Hacker News Reader

Comment by ketralnis | Hacker News Reader

I think it's just monkey see->monkey do. As soon as one person said +1, everyone that saw it thought that that's just how you voted for stuff. It's the same reason you see comments on HN or reddit that just say "This." or that if you leave your shoes by the door, everyone else will do the same. I doubt these people keep doing it if you ask them not to.

View on HN

There's an old story about this man who stood quietly next to a closed door in Moscow, said nothing to no one, and did nothing else of interest. Eventually others joined him, and before long a queue has formed. No one knew what they were standing in line for.

Monkey see - monkey do.

One of Milgram's experiments (not the infamous one) tested this, using people standing on the sidewalk looking up.

https://youtu.be/P0e6zG8IbE8

He might think he's testing conformance, but he actually just tested curiosity.

Wouldn't they at least ask after a while if that was the case?

What makes you think they didn't? I saw lots of people look up, check the people around them and keep going.

I really want to try this out myself now.

Is it really possible that people just continue standing there while not getting why they are doing it? Don't they even care to ask?

Feels like it would take just a single guy to ask: "What are we looking at?" For everyone to realize that they are acting like fools.

So try it! Elevators are wonderful places for things like this :)

Try the classic: enter an elevator and turn around to face the back - see how many copy you.

I remember one day I was walking through london with multiple hours to kill; and there was a massive line. Without anything else to do, I just stood in it. Approx 45 minutes later, I got to the front: turns out it was a sale for a clothing store. I didn't really need any clothing, but the discounts were good; so I purchased a jacket. This was 6 years ago and it's still my favourite jacket....

I agree that that's probably how it started, but it seems that once the cultural expectation has been set, it's hard for a single project maintainer to set a different custom just for their own project. People are going to use the conventions and communication methods that they learn elsewhere, even if you say not to in the contributing guidelines document. You might be able to get individuals to stop doing it in your project by asking them directly, but then each person has done it at least once, and you've had to ask each person to change their normal habits. Besides, as they note in the letter, there is a valid and valuable purpose to these communications, it would just be better if they were in a different place than clogging up the comment thread.

StackOverflow tackled this by intercepting plus one posts and telling people to just vote. GitHub should do the same (with starring or following).

Yeah, and now look at SO, it's got so many "rules" that you can't look cross eyed at it without breaking one of them. "You don't have enough rep!" "A minimum of 15 characters per comment." "At least 5 characters per edit." "That's been asked before." Eventually, everyone just stands in line with blinders on, forced to stare straight ahead, mouth shut, one step at a time. There's never an end once you start "tackling" these so called problems.

"This." or "+1" is a more expressive way of showing support beyond anonymous voting mechanisms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com