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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage. Literally: express outrage, get banned. "Signal boost" someone else's outrage, get banned. It's not welcome within the community.

Would this even make sense? Or would this shove so hard against human nature that people would never be able to abide it?

(Of course, sometimes you'd be outraged at the community—or its management—and that'd be sort of an insidious policy in that case. I think it could still work if there was a "side" area—like MetaFilter's MetaTalk—that allowed outrage, but with the strong rule of not linking to the side area from the regular area, so people wouldn't just be having the same viral arguments by link-proxy.)

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I've been playing Clash Royale on iPad (it's a multiplayer battle game set in the Clash of Clans universe that essentially drops the base building element and concentrates on the strategic combat).

Generally, competitive multiplayer games can be pretty harsh (devolving into toxic) communities. Clash Royale addresses this problem in an interesting way. You're allowed to communicate with your opponent, but only from a fixed vocabulary. There's just no way to be really hostile - the closest it gets is an angry face, which says more "I'm frustrated!" than anything else. There are a few faces and some simple speech -- "Good luck!", "Well played!", etc.

This has a really nice effect - it's actually a pleasant game to play and it's pretty common to get a 'Good game' or 'Well played' at the end, or even during the game when you make a good move. It works well in this situation because it's a 1-vs-1 game -- you aren't coordinating complex actions with teammates, which is where I think something like this would fall down.

Without hostility being in the vocabulary to begin with, you don't really feel like anything is missing and it gets around the whole hurt-feelings problem of 'banning' nicely in this case.

>... You're allowed to communicate with your opponent, but only from a fixed vocabulary.

This is what Nintendo did, at least in online Mario Kart for WiiU, and it's great. I allow my 6 year old get acquainted with this very safe version of online play and she loves saying all the positive things to the other players.

Kids often get around those limitations pretty creatively: http://lanayarosh.com/2014/06/whitelist-chat-as-a-strategy-t...

It's like Hacker News for online gaming! :-)

I like using the 'Well played!' when my opponent makes a horrendously bad move.

Blizzard gave us six inoffensive emotes, and we still find a way to engage in asshole behavior with them. It's kind of inspiring, actually.

With open chat in Hearthstone, wars would be fought, friendships would be hopelessly broken and feuds would run eternal.

This happens in Blizzard's Hearthstone as well.

People enjoy saying "Hello" just as they deliver the finishing blow.

Interesting: In World Series of Poker, "Thanks!" is one of the permitted auto-texts. I find it annoying when people say "Thanks!" immediately after winning a hand / before anyone compliments them on their play or win. Sounds like Hearthstone's "Hello" deathblows.

That says something about language, how the rules affect what's considered "offensive," and how some will work within the rules to create new offenses.

I think "offence" is required to build human relationships. I find myself say something in a joking manner to my best friend that would be offensive to anyone else. In a way I think it's a test - you test if the relationship is strong enough to withstand the offence, and if the friend gives the appropriate response to show you he in fact did not get offended, the relationship is affirmed and becomes stronger. Here's an example on a phone call to my friend, who is engaged, on Valentine's night.

Me: "whatcha doing?"

Him: "eating dinner"

Me: "With two girls? You fox"

Him: "haha, parents"

Me: "Wish them a sexy valentine's day in bed for me"

Him: "Haha you fuck."

Then we both laugh.

And then there are times, when I probe potential new friends with the less intense, but same kind of speech, and they take it seriously, and that's a "test failure" meaning a confirmation it'll be difficult to build a relationship with them. Of course, sometimes it works, and I make a new friend.

Ah, now this is interesting. I can see that I often fail friendship tests such as yours. I don't actually tend to take things seriously, but I'm particularly bad at showing that I'm not taking something seriously. Or so I've been told, though I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing wrong. Fortunately I have an amazing wife and a few good friends, so making new ones isn't particularly important to me. Which I guess is likely part of the problem. Anyway - I hope your parents Valentine's day was unique and experimental.

You're doing fine. I think there's need to be potential for friendship in the first place. If one person don't get the other's humour or the other person don't get the response, I think it could be because there's not enough shared experience or shared perspectives for the two people involved, and that's that. There's nothing you need to do - the kind of person you are, will likely be friends with, the kind of people, your kind of person tends to be friends with, so enjoy. :)

understood. though, there are different rules of engagement for potential friends and a bunch of mostly random people with whom you're playing a game. Still, agreed, there may be place for offense. And offense can enter even without an invitation.

hearthstone also allows "Thanks", and it is also used when you make a mistake (although there is also a "mistake" text).

The interesting thing is that you could actually say "thanks" (or "well played" or "hello") in a neutral way, but if you are on the losing side you are very likely to interpret them as mocking any way, which personally increases my annoyance at losing wildly. I desperately crave for a "f* you" emote at times.

But blizzard has been smart: you can preventively mute your opponent, and just get rid of the thing altogether.

Mute sounds great. It also aligns interests: if you want to be heard, you won't want to act like too big a jerk. Be interesting to see how the mutes are manifested: is it quiet -- you know you've muted me but I don't -- or more-widely communicated? Be great if the mute action was broadcast to appropriate players. "riffraff has muted smcnally." Then others would have less tolerance for my nonsense if they had affinity for you, or they might view you as overly-sensitive if otherwise. The latter would govern abusive or reasonless muting.

AFAIK there is no indication that you have been muted, which I think is in fact not ideal, as I agree with what you say: you should know when people find you annoying (thought that might encourage the behaviour for trolls, not sure)

Like the commenter below/above. Hearthstone restricts this to a set of common wordings such as greetings, well played, etc.

You also have the option to 'squelch' the opponent at any time, which mutes them completely.

Shazbot!

This just gave me a flash back to back when I used to play Starseige Tribes.

The chat system included quick key commands for a ton of useful voice callouts.

The quick keys and audio sampling made them a lot more fun to use and harder to miss than manually typed messages. As a result, it was much less common to see typed messages popup during regular gameplay.

Looks like they still use the chat system in the latest iteration of the series. http://www.tribesascendwiki.com/Voice_Game_System

The company who now owns Tribes is Hi-Rez, and they've also implemented this system in SMITE, A MOBA. (MOBAs are legendarily hostile environment.)

Of course, they didn't disable normal text chat, so the game's still full of jerks. I think it does help though.

In Rocket League it's common to emote "What a save!" after scoring a goal past the defenders, or if the keeper was particularly inept.

One of the finest multiplayer gaming experiences I ever had was Journey, and that devolved communication to pinging.

Can you at least tell your opponent that they have played double plus ungood?

> I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage.

One of the reasons I like HN is that outrage is discouraged.

I've mulled this over in watching the community. Unfortunately (for other sites), I've come to the conclusion that it's a cultural thing and therefore subject to the whims of the dominant culture at any time.

HN certainly does things (thanks, team!) that make this more likely, such as playing around with the ability to downvote replies to yourself, etc.

But I think a larger part of it is "monkey see, monkey do to fit in." If I see an angry, fact-lite comment getting grey-bombed into oblivion, I'm going to probably be less likely to make such comments myself.

Sociology has a lot of language for this, but there are few things more powerful than the disapproval of one's peers, virtual or real.

(Of course, 4chan/SA as cohesive social entities are simply fascinating too...)

it's a cultural thing and therefore subject to the whims of the dominant culture at any time

It's also subject to the whims of dang the moderator, he's "the dominant culture". He's deservedly called me out a couple of times. Consequently I've tried to change my occasionally boorish behavior. Sometimes it only takes one person to create a culture.

One person only scales so far / for so long though. If BusinessWeek wrote an article claiming that "Hacker News was the place to hang out if you want venture capital!" then I wouldn't have optimistic illusions of cultural persistence.

Agreed .. especially compared it to the cesspool that Slashdot became!

There's plenty of topics here that are worthy of outrage and posted and discussed exactly for that reason. Fortunately people are civilized enough not to stoop to insults and threats. Those are the real problems. Twitter has no method to address insults and threats, and that's its ruin.

If you ban sarcasm in addition to outrage I'll sign up to whatever thingamajig you're making there.

Can't tell if you're being serious or not. Would you actually enjoy that kind of network?

Sarcasm is really hard to identify, and would be really hard to ban.

Yes, absolutely. Sarcasm poisons the well of conversation like nothing else. When people disagree and provide an argument you can have a conversation about substance. When people disagree and provide no argument or a personal attack, it's easy to dismiss and move on from there. Sarcasm leaves you hanging precisely because it's hard to identify - is the person serious so you should continue to put effort, or is he not serious and you should quit this discussion?

As to practical concerns - it's not the goal to catch every single instance of sarcasm, but rather to identify people who like to use it. People of this kind will be doing it regularly, and with various degree of subtlety, as such they will be caught in the act sooner or later.

It would be a strange use of sarcasm, in my opinion, to use it to keep people arguing to no avail. I'd rather call that disingenuous goading, not honest sarcasm.

Personally, I'm rather fond of sarcasm and irony. But if I find myself in a dialogue, and another party seems to not get the point of a sarcastic or ironic comment, then I will point out the miscommunication.

Poe's law :)

There's a heavily moderated and busy Facebook group focused on urbanism in Helsinki, "Lisää kaupunkia Helsinkiin". Irony and sarcasm are prohibited; they don't get you banned, at least not right away, but you do get called out for them. It really helps keep the discourse focused.

I would as well. Sarcasm is a problem though. I don't like sarcasm over text. People tend to type their messages and perform gestures as they do so as if they were speaking to the recipient in person. Of course this causes all sorts of problems.

Personally I had a minor cultural clash over someone saying "whatever" to me in professional conversation over text. It turned out that as it was very offensive to me meant nothing of the sort them.

Text is read in the voice of the reader, its meaning is relative to the reader, and should aim to be as clear as possible whenever possible.

You could do real time sentiment analysis on what someone is saying and it it is negative open a new input area for an explanation of their anger, greater than 500 chars (and validated as well as possible for realistic word structure), so the person would have to think through their anger, and possibly change their opinion or push it through with its attendant explanation as a expandable area on the message.

In traditional societies public outrage has always been taboo. In our society, when you take into account traditional communication modes, it is not that different. The problem is with electronic communication - which feels like a private channel and we feel dis-inhibited - but it is in fact public. Frustration is an emotion that we easily copy from one another - so when it is expressed publicly it spreads like a chain reaction.

https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/online-conflict-in-the-light-...

I am part of a couple of groups where outrage/offendedness is really not socially tolerated, and will lead to tempbans and then permanent exclusion if continued. But they're closed groups built by invite; the concept could in theory be scaled up but I don't know how you'd make the moderation work out in terms of effort to available volunteer time.

> Literally: express outrage, get banned.

What is one to do then when someone does something truly outrageous? Ban the entire community?

So outrageous that literally nobody is able to talk calmly about it? I doubt such a thing is possible.

Sounds like a safe place :) Being outraged is still within the range of self expression. You are close to your limits of harming others, but not automatically.

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