Meta HN: About the quality of discussion or rather the lack therof | Hacker News Reader

Meta HN: About the quality of discussion or rather the lack therof

28 pointsmrleiter43 comments

Dear HN,

over recent months I have felt that the quality of the discussions has fallen below previous levels in terms of subject-related talk. Specifically, I find it annoying that more and more top comments or top replies to top comments are puns and/or variations thereof.

A good laugh is healthy, I agree. But, to me, HN feels more and more like reddit. Phrases like "I'll probably get downvoted for..." are nonsensical, as it does not help a meaningful discussion at all.

So, I ask of you - do you have the same feeling?

Kind regards,

View on HN

These perceptions are notoriously subject to bias: first, to sample bias, because no one reads all the posts. And second, to whatever the bias is called where we notice what we dislike or annoys us far more than what doesn't, and thus overestimate how much of it there is. We see this most of all in claims of HN's political bias.

Because of that, it's best to post links to specific posts to give examples of what you're talking about. You might find that other people read those posts quite differently, which can be interesting in its own right. Alternatively, if they're posts that break the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), we should moderate them. You, and anyone else, are also welcome to email such links to hn@ycombinator.com.

Why isn't this ever upheld anymore?

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points.

It's upheld all the time. The proportion of that stuff is no greater than it used to be.

As pg once put it, "note those words most and probably". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380

In writing you call those "weasel words":

"words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that a specific or meaningful statement has been made"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

Essentially, if you were being honest, you would just say on topic is whatever we decided it is, since the intentional ambiguity basically comes down to that.

Can you please stop posting these tedious harangues? You've been doing it a lot, and it's off topic. Since you started doing it after we chided you for breaking the site guidelines, it also seems a bit petty.

Throwing what seem utterly baseless accusations of dishonesty and bad faith ('intentional ambiguity', 'aimed at creating an impression that' etc), and somehow you're the good guy here?

Would somehow "Topic X is never allowed" be somehow better? That would be silly, but even then there would be arguments about whether a story was topic X. Well, anyway, that guideline seems sensible to me. Not hard to understand why every word is there, for those not blinded by frustration (or whatever you were blinded by when you wrote that). I'm a huge fan of Weasel Words, Don Watson's excellent book, and I can't see a similarity. If you're so sure this place is controlled by evil forces, you should live somewhere else, no?

There is no mechanism whatsoever that identifies you as a mod. You don't even indicate this in your posts. Most of your interactions with unruly users are farcical in this regard.

On days when I am in a lot of pain and throwing up, discussion here often sucks. People are mean to me and they don't understand me. The rest of the time, it's pretty darn good. ;)

Also, some of the humor here makes obscure references and brings to light excellent tidbits of science, history and wisdom I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to.

I've had this feeling, but not sure if it's justified. Could be also the result of more users writing comments.

Since the down-voting is the tool we have been given, I have tried to be more active in using it to mark comments that take discussion to wrong direction.

Some UI innovations might help here as well. Sometimes when inside thread, you see it's heading to useless direction. Would be nice to be able to collapse the thread without scrolling back up.

>Since the down-voting is the tool we have been given, I have tried to be more active in using it to mark comments that take discussion to wrong direction.

I thought downvotes were to be used on posts which don’t move the discussion or contribute to it. For example, non-sequitors or inaccuracies. Judging which direction is “wrong” sounds like opinion abuse to me.

One of my favorite parts of HN is intelligent and diverse discussion, two things I believe must exist hand in hand.

Maybe this is what you meant, but I would not choose to downvote you either way.

>I thought downvotes were to be used on posts which don’t move the discussion or contribute to it. For example, non-sequitors or inaccuracies. Judging which direction is “wrong” sounds like opinion abuse to me.

Downvotes can be used for any reason at all, as can upvotes. AFAIK only flagging has guidelines.

Obviously, it CAN. But down voting for "any reason" (for example, should I down vote your comment because I think you are wrong?) is unlikely to foster a collegial environment.

For example, many Ask HN posts are questions asking for opinions. So you help the poster out and write your opinion. Then some dofus comes around who is to lazy to write an opinion of his or her own but wants to express disagreement by down voting your post. These dofuses' downvotes are annoying and results in people not bothering to reply to Ask HN posts anymore.

Downvoting for disagreement is probably the most common reason for downvoting, after accidentally not upvoting because the arrows are too small.

Letting people downvote for any reason frees up space that would otherwise be taken by petty or banal comments. If a downvoter had something to say worth reading, I would rather they commented, but if they can't put in the effort, then the board is better off with just their vote. Better still with their complete silence, but people get emotionally involved and feel they have to contribute something.

Also, I've found that most obviously pointless downvotes either get corrected or stay at -1. I haven't seen many comments voted down further than that which didn't have some obvious issues. People shouldn't be discouraged - these are meaningless internet brownie points we're talking about.

“https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171”

Ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Thanks.

I generally agree with that policy. The only real downside of that is that minority views can be downvoted to hell merely for being a minority view. A side effect of that is that minority members can get a lot of downvotes simply for participating, no matter how well they express themselves, and this can feel very unwelcoming and like there is a hostile atmosphere here.

I post as openly female. It isn't uncommon for me to get a lot of downvotes and it is really hard for me infer meaningful signal from that. I often cannot readily determine if I committed some social faux pas that violates the guidelines or if I am getting some pile on of disagreement simply because I am a demographic outlier who, therefore, has a different world view and expresses myself differently.

I posit this is a de facto barrier to diversity on the site. It will cause a lot of women and other minorities to simply not bother.

In fact, someone essentially said as much to me recently. They just don't bother most of the time in part because of downvote patterns here.

I agree with your thesis, and while I posted my above comment to reference what the "rules are, I upvote downvoted comments (including yours) when I think they are of substance and have been unfairly downvoted even when I may disagree with them. I try very hard not to downvote when I disagree with a comment, only if I believe it doesn't contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way.

I'm often downvoted when my perspective deviates from that of the HN bubble, but I really don't mind. I'd rather have the discussion than worry about worthless internet points; if it changes even one person's mind, or helps them think or see a topic in a way they might not otherwise have, it's worth the effort put forth.

TL;DR Don't worry about the downvotes. Can't change HN policies or other people's actions and feelings, only your own.

I am in no way worried about internet points. My concern is trying to parse social signalling. Downvotes can express rebuke of undesirable behavior here. Ignoring that fact is not a good thing.

I am very leery of concluding that downvotes can be wholesale ignored simply because I am a demographic outlier and many people will knee jerk disagree with me. That fundamentally breaks an important social feedback loop.

I didn't make it to the leaderboard by assuming I was getting pushback merely because I am female and men here are clearly sexist pigs and I can ignore their rebuke. I put quite a lot of time and effort into sorting out what I could ignore and what I needed to take seriously as an indicator that I needed to do something differently.

Granted, what I did different wasn't necessarily what other people thought I should. But that social feedback loop matters. It never works well to suggest that minorities can and should simply wholesale ignore such feedback. That goes bad places.

It has been extremely helpful to me that really ugly comments aimed at me are often flagged to death. Unfortunately, this sometimes only happens if I point it out. Then my comment pointing it out is often also flagged and/or downvoted.

It has also been extremely helpful that some people give corrective upvotes. I, also, do that to comments that I don't think really deserve to be in the negatives. Getting back to even after being downvoted feels much, much more to me like "Okay, others don't see it that way and your viewpoint is an outlier for this forum" and much less like "Shut up, bitch. No one wants you here anyway."

> My concern is trying to parse social signalling. Downvotes can express rebuke of undesirable behavior here. Ignoring that fact is not a good thing.

My point, which I didn't convey entirely well, is that you can't use downvotes as a signal because there is no agreed upon criteria for when they should be used. Don't agree with the comment? Downvote is fine. Don't think the comment is on topic? Downvote. Have an emotional response to the comment? Downvote. I'm not sure how you can pull signal out of that noise.

I say ignore downvotes because they should not be used as the anti-validation of an idea, thought, or concept. The groupthink can be (and often is) wrong.

> It has been extremely helpful to me that really ugly comments aimed at me are often flagged to death.

Flagging does have guidelines for their use, and ugly comments should (IMHO) be flagged to death. There is a line between disagreement and incivility, but that's what HN mods are for (thread detachment, ban warning, bans) and their attention can be requested with those flags.

With all of that said, I think the HN moderators are fairly astute as to whether someone is participating in good faith, and taking corrective action if they're not. Sorry if we've gone off track. People are hard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Assume positive intent until observation proves otherwise.

Very, very carefully and with a low statistical confidence level, relying quite heavily on other factors to inform your conclusions.

As stated above, I think it is problematic to ignore them entirely. I don't see how I could state that more clearly.

I'm aware that I generally think a great deal more about social stuff than most people I meet. I'm aware I do sometimes overthink it and sometimes the answer is "Someone fat fingered it and there really is no social signalling to be derived from it."

I have doubts about what exactly the signal is you're receiving in any case. Superbowl ads are popular. Agatha Christie is popular. Racism is popular. Many, many awful things - indeed, most awful things, are very well liked by most people.

As I see it, the only possible content of votes is popularity - which, when it comes to quality, is a very bad metric. In a relatively small, educated group like HN, it's a little bit less diabolically awful than it might be if it was in, say, 1930's Germany, but it's still the same metric.

That does not fit with my experience of participating here.

A clarification: With "wrong direction" I mean off-topic or for example comments which are certain to trigger a heated discussion taking us nowhere.

Different opinions are what I expect from HN, but I wish the discussion revolves quite closely around the title.

For what its worth: The same discussion was held on HN 8 years back on how the quality of discussion has fallen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041

There are recurrent discussions in the same vein echoing back in (HN's) time. I suppose they crop up whenever HN goes through a growth spurt. Just guessing.

I am not against quips and puns. HN is a gathering of people with a certain area of interest and there is great fun is sharing puns that the community identifies with. There are rarely such outlets outside this arena sans an in-person meetup of aspiring startup geeks.

Having said that, such comments are usually in the mid rung and the tops ones (within an hour of posting) tends to be indepth thoughtful ones by relevant people. I have seen doctors, life guards, teachers, lawyers, and so many others from various walks of life give profound insights in the comment sections of relevant articles. So I would not discount the quality.

But discussions like this are worth for keeping the focus where it needs to be.

I often use HN as an archive, so I end up in very old threads when I search for particular things. As a result I quite often have tabs open with threads that are years old. And more than once I tried commenting/upvoting, thinking it was a recent thread.

I don't think you're wrong, but I do agree that it's easy to only remember the good bits. Anecdotally at least apparently old threads can be just as bad, and that's even after search for specific topics!

Group think is getting worse. If you have a minority opinion it is more difficult to avoid the bottom of the heap, the standards for a post rise dramatically, and even then there is no guarantee. Sometimes you comments will hit the negatives regardless.

( Edit: heres my latest -2 comment which i really don't understand https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16401221 )

There are some sacred cow on HN too that you cannot go against: meltdown/spectre is overblown, Google tech isn't the greatest, or numerous economic or political opinions.

It also seems like there has been a relaxing of posting subject matter requirements. Naked politics now hit the front page daily when mods used to give at least lip service to deleting it. I think this has done a lot of bring in tribalism - online political discussing seems to bring it out in people and it spreads like a cancer to the rest of the site.

I think if you shoved the political discussion to a side channel, the discussion all around would improve.

Hehe I had a look at your comment.. It started:

"Not new. Only read the first and last page if the paper.."

And you have no idea why that might be downvoted? I don't think you can have tried to understand. Maybe the downvoters got no further than me (i.e. the bit I quoted) which already has arrogance, ignorance, carelessness—or so it seems—and had already had enough.

Quite ironic

"I didn't read the whole paper but..."

"I didn't read your whole comment but I got to that bit and I downvoted you!"

Hehe yeah. Hypocritical, you mean maybe. At least I didn't say there was nothing new, and I restricted my..criticism to the bit I actually read. But I'll upvote that. :-)

The rest of the paper was explaining concepts in computer architecture.

I feel that only a very narrow range of opinions are acceptable.

I don't agree. I love the quality of HN discussions, and frankly it's the entire reason I use the site.

I also hate to see puns and jokes on HN, but I'm glad to report that when I do see them, they are usually downvoted at the bottom of the page.

I'm sure it's happened that a joke made the top comment, but I can't remember ever seeing it in the thousands of comment sections I've read here.

I personally haven't found that. I find quality typically rises to the top, and only an occasional worthy pun will make it up there. But of course my opinion is anecdotal and heavily subject to bias. I just try to be a good citizen here and add to the quality conversation whenever I feel like my experience on a topic makes me able to contribute something of value.

I find that HN discussion are the most relevant, least trolled discussions of most well-known sites. However, I am biased because my exposure to comments and discussions is mostly HN, some reddit, WSJ/NYTimes comments, and the notorious YouTube comment sections.

Seems to me like a general trend not limited to HN.

No, I do not have the same feeling.

You can always try Reddit, Facebook, Fark, or your favorite topic-specific forum for a different flavor of commentary.

You might be noticing the eternal September effect, which is sadly starting to affect HN.

Eternal September seems to have "sadly started to affect HN" since the very beginning, or about a few months ago, depending on who you ask, and how old their account is.

I've stopped posting interesting comments because I get downvoted just because my opinion is different.

Lately, I began to feel HN is full of people who sell their time. They just can't believe that anyone might be willing to work for free. Here is the evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400111 Albeit, it's not enough to draw this kind of conclusion.

See this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391332

Here I simply asked for people's opinion of the experience on different platforms.

From now I'll just read and rarely post. My work area is ad tech and people here seem not like ads much and will downvote/ignore ad tech questions.

My perception is that downvoting has increased. I often upvote downvoted comments that are perfectly reasonable, though I might disagree with them (or simply not care much), because downvoting can alienate folk from commenting – I've had that before myself – and I want to read the best content.

re ads: I hate them, but I would only contemplate downvoting someone claiming that the internet would die without them – the whole entitlement to push them to my eyeballs thing – unless the comment cited evidence.

Most of the downvotes that most people on HN will receive simply mean: "I sure hope that isn't true." (Even though you've cited a peer-reviewed journal and they've got nothing but hope.) So the more novel and significant the contribution, the better the chance of being downvoted into oblivion, in my experience.

But keep commenting, some will read it and knowledge that challenges prejudice (prejudgments) always spreads quite slowly at first. Then later nearly everybody convince themselves they've ever believed anything else.

Note that the above is true for most contributors, but most downvotes on the site are directed at a small minority of people who commonly comment without reading the article, or didn't understand it, or blunder through general ignorance or profound bias; so most downvotes are still legit.

Well, why care about downvotes? Maybe 20 people read it and are glad you wrote it, 1-2 people downvote. Don't let that stop you.

I've put more thought into the strange ratings of movies on IMDb. There are many reasons for this, but one is - it seems the, er, less discerning movie-goers tend to do more voting. Many people never vote. Just that alone means the crap movies get more and often higher votes. Similarly with music topping the charts. But on IMDb the voting's not everything. There are user comments where you can have your say. People know the movie ratings are often silly.

p.s. Do people anywhere like ads much? People in advertising aside perhaps.

I'm out because there is zero accountability for downvotes, they are completely anonymous.

> "I'll probably get downvoted for..." are nonsensical

It's a psychological trick.

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