Identity as Collateral: Preserving Hacker News
e1ven.com
e1ven.com
The definition of crap may have to get broader. We may have to kill stories related to politics even when they're intellectually interesting. We'll see.
As you commented in "What I've Learned from Hacker News", it's not so much the stories, but the comments, which see the greatest tarnish as new users enter any community without necessarily understanding the culture.
I love Hacker News, and I suspect I'll remain a member as long as you will permit me, but it disappoints me when I see comments along the line of "So what?"..
What's more subtle is the increase in sarcasm- It's not that any particular comment is terribly hurtful, but it indicates a culture of people who are showing off, or attacking one another, rather than working together.
I'm ashamed to admit that at the worst of times, it reminds me more of 4chan than a college coffee shop.
Of course, such feelings are mostly isolated, at least for now, but I'm more worried about preserving the commenting culture than the submitted stories.
I would not object at all to linking what I say here to my real name. Indeed, my name is Thomas Doggette. My username is my first initial and last name. I don't use my real identity on sites where I argue with others about sex and religion and politics (in rather mixed company), nor where I play games, but something like HN provides a benefit to me (reputation among potential future colleagues and employers) in exchange for being upfront about who I am.
Thank you for the wonderful post- That's exactly the point I was trying to make in my article.
"I don't use my real identity on sites where I argue with others about sex and religion and politics "
People avoid certain subjects and behavior when they're using their real name and identity. They focus on building an account which will help their reputation.
It just so happens that the best way to do that is to civilly discuss news and information that's relevant to a Hacker News site ;)
If the goal is to keep conversation civil and on-topic, encouraging people to post under their real names, using their reputation as collateral, just might work.
Metafilter and other communities have used such tactics with reasonable effectiveness, but I think that it may be a bad choice.
If I were interested in the Startup Community, but were based out of Louisiana, I might not have anyone who would 'vouch' for me, even though I might be a very productive member of the community.
Further, I were a new member, and able to convince you to sponsor me, unless I know you outside of the forum, there's no incentive for me to respect that I might make you look bad.. If I make you look bad, I can just disappear, and all is forgotten, at least so far as my username is concerned.
That's why I had hoped we might find a way to give usernames more weight, either by using the same username as multiple other projects, or by using birth names.
Regarding your example of the person in Louisiana interested in the startup community, I think that person would still have a reasonable shot at joining the HN community. Remember, I'm only talking about write access to HN, not read. So that person could still read all the great discussion and links here. If that individual is interested enough in hacking or startups they must know some other people somewhere who might be members. I would guess there would be enough HN members sprinkled around open source projects and small companies around the country that a person who has a decent footprint in another hacking community would be able to find someone who knows them well enough to invite them. Are there going to be people you miss with this strategy? Clearly there will be. However, I would be willing to bet that a motivated person who genuinely wants to join the community would still find a way in. I see that as a bonus: anyone who works that hard at it probably has a lower probability of being a troll.
I love this community and I do really hope we find a mechanism to keep it from degrading!
The irony is delicious :)
- Ron Tackle
That would only make sense if there were too many intellectually interesting articles about politics. There aren't. The vast majority of articles on politics say nothing new at all.
A quick and dirty solution would be just to delete any articles if someone can find a link to an earlier article saying essentially the same thing. This would get rid of more than just the junk stories on politics, it would get rid of all the rehashes of the ethics of nootropic drugs, or the link between race and IQ, or whatever. We have all these topics on this site where people find it necessary to upvote thinly rewritten versions of the same dumb ideas every few months; that's what needs to be banned, posts with nothing novel except the URL.
But now that you mention this, maybe the problem is that it's easier to recognize articles with identical data than articles with identical ideas. So people say "oh, I've already seen an article about bailout X", but not "oh, this is just another flavor of libertarian blathering."
One thing I found interesting, and what may be very effective, is something like robot9k. The gist of it is that no comment that has previously been posted can be posted again. I've spent some time in the #XKCD-Signal IRC channel (Where Robot9000 came from), and it forces rather lengthy and interesting discussion. While it would have to have some modifications to work in a commenting situation rather than a IRC situation, I think it largely helps with the amount of trash posts.
Note that while it removes all the "First post" and "Wow. That sucks" posts, it does nothing about post attitude. It doesn't fight against trolling, but at least it has to be original trolling, and you will thus have to have some sort of moderation to beat that.
I used to be a regular reader of Kuro5hin, but I've fallen away as I've had less time to read general interest articles of late.
The article seems to focus on several suggestions all of which presupposing the idea that user accounts can't be the same as the list of members, so you see an increase in trolling. I suppose I'm not sure I agree.
I'd be interested to find out if people would be as willing to troll, or even just be vindictive, if the had more at stake than simply a disposable username. There would always be some, I suppose, but my hypothesis is that it would greatly diminish.
A deep strength of hacker news is that when someone goes to the trouble of responding to a troll in a factual rather than inflammatory way, it is supported with upvotes. Responding like this can be difficult, but it's very effective - and good for the soul.
A weakness of HN is that intelligent, articulate writing is sometimes used with harsh attitude and connotations. That is, it's just as nasty as elsewhere online, just elegantly phrased. This is accepted, because HN favours intelligence over attitude (could just be my perception).
Eliezer posted an article on denotations vs. connotations recently, which gave me a new perspective on this old idea: http://lesswrong.com/lw/4h/when_truth_isnt_enough/
The most important thing is that the comments are kept useful by constant vigilance on the part of the community. Did anyone see the reddit t-shirt thread yesterday? That sort of thing needs to remain unthinkable here. Not just the sophomoric sexualization and laughter-excuses-any-misconduct, but the parts of Internet culture which aren't relevant to programming/business/etc. (I like lolcats, anime, and politics myself -- just not here.)
If the commenters aren't civil, almost no topic is going to work. You can have lots of flame wars and trash talk about OOP vs FP -- heck, we've done it many times. Same goes for relational databases verus column-oriented databases, or Erlang innards vs. the JVM.
It's not the topics, it's the behavior of the commenters that make or break a site.
As a hacker and somebody who is interested in just about anything, I'd like broader topics and stricter commenting behavior, although I understand you can get to the same point with a limited topic list -- it's just real boring. Bascially what you're saying is "let's limit discussion to things that are so technical as to not emotionally involve but just a very small subset of the readers" That's great, but success in this case means the site is bland and stale.
At some point, I think about 1.5 years ago, we had a discussion on here about the reason for other topics. Fact is, after so many startup articles, they all start to look alike. I don't know about other readers, but I'd like a reason to come back every day. The "nuances of database scaling" is wonderful, overdone, and we all wish we could have those problems. 3-D printing? Economics of drug legalization (not the policy)? Working a startup in a down economy? Effects of the Innovator's Dilemma on military power? Comparison of various country's economies and the impact on trade? These are all startup topics: they're exploring problems and issues where startups can get involved.</soap box>
EDIT: I'll add another statement: the best startups are those that emotionally-involved founders come at a unique and interestesting problem from radically different worldviews using technology to make people's lives easier. That means that discussing unique and interesting problems that emotionally charge and divide us is the best way to form groups to begin to solve those problems.
For the record I don't have a problem with user identity - after all I post under my real first name which is unusual enough to google me very quickly. I certainly do object to the suggestion of user identity being enforced through membership of a social network. Much as I love Hacker News, I don't love it enough to jettison my misgivings on social networking.
It would be a real shame to kill interesting stories because of the comments they would attract. Perhaps allow those stories to be posted, but lock them down for comments?
I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression- I'm glad to see the site expand, and I think it's great that you're coming ;)
I just want to preserve exactly that signal to noise ratio that makes the site attractive to both of us - The comments in particular suffer when people don't try to maintain a good front.
You're absolutely right that Social Networking may not be the best way to do that- My contention is that digital identities are inexpensive; They don't require substantial investment to maintain, so it's easy to turn abusive.
For example, say for whatever reason, I chose to be acerbic and taunting to people on the forum, rather than engaging the larger community.
It would be trivial for me to create a new username, do things which are destructive to the idea of a community of interest.. It's not just outright trolling, but I might reply to comments sarcastically, and attack people when they "Ask HN" on something I think is somewhat obvious.
The harm to myself would be minuscule- In this example, I've substantially diminish the enjoyment of other people, and might even do so for months or years under the same username.. But when I'm ready to move on with my life, I discard the username I created for HN, and no one is the wiser.
I haven't left any trace that people might find when googling my name. Essentially, I've made myself dispensable.
If I were applying for the YC program, I'd not want to do that, for fear that PG et all would reject my application, but if I'm visiting, and this account is in no way linked to me, what incentive do I have, other than common decency?
Sadly, I think that common decency does not get us very far.
You might want to take a look at the article I linked at the bottom of my post, on creating online communities.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/identitymatters
I think that it does a very decent job at giving a general overview, but it doesn't yet account for way inexpensive digital identities allow people to behave in an uncivil manner.
Again, welcome to the site, and I hope I haven't scared you away ;)
It's a shame that 'common decency' has to be enforced in some way.
I post under a screen name (obviously), and while my real name is in my profile now, even before it was I never felt the urge to push someone else's buttons just for the fun of it. I realize I'm being a bit optimistic when I say this, but I think people rise to the standard to which they are held.
We have a bit of a reputation here at HN for being stodgy and humorless. While I don't think that is true, I'm fine with that reputation if it means newcomers think twice before posting their witty one liners and meme-of-the-week. Eventually the culture initiates the newcomers and they don't have to think twice... they will know what the community values and what it does not, and they will contribute accordingly.
In short, I don't think we need any technical solution to solve what someone's innate desire to be valuable will accomplish for us. What we do need is for existing members to set the tone, and so far they have done so admirably.
Perhaps you're right- An extension of the Broken Windows theory, if you will. But so far it might seem that evidence is against you.
Look back, not just at HN, but Reddit, Digg, Kuro5hin, and even Slashdot have people who say how nice it was before the trolls arrived, before the site became as popular.
I certainly don't want to come across as a wistful elderly man looking back with nostalgia at his youth- I think that there's more to it than hazy memories of the past.
Communities evolve and change- I love Reddit, and my Alien Bobblehead is amoung my prized possessions.. But at the same time, I know that the level of discourse has fallen sharply over the few years. Pun threads are common, and people attack one another frequently.
I once read someone mention the "4chanization" of reddit, and unfortunately, I worry that that is the natural state of all communities, if they aren't tended.
The level of discourse on HN, while still exemplary has been declining of late, and I've seen more personal attacks and discussions of identity politics.
I wish I had your optimism, Andrew, and I hope you're right.
I think setting a good example will cause people to rise to it, and I think being conscious of setting a good example means we will preserve our community values. No one on Reddit or Digg was clamoring to "maintain the level of discourse"... their '4chanization' happened because those communities had no immune response. Here, we have a powerful social response, in that most people set a good example and gently correct those that don't.
I don't know whether this helps at all, but I "read" HN for months through the RSS feed - so in a way I was not on HN at all, if HN is defined by reading the commentary and/or upvoting. But it was enough to give the vibe of the site, by the nature of the stories posted. Eventually I read something where I thought something like "Does whoever submitted this actually believe this ?!" and came back here to see the comments. I was pleasantly surprised by the S/N, so either it was not the kind of thread that was worrying you or you guys must have been intellectual saints before all the plebs showed up :-)
The point is that whether you realise this or not there are already two tiers of access to HN (full site and read-only). So you could chose to enforce some kind of social pressure on commentators (either through real identity or as another person has said through an invite system - I have seen the latter work well in other contexts) while still not turning HN into a private Y-combinator club.
It comes down to as to whether you folks feel that the essence of HN lies in the story selection or the commentary. Obviously I don't have an opinion on that.
I certainly don't want to turn HN in a Y-combinator club- They rejected my application almost 2 year ago, after all ;)
"It comes down to as to whether you folks feel that the essence of HN lies in the story selection or the commentary."
I think this is the point PG and I disagree on a bit- His approach is to focus on moderation of the stories, and increasing their focus, where as I'm more concerned with the tone and caliber of discussion.
It's his site, so he gets to win that one ;) Hopefully community pressure can help to keep things inline- Past experience suggests that doing more is likely necessary.
I've offered my proposal for comments and had it rejected, but hopefully the discussion may help him (and us, collectively) find a solution that works better.
At least, it's worth it if the alternative is becoming the next reddit.
Many (most?) people here already have a domain that they control, and this seems like a reasonable hurdle for anyone posting to Hacker News to accomplish. Unlike credit card validation or the like, it's equally accessible for users from any country. And one doesn't even have to buy the domain, just come up with some way to make a file accessible on the root of some site.
It's also a nod to history of the internet. Long ago, essentially in the predawn of time, Usenet started being filled with spam and low quality posts. The alt.hackers newsgroup came up an interesting solution: self-moderation. Users were required to figure out how to add an "Approved" header to their own posts. Thus perhaps the file could just read "Approved". :)
Look around your LinkedIn and Facebook communities. How many of those groups are thriving in the way Hacker News is with useful, helpful information? How many of you read them every single day and contribute to them in the way you do here?
I, for one, would rather pay large monthly fees before making it trivially obvious to the rest of the world, Google, future investors, etc, what I contribute here on HN.
(This isn't my primary account, so consider this post even more "anonymous" than usual.)
Keep in mind, however, that "making it trivially obvious to the rest of the world, Google, future investors" is exactly the point of the proposal!
People are unlikely to engage in disruptive behavior if they're "being judged" on what they say- Instead, they have far more incentive to contribute, in order to increase their reputation.
Which is exactly the problem-- it's important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are good things and bad with attaching real world identities and that was not considered in your post. It's not a panacea and has real and (to me, at least) severe consequences.
I happen to work a great deal with gaming communities which are notoriously trollish and awful. In my experience, physical identity would help with those problems, but it's overkill. It's like the "nuclear" option, in a sense.
What we've found works best is the general act of tying the identity to something the individual does not want to lose casually. The real enemy of the net is casual trolling out of boredom or random flashes of meanness. The highest return on investment is found by eliminating that one aspect-- it doesn't require the "nuclear" option of turning us all into our public personas.
For example, we've found that physical/real-world identity is not nearly as important as the combination of:
* Tying access to something people don't want to lose, such as months of their time/effort, their reputation to people they respect, or to their wallets. Note that reputation can be based on limited identity revealing to key people, or even simply reputation amongst people they associate with under a particular identity (even if they whole group is using non-real identities-- for example, a gaming clan).
* Broken window theory (i.e. http://ta.gd/broken )-- hiding/fixing trolling as quickly as possible. This is one of the best methods we've found to keep incidents down and people behaving. If they don't see it as commonplace (as trolling is on Reddit/Digg) then they aren't going to dive in as readily.
* Having strong, respected moderators/spokespeople encouraging respect and frowning sternly (and directly) upon negative behavior. This ties into both of the above points.
My company is actually investigating using some of these techniques in a service to reduce griefing in games, but requiring physical identities in that case is a deal-breaker.
> Instead, they have far more incentive to contribute, in order to increase their reputation.
This is only true if you believe that people want to increase their reputation solely tied to their real world identity. This is a motivator for you, but it is not for me and others-- otherwise people would already be using their own names 100% of the time on things they are proud of.
Anyway, I agree with your desire to keep HN strong. I actually think HN has been doing great for the while I've been here. It has its ups and downs, but I think we have other options to improve that don't include tying Facebook Connect into every aspect of the online world.
Even charging money for an account wouldn't do that, because it's easy enough to write off the account, and get a new one later.
But for example, look at my user account, e1ven. If you Google it, you'll see work I've done with Zimbra, Freenet, SQ7, and a dozen other projects.. The username certainly has a great deal of weight on it's own, without needing to link it to my resume.
How else do you think people could be encouraged to have "weighty" reputations, so they don't want to give them up?
yes and if you google my username you won't find any connection to the "real me". Yet I (like to think I) am a responsible and constructive member of this forum.
"How else do you think people could be encouraged to have "weighty" reputations, so they don't want to give them up?"
I don't know. I don't even know if it is the right question to be asked.
Another approach is to remove identity from posts. The underlying idea is not unlike the idea behind the ITS "crash" command.
It may also be useful assigning downvotes to users not posts, to keep users unaware of totals, and possibly the votes on their articles.
As hacker news grows, there would come a time when a new news.news.ycombinator.com would be created taking with it a certain group of people that would form a more tight knit community similar to the way it was in the beginning. The stories and comments would flow up to news.ycombinator.com but not the other way.
Then repeated...
I think it's worked, to a degree, but it's somewhat at odds with the purpose- If X people want to be members of a community, I'd prefer to find a way to work together and ensure we all behave ourselves, rather splitting into small groups.
I'm honest curious- Would you agree that under ideal conditions, if everyone behaved, it would be better to be a larger group such that you could share disucssions, or would it be better to remain small, so that you know all the posters?
If you did want to remain small, how do you ensure the communities are of sufficient size to be viable even with people leaving?
Personally, I'd rather find ways of encouraging people to be on good behavior all of the time- That's something I liked about the applicants knowing their posts might be used as part of their YC application, and something that might work well if they posted under their real name.
Please don't sign comments, especially with your url. They're already signed
with your username. If other users want to learn more about you, they can click
on it to see your profile.
I'll remove them. Upon re-reading the thread I can certainly see how that might be frustrating, and counter to the intent.
I guess you could do it by changing your username (though you can't take your karma to your reincarnation - unlike real karma). But I like your present username.
If you google "e1ven", you see 14 pages, most of which are about me. My posts about the Zimbra mail server, the Freenet project, Slashdot comments, and the like.
That's far more expressive of my body of work/experience than my Facebook page, which I seldom use for anything, or my linked-in page, which I use as an addressbook which updates itself automatically.
The only advantage that those two do have is that they are specifically tied to my offline identity, which I can't easily change.
I am not sure if everyone behaved it would be better;
Comments would be better - there are two types of disruptive comments; people that are just being jackasses in comments, if they are over-the-top and constant, I say smoke them out of their cubes or basements and boot them off the site. Make it possible to just kill a comment chain. The others are either new or stupid and not much you can do to these people except mentor them and give positive re-enforcement.
Stories are the biggest issue because they are the basis for what I think is the most important part of hacker news and that's the comments. One reason I really like hacker news is the "Ask HN" feature. This allows me to skip the story and read the concept, question... and dive directly into the discussion.
People are not malicious in their story submission - It's not like there are links to child porn or nazi sites. So people aren't knowingly misbehaving. The problem is that there are lots of things that a lot of people won't find interesting.
I know personally I won't be offended or concerned because you or everyone thought my submission wasn't interesting. The reason being is that I most likely didn't write it, if I did then pride-of-ownership would come into play would I would be disappointed.
---
The topic of online community preservation has many parallels with "real-world" communities and even biological diversity, which means it will need to be solved by someone more advanced than me. If we could come to a conclusion on this for hacker news and apply it to the real-world we might get a noble prize.
I agree that the small communities have worked. FWIW, I've had more pleasant conversations in the quiet backwaters of reddit than here.
It seems to be a very hard problem - I'm just thankful that something has been found to help.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
HN is the first "community" I have ever given my real name to.
Being more like real-life isn't such a bad thing ;)