Poll: Ban Codinghorror? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Ban Codinghorror?

27 pointsrglullis66 comments

I'm really against censorship, but this does not mean we are free to do whatever we want. I believe that people should know and practice self-restraint. Jeff Atwood, through his blog, has consistently failed to exercise such self-restraint.

I wouldn't mind ignoring his stories that show up here, but the recent posts where he

(a) criticizes the decisions that drive News.YC despite of being ignorant of how things work

(b) recommends news.YC to his subscriber base, potentially bringing a new mass of users that will contribute very little to the website

are close to being provocative. It does give a feeling that he is not happy to have his own blog, but feels like he needs to control every possible conversation channel.

I'm not suggesting censoring it for anything in particular that he writes about, but because the articles are always such deliberate linkbait. In 99% of his articles, the most interesting thing is the title. But I don't want PG and the editors to be accused of censorship, so I thought I'd ask for opinions first.

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Could we have a 3rd option: "Quit whining" I mean, really. Although, you make a good point that it will drive unwanted people here...but there's nothing we can do about that unfortunately.

Well some of us might not want to just surrender like that. And since this is the internet "whining" is pretty much all that can be done. That and continually moving on to the "new" place.

It may also bring interesting people too.

No,no, mistermann refers to people like myself, who've come from coding horror, and asking questions like "Excuse me, but, um, where are those Warez, dudes?", or who think PHP is a fine language, or, you know, people that embody the children that use to pick on you in school.

I'd totally vote for option 3, but if people don't want to ever see a CodingHorror article again... well:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039

"No, don't ban it" and "I like seeing Codinghorror stories on News.YC." don't have to go together.

If you're going to ban one source that irritates some people, I'm sure a list can be prepared of other sources to ban. Here's a sample of authors/blogs to ban:

1. Guy Kawasaki

2. Seth Godin

3. TechCrunch

4. 37Signals

5. Joel the Fog Creek Guy

They all can be seen as shameless self-marketing disguised as blogs or worthless regurgitations of tech news and gossip.

EDIT: to note one has been banned already.

Most you've listed are shameless self-marketing blogs that push remarkably poor self-acclaimed technical insights onto the programming populace, and propagating their work does learning developers a gross disservice.

Unfortunately, "Ban it, it causes brain rot" wasn't a poll option.

Nitpick: Valleywag is already banned.

Edited to note that. Also, the spamtrap on your site rules.

poll flawed. i need a "no don't ban it, but i'm tired of seeing codinghorror stories on news.yc"

perhaps a better solution overall would be to implement some sort of restriction on submissions. if you submit from a single domain more than X number of times in the last Y submissions, you're disallowed from submitting from that domain for another Z submissions.

Agreed. Some of Coding Horror's material is certainly worthwhile. For example, I know I found out about the HttpOnly flag in cookies from him, and I'm pretty sure I've learned of some usability improvements from his articles as well. However, there are a lot of his articles that I don't think really belong on HN, but they end up here anyway.

I'm actually a bit suspicious that the following may be happening:

1) Karma-hungry users submit all of his articles as soon as they're posted without checking whether or not they've been submitted already.

2) Since submitting a page that's already been submitted results in an upvote, his articles make it to the front page and RSS feed without the usual oversight of people reading things in the new submissions list.

Your points taken together sound like a strange equilibrium from game theory.

In effect those hypothetical karma-hungry users amount to a voting ring, but one that does not need to communicate --- or even realize that they are in a voting-ring: Members just notice that sometimes --- when they are by chance the first to submit --- they get a huge karma boost. And when they are not the first, they do not lose anything from supporting the other members.

Potential solution: Decouple. I.e. do not make submitting an automatic upvote for existing stories. Just forward to the existing item and let people upvote (or not) manually.

There were 4 'articles' from 37signals earlier on the front page. 1 is more than enough.

I don't agree with this.

Jeff's post had some thoughtful things to say about designing rules for communities. He's thinking a lot about what the rules should be for his community at stackoverflow, and comparing your rules to other people's rules is a good way to think about this kind of problem.

There certainly isn't one answer: there's an interaction between the rules and the actual bunch of people you have visiting a site.

Personally I'm losing interest in reddit, for instance, because articles about mainstream programming languages get downvoted immediately -- but articles about farting in Python or computing fibonacci functions recursively in an obscure LISP dialects get hundreds of votes.

As for attracting the "wrong" kind of people, I think you're taking the wrong angle. Atwood is trying to get more people to pay attention to stackoverflow -- if he's got any tactical aspirations towards hacker news, it would be using it as a way to promote his own ventures, as he's done with DZone and other programming sites.

Jeff Atwood is only doing his job - promoting his blog and start-up. Doing a better job than most of us at that.

Sure he gets things wrong but so what? If we were afraid of getting things wrong we would never publish anything - and would probably also never learn anything new.

It's not the "getting things wrong" that bothers me. I don't mind at all seeing flawed, but honest attempts of writing.

What bothers me a lot is the whole attitude of shoot-first-ask-later. It causes excessive noise. He knows it, but he doesn't care, because it gets people talking about him.

He tries to control the conversation by saturating the channel, and the one filter that we have (the community itself) will go bust if we let the channel be saturated.

Just because we post some Codinghorror articles doesn't mean we have to post them all, you realize. He's not "saturating the channel," we are, and we can stop if we want, without having to ban anything.

I'm not sure the several posts a week constitute "saturating the channel." Jeff is hardly prolific as far as bloggers go.

Several posts a week is remarkably prolific for a genuinely technical blogger. I'm lucky if I write a post once a month, and that's because that's generally the minimum amount of time it takes to do something worth talking about, or gain an insight worth sharing.

Maybe somebody could put up a poll about whether or not to ban polls about banning sites.

If you don't like Jeff's blog, don't click the link. If the community likes the blog, it will get voted up. I don't get what the point of banning it is in the first place if the community in general is voting it up. Controversial or not, it's way more relevant than a lot of the other crap that gets voted up.

I listen to Jeff and Joel's Stack Overflow podcast. Jeff seems like a totally reasonable guy whose ego is in check and who is not looking to piss anybody off. He's just out there writing down his thoughts, just like everybody else. You're allowed to disagree with him. Feel free to do so. I don't see the need to ban his blog.

I'm getting more than a little tired of the star programmer rivalry. To see a great site like HN join in would seriously crush me. I come here to read news, regardless of where it comes from and regardless of whether I agree with it or not.

Isn't that the point? If everything were censored and all we ever heard about was TDD and how great and spiffy it is how would we ever know why? Why is Jeff Atwood to be despised? Why is "An open letter to Steve Jobs about approving the amber alert application" more appropriate than "Sharpening the Saw"?

I want the good, the bad and the ugly. I agree with censoring spam, sites that are gaming the system, and the like but this is just silly. It all seems very ad hominem to me. Get off your soap box and write something worth while.

Criticism is how start-ups thrive. Learn it, live it.

Don't ban it, but I wish people would stop posting Codinghorror articles. The writing quality is low, and I don't learn anything from the articles. It's just a big waste of time.

Edit: modding this up to 11? Give me a break. There are much better comments than this.

My feelings are that those who want to read Codinghorror already subscribe to the feed (I'm one of them) - so there should really be no need to pos tthem at all. For me HN is still the place to find things from palces I'm unaware of.

I should note that I voted your comment up based on your edit. Not that I don't agree with your original statement, but humility is usually a pleasant surprise.

Greetings! I'm one of the regular readers of codinghorror who had never seen news.ycombinator.com until just today. With respect, the original poster (pollster?) is painting with a rather large brush. Could we please at least be allowed to get in here and see what's going on before the assertion that we will "contribute very little to the website" is leveled?

On the other hand, it's refreshing to see the comments of someone who doesn't think that a simple count of users is the be-all and end-all of a website's worth. That attitude is intriguing and makes me want to learn more about this site.

Could we please at least be allowed to get in here and see what's going on before the assertion that we will "contribute very little to the website" is leveled?

Don't worry, all they're talking about is banning links to Codinghorror, not banning people coming from it. We would never do that. Not that we would ban CH itself either.

But what sort of greeting has rglullis sent out to all those potential readers coming from CH "that will contribute very little to the website"?

I can think of a few :(

I'm one of the unwanted new people driven here by Coding Horror and you are making me feel very welcome.

Don't feel like that. I think the community aspect of HN is a bit overstated, it is not as if all HN users are speaking with one voice. Besides, it is all about good content, not about personalities.

This is an extremely arrogant position to take and I'm amazed that more people aren't calling you out on it. Your reasons for this are:

1) he provided an honest critique of a site that he uses and respects (in an open format where he was clearly corrected)

2) directed users here as a place where they could find great content to hone their skills

Those hardly seem like valid reasons to ban his articles from your site.

"I'm not suggesting censoring it for anything in particular that he writes about, but because the articles are always such deliberate linkbait. In 99% of his articles, the most interesting thing is the title. But I don't want PG and the editors to be accused of censorship, so I thought I'd ask for opinions first."

If you honestly believe that this is true of codinghorror (I know you copied and pasted from pg's previous post on valleywag) then it would be good for you to provide some data to back this up. Point us to the articles that you think are "deliberate linkbait".

I think a little humility would do the hacker news community well.

You are not suggesting consorship. This a clearly well beyond suggestion. You want Codinghorror banned but you do not have the spine to say this outright, so you propose a poll to make yourself appear reasonable.

Even your second point is baseless, "potentially bringing a new mass of users that will contribute very little to the website". Note the use of the word 'potentially', you know you have no evidence of this but you don't like Jeff so just throw any shit around and see what sticks.

What next, CH causes cancer, CH makes you homosexual, CH promotes liberalism?

(I am no longer bothered by having negative karma)

Parent upvoted (from -1 to 0) b/c unsupported warnings of possible future harm really is a lousy way to carry out debate.

OTOH, peterhi, I just skimmed your past comments: the negative karma isn't just b/c you say unpopular or off-topic things--it's also because you're mostly a jerk about it.

I have a way with words, mostly because people seem to miss the point if it is subtle. A slap in the face will get attention, a polite cough is all too easily ignored. The OP has basically called the readership of Codinghorror worthless and incapable of contributing to a site so elevated as HackerNews and if we could only ban Codinghorror from HackerNews then perhaps this flood of proles could be thwarted (and how is that supposed to work exactly? Do we get an injunction to stop Jeff sending his readers here?)

And I'm the jerk?

I think you're absolutely right about rglullis's methods here, they strike me as pretty slimy. I also find the whole To those who have objections to the choices: I did a copy-and-paste of PG's poll when he was deciding whether or not to ban valleywag. just a weak grab at legitimizing his behavior through canonizing something pg did for a fringe case. All in all, rglullis is plainly taking this all very personally and trying to rationalize his reaction.

As for the "jerk" aside, well, it goes either way. You can either say something politely, knowing that most people who disagree with you will probably ignore you. Or you can say something more heavy that will get their attention, but then you'll have to deal with character assassination tactics like marginalizing you as a extremist or a jerk, etc. Either way you're kinda screwed.

Censorship is quite a reasonable suggestion for HN. We aren't here to express our political views, we're here to read good content. If a site gets in the way of that, then by all means it should be banned.

Well said. That's what I meant to say when I said "this is how communities disintegrate".

Yours is much better.

Yes, his posts are not always well thought-out. Yes, he tries to be incendiary. But the good part about exposing these posts on HN is that this is exactly the group to dissect his drivel. You may not think the same way he does, but many people do, and one day you may have to deal with them so you better be prepared to counter their lunacy.

It surely can't be that difficult to just not click the link, can it?

http://xkcd.com/386/

It's sad that I get sent that enough that I know which comic it is just by the URL :(

I'm worse, I never really noticed what number it is but when I see an xkcd link like that I infer from the context that it must be that particular one, without even considering it might be another, and then I verify and I'm right 100% of the time.

Funny you should say this. As I was pasting this link, I thought to myself: "This is a nice memorable number... I should just memorize this URL. It's not as if it will never come in handy again."

I don't particularly like Codinghorror, but I'm not in favour of having it banned.

I would however like a mechanism to filter out stories from certain domains.

I would however like a mechanism to filter out stories from certain domains.

The human eye can serve as that mechanism if the parenthetical label of the submitted article's domain is unique to one author or group of authors. (E.g., google.com as a source domain doesn't help me at all in filtering articles, but techcrunch.com does.) I read HN selectively, depending on what the source of submitted articles is. For the record, I like reading some of the codinghorror.com articles submitted here.

The whole point of technology is to eliminate mindless, repetitive tasks like looking at a domain, comparing it to our black-list, and ignoring it. Sure, it only takes a second, but how many times do you visit hn? How many articles do you have to parse before you have wasted time?

Letting hn users specify their own domain black-lists can be implemented trivially, and saves a ton of time, in aggregate. I agree with the grand-parent post.

I don't think this is a very good welcome for new users at all. I've found HN to generally be very welcoming. And as it has been said before, not everyone feels the same way as the OP.

Though a lot of users are worried about the culture on HN. Most users like this site because there is very little trolling, low noise, and informative posts. And a lot of users here consider other sites like digg and reddit to be less useful because of trolling and a high ratio of uninteresting to interesting posts. So they want HN to keep its culture and focus. That's why if a popular story is unrelated to tech or business, someone will probably complain that it doesn't belong on HN.

Most people who are concerned about quality on HN think growth can be ok, as long as it's slow enough that the all the new users can have time to learn the social norms of the site. And so if someone mentions it on a highly-trafficked website, some people get afraid that the user base will grow so fast that the new users won't have time to learn the social norms.Then HN will turn into another reddit or slashdot.

People started worrying about the culture of HN six months after it started, so almost everyone here came in at a time older users were complaining about growth.

Post welcoming new users:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=459289

Here's a post on culture: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465991

As a community, we will become what we become, with or without Jeff Atwood. This poll doesn't help things.

To those who have objections to the choices: I did a copy-and-paste of PG's poll when he was deciding whether or not to ban valleywag.

I used to read codinghorror regularly. I'd like to think I've "graduated" (since some time ago now). Welcome all visitors from codinghorror.

Also, I sort of find it hard to believe that Jeff's posts are as bad as all that, but I can't say from experience b/c I just don't click the links anymore.

If it wasn't for Jeff's recent posts I would not have known that HN even exists. I'm sure there are many more like me. Thanks for the welcome!

I read a lot of programming blogs and I'd say that the codinghorror content better than many. The size of his readership certainly bears that out. It's actually not really a programming blog anyway. It's mostly opinion pieces that are designed to provoke a response. One common response is that he's simply dismissed. Everyone's entitled to have their say.

No, don't ban it; I like seeing Codinghorror stories on News.YC. There's no law that says I have to read it. It's nice to have a wide range of posts and sources.

Let's not overreact to a few recent anti-YC posts from Jeff. Wait a month and see if you are still this angry.

Also, banning a site for generally worthless content is one thing. Banning a site because they made some incorrect but interesting criticisms of Hacker News is another.

How can a criticism be interesting when it is incorrect?

Well, my comment was a criticism of the poll, and you thought it was incorrect. But you responded to me, so it was still interesting.

So that's a good example, if you disregard the paradox ;-)

``potentially bringing a new mass of users that will contribute very little to the website''

I guess that I'm one of those users. Is this community really that elitist?

No, just a pattern we go through whenever we get an influx of visitors. Then someone will be offended, and one of us will explain that there are a few curmudgeons here, but most are warm, lovable people. It's kind of a good cop, bad cop routine.

No. If some HN users post codinghorror links, clearly those users find them of interest, and however well or badly informed they may be, they are still on-topic. What anyone can do is vote them up or not.

No, don't ban it, just submit more good technical articles that can drown out his crap.

There needs to be a third choice:

No, don't ban it; But I don't like seeing Codinghorror stories on News.YC.

Though I don't agree with him all the time. But if something will become a meme then I will read his stuff even if HN bans him.

How incredibly childish.

Just a thought on the idea about the "mass of users that would contribute little": why do people assume others will never grow, change or that they have a certain fixed "intellectual level" based on one source of articles they chose to read at one point in time?

As far coding horror links go: the main point of posting a link here is to discuss it, and I, personally, would much rather read comments about Atwood's posts here than on his site because I consider the signal to noise ratio in comments here more reasonable. Even if articles from any given source don't get facts right or if they sound like blatant self-promotion with a programmer facade, I feel the insight from the community's comments are still invaluable.

Although I'm more of a user than a contributor to HN, I have to (generally) disagree to the practice of banning blogs such as CodingHorror, Joel Spolsky etc.

I simply think that the practice of banning will lead to elitism, which will eventually lead to extinction.

I was waiting for something like this to happen after reading Coding Horror this morning.

Everyone is scared of this site turning into to digg. The signal:noise is very good, and everyone appreciates that. I'm not sure banning stories from CH are going to help this matter, because the damage is already done. The cat is out of the bag, and Hacker News will either turn into digg, stay the same, or, most likely, settle at a happy middle-ground.

Hopefully there won't be any lolcats on the front page.

It's funny because I came here because of his blog entry this morning. I have to say, I've never seen anyone on the web willingly say they do not want traffic... guess we're all a little strange in our own way.

And this is how communities start to disintegrate.

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