Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

The difference is visibility. A few hours into a conversation, the top two comments are, more often than not, a well-reasoned argument for one side and a well-reasoned rebuttal. If you start in on a thread while it's early, you'll see a lot of garbage, but that tends to float to the bottom over time. In general, the HN system (tech+mods+community) rewards thoughtful content and penalizes shallow nonsense.

Twitter is the opposite. The most inflammatory comments trigger the most engagement, and so get the most visibility.

View on HN

I don't agree with that. I think often hours in, the top comments often get more offensive here. Not less. The garbage floating to the bottom is not my experience here.

> In general, the HN system (tech+mods+community) rewards thoughtful content and penalizes shallow nonsense

I don't see this happening on HN. The shallow nonsense isn't the problem, it's the hateful opinions and "carefully reasoned, smart sounding" racism that is the problem. Calling it shallow nonsense makes it sound like no big deal or low effort hate posts. But that's not what I'm talking about.

People say the worst things here but they use a large vocabulary and so it seems to get a pass. The hate here is very similar to the hate I see elsewhere and often it is much much worse here than on Twitter, in my personal experience.

Ah, okay, I understand better what you're saying. So you do perceive Twitter as different than HN, but only in quality of writing, not in lack of hateful content.

Can you give an example of a thread that turned out that way? I'm genuinely curious if I've been missing something, or if I've just managed to steer clear of topics that end up like that.

I'm on Hacker News more than I care to admit and I don't see evidence of this widespread racism you proclaim. Please provide evidence if you're going to make these wild accusations.

I'm scratching my head on this one. There are passive-aggressive haters in the world, but I don't see much of that around here. People around these parts usually keep their biases to themselves or outright flaunt them and get hammered for it.

$5 words instead of plain speak is an accessibility problem but anti-intellectualism never solved anything. Maybe inferiority feelings or catastrophizing? Do what I do, subscribe to the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day. :) Go through the GRE prep materials if you want a bigger vocab. Heck, I would get a used unabridged dictionary and make it a point to work from cover-to-cover. Watch those obnubilated smarty-pants shudder in fear. :)

If this is as widespread as you claim, I'm sure you can link/quote some real examples.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com