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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

No social news site is going to be perfect. If it's people that are writing comments, some comments will be good and some will be bad. Read them and decide for yourself. If a comment hurts your feelings, get over it. If you like a comment, upvote it, and help other people find the best comments.

Really, I kind of get tired of reading stuff like this because there is always some subtext to it. "mean-spirited" usually means, "someone disagreed with me". If people disagree with you, you can either get over it or learn to argue better. Passive aggressive, "oh noes everyone is so mean" is not going to change what people think. Good writing will.

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I think meanness is something you have to push back against actively.

This site is not in a state of nature. There are all kinds of things I do to keep meanness at bay, and the situation would be a lot worse if I didn't. Preventing the site from declining into a swamp of meanness and stupidity (I believe the two are closely related) is something I think about constantly.

Preventing the site from declining into a set of meanness and stupidity (I believe the two are closely related) is something I think about constantly.

Does that imply anything regarding hateful posts in HN, or is it just a 'hey, there's a correlation here' observation?

I've had to close a large-ish site of mine due to meanness. Things can get very nasty online, it's hard to really understand until you've tried running one of these.

Sounds like you have a lot more experience than most of us. What's in the intersection of that and your observations of HN?

(Sorry I don't understand the question.)

I was just wondering if there are any interesting things you noticed on your own site that you've also noticed here.

I think a big problem with a "harsh debate climate" is that the people who can provide real value with experience, knowledge and insight will stay away. For different reasons like personal, professional or just disinterest. That will in turn attract more people who enjoy a harsher debate, which most (if not all) of the time are less enlightened.

Or as the saying goes "Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."

That saying is only true if there are no other people listening to or reading the argument. If your goal is to convince lurkers, it's actually pretty easy to win a written argument with an idiot.

Which is the only valuable thing to do if you are going to debate an idiot and perhaps the only valid reason to debate an idiot.

> I think a big problem with a "harsh debate climate" is that the people who can provide real value with experience, knowledge and insight will stay away.

An overly civil debate climate, viewed as a "circle jerk", might also keep some valuable contributors away. Whether that is a good thing or not is up for debate of some sort.

This post was not a reaction to a discussion that I was engaged in, so in fact there is no subtext and it's not personal. :-)

When it comes to things like politics/religion/etc no amount of good writing can convince the other person.

I don’t think that’s true at all.

I would make the argument that it depends more on the rationality of the person receiving the argument then what the argument is about.

A rational person is capable and willing to change their mind when new evidence is offered.

A irrational person may easily change their mind on some topics with no evidence and never change their mind on other topics(politics/religion/etc) even with the best evidence.

I think the trick is staying calm while you confront somebody about something. If you set them off, they stop hearing what you're saying and the whole "discussion" turns into a spitting match.

Everybody knows that crazy talk is a waste of everyone's time. I get depressed every time I find myself reading the comments on CNN or YouTube. . . .

"Really, I kind of get tired of reading stuff like this because there is always some subtext to it. "mean-spirited" usually means, "someone disagreed with me"."

Unfortunately this is often the case, however it should still be possible to make some sort of judgment based on rationality, patience, and communication skills of the people involved in a debate. If one side is constantly irrational and/or impatient then they are often also described as mean-spirited. This is why comments/complaints like the op's can be valid and important; though (ir)rationality/(im)patient/lacking communication skills are my preferred terminology over "mean-spirted" and other similar descriptions.

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