or it could be something else. Certainly I'm not the first to say, in any community, 'it's not like it was in the old days'.

In my opinion, there is plenty of noise, but the truly excellent signal remains and pops up at a reasonable rate. But I've only been around 5 or 6 years, so I always wonder if I simply don't have a concept of the "good old days" that people are nostalgic about.

In a discussion where the community has expertise there is a tolerance for practicality and getting things done even when it may not be the most perfect solution in an intellectual sense. I find that this is not extended so readily to other domains. People will often have a good understanding of the abstract concepts involved and assume that decisions should be tested on that basis alone. It is a bit like an intelligent but non-technical executive choosing database software.

No problem with people saying "it's useless" as long as they make their point with some arguments (which was the case with some of the other comments).

> No problem with people saying "it's useless" as long as they make their point with some arguments

My opinion differs:

1) IME, comments which begin with hyperbole such as "it's useless" rarely improve beyond that. I generally stop reading there (I don't have time to read everything). My theory, anecodotally confirmed, is that if they are careless with their language (i.e., the lazy use of hyperbole), probably they will be careless with their content.

2) It's rude to whomever wrote the article, and it also creates that environment for interactions between commenters.

3) That kind of rant is like a virus; it spreads through discussions and through the community. I believe this concept is well-established among veteran forum maintainers. From Paul Graham, talking about what he learned from running HN: [1]

It's pretty clear now that the broken windows theory applies to community sites as well. The theory is that minor forms of bad behavior encourage worse ones … I was living in New York when Giuliani introduced the reforms that made the broken windows theory famous, and the transformation was miraculous. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and the transformation was equally dramatic.

...

Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly. … If someone submits a lame article, the other submissions don't all become lame. But if someone posts a stupid comment on a thread, that sets the tone for the region around it.

----

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

> if they are careless with their language (i.e., the lazy use of hyperbole), probably they will be careless with their content.

Don't forget that many people don't speak English as their first language and it may be difficult to express an adequate degree of nuance (it is for me...).

Overall I agree with you, and I prefer when commenters are respectful of everybody's else feelings. But I don't think it's that bad on hacker news: the ranking system is quite efficient and I often learn something from the comments.

> EDIT: Sorry, I know it's off-topic, but there's no other place to post it (that I know of).

Yeah, as annoying as it is to see hostile comments, it's also kind of annoying to see meta comments. I understand that meta comments are important for making the site better, but it distracts from the discussion on the articles themselves.

Perhaps a good solution would be to have a separate "meta" comments section for each posting. This would be similar to how wikipedia has a separate "discuss" section for each article. This would be a useful place to put comments like yours and mine, and moderators could even move comments over to the meta discussion to keep the main comment section on-topic. It would also be a good place to post title-change requests, and other moderation requests.

This would lower the prevalence of off-topic meta discussion, while also providing an appropriate venue for discussing important topics that make the site better in the long run.

My comment is the only one using the word "absurd" so I take it you're talking about it. Let me try to defend it.

I called the title misleading, so I shortly described the gist of it. I also opined it's absurd because the idea doesn't seem to have been thought through (because of the large amount of space dedicated to bikes, as I wrote). This was just a warning to other readers, so they aren't baited like I was.

Notice that even the submitter (geezsundries) wrote "I'm confused as to why they created bike paths in apartment building hallways." This really isn't a good submission.

In my opinion, you're just picking the wrong article to seek great discussions about bikes and city planning. I'm looking for the same but this thread isn't the place. When the reporting is done by someone who's just trying to grab pageviews cheaply on someone else's bad content, then comments will be mostly negative. If it was a "Show HN" by someone who's poured reasonable effort, then negative comments would be more significant to gauge gratuicious negativity.

Certainly I did not mean to make anyone feel accused; sorry. I purposely didn't name names or comments; I was just making a general point.

To address your points: Whatever someone's reasoning, words like 'absurd' create an atmosephere where ridicule and sniping are acceptable, which I think deters more thoughtful discussion. For one, other commenters follow the example and do the same (see my quotes of PG in my other post, above). But also, who wants to put the effort into a thoughtful comment, sharing what they know, when they see that the response may very well be more thoughtless ridicule? It attracts the worse comments and deters the valuable stuff.

> the reporting is done by someone who's just trying to grab pageviews cheaply on someone else's bad content

I see no basis for this statement. The author could have any number of reasons to post it, including that it's an excellent article in their or in other people's eyes.

It's always been present. I can't construct proof or a solid timeline. However I recall back when comment scores were public and upvotes had much more momentum (the more upvotes the comment had, the more it would get), there was a much-lamented problem of two-bit posts of the sniping variety, ostensibly as a low investment spray-and-pray strategy to try to catch a runaway upvote train.

I want to say it actually improved after comment scores became private, though it could have easily regressed since then.

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