Comment by S_A_P | Hacker News Reader

Comment by S_A_P | Hacker News Reader

There always seems to be a touch of nostalgia for the good old days when situations like this come up. People undoubtedly yearn for the time when Hacker News was smaller and more close knit community. Ive been a member here for about 3 and a half years. I suppose that in that time, some of the quality has declined, but I really cant even say for sure that is the case. I think I have learned a lot here, and because of that I may perceive certain topics and discussions here not as stimulating as I did back when I joined.

As for downvotes, I reserve that for obvious trolling and overly snarky comments that just seem to be aimed at stirring the pot. I have noticed that some genuinely funny comments or puns based on the discussion get downvoted, which I disagree with. It may not add to the intellectual value, but I enjoy a good laugh as much as I enjoy learning.

I would agree with some of the sentiments here that the person probably deleted their question out of fear that they would "look dumb". I think experience has taught me that while Im not the smartest person out there, when something doesnt make sense to me, there is usually someone else that doesnt get it either. Ive also learned that people that react poorly to "stupid questions" are probably feeling defensive of their own knowledge/incompetence.

Anyway, I agree Colin, there is basic courtesy that if you are asking for help, it should be acknowledged and thanked when its provided. Nobody knows everything, and asking for help isnt a bad thing. So OWN your questions folks!!!

Small communities become insular festivals of group-think. Large communities become whitewashed noise full of trolls. There doesn't seem to be a way to "win".

There's always a healthy middle ground: form a community with healthy cultural norms in matters of politeness, courtesy, intellectual rigor - all elements of form - while encouraging the greatest possible diversity of substance. Make it clear to people that be adhering to the norms of form, they'll be a welcomed member of the community, without being censured for the actual substance of their arguments, but merely argued against politely by those who disagree. (Sure, there are people who take any counter-argument as a personal insult, but that's just one of the things we need strong cultural norms against.)

I suppose it's a challenge to maintain this sort of pattern as a community scales, which is why sites like HN, Reddit, StackExchange, etc. all try to incorporate incentives and constraints into the mechanics of discussion to attempt to reinforce certain styles of participation, with varying success. In this situation, a simple mechanic to prevent people from doing what OP is complaining about would be to prevent comments from being deleted once they've been replied to.

It bugs me when I see long streams of deleted comments on Reddit, too - it'd be an interesting experiment to treat posts and comments in a discussion forum like wiki pages - freely editable at any time by the poster, but with the full edit history always available to see.

> I have noticed that some genuinely funny comments or puns based on the discussion get downvoted, which I disagree with. It may not add to the intellectual value, but I enjoy a good laugh as much as I enjoy learning.

I used to constantly crack jokes to one of my work colleagues, yet she hardly ever laughed at them. One day I uttered a joke which she merely scorned at, a few minutes later another colleague uttered exactly the same joke and she started giggling. At that I moment I realised that she was deeply prejudiced towards me. It would explain why she would often shout at me, insult me and even threaten me with violence.

My humour served a very serious purpose, it exposed someone as being an emotional sadist.

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