Hacker News Reader

Comment by DailyHN | Hacker News Reader

> The caliber of discussion on these threads drops hard, and things that are discouraged on any other thread are rampant.

Thanks for pointing out this problem.

Is this something that might get better in time? For example, downvotes catching up with those who can't participate in a productive discussion.

View on HN

I dont really think so unfortunately. This is more of a general internet issue as opposed to an HN specific one. Of course, especially bad stuff tends to eventually get flagged and HN moderation is generally good at keeping things under control, but many of these threads seem to attract people with a specific view (not calling anyone out in particular, different threads will attract different groups and create echo chambers, as does anywhere in the internet) who will mass downvote what they oppose andunkike other threads, wll constructed comments cant wind up greyed out at the bottom and highly disingenuous ones at the top. I suppose the worst of these threads deal with things that may not neccesarily against the rules, but lower the quality regardless. It's not uncommon to see seemingly suspicious unsourced claims and stats upvoted if they confirm existing biases, for example, while this seems to be less common in other types of threads

> upvoted if they confirm existing biases

Yes, though I also appreciate when people recognize and call out these biases. That has helped me understand the phenomena of physiological biases. And HN is the only place I can think of where people actually recognize this sort of thing.

HN does tend to correct such things... in the small. The corrective mechanisms seem to get overwhelmed when the volume of garbage is too high. People don't have the time and the energy to wade through it all and try to clean it up, so the garbage accumulates. This is true both of the members and the moderators.

So HN tries to avoid topics that are too hot-button politically. I like to think that we do better at having a reasoned discussion on difficult topics than other places do, but we have our limits.

People's views on politics (I am no exception) are often so deeply rooted in emotion that political topics often hit people more in the lizard brain and brings out the, um, "discouraged comments", than it encourages actual, polite discussion.

> People's views on politics (I am no exception) are often so deeply rooted in emotion that political topics often hit people more in the lizard brain and brings out the, um, "discouraged comments"

Yes, we'll said.

What has worked to solve this in the past? Is there any precedent for getting back to a productive discussion? Can't we act in a way to proactively cool emotions and identify the root issues?

We have, on occasion, had discussions of carefully-chosen hot-button topics, with a warning from dang at the beginning to keep it under control, and careful monitoring from the mods thereafter. They don't do it often, though - only when they think the value of the discussion has a chance to outweigh the risk of a flame-fest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com