Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Discussions like this remind me of my favorite scene from "Roadhouse", the best bad movie ever. Discussion forums are kinda like bars and hackers are kinda like coolers...

  All you have to do is follow three simple rules.
  One: never underestimate your opponent.
  Expect the unexpected.
  Two: take it outside.
  Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary.
  And three: be nice.
  Come on.
  If somebody gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker, I want you to be nice.
  OK.
  Ask him to walk, be nice.
  If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice.
  If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you.
  And you'll both be nice.
  I want you to remember that it's a job.
  - It's nothing personal. - Uh-huh.
  Being called a cocksucker isn't personal?
  No. It's two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response.
  What if somebody calls my mama a whore?
  Is she?
  (laughter)
  I want you to be nice...
  ..until it's time to not be nice.
  Well, how're we supposed to know when that is?
  You won't. I'll let you know.

Sometimes we hackers work too hard to make things more complicated than they need to be.

Be nice.

(Oh, and by the way, I'm letting you know now when it's time to not be nice here: never.)

"Sometimes we hackers work too hard to make things more complicated than they need to be."

tl;dr: maintaining an online community is anything but simple.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. One possibility is that you're referring to the hackers that build communities online who try to establish some sort of guidelines for behavior.

If this is what you meant then I think I disagree. I've tried a very similar experiment to pg's with HN. I run a small community site http://yakkstr.com and most of the users came from an older site called soulcast. soulcast had no rules and it degenerated exactly as expected and was full of trolls in no time. My entire goal was to recreate that site minus the trolls, and I ruthlessly enforced one simple rule. Do not directly insult other users of the site. (actually two rules: no porn, illegal stuff, or spam)

Simple right? Not really. I loved pg's child metaphor, and just like a child the trolls from the old site, who are smarter than actual children, do everything they can to find the limits to what is allowed, and they hover right around that line. As soon as they think you're going easy they push it farther.

One example, people like to argue about politics on yakkstr and one of the trolls uses a pattern of associating a label like "liberal" to someone then they insult the label. Moronic ideas for liberals, liberals are morons, etc, etc. Technically he's not violating my rule, but it's very hard to define an explicit rule to deal with such instances because you want to allow people to sometimes say controversial things about generic groups.

The problem arises when someone gets offended and reacts by directly insulting the savy troll. How do you deal with it? Not so easy. And occasionally a good user gets made at something and calls someone a moron. It leaves a bad taste in their mouth if you come down with an iron fist on them.

I don't have good answers to these problems, but I think the hard work is working out pretty well for my little community. But it is complicated and requires constant vigilance.

Sometimes we hackers work too hard to make things more complicated than they need to be.

I was referring to the hackers who use the forum, not the ones who run it. Sorry for the confusion.

It really is much easier and more beneficial for everyone to just be nice. Why work harder to achieve less?

A few strategies that have made it easier for me to "be nice":

1. Avoid long back and forth threads. Say what you have to say and get back to work.

2. Try to plan your comment to not be misinterpreted. This avoids much unnecessary pain. It's also difficult.

3. If someone responds negatively to you, wait and let others respond on your behalf. It's amazing how much better this feels.

4. Imagine that the other person has 42 legitimate reasons for not being nice. Let 'em slide.

5. Imagine that the other person may someday be your ideal co-founder, mentor, collaborator, customer, or angel. (Or more likely, your ideal co-founder, mentor, collaborator, customer, or angel is witnessing this exchange.) Don't say anything to scare them away.

6. Most of all: It doesn't matter! This is all optional. We were all busy working before Hacker News and will be busy working after Hacker News is gone (perish the thought). Lighten up.

"1. Avoid long back and forth threads. Say what you have to say and get back to work."

If everyone followed all those rules I think this one would be detrimental. Seeing you smarter-than-me people go back and forth about stuff I'm right on the verge of understanding is pretty cool.

About 5-10% of back and forth threads are useful to read. As you point out, these are usually civil debates about the merits of particular approaches.

I think the point is: as soon as it gets personal, get back to work.

The best predictor of a long exchange being good is the number of intermediate questions asked and answered in it.

It depends on the reason for the back and forth. Is it to exchange new information and deepen the conversation or is it to retread the same ground and try to defend a point? When it's the latter it's rarely productive. If you were unclear the first time and someone misinterpreted you then perhaps take the time to make sure to be clearer in restating what you meant, but try not to go beyond that.

I remember going back and forth with you about that escher illusion a guy built in his garage. Just an example of what I'm talking about and why I think it's cool. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2233584

Try to plan your comment to not be misinterpreted. This avoids much unnecessary pain. It's also difficult.

I think you can reduce the chance of misinterpretation but never eliminate it. Language is not sufficiently precise to prevent all misinterpretations.

> My entire goal was to recreate that site minus the trolls, and I ruthlessly enforced one simple rule. Do not directly insult other users of the site.

I've pondered this issue a lot, and I've also noticed that, as you indicated, lots of troll messages would be acceptable under your rule, but many responses to those messages would not be.

My favorite example comes from a discussion group about hamsters as pets. Someone -- clearly a troll -- posts a recipe for barbecued hamster. 100 people respond something like, "You're sick!"

In that case, it seemed to me that it was not the trolling that wrecked the discussion, but the response to it. And of course the troll is not violating your rule, but those who replied to him are. So I like your rule.

> And occasionally a good user gets made at something and calls someone a moron. It leaves a bad taste in their mouth if you come down with an iron fist on them.

Hmmm ... but directly asking them not to do it again would probably work well. If they can't even handle that, then you probably don't want them anyway. (And really, is the iron-fist policy so bad? So someone gets a bad taste in their mouth. That someone was wrecking your community.)

"And really, is the iron-fist policy so bad? So someone gets a bad taste in their mouth. That someone was wrecking your community."

The person I'm talking about was/is a good member of the community, but they got mad 1 out of 200 of their threads. I don't want them to leave.

Ban the line pushers or at least probate them for a fortnight. There is no reason to allow someone to take up your time by making you wonder if you should ban or not ban.

You might be interested in this presentation on running an internet community: http://vimeo.com/5623703

Here's a real life example of a bouncer being nice and firm. Like the top rated comment says, it's as if he is a doctor in psychology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWfetF1jCO4

And here's a similar event related in the hacker/online context.

http://pugs.blogs.com/audrey/2009/08/my-hobby-troll-hugging....

Discussed here on hackernews: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=786874

The monolog from "Roadhouse" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojPVOhHhwnk#t=2m

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