I do think meanness is worth calling out, FWIW, though in my experience HN discussions are better than most I see online (though far from faultless, of course).
...which in turn gives me faith that when there really are unduly mean discussions, someone calling them out can actually improve things (whereas I imagine an article calling out meanness on /. or similar and can't imagine who would even read it).
This was close to the top of the front page on HN, so I'm fairly confident that they're talking about this:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5339287
Nothing too suss in there from what I read, and most of the top comments are still the same as when the Design News post was made.
If you can't be bothered reading, topics included:
- Facebook steals from Google+. Google+ steals from Facebook.
- People overuse certain adjectives when describing products.
- The impact that new FB design has on advertising, particularly that ads can now take up ~30% screen space
...I don't see where the meanness is
...which admittedly doesn't have a great discussion, but it's not worthless.
The one you linked, though, is worth highlighting as a completely useless discussion, due to some meanness (mild as it goes), but mostly just a sad lack of thoughtful commenters, all of whom seemed to think several dozen redundant comments about the OP's headshot on his blog post was valuable feedback.
I didn't see any discussion whatsoever on the actual content of the OP.
However, what I see in that thread are valid criticisms. The article and author were self promoting the author's expertise in UX -- with the promotion rather more prominent than the article content. Meanwhile, aside from the, um, "self aggrandizement", the site violated cardinal UX rules.
Readers called him on it without using faux polite weasel words, and he says he'll fix it.
Pretty sure constructive feedback is what submitting your own material to HN is for.
That discussion lacks basic civility. A good half of comments there is not something that their authors would've been willing (or have guts) to say to guy's face. Hilariously, they are in fact being mean.
Using that as a metric is silly. Is that too mean?
It's more likely it's the other link that's posted - the official FB Feed announcement.
This is not an isolated instance, however. For some reason people who reply seem to always look at things from the worst prespective possible. Some are valid concerns, others not so much but you end up with a (very) pessimistic view of things if you consider only opinions expressed on HN. It makes me feel a bit sad and down.
I think this happens because people who like the post, product, etc don't know how to express appreciation in a meaningul way. Maybe it is easier to pinpoint specific things that you don't like than to be specific about a product you like. You get that overall feeling that it is an improvement but cannot easily pinpoint all the reasons why.
I also have faith that things can improve if people, instead of only writing about specific things that they don't like, take some time to also write about the small things that often go unnoticed but make great products great.
Negative isn't the same as mean.
I don't think it is Facebook's fault that some friends post this kind of things and I can't see how this comment is constructive in any way.
"Great. It isn't Schadenfreude exactly, but I hope big changes ups (that they have to make because doing nothing is not an option) like this accelerate their decline. I don't think Facebook will go away any time soon but it will become another Yahoo and that can only be a good thing for the ecosystem in terms of opportunities."
This one is like wishing Michael Phelps dies so you can win some medals.
These are just some examples. If you read the Linode thread you will also find that the top comment is negative, has nothing to do with the content of the blog post, and does not offer any constructive criticism that people from Linode could use to improve their service. In all fairness in both threads there are also a lot of positive comments and constructive criticisms but for some reasons those tend to get burried.
NB
I am British and the apparent ambient meanness level in most banter probably appeals to be quite high - in reality it is just the fact that we probably waste more of our time on attempts at humour than most other nationalities....