Open-letter: Did hackernews become hateboard?

I did a spot-check of what's currently on the frontpage of HN, and where there are clear sentiments expressed about a project, they seem to have a reasonable distribution of positive/negative, with more positive. Obviously this probably varies day to day, so more data would be needed to draw conclusions.

Projects with mainly positive comments currently:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755656

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754561

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754108

Mixed comments on this one:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755276

Mainly negative:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3752447

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755574

i also don't think everything gets negative comments.

it's the 'new' stuff (idea/startup/concept, not funny/interesting links). just based on your links, you'd notice 'mainly negative' ones are 'new' stuff. positive ones are bash, excel spreadsheet, notepad++ etc.

if PG built and posted one of his 'ambitious ideas' here (http://d.pr/if1q), say he made his new email program, i bet the most upvoted comment would be like;

"... gmail does many of those things and already has X,Y,Z ... do you have any brains at all to understand email protocol is A,B,C ... you better spend your time doing research/study/..."

this is what i'm seeing over and over again.

It's a problem. I was just thinking about ways to mitigate it as I was driving home from YC. I'll spend more time on this problem between batches.

It may be inevitable as HN ages and gets more well known.

Technical solutions would make HN less like HN, and more like Slashdot, Reddit etc.

My impression is that the elders I'm used to seeing are gone or holding back. Maybe they've found somewhere else they like better, or maybe they've resorted to email among themselves.

Whatever the solution, its goal would need to be to encourage more posts by wizards and elders, and discourage posts by, um, the rest of us. I think that would be most successful with social prompts rather than mechanical prods.

You might think about making comment karma visible again. With invisible karma, the only thing one can learn from karma is how bad one's own bad posts are. If you can't see others' positive karma, you don't have the opportunity to see how strongly other people like positive posts. "Dang, he got a lot of karma for that comment. I wanna be like him."

Or has hiding karma achieved what you'd hoped?

I'd be interested to hear what percentage of active HN commenters have also applied to YC. I'm not an active commenter on HN (or any other site) but if I was to be more than a lurker I wouldn't want my reputation for snarky comments to impact future opportunities with YC or any other startup group. HN/YC has the potential to back into a professional hacker reputation system in a similar way that Facebook has done socially. e.g. block commenters who haven't submitted a YC app... of course if the % of HN commenters to YC applicants is low this idea is dead on arrival.

The reality of modern HN is that many people here don't even know what YC is.

paul, the following might be helpful addition to your test/training sets

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3769027

I agree with the OP, the level of negativity on HN is striking, if you peruse through the articles on the first page on any given day at least half will have some negative "hater" comment as the one with the most votes. You saw the same type of negative behavior on Techcrunch before they transitioned over to the Facebook commenting system, maybe there's something about anonymity that brings out the worst in people.

I think this goes hand in hand with the decrease in front-page quality. It has become normal to see a link-bait title voted to the top...and then the first ten comments lamenting about how horribly linkbaity the title/article is.

A lot of the times the article is only tangentially related to the sensationalist title and this irks a lot of people.

I get the impression that this is supported by hn to some extent by the "don't comment with me-too, or cool-stuff" kind of rules. If you see something that's actually new to you, you'll usually have a response like: this is good (up vote), disagree (comment), know something more (informative comment), know something related / similar (start slightly off-topic but related comment thread). And these are all useful comments to some extent.

If it's really news to you, the comment is really unlikely to be informative or deep. Actually there are people who are almost always in disagreement with news on some topic, but I don't think they're bad (see tptacek on every homemade-crypto related article).

I think the general negative response is just a result of the news themselves. Before you really get to understand/apply/have fun with some of the stuff, it will be far away from the front page already. But as long as there's at least a bit of constructive criticism in the negative ones, I think I'm fine with it.

There's a big difference in constructive criticism and some of the more vitriolic comments that have been around more recently.

I agree with you that the system invites comments that tend disagree.

"Did hackernews become hateboard?"

No. you're just upset because you're afraid HN is losing its hip factor. Your links don't point to examples of negative comments, they point to images of a couple of people making negative comments about HN.

There is nothing wrong with the comments on this message board, and attempts to censor just to meet your ideal comment is stupid and wrong. The correct course of action for you is to start a new, hipper message board where you can post all you want about how awful the old one was and how you knew about it when it was still good. Please do this (hipsternews.com is taken).

thanks for proving my point.

Yeah, seriously. Was it necessary to add "stupid and wrong"? Your suggestion that he go off and play by himself at a new message board probably would have sufficed without that thoughtful addition.

I totally agree. The whole point of Hacker News is to be a positive environment for techies and startup founders to share knowledge and discuss intellectually stimulating issues. Negativity and personal attacks really have no place here.

It proves none of your point. Your links don't prove your point either. You link to some tweets where people complain about HN, not to examples of supposed 'negative' posts. You are clearly worried about what others think of hacker news.

While the start-up biz may be all about pr, image, and hipness, Hacker-ism is about keeping the truth and contempt for authority. If HN needs to be sanitized for the sake of some software personalities sticking around, then maybe users were mistaken in coming here because the site is named hacker news not hipster scene start-up pr news.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore

the whole problem i'm describing here is you (codeonfire). and it doesn't surprise me that you don't see it. let me try to show you.

you've wrongly (psycho)analyzed me/my viewpoint (i'm upset HN losing it's hip factor), misrepresented my proposal (censorship), then took your own analysis as a fact, and called me/my opinion "stupid" and "wrong" based on that.

of course, you didn't stop there, to add a bit of sarcasm and humor, you went on and checked the domain name that would remedy my non-existing problem. that's why i thanked you for proving my point.

this is a great example of low-quality hate content. it almost is a template, we can write a bot that exactly does what you do.

i'd normally not write back and pass, like many others, but just for this post's sake, i'm keeping this conversation on. also you said my links were pointless, let's put some other links here, quick glance at your comment history:

http://d.pr/CChr http://d.pr/IUYL http://d.pr/Hk9d

just to clarify, despite of low quality content you produce (to be fair, i also saw neutral ones) i'd never ban you, wouldn't try to suppress anything you want to say. i respect your viewpoint as much as you disrespect me and others.

i'd just like this system to put some measures so you express them respectfully. that's all.

"called me/my opinion "stupid" and "wrong" based on that"

Lets be clear. I never made any personal comments, and you didn't really offer an idea except to say that your goal is to "balance negatives and positives" I said any attempts to censor comments to meet your ideal comment is stupid and wrong, and whether or not censorship is what you want, I don't see why someone would disagree with this. If you start removing comments that one person doesn't like, then a forum becomes a simple pr blog.

"despite of low quality content you produce..." "i'd just like this system to put some measures so you express them respectfully..."

in the interests of moving on, i won't comment on these.

I agree that hacker-ism is about keeping truth and contempt for authority. A true hacker will create an innovative solution for that problem. Good example is Richard Stallman, when others used law and authority to stop him from hacking, he went on to create GNU, wrote emacs and released it under GPL. Some hackers may write a language or OS, while other hackers may create a business. There is nothing wrong both. It is based on the personality and specific problem they are hacking. The point of this post is that we focus on the positive aspect.

I think it's ironic that if I disagree with your post, I'll just be proving your point. Usually, I don't read the discussions as much as I click on the links to the articles. There are around two or four per day that look interesting to me (congratulations, by the way). Sometimes, I save articles to read later, so by the time I get around to reading an article, it's not being discussed on Hacker News anymore.

Maybe when I accumulate enough karma to down vote, I'll down vote some stuff. That's the most efficient way to hate. ;)

disagreement, is a very respectful thing, when done like you did. thus we sometimes respectfully disagree.

however you'd agree that calling people names, injecting malice is not ok. a comment like this, would add value to the argument, as i'd happily go ahead and say "i hear what you say, however ..." just like i did here.

but if you call me retarded, my idea stupid, there's no room left neither for me nor anybody else to take it any further. (thanks for kudos btw :))

I have a question.

You see, sometimes debates can get a little heated. I'm sure you've experienced such debates yourself. Are you also talking about these debates, when people say something is 'stupid' but are still capable of having a rational discussion, or are you mostly annoyed by plain old hating?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm relatively new to HN, and thus can't really comment on any changes. However, I also think that in the time I've been here, I've seen some hatin', but definitely not a lot of it. Again, this could simply be because I'm used to communities where this is much more common, and haven't been able to see changes in HN itself.

i think this is more about who is saying "stupid" and how generous they feel about it. there are a few things

- if paul graham says it's stupid it's different than somebody who calls everything stupid.

- calling the owner of the idea stupid.

- plain old hating.

- saying 'stupid' can also be a part of the debate, that's natural.

this is a hard problem to solve, that's why i brought it up. there is definitely not an easy way of saying this is right or wrong, but if community sets its tone, i think participants will try to be a part of that commonality.

and hopfully HN stays 'objective' and within 'reason' with polite, kind, constructive comments. when there are no rules, haters win.

The fundamental problem is that the easiest non-fluffy response to something is to object. If you read an article and agree but don't have anything personal to add, posting "This is correct for the reasons stated" is a waste of time, so you probably don't (and should't). But if you read something and disagree, you can simply write "This is not correct because X and Y" and you've added something (though not something very worthwhile most of the time, as X and Y tend to be knee-jerk emotional reactions).

Great point. "This is correct for the reasons stated" comments are almost as annoying / spammy as the shallow negative comments, which makes it a tougher problem to solve.

I would have a check box next to the add comment button that says "this is a nice comment" and if someone posts without ticking that box, redirect them to a page on civility.

If nothing else it'd be interesting to see if people tick it and still comment mean spirited things, this way they actually have to acknowledge they are flying in the face of Hacker News every time they comment.

Maybe it's me, but I don't think it is that bad. Yes, you see the occasional trolls, but it's nowhere near as bad as Techcrunch or Reddit or whatever. There was a post about some guy wanting to move to SV asking for a place to crash, and he'd get the most wonderful comments and offerrs. I think HN is a nice community with a few newcomers who still have to learn that there is actually something like being nice to each other on the internet.

I'm sure things were different, more intimate and friendly a few years back, but that's more of an issue with becoming more mainstream. To me it doesn't matter, just ignore the haters and remain constructive, helpful and friendly. Well, I try to, at least!

Negativity can be bad. Grinfucking always is.

HN offers a certain type of feedback for new ideas. When it was a smaller community, it offered a different type. This probably had some advantages when someone needed encouragement. The downside was that feedback was closer to the fiends and family end of the spectrum. Now a shared idea will see a broader range of opinions, and this probably means more people who will see the idea as pointless, trivial, or just plain dumb. The upside is that the idea will see more diverse debugging.

The issue with many "new idea" posts is that there doesn't seem to be a specific purpose behind them. So many are, "here's my site" followed by "yeah, I know the landing page sucks" and "thanks for letting me know that not everyone wants to log in with Facebook."

General requests for feedback illicit general responses.

Sometimes, I read "My great idea" threads and my impulse is to debug it. That means ruthlessly pointing to problems or possible problems - e.g. the person whose "startup idea" is a lifestyle consultancy which doesn't scale well and probably will never attract outside investment.

While one of the things I appreciate about the HN culture is "think about what you would say face to face," there's a certain way in which it doesn't apply - in person, I would know if sandwiching was productive, online, I assume that it isn't.

The reason I assume it isn't is because online comments are not just for the individual who asks the question -- this comment doesn't start "Dear Devrim." This comment is more or less standing on a soapbox in the public square, as are most in an online forum. In a public forum sandwiching adds noise and tends to ignore the context.

I was was thinking of leaving HN for exactly this reason,

I'm not long here but I already noticed that I often receive downvotes for being positive or having a social conscience, and oddly on the one occasion I expressed a controvertial (and negative) view I received a significant amount of upvotes.

I had always thought HN was about open, free and frank discussion where everyone's view counts, but unfortunately I'm afraid to say, I'm not getting that vibe at the moment.

I've never been a major contributor here, but I've definitely commented less over the past six months. This is mostly due to dropping in on a few stories when they're at the 50-comment mark, and seeing the top-rated comments containing negative sentiments.

The annoying thing is that the best way to help fix this would be to comment more, rather than less. Basically, try and beat the demotivating effects ;)

A Slashdot style moderation system is probably the only real answer. Let some subset of users mark comments:

  [informative] [snarky] [humor] [question]

Then take that into account when ranking comments.

Being negative and being an asshole is not synonymous!

Believe it or not, it is completely possible to disagree and/or be critical of someones idea without being a jerk or an asshole. As we all know, emotion, intention, and connotation are all hard to convey in a text-only medium. Take a bit of extra time to ensure your comments are polite and respectful, and always keep in mind - PERCEPTION IS REALITY.

100% agreed. being an asshole is one problem, thinking about what's shared, and like you suggest, taking a moment to make sure if our message will be perceived as we intend is another.

i enjoyed this article a while back, it touches on the stuff we'd do better even if we are polite and respectful on the surface.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes

Is there any experience with merely hiding abusive commenters. That is, I'd like the option to be able mark an individual as hidden so that I don't have to read his comments again; the individual is still public to anyone who hasn't marked him. Over time it seems there could be multiple self selecting communities within the same comment section.

Personal "kill files" would be handy.

Perhaps a third vote button - "this might belong on HN but I hate it".

OMG, this thread is so stupid. This is such a dumb idea. (That was a joke, get it? :)

dude.. it's your wonderful idea that made me write this post.. it took me 25 minutes to learn i can in fact 'read' using dotsies, it took 30 seconds for the first hater to teach you (us) a life lesson.

"If this were going to work, Braille would be a lot more popular among sighted folk." dsr_

"Not to mention another big flaw. It's nearly impossible to differentiate between A, B, C, D, and E as individual letters since they are all represented by one dot." csytan

this seriously needs to be discouraged.

Just... your idea will never work!!

K, joke over for now :)

I agree. There have got to be a few clever / simple ways of discouraging low-quality hate, without discouraging high-quality hate or moving in the direction of censoring or complexity. By "low-quality" I mostly mean the derogatory and/or superficial ones.

Just throwing some out there... Ask people to voluntarily check a "this is negative" checkbox when submitting, and if they have too many of them show a "curmudgeon" badge next to their name. Or, let the poster have a limit number of "this is infair" or "disputed" points they can assign, that will mitigate the benefit to someone's karma, or ding/label the person if too many people accuse them of being unfair in proportion to their number of comments.

I know, I know, these ideas are stupid, and dumb, and idiotic, and so am I for having had them, and so is anyone within a 10 foot radius of me at the time I posted this, by proxy. Glad we got that out of the way.

Re comments with high-quality hate, they are a strength of HN. I suspect many of the more shallow comments tend to keep them away (people might be less likely to add a thoughtful / informed criticism to a thread that already has a bunch of jabs).

No doubt the future will bring some innovations for dealing with crappy comments. It would be nice if they happened on HN because it's still a great site.

If Dotsies does get anywhere, I may individually contact many of the haters on that thread, just to say "remember this bitter comment of yours that discouraged people from giving it a fair shot?" :)

these are as stupid as dotsies :) such that i'd love some of them get implemented to hackernews. "curmudgeon" badge would be very useful in fact. not to belittle people, but to encourage them. as long as we know that person has that tone of voice in general, nobody will judge the content by that. and the person will be free to express himself in anyway he/she sees fit.

haternews. I couldn't agree more.

:) wish i came up with this one )