I often just shake my head at people's inability to sit back and appreciate what's interesting about something, rather than try to find things that are wrong with it.
Yes, discussions on HN tend to bend towards the latter, but it's a useful counterbalance to the larger environment around technology.
Unfortunately, that's as difficult to find on Hacker News as elsewhere. What we do get plenty of is aggressively ignorant hot takes and middlebrow dismissals and Dunning Krueger effects when the subject veers outside of the programming/CS wheelhouse. It's common enough that one might as well not even bother with the top subthread most of the time because it's bound to be the "this could have been trivially accomplished with FTP[0]" part of the conversation.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
But I feel that it often isn't lived up to. I feel like I've seen a lot of criticisms here that add nothing of value. And even among the ones that do, they are often needlessly provocative. I shake my head every time I see a "I completely disagree" here. I mean sure, that's a fair thing to say, but I doubt it's true nearly as often as it's said. I think more often than not it's an ego-driven response. And that's just one example of what I perceive as a bit of a common, negative tone here.
But I'm not just jumping on the hating on HN bandwagon either. No place is going to be perfect. I find a lot of value here. There are some really thoughtful comments. Even some of the rude ones are sometimes informative. I'm not aware of a better community and I'm not sure if it's possible for this one to be better. It is what it is, as they say.
It's like saying the least toxic venom on the planet is the pinnacle of non-toxicity... I mean it's still venom.
It's also worth talking about the toxicity on HN because it follows very specific patterns. It's also essentially a dictatorship. Whatever Dang says goes.
One makes things worse and the other makes things better.
Regardless of whatever they say goes where.
I think you just agree with him. Dang is a dictator whose policies you agree with, but ultimately you have no say in anything.
I do recognize this is nothing like a democracy, and the less like a democracy the more you have no say in anything.
But it still ends up a better place so that's what counts to me, and I highly appreciate the effort that goes in and the creativity seen when difficult things are handled way better than could be expected otherwise.
So you don't agree, but you feel despite your disagreement it makes HN a better place. So in a sense, you agree that his decisions are for the better.
Ultimately you didn't contradict anything I said. It is a dictatorship. You just agree with the outcome of his policies. We can caveat that with the fact you may not agree with individual policies but you agree with the overall outcome.
If all you see is toxicity, wherever you look around, then perhaps that warrants some introspection and a review of your personal definition of toxicity. Odds are you're picking way too many false positives.
Accountability structures are provided by real in person institutions that have standards. For example, nobody is spurting toxic speech at their fellow churchgoers, because there would be a personal price for that.
The anonymous Internet for better or worse removes much of the skin in the game for commenters, thereby incentivizing toxicity.