“a dribbling selfish jerk” – an analysis of getting on the front page of HN | Hacker News Reader

“a dribbling selfish jerk” – an analysis of getting on the front page of HN

afatefulhaven.com

48 pointskerno47 comments

There is a large percentage of users on HN who are neither tactful nor socially competent.

I've been here for 6+ years and while much of the time the discussions can be insightful, many other times you get people who are overly aggressive and downright mean because they're either unable to control their jealousy or throw away all decency for the pursuit of Truth and Accuracy.

I really don't know if it's because of something like Aspergers, or that maybe hackers tend to be overly analytical and take pride in that over being civil. I find myself complaining about it from time to time.

This is the norm here.

Edit: OP, "A Dribbling, Selfish Jerk" should be the title of your blog from now on.

  > neither tactful nor socially competent.

We're also "living a lie", that is, we've fooled ourselves into thinking that we're participating in an actual conversation, when in fact this is just a near-anonymous, non-synchronous message board. Without most of the social cues that we get when we're in a face-to-face conversation, the result is something that very easily becomes pedantic or insensitive.

Although what we're having now may not be considered a "real-world" conversation, we are not completely without social cues. You and I both know what's appropriate and not to say to one another. People who are pedantic and insensitive willingly ignore the thousands of face-to-face conversations they've had throughout their lives. It may be a quick and emotional dismissal, but a dismissal nonetheless.

I've been guilty of it. It's that when the right submission is made here, I am always surprised at how indecent and plain weird people act. Remember the story of the Pakistani girl with the Microsoft certification? What would possess a mid-20s man to comment and belittle that achievement, however factually unimpressive it may be, is just way beyond me. And throw in the countless threads about YC startup fiascos.

I get it's easier to be an asshole online; I'm not oblivious to that. It's that hacker dickishness can be particularly sharp and cruel, probably because it's usually made under the guise of logic and reason.

  > I get it's easier to be an asshole online

Your point is well taken, and I think we agree.

My point is simply that the mechanics of interaction on HN do little address the missing social cues that (my programmer brain theorizes) would help. The social evolution that HN is going through is nothing new[1]: It's been understood since newsgroups or before.

For example, I have no idea if you're a native speaker/writer of English or not. (I might cut you more slack on your grammar.) I have no idea if you and I share the same culture. (I might cut you slack on certain culturally sensitive issues.) I don't know if you're new to computers or an expert. (I might respond to your comments differently.) The conversation presents itself as real-time and throw-away, yet since comments are stored indefinitely I must write as deliberately as if I'm writing a book.

[1] Here's just one analysis: "A Group is its own worst enemy" by Clay Shirky: http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

"I might cut you more slack"

"I might cut you slack on certain"

"I don't know if you're new"

The dichotomy that I've notice is that when someone goes on HN with their belly exposed "I lost my job it's Christmas" or "I'm depressed and.." etc. they get treated with almost universal kindness by some of the same crowd (but not necessarily the same people) that will ravage someone who makes a stupid comment (and might be in line to jump off some bridge or abuse some drug to feel better).

It appears to be a hardware limit - humans can only consider a given number of other humans as individuals. Everyone else composes "the others" and are treated less favorably.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

It is possible for one to group somebody outside our Dunbar number and not be a douche[0]. Empathy is not as strong for people we don't know, but it is still possible to have it (or even convincingly fake it as many on the Autism spectrum[1] do).

In fact that empathy is what allows normal conversations to occur "in the real". That people lose that empathy online isn't surprising, they are talking to a screen, after all. But I also believe that those who can see past the pixels and into the virtual eyes of the person they are talking to make better real-life people. It also makes for much better conversations[2] online.

0. I'm going to go Godwin here just by saying I'm going Godwin here. You know what I mean!

1. My wife works for a pediatrician and has told me they are no longer considering Asperger's as its own syndrome (disease, disorder, I always get those mixed up); it is just a place on the spectrum. I have no separate source and just thought it was interesting. I also realize trusting what a single doctor says is a really stupid move on my part, so please feel free to shred me.

2. If for no other reason than you don't have to read a bunch of self-effacing, defensive crap, such as I wrote in the above footnote.

1. I heard that too, actually. It looks like they just dropped it from the DSM-5: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/02/aspergers-synd...

I guess it makes sense in a way, but it'll probably just confuse popular conception of autism even further. Ah well.

OK, the notion that its a hardware limit appears (from my reading him many moons ago and now quickly checking wikipedia) to be his. Nonetheless, I don't accept this premise.

This theory always seemed to me to be attempting to account for the absurd size of our neocortex, and proposes a somewhat convincing rationale for this (i.e. the need to socialise and deal with many other humans).

Now, this sort of selection pressure has not reduced in the modern world. Far from it, one's ability to maintain larger social groups could easily be extremely adaptive in that you have both a greater opportunity to meet potential mates, and may additionally come into contact with resources through these larger groups which make you a better potential mate.

Therefore, it would seem to me that while Dunbar's limit may be at a particular level now, in our current society it may well be being selected for, and perhaps will be much higher in the future. Or perhaps I am completely wrong.

"or that maybe hackers tend to be overly analytical"

Another reason is that someone could be having a bad day and since making a comment is so quick with little friction the bad comes out. In general I'm guessing that a slew of the wrong type of comments would get you banned so consistent behavior like this would not be tolerated (and would be downvoted).

Except there is a category of scathing comments that come across as well thought out but really aren't that tend to get upvoted a lot. It's easy to arbitrarily pick something apart. It's much harder to do so constructively (why is it bad, how should it be fixed, etc).[1]

As a result, HN is a very negative place. When I agree or disagree with an article, when I click on the comments button, I am literally thinking "Lets see why HN thinks I'm wrong (if I agree) or right (if I disagree)." I can pretty much always count on the top rated comment to be a negative reaction to the post.

When it is that common, it isn't just being analytical. It is being negative.

1. Compare "I can't read your site" with "While trying to read your site, I'm distracted by all the widgets, making it hard to find the actual content. When I do find the content, it just looks like a wall of text because the headlines look so similar to the body text."

>I've been here for 6+ years and while much of the time the discussions can be insightful, many other times you get people who are overly aggressive and downright mean because they're either unable to control their jealousy or throw away all decency for the pursuit of Truth and Accuracy.

For me, plain stupid I can cope with, but the worst offenders are the seemingly benign types, that go passive-aggressive on you.

I'm just amazed someone is a sad enough individual to take time out of their day to write a nasty email to someone they don't know. Don't sane people just close the browser window and move on?

I snapped and wrote to Gruber once, pointing out exactly how he was factually wrong about some Android issue. I believe he continued to write and be wrong about it.

Clearly a waste of my time. I was at least polite, though.

High-profile bloggers' priority is not to get the facts right. It is to generate traffic.

It sounds like bloggers are devolving into the Angelyne's of the web (famous for being famous).

Please, tell us about the issue so we can judge ourselves.

Otherwise, this is just an unsupported accusation against Gruber -- which is ironic in this particular thread.

How do we know he "continued to write and be wrong about it" rather than being you who was wrong about it all along, or that both of you were right in a different way?

I'd rather this thread not devolve into a discussion about Android minutia, or worse, a debate about Gruber's character. Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant to the GP's point that writing to Gruber was a waste of his time.

>Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant to the GP's point that writing to Gruber was a waste of his time.

I beg to differ. We are in a thread about BS accusations from random people on the internet, and a HN reader contributes with an accusation about an famous blogger without providing any data to substantiate it.

Sort of the thing the article condemns.

I agree. On the scale of things that would make me write 'f- you' to someone, not linking to a video at the start of a post is, I would have thought, fairly close to the bottom of said scale.

Hell, it's even low on the scale of things that would make me write to someone.

I actually think you got unlucky with this one. I've been fortunate enough to get a few posts onto Hacker News over the years and I've never received any remarks like the one you had.

Once bitten, twice shy (though also it appears twice on the front of HN so not all bad ;) however my experience is that most of the discussion and feedback from Hacker News is very good and that which is rude or genuinely unfair gets downvoted pretty aggressively. That doesn't of course account for private messages but for one reason or another I don't tend to receive those.

It's better for the future of this site and "community" if it didn't become people's goal to get on the front-page, or some such idiotic achievement.

This is wrong. Making the frontpage === making something that is interesting to hackers and gets upvoted.

No, it's wrong to make this the goal in and of itself. The purpose, according to the guidelines, is to post something that is intellectually stimulating to oneself. If it makes it on the front-page, then this is an indication that others share the same perception. This is perhaps a fine distinction. One more thing, your suggestion encourages groupthink and is something that I have been observing on HN since I've signed up.

Were I to have written this, I would have included a link to the post in question. That seems a pretty obvious traffic acquisition strategy to me. When you write a followup about how this post was included on the front page perhaps that will be a point under "The Bad" :-P

The few times I've been on the front page of HN I've had a fairly consistent 1000 visitors per hour, FWIW.

Hey Noel,

Thanks for the tip! I've made that edit now, can't believe I overlooked that. Too much Christmas cheer in my system!

I was on the front page the day I released my "blog" website. I ended up being on the front page for a few hours, but that is partly because I released on a Saturday evening. The traffic was shocking.

I didn't end up with any really bad feedback. In fact, I was immensely pleased with the feedback I received and the commentary I had here on HN. I think it was obvious to those who visited that the site was brand-new and rusty. I considered adding a comment area to the site, but I decided against that for several reasons I don't want to get into here.

I also thought I missed out on the social media stuff, but I don't think I did. The traffic was very healthy from social media because people wanted to share my article, and I don't think that any real reminder would have caused people to share that would not have. I did add social sharing buttons on the site for about a week and the sharing decreased during that time. Also, there was a lot of traffic from "other" social media outlets, so how many buttons would I really need?

Congrats on front-paging again. It really is a nice feeling.

Hi dizzystar,

Thanks for your congrats - it does feel good, although I'm sure some of that is the pre-Xmas drinks!

I'm surprised that when you added sharing buttons that sharing decreased - do you have any idea why?

There could be several reasons, but my research suggests that the practice of using social-sharing buttons blows up in your face more often than not. It may have been partly because of the location of the sharing buttons (this apparently is the number one issue). It could also be a matter of timing: I would have to get front-page here again with social sharing so I have proper data to work with.

I did have significant traffic from another site I won't name here and that didn't generate any social sharing. I honestly think people will share only if they want to. I've recently been paying more attention to the counters on other websites, and it is quite surprising anyone would publicly advertise such low numbers.

I guess you'll now have some gAnalytics to look at and you'll get a more clear picture of where your traffic comes from.

I'm surprised that he got fewer than 1000 hits. I always thought that HackerNews and Slashdot (probably much larger, I guess) would send way more people, for some reason.

I guess HN traffic is quite targeted and valuable to some people though.

I'm sort of surprised by this too. Perhaps it comes down to titles and time of day? Most of the posts I've had hit the front page get >20k hits the first day, but I also word my titles carefully (no linkbait, but make it catchy) and time the submissions when I know that the maximum number of people will see them.

I've been on the front page a few times and got around 10,000 to 20,000 visits from it. It often brought many more comments on the posts that made it than when people find it another way, but I saw no real increase in social sharing. Opposite that, if a post makes it to a fairly popular subreddit, I get a lot less comments from that kind of traffic, but on the other hand the posts will tend to be picked up again by other blogs or sites. I found that interesting.

If you make a comment that's downvoted, it gradually becomes invisible to the extent that people have to select it to view it.

I know from experience that either people do just that and then downvote or else downvote unread. Either way it smacks of kicking a dog when it's down.

It seems anomalous that when a comment is upvoted no one knows it except the person voting and the person getting the vote but when you're downvoted everyone knows it.

We were on the front page briefly the other day (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4916201) and got about 2,800 visitors. The comments were largely helpful and the experience a positive one overall.

On the other hand, nobody succeeded in earning the $2,500 bounty yet.

PG's hierarchy of disagreement should be a sticky post on the front page for this reason. +1. Thanks for sharing.

I'm guessing that someone posting like that on HN would quickly be downvoted and then shaddow-banned.

Comment systems are baffling, and it's an important problem that needs some work.

Don't say what it is, but did they use a real name or an obvious psydonym or pseudoanonymous?

My unseemly ranting about a popular hosting service was pinned to the top of HN for about a day. It was good for about 20,000 visits.

If you think 20,000 visits in 24 hours is a lot, it's not. It just isn't. It hasn't been since 1998.

But the audience is valuable.

Surely it's all relative? Sure, 20,000 people in a day might not be a lot when compared to 'total people using the internet every day' or even 'total people looking at HN every day' but it's a huge number when compared to 'total people looking at my blog on an average day'.

20,000 isn't that high, but it's specific traffic - people coming from one source who are generally in the same niche group.

Compare this to something like the frontpage of Reddit for a guest and you'll see a lot higher than that... but from a very broad audience.

Compare this again to something like Facebook, if your site has been shared across (and not just some humorous image that has been reuploaded and shared).

Imagine if you used that post to say "Here is why this webhost sucks, rah rah rah", and then funneled them into another company. Imagine if you hired sock puppet accounts to upvote your comments both here and on other social sites, if you are either an affiliate or a web hosting company you have the potential to make a lot of money off the right traffic source.

That's similar figures to what I got when one of my sites got to the top. It would be interesting to see the fall off rate of # of visitors based on its rank on the front page.

Now that you have all your analytical installed, I'm interested in seeing what they produce :-)

Congrats you're on the front page of HN now! Nice insights on the post though.

Heh, now you've gotten on the front page twice. Yay?

I've honestly struggled with how to give feedback to other users on HN. It's not hard to be civil, but my automatic reaction is to look for things to criticize, not because I'm overly critical, but because I assume that's the purpose of submitting your work to HN in the first place...if you're confident enough to do so, I guess I just assume you have a decent amount of self-validation going and more patting-on-the-back is going to be less helpful than critique.

Having read your original post on HN, I noticed you didn't actually fix the problem that the rude user complains about. The rude user is definitely out of line, but are you really much better by just dismissing their point as simply "sheer mind-numbing stupidity"? Is the user wrong because he/she was an asshole or just wrong period? Because I think the user had a good point: you refer to an off-site video that you don't show until the very end, and you don't even link to the indepth NYT article that includes the video, which would be common courtesy for any SEO specialist.

There was nothing broken. Why should he fix it? Putting the video at the top would result in people watching the video, then ignoring the words, because, hey, they just watched the video. Putting it at the bottom makes it an extra treat for those who put in the effort to read the words.[1]

And that is exactly the problem with feedback online. Instead of assuming something is the way it is for a reason, people assume it is that way because the author, who spent who knows how much time thinking about things, was too selfish to cover my own particular need.

I think selfish is the right word for how people view it. If it was just incompetent, people would be more willing to help. But people take it personally, and that implies people see open hostility.

On the other hand, when competence in the author and humility in ourselves is assumed, the dialog is much more interesting and useful. Instead of just shredding the work, helpful language and reasons for the concern are used.

1. I have no idea if this is the author's actual thought process, but when I viewed the page, I immediately thought, "Wait, it makes sense for the video to be at the bottom. Anywhere else would be highly distracting to the article."

Well, yes, something was broken. The author makes reference to a video without saying where it exists, even though it seems to be a video that exists on the Internet. This leads the user to believe that maybe his browser is broken or that the JS on the page is broken.

Is it really an either-or situation here? If it's not right for the video to be at top (which would go against a lot of other user-studies showing how important it is to have imagery leading the text, and how especially important it is to have assets close to where they are referred to in the text) then there should be a link. This is how the web was meant to work. If the readers end up clicking through (there's no reason you can't just have it anchor to the bottom instead of going externally) and never come back to the text, then that is an issue of the author not fulfilling his first rule of advice: "I like the first line to be funny right away" (replace "funny" with "compelling").

And you may be right, just because the author did it this way doesn't mean that he is "selfish". But it's hard to have any sympathy for him when he rips on someone for being ad hominem with an ad hominem attack.

(Also, it's worth pointing out that if the OP author had explicitly made the argument that it's good SEO practice to put the source material at the bottom and force the reader to discover it at the bottom, the OP would never have been upvoted to the front page. I don't think that's a design philosophy shared by many at HN)

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