New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
blog.ycombinator.com
blog.ycombinator.com
That's what I find worthy of being changed, and I will certainly make an effort to read comments more charitably as well.
Overall though, and I realize this is quite anecdotal, rampant negativity - especially about things other members of the community have created - seems to have gotten less common recently.
Steelmanning an argument means to go one step further. In addition to selecting the most charitable parts of another person's argument, one seeks to improve on it, by making it the best possible representation of the other persons position.
From there, one can offer their own counterpoint, to this improved version.
[1] https://themerelyreal.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/steelmanning/
Accepting an offer means to build on it in some way, as a real part of the scene - in the way you mean.
A block is when you ignore or undermine the offer, denying it instead of building on it. There's temptation to do so for a cheap laugh. The uncharitable negativity of HN seems similar.
[1] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2013/18.html, para 21.
Drew Houston describes the HN feedback he received for Dropbox as all the motivation he needed to keep going. He also explained that he knew it was a hit because of how many people were saying negative things.
Today though, any truly critical comment means you're either a hater or a troll. Every person is either a friend or an enemy. Inside the club or outside the club. You can't sincerely like something, and also be very critical about aspects of it, without instantly transforming into a jealous hater.
Assuming the worst about other people is probably the most negative thing you can do. Everyone is a mixed bag.
Voicing legitimate and non-pedantic disagreement in a polite manner is to me one of the major features HN offers, simply because it's a collection of interesting people.
Myself, I don't always agree with the majority opinion either. For example, I disagree with Sam's opinion about AGI, and even though that particular comment was received quite badly, I never meant it to be anything else but an invitation to see things from another perspective.
Other times because I'm trying to rip it to shreds. It's probably impossible to tell for someone online which mode I am in.
Most get negative reviews, few are hits. The irony is that I've seen that thread and I thought it was generally well-received.
This is like the phenomenon examined in this 2005 paper: Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?[1]
From the abstract:
> Without the benefit of paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation, it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over electronic mail. [...] this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can.
When we read a HN comment negatively, we should second guess our interpretation of it before we reply. We may not have perceived it the way the author intended.
Likewise when writing comments, we should ask ourselves if our wording might be received more negatively than we realize.
[1] http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/krugeretal05....
I suppose it's possible there's also some sort of face-to-face feel with chat that encourages sympathetic responses.
Part of this issue is what at Stackoverflow was called the "Fastest Gun in the West Problem" [1].
I think a successful strategy on HN is: Write many comments really quickly and take the risk that some of them are bad or even wrong. The incentive for being an early commenter outbalances the penalty for being wrong sometimes.
[1] http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/10/solving-the-fastest-gu...
> How to compose a successful critical commentary:
> 1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
> 2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
> 3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
> 4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/28/daniel-den...
I add thoughts here: http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/01/28/links-for-january-2015...
The point is that it lets people feel like they've been heard and understood.
A made up example using something that is about as subjective as possible: No, that's wrong, strawberries are awful.
(just changing that to "I disagree, ..." gets rid of a lot of the nonsense)
There also ends up being a lot of what is essentially squabbling, comments going back and forth over what someone meant, or pedantically squishing some point that had done a good enough job of transmitting the idea (I'm all for being careful when it matters, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter all the time).
On the other hand, my favorite professor would often come out with an interpretation of what someone said that was levels more intelligent than what was said. Then the reaction would be surprise or even delight on the part of the other. (Sometimes, I think this was a deliberate tactic to keep the conversation on a higher level.)
One of the smartest men I've ever met.
HN does do a good job of weeding out uselessly negative comments and other trolling behavior. If you want proof of that, go to your profile and turn on "Show Dead". It is amazing to see how many people are shadow banned yet continue to post on a daily basis. I've seen several accounts that have posted daily for years completely unaware nobody is seeing anything they post. They know nobody has ever upvoted or downvoted their comment or replied to it but just can't seem to make the connection that they're shadow banned.
I may be in the minority here, but I do not consider this a good result for anyone.
"No, it's actually this way" vs "Have you considered the possibility that it's this way?" carries the same information with drastically different results.
This is the reason I stopped reading HN as much, just as I stopped reading comments everywhere else on the internet. I don't want to tiptoe through arguments trying to preventively push aside all possible misinterpretations or people trying to put words in my mouth.
This is not critical thinking, this is just cynic criticism.
I don't even want charitable interpretation necessarily—I just want close reading and reasonably deep understanding of the topic! For example, the top reply to this comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8941152 totally misses the plot.
Looking through my recent comment history, though, I'm impressed at the overall quality of the responses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
It has been studied in detail with respect to computer mediated communications as far back as the dawn of email and the tendency of readers to assign a lot more negativity to the emails they receive then their senders ever intended.
And the saddest part is not seeing the interlocutor full of himself and completely ignoring the fact that, by not using this principle, he makes his own argument weaker (showing that his intelligence didn't reached those heights).
The saddest part is the public false victory because depending on the peers (audience), he will likely be perceived as in a stronger position when the opposite is true.
Let's see, here are the possibilities:
1. Someone means well, you interpret it as them meaning well and respond accordingly. Everything is fine and dandy, everyone's happy. 2. Someone means well, and you interpret them as meaning ill, and respond accordingly. Now you are angry for no reason, they have had the experience of making a well meaning comment and being shot down for it. Everyone is miserable. 3. Someone means ill, and you interpret it as them meaning ill, and respond accordingly. Now they have gotten the thrill of getting through to you (remember, they mean ill, so that is their intent), and you are angry (for a good reason). You've made yourself miserable and a troll happy. 4. Someone means ill, and you interpret it as them meaning well and respond accordingly. Now they don't get the pleasure of having bothered you, you have shrugged it off an it's not great loss to you. You are now happier than option 3, and they haven't had a chance to hurt you like they meant to.
Of course, real life isn't quite a simple as that; but that does cover a very large number of possible interactions on the internet. By biasing yourself toward the most charitable interpretation of others comments, you reduce the risk of a simple misunderstanding leading to everyone being unhappy, reduce the risk of just giving a troll exactly what they want, and contribute to a more positive environment in general.
It really does help out in an awful lot of cases, and reduces friction dramatically if you always assume good faith unless you have very compelling evidence to the contrary.
Because doing so contributes to the community and not doing so harms it.
When you respond to the strongest interpretation of a comment, you're responding to what's most substantive in it. That raises the signal/noise ratio for everybody, and curiosity is what we're trying to optimize for.
Wrongly assume the best: It quickly becomes apparent, things move forward, you may even steer things in a better direction.
Wrongly assume the worst: You look like a jerk, possibly demotivated people or made them feel bad, and now there is an air of conflict that needs to be ventilated by unnecessarily defensive comments.
The best outcome for HN is if we as a community converge on the right answer.
Now if someone brings argues poorly, but for the right answer, and then someone comes along and crushes the poor argument. Then the counter-arguer "wins" and succeeds in humiliating the "opponent". But the the wrong answer wins, and that is bad for the community
If on the other hand, someone comes along, reinforces the poor argument, and then brings a weak counterargument, then that gives the right answer a better chance of winning.
However, it takes two to tango; worthwhile discussion is a cooperative venture. There's systematic reasons why a forum is incapable of reaching a certain level. Take Twitter and misogyny. (Or HN for that matter; Twitter's rampant death threats shouldn't lower expectations when evaluating other forums.)
More generally - the failure to r e a d the article/parent comment etc.
(People who disagree with me seems particularly prone to this :-P )
There is hope: one of my best received comments was a gentle chiding of someone who had belittled someone's comment.
EDIT: I'm surprised that I got a downvote on this comment. I think that illustrates the problem.
I think it illustrates the problem with "sometimes UI elements get clicked without intent" and "HN has no way to undo up/downvotes".
In fact, I can say that with authority, since I was the one who made the accidental click.
The prevailing attitude here is sort of vague lefty-"liberal", basically what you'd expect from, well, a bunch of college students and recent graduates who don't take politics too seriously and live in places like SF and NYC.
Sometimes when I've said something perfectly reasonable and then gotten downvoted, I've realized that in fact my statement was unclear and liable to be misunderstood. The downvotes have helped me to write more clearly, and they're more charitable than rude rejoinders.
[I didn't downvote you. Your statements were perfectly reasonable to me.]
Seriously, it's a slippery slope. "Nothing of substance" is a term that needs more clarification that what that post provides. It seems to suggest that if the criticism is too harsh, then it's no longer substantial. I think there's a better guideline than that.
The best ideas not only can withstand criticism, they get better with criticism. If you examine what's being revealed about Apple and Steve Jobs -- the most successful company in the world right now -- it's not that they avoided criticism. And contrary to rumors it's not that they didn't nurture seemingly "dumb" ideas. Jobs would toss them out there all the time, by his own admission. Nurturing crazy young creative ideas and rigorous critical analysis are both part of Apple's process.
Apple's secret is that the criticism is directed at the idea not the person. That is what defines "nothing of substance": the target of the criticism, not the intensity. If it's about the idea, that's substantial, even if it's harsh. If it becomes personal, then that's truly not adding substance.
You "throw it in the cauldron" and then rigorously debate everything in the pot in a manner divorced from the people who contributed it. That's how you boil it down to the best stuff, not by holding back.
I see where you're coming from though. The comments on HN, while often being negative, and almost entirely constructive. I try reading the comments at product hunt from time to time, and while all the "beautifully designed" and "i've been using this since [earlier than you] and i love it" comments are nice and surely make the developers feel good they inevitably add nothing of value to the submission, and as far as providing useful context to the submitted link they may as well not exist.
Banning personal attacks, but allowing unlimited criticism of ideas, is more of an objective guideline.
We could, but I don't see any evidence that there is an amount of that going around that requires an addition to the guidelines.
Instead we end up with this slippery slope of certain types of negativity vs. others and all it really means is the mods have a blank check to remove anything they don't like that isn't meaningless happy fun compliments.
The way this stuff really works out is in practice, so judge it based on what you see actually happening on HN. The intention here is pretty modest: to nudge the community slightly in the hope that the culture will grow a little more aligned with the guidelines. We're not interested in false positivity either.
That doesn't mean this isn't a big deal. Gratuitous negativity is a hard problem because it's mostly unintentional. That's why the most important part of this is asking the community to gently give commenters feedback when they see it. Any significant effect of this guideline change will not be in what moderators do, but in what the community does. Given the quantity of comments posted to HN, there aren't enough moderators to make that big a dent by direct intervention anyhow. We like it that way.
I believe downvoting a comment that I disagree with is often far better for HN than expressing my passionate "well informed" opinion. Downvoting prevents my inclination toward "trolling lite" in the form of explaining how someone is obviously wrong for the sake of correcting the internet.
To put it another way, downvotes are for downvoting. Downvoting and moving on is the right choice whenever it proxies the possibility of worse behavior. A downvote can be a way of mocking out a flamewar or general meanness.
- The extra effort will slow down causal unthoughtful down-votes.
- If there is no justification, the down-voter can be down-voted in turn presumably by a greater degree.
- Any pattern of abuse can easily be seen in user profiles.
I'm actually surprised to see people here complaining about downvotes being used to disagree with comments. A large chunk of HN users can't even downvote. And I can't remember the last time I saw a gray comment that wasn't gray for a really good reason.
If you're serious about downvoting, it's no trouble to type in a short explanation such as "incorrect", "not funny", "obvious troll", "unnecessarily rude". (Those seem to be some typical reasons for downvotes.)
And if you're not quite sure why you're downvoting, having to explain would certainly serve as a determent.
I do wish, however, that there were simply two voting options: one for up/down on the page and one for agree/disagree. Just to give us all something to do when we disagree with a comment, other than reply or downvote. It would give "disagree" downvotes their own place and let the other votes dictate a comment display order and user karma. Of course, it would also be interesting to see a user with high karma and high disagree score, for example.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
I don't know if he's made another comment on this issue since then.
Shouldn't flagging a post/topic be generally used for a guideline violation?
At the end of the day, a good comment will always get more upvotes based on its perceived quality than downvotes from people mis-using the downvote feature. I credit this to the fact that you only get downvoting privileges at 500 points, at which point, you've been around long enough to have a sense of the HN culture. At 500 points, you feel like you're receiving a great power that comes with great responsibility.
> It's an awful experience
It can be, if taken the wrong way. It's important to stress that one shouldn't get too freaked out over losing some meaningless internet points over what may have very well been a misclick. Keeping this in mind, it has not been an awful experience for me when I've been downvoted. I wouldn't even say it's been a bad experience for me.
> Most people use to show they disagree with a comment.
I think this is only true when the reasoning or tone is poor - or at least that's the only case the negatives outweigh the positives. I've seen exceedingly few downvotes when I've disagreed and argued here on HN.
As an extreme example, I've seen a thread advocating Cannibalism in a serious tone gain rating, due to it's solid reasoning and proper treatment of the pros and cons of the matter. More typical topics behave similarly - constructive, well reasoned disagreement gains more points than it looses. This on a forum unlike HN - in that, I believe, you could downvote immediately upon account creation.
It's gotten to a point that I'm not sure downvoting is a net positive for the community any more.
EDIT- example, this comment was downvoted in less than 2 minutes after it was posted. Did this voting improve the conversation or the community?
Of course, any comment about downvotes is also, understandably, frowned upon and discouraged so there doesn't seem to be much recourse.
We could avoid political or ideological topics altogether but that's very hard considering any conversation can lead to them.
To get back on track, I see it as an extremely hard problem to solve since downvoting due to disagreement is a very big temptation and, once you start, you might not even notice you're doing it anymore.
Perhaps instead of a down arrow the icon is a circle with a slash?
Is it just regular negative of me to say statements like that one are horrible, or it is gratuitously negative? Am I being a critical thinker when I say that, whenever I hear people make statement like that one, they are usually weaseling into some businessey doublespeak that roughly translates into "people like me can be negative, people like you cannot, but I refuse to say that outright." Or is that shallow cynicism?
I get your general message, Sam. And while I don't agree with it, I see how enforcing some unwritten "gratuitous negativity" code could improve HN discussions (I just don't think it would). But I do not know of any place on the internet where I find better discussions on daily news; so my opinion: when it's this great already, why do some vague micro-morality-management thing like this to try to change it?
You may be right that not many places on the internet are better, but HN can and should be much better than it is. Rather than measuring it against rampant internet negativity of today, we should measure it against a future online community where people have learned to refrain from taking their negative feelings out on others.
It no doubt took a long time for people to (mostly) learn how not to do that in person, so it's not surprising if takes us a while to learn not to do it online.
If you'd just said that, I'd say "regular negative", but also non-constructive and useless and the kind of thing I'd downvote for being non-constructive. But when you go one with this:
> Am I being a critical thinker when I say that, whenever I hear people make statement like that one, they are usually weaseling into some businessey doublespeak that roughly translates into "people like me can be negative, people like you cannot, but I refuse to say that outright."
...you aren't engaging with the idea that you are responding to, but making an unsubstantiated generalization that is worse than even just directly inventing a motivation to ascribe to the author of the idea you are responding to, because you are instead doing so for other people and using it a base for a guilt by association attack on the author of the idea you are responding to rather than engaging with the merits of the idea itself.
> Or is that shallow cynicism?
At best.
That is gratuitously negative because you are not contributing anything to the conversation except your opinion. While everyone tends to think their own opinion is an incredibly valuable gift to the world, the world rarely receives it as such.
> Am I being a critical thinker when I say that, whenever I hear people make statement like that one, they are usually weaseling into some businessey doublespeak that roughly translates into "people like me can be negative, people like you cannot, but I refuse to say that outright."
You've taken a simple sentence of a few words, expanded it into a nebulous category of "statement[s] like that one", inferred motivation, and taken it as an assault on "people like you".
That's "critical thinking" if you use the definition of critical meaning "negative" but not the more valuable sort of criticism based on empirical evidence and carefully considered logic.
Now, if you'd presented examples of how previous arguments have been called "gratuitous" but in fact contained substantial contributions in terms of facts and logic, or vice versa, because of the status of the individuals involved, then you would have a real argument rather than just a vague expression of cynicism, and I for one would not call that "gratuitous negativity".
Well, I know of a place on the Internet where I used to find better discussions: Hacker News. I think Sam is attempting to push HN back toward what it used to be.
There should simply be a confirmation step after hitting submit, reminding the poster that they are valued for their positive contribution and giving the poster the chance to rethink their post and cancel if its too negative. Additionally when posting, require people to self-rate the level of negativity of their post when they submit from one to ten. Publish that number along with the post.
There's nothing at the moment that explicitly asks or reminds people of expectations when they post. What is it that makes you think posters know there is an expectation not to be negative? People don't read the community guidelines every time they post, UNLESS key points of the guidelines are presented to them.
The community moderation system, what it ends up being, will be gamed and abused and alienate and anger people. Don't do it. Witness the toxic mess of StackOverflow.
HN is not in a position right now to express concern about negative posts because it is not explicitly asking people to avoid negative posting, at the time that they post, and requiring the user to think about it. That is step one.
HN would be implementing a passive-aggressive solution by going to an indirect system that continues to allow people to post negatively and then gets the community to police it later. Address it up-front, at the time of posting. Let people be responsible for their own posts. Asked to think it through, posters will dial back the negativity.
It seems like the reason HN will come up with a new moderation system is because dang isn't going to stay moderator for the rest of his life.
I sometimes feel bad HN has claimed so much of his time. It must be at least slightly depressing to constantly deal with the worst parts of HN. We should send him a thank-you card or a cake or something.
There are other candidates for moderator, of course, but would they be as thoughtful? As careful? Will they have the presence of mind to avoid hellbanning people if it would make the HN mod team appear in a bad light, as in this very comment section? (The squabble near the top of this post was HN at its worst, but dang probably couldn't ban anyone involved without giving the wrong impression.)
One thing's for sure: A community moderation system definitely won't. But a community moderation system might be a better alternative to a careless moderator, since at least the poor decisions can be appealed.
But that would probably be the first time in the history of the internet that something like that worked. So hopefully it will work.
If not, I imagine the HN team will do what they've always done: undo the bad decision and think of something else. They're nothing if not persistent and creative.
The OP's blog post suggests that "Gentle reminders by peers" will make the culture better. I think these gentle reminders by peers in practice will whip everyone into a frenzy of hunting for negativity, naming negativity, blaming for negativity, being defensive about negativity, judging and feeling judged, anger, outrage and despair with constant accusations and counter accusations about the definition of negativity.
Some negativity is normal and natural and okay. HN wants less of it, so they should just ask people to make their own self assessment of their post at the moment of posting. Problem mostly solved, but it's pointless to try to completely solve it - the concept of negativity is open to interpretation and therefore everyone will have a different opinion.
I think plenty of people will tone it back after being forced to judge their own negativity.
New users are asked to read the guidelines when they post. I don't know how long that reminder stays there, but there's a linkto the guidelines right under the text entry box.
"How negative is this post?" 0: not negative 10: it's snarky
Unfortunately, some of the qualities that make a good technical problem solver can also lead to nitpikcing. It feels like trying to find the bugs in an argument. That can be useful, but only when it ties to the core idea rather than some tangential point. Top comments often sound like, "Well, technically, you're wrong on this one unimportant fact you mentioned briefly."
I'm glad HN is taking steps to ensure that feedback is constructive.
So my question becomes thus: how do you define constructive? I, personally, have run across multiple instances of one person's constructive and actionable feedback being another's gratuitously negative useless nitpicky feedback.
No. In fact, cynicism can be a herd-like behavior.
> Doesn't cynicism help to temper what may otherwise become a rah-rah echo chamber?
No, it doesn't. It might add another problem on top, but that doesn't actually make things better.
> To me, this policy seems like a way to squash otherwise-potentially-valid criticism
If it is valid, on-topic criticism, it isn't gratuitous negativity.
> or cynicism
Discouraging plain cynicism as distinguished from reasoned criticism is, IMO, a positive benefit.
> Under the new policy, my comment could be considered gratuitously negative, no?
I don't see how.
No, your comment would be fine. The idea is, if you're going to be negative, at least be thoughtful about how you want to say it. Looking at it a different way, if you're negative, do you take the pleasure from being honest or from being dramatic? If you take pleasure from being honest, there's nothing stopping you from being both honest and welcoming. If you want to be dramatic, do it as a joke, but don't do it to boost your ego, and go after the idea rather than the person. There are ways to have your cake and eat it.
For whatever its worth, I don't see this comment as "gratuitously negative". You're not posting just to get a rise, you're leaving people with something substantive to reply to by way of expanding on your viewpoint (a "this sucks" comment doesn't do that).
Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs are Italian, the Mechanics German, the lovers French and it is all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the police are German, the chefs British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss and it is all organized by the Italians.
[1] http://www.happyhotelier.com/2008/06/01/quote-of-the-day-no-...
They address some non-obvious behaviors that tend to stunt conversation. It'd be nice to see some of those guidelines bleed over into the HN community.
The "no-subtleisms" rule is designed to hinder the spread of information about the differences of different groups. "It's so easy my grandmother could do it" is supposedly bad because it reminds us that there is a group, old people, who are not like us. Focusing on differences can create a hostile us-vs-them climate. But it can also remind us that there is a world outside of SV. That there are other people with other abilities and skills, with other problems that need solving. In this particular case it can remind us that if we want to target old people with a product, to make sure it is easy to use.
We want the Recurse Center to be a space with as little bigotry as possible in it.
and yet their financial aid policies are explicitly discriminatory [2]:
The Recurse Center is free for everyone, and we offer need-based living expense grants for women and people from racial and ethnic groups traditionally underrepresented in programming.
In other words, poor white and Asian men can attend, but they don't qualify for any extra support. This is an "ism", but there's nothing subtle about it.
I find that emotion and enthusiasm can lead to gratuitous negativity without even realizing it, as those things don't always translate well to plain text. Aside from posts, this applies to emails and texts.
Since I started this, I am almost never accused of coming across in a negative tone, even when I want to convey disappointment or other negative emotions. There's usually always a way to craft it so that it's perceived as constructive criticisms, and thus, well received.
Write with emotion, and proof read without.
As a bonus, I rarely make spelling or grammatical errors, except occasionally out of ignorance.
Guidelines like this should have specific examples to aid in their definitions so we can criticize or agree with them. What could be considered "mean" to someone emotional/thin skinned, might be interpreted as helpful criticism to someone not so sensitive.
Sometimes it's really hard to say something respectfully negative (oxymoron), and even harder for it to be interpreted as respectful. I, for one, appreciate when people talk trash to me (especially when I'm wrong). It's an awakening I sometimes don't get from a less firm/colorful counterargument.
A thought experiment. If you and some others are in a car, and it's just driven off a cliff, and as you are falling you say to the other occupants, "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here!" is that gratuitous negativity? No, it's the truth.
Most people, in this car, don't want to hear the truth. As they say, ignorance is bliss. Stop being so negative! Saying we've driven off a cliff is getting me down! So shutup!
The thing is, reality is not all sunshine and rainbows. There are some very hard realities unfolding in the world right now. Remove the ability to make negative comments and now you can't criticise things. The car driving off the cliff is a metaphor for our society which now openly tortures, wages a never ending false war on terror, and is a government of wolves that's using incrementalism to roll out a police state. We double tap drone strike weddings, we snoop on every communication on the planet. And when it's found out, absolutely nothing changes, because we are already captured. We are already prisoners.
This is not negativity. This is reality. This is the truth. Some people, when faced with this, want to shake people, wake them up and say 'lets fix this'. But most want to bury their head in the sand. They want to gag the words. They want to shoot the messenger. And then go back to sleep in their ivory tower, hoping that they will die of old age before the consequences really come home to roost.
For a group of supposedly smart people, this is incredibly dumb. I've just finished reading Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" to try and get a better understanding of the societal structure of prisons and punishment to better understand the times I live in. And most of what's in that book would be deemed by a lot of people here as 'gratuitous negativity'. And yet Foucault was one of the great minds of our time. Under this guideline his ideas are no longer welcome. And so it goes.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell
In your case of the car falling off a cliff, perhaps it is gratuitous negativity to say "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here!" but it's not gratuitous negativity to say "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here because this car is falling towards the ground at high speed due to gravity and motion and we're all about to die!"
I think if there is at least some reasoning shown with the negativity, the argument is more clear and others can learn from it.
Again, I could have misunderstood both the OP and your comment, if so I apologize.
No you don't.
Negativity isn't the problem--gratuitous negativity is. By that we mean negativity that adds nothing of substance to a comment. This includes all forms of meanness.
That's enough for reasonable people to get the idea. Trying to force precision here would take us down a rabbit hole.
Niceness/meanness is more often than not entirely subjective, relative, and arbitrary. Trying to create an objective definition for a subjective concept is going to end in frustration for a lot of people.
Personally, I started frequenting HN mostly because the community was not only smaller, but also more up-front about its opinions. I've come to expect and appreciate a blunt, direct criticism from the folks here, and would hate to see even the harsher end of that go away. The Theo de Raadts and Linus Torvadses of the world say "mean" things sometimes, but 93.8% of the time, those "mean" things need to be said.
Reasonable people can disagree about the boundaries of most things in the existing guidelines. But the guidelines aren't intended as behavior definitions for a computing system, there met as guidelines to be applied by humans to a human community, so fuzzy boundaries are normal, and trying to create excessively crisp boundaries for that task is usually counterproductive.
I wonder though - how (if we take it to unlikely worst case scenario) would it affect how the behaviour of certain well known personalities such as Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds is viewed in the future where any form of negativity is censored against?
Remember that the guideline is against "gratuitous negativity", not "negativity" in general. HN will still be a place where actual crap gets called crap, but hopefully this means that we'll see less middlebrow criticism and more actually substantive comments.
I second the request for examples -- "gratuitous" is subjective, and until better moderation tools exist, it would be nice if the community has some standards around who to issue "gentle reminders" to.
It would also be nice to have the guidelines be in a more prominent spot than the bottom of the page -- it's hard to notice them as is.
And who or what decides what is "gratuitous". This is a recipe for despotism and censorship.
I can think of several ideas actually implemented in human history that were much worse.
> And who or what decides what is "gratuitous".
FTFA: "How are we going to enforce this? By asking the community to do so. Gentle reminders by peers are the best way we know to make the culture better."
> This is a recipe for despotism and censorship.
I don't see how that is any more true of the HN guidelines with this addition than it was of the HN guidelines without it. Could you, perhaps, flesh out the basis for this conclusion?
Negative feedback might be necessary for the commenter to feel better.
This a community. Was there a "we think we may have a gratuitous negativity problem" discussion?
Thin end of the wedge, perhaps. I hope not.
(From the article) "Too much gratuitous negativity might be the difference between someone giving up on a crazy idea and building the next Airbnb."
If negative, anonymous feedback here disuades and disenchants them, what hope is there?
Are we going to have a Safe Place section of the site, to protect applicants from all bad things?
Bad things happen. Mean people will say mean things on the Internet. Life is hard.
I (previously) used the average karma/contribution on my profile page to self-police by trying to maintain an average around at least 3. Any idea why it was removed? Will it be coming back in some form? Any ideas on other ways to make sure I'm staying positive on here?
We got rid of average because (a) after looking extensively at the data we didn't see any value in it, (b) we had evidence of people gaming the metric, (c) its implementation was complicated, and most importantly (d) we think upvotes are wrong thing to optimize for. Optimize for saying substantive things.
That sounds really interesting. I'm curious what kind of additional moderation capabilities this potentially includes. In particular, personally I'm less interested in the moderation ability to more heavily bury or downvote awful comments or stories, and more interested in the ability to "rescue" something that's been excessively flagged/downvoted.
Perhaps for those people seeking feedback who want brutally raw, might-hurt-a-bit honesty, a special flag can be set inviting all manner of such comments. I know I'd elect for that, and would be disappointed with anything less. Spicy internet discussion can flush out the pipes of a concept and invigorate thoughtful discussion quite efficiently. It can also derail, but it's worth the risk IMHO.
One psychological aspect of this is the need to feel that one is right. Smart technical people can become addicted to this, but it's the wrong thing to optimize for if you care about curiosity, which it kills.
I agree with the principle, but in practice, it is too subjective. Reasonable people can - and will - disagree as to what is warranted and what they consider justifiable.
Now, if it was well-defined, that would be something else. But I don't see any way of doing so, humanity being such as it is.
Anyone with a product to share should want feedback. Doesn't mean that person needs to act on it.
Also, if you are criticized, take a second to think about it before immediately defending yourself.
The worst Show HN threads are where the OP feels the need to respond to every comment on the board to defend his or her project.
Learn to take the criticism.
Positivity is nice, but criticism is what chips away at the block of marble until it becomes a beautiful statue.
HN has long ago become something of a joke to the rest of the English-speaking internet at large. When a great many people you know and respect "can't be bothered with that site", you should be concerned.
For those of you thinking this is somehow unnecessary, let me remind you that genius will only take you so far. Good social skills get you the rest of the way. Look at this as an opportunity for self-improvement where you may not recognize that you need some.
How about an extra pair of vote-buttons to classify a comment as "positive/negative" (karma-neutral)?
I often find the karma-system frustratingly one-dimensional.
Experiments in that direction are of course a slippery slope, but what place other than a hacker forum could be a better petri dish?
If you write a response, before sending it go back through and edit it, think about removing unneeded negativity now that you have a fully fleshed post.
If your post starts with "No." or "You're wrong." consider removing those and just letting your argument stand on its own.
Consider using softer and more charitable words like "mistaken" instead of "wrong". Usually that's what is meant in most cases anyway.
Avoid the backdoor route to building a strawman, don't add unspecified details or intensity to a post that isn't there. Doing so makes it easier to get on a high horse, but usually that isn't warranted. Get used to having a genial exchange of views with a slight difference of opinion, it's not necessary for every "argument" to be a fight to the death.
Try to read posts by others more charitably, and take the time to apologize for mistakes you've made or times you've let your emotions get the better of your reason.
Upvote comments you disagree with that are well made and lead to a good discussion.
Do you have advice how to figure out if someone is responding in bad faith, and what to do in those situations ?
EDIT: > Avoid the backdoor route to building a strawman, don't add unspecified details or intensity to a post that isn't there.
What if you must add details to clarify what the context of the post is ? ex .Water is liquid. I reply But Water is solid when below freezing.
Maybe the issue isn't so much negativity as it is sensitivity.
HN guidelines do not address whether a person is good or bad (or "terrible").
> and wouldn't be allowed to post here for very long before he was hell banned.
You assume that Torvalds, if he choose to participate in HN, would apply the same mode of interaction he applies in different contexts with different expectations.
While, certainly, there are people who are unable to adjust their mode of interaction based on what is appropriate in different contexts, I don't see that it is clear that Torvalds is among them.
> Maybe the issue isn't so much negativity as it is sensitivity.
Or maybe the issue is that what lots of people want out of HN isn't the same kind of environment in which the actions of Torvalds to which you are obliquely referring occur.
Further, I suspect (though I hope I'm wrong) that a rule like this could end up causing the same issues that people here complain about with Stack Overflow. Namely, we'll end up with a brigade of people who feel it's their job to keep the "gratuitous negativity" to a minimum. The only problem is that everyone will have a different idea of what constitutes "gratuitous". But I hope to be proven wrong!
Let's see. HN is experimental, and this is just another experiment. If it works, it will be because community members help shift the culture in a higher-quality direction.
That, by the way, is also how newcomers find out about these things. Rules don't communicate themselves, but culture does.
For example, I often say intentionally chaotic things in relation to Microsoft stories because we have a history and this reflects my current impression of that company.
That said, I find a lot of their recent changes, open source contributions, and future plans very agreeable and sometimes amazing and I try to point that out.
So, is it ok to dredge up their past transgressions if I can simultaneously make positive observations regarding MSFT's future?
Even though I tinge towards the negative/chaos, I notice that I can 'score' better with people whenever I put effort into the quality of my writing.
Obviously there's a line where a comment becomes predominantly mean.
The only concern I have is that one day it takes too much cognitive overhead to post an insightful comment that happens to be negative.
Couldn't help it.
It is fairly easy to be negative. In fact, the cynical approach is the easiest point of view you can take. I have been working on this myself, and I encourage everyone to try and go the whole day/week/month practicing the opposite.
I think this has to do with how we are taught. Critical thinking somewhere down the line gave justification to being 'gratuitously negative'. I went my whole life thinking that I was being helpful when in reality I was just hurting people.
Looking through my comment history, I have a few times previously. We're all fallible, but at the same time this sort of negativity can come through without intending it. I'm really caring and optimistic, so to see some of my comments become unintentionally overly negative is kind of humbling.
Let's all remember how easy this is to do and keep an eye on ourselves. It matters.
Good tools already exist to do automated sentiment analysis. It would be extremely interesting to build forum software for HN that detects when a commenter is going too far with negativity and then gently guides that person to tone it down a bit while the comment is still being composed.
Maybe a few gentle prompts at the right moment is all it really takes.
We do intend to try it, though, when we have the cycles. It might be useful as a supplement, or if nothing else a fun experiment.
* Comments that are insightful and informative overall, and recognized by the community for being so, will still get dinged for one poor choice of phrase.
* Comments that are critical of anything outside the already-obvious zeitgeist, but worded passive-aggressively enough that their actual gratuitous negativity and chilling effect can be explained away, will get a pass.
This will have less of an effect on negativity than on diversity of opinion.
Moreover one can claim "gratuitous positivity" is the bigger danger.
That's a comparison of apples and oranges. Critical thinking is something you do, i.e. an action. Cynicism is an attribute of a person.
This essentially tells that a cynic, i.e. the person as a whole, should not contribute in the case he/she is shallow. Whatever 'shallow' means in the context of a point of view developed from years of experience.
So even if such a 'shallow cynic' is critically thinking he/she is excluded as per that statement.
I'd rephrase that statement using a word like sarcasm (that is actually an action and not a statement about a person) since the guidelines should not criticize persons but their actions, which is – by the way – the right way to phrase negative feedback.
Reminds me of that Key & Peele skit: https://youtu.be/naleynXS7yo
Mr Zuckerberg and his team must have had similar conversations at Facebook when people keep asking him about whether or not to add a 'dis-like' button. He said publicly that although he did not agree with a thumbs down button, he did see a need for another button which would acknowledge a post.
Say for example, if someone posts about bereaving a lost loved one. Others may not want to hit a 'like' button in that context but would love to hit an alternative 'acknowledge / agree' button.
This is melodrama. Ignoring the negativity in comments on an internet message board has got to rank as one of the smallest possible challenges a startup can face.
I've had some people talk some mad shit about intercooler.js and yet, after engaging them a bit, I learned some very useful things.
Its ok for people to be dumb, and for ideas or products to be shit. They exist / will keep coming. But if you want to actually contribute to the discussion, ask questions instead of belittling them. Try to steer them in the right direction instead of trying to get them to jump off the tracks entirely. Building stuff is hard, presenting things to your peers is nerve wrecking. Armchairs are comfy to speak from, but they don't move anything forward.
#Meanreal. #Votereal. #Censereal. #Sensereal. #Centreal. . #Traumareal. #Painreal.
Good comments seem to me to have the same characteristics - insight, good will, lessons from experience, novelty, thoughtfulness. Strongly held, polarising and poorly explained opinions aren't one of those characteristics.
I myself have written comments which start with a negative comment, and then through fleshing it out arrive at a more moderate position at the end... at which point I go back and change the first sentence. Don't just write the first sentence...
@SamA what more "severe" approaches did you consider and why did you decide they wouldn't work? This is a difficult challenge.
Arguing politely (read: effectively) is a skill that takes a long time to learn. These uncultured kids will show up every year, and it would be quite a leap to attribute it to anything but the steady passage of time.
Some comments would (and do) have a negative impact on me. Other more objective comments or advice, though still sometimes hard to take when it is criticism, should be expressed freely.
It's amazing just how many arguments reduce to nothing if you discard those that don't apply the principle of charity.
There are some fair criticisms to be made of HN being a little insular and exclusive. (The leader board, for example—not that we emphasize it or even like it—moves in geological time.) We plan eventually to work on that to encourage more up-and-comers. But how a guideline against gratuitous negativity could discourage any outsiders except trolls is beyond me. It's dismaying that anyone would think so, so please let us know your concerns.
In all seriousness, the line between a valuable piece of criticism and gratuitous negativity seems like a fine line, and one of the things I like about HN is that there is usually intelligent criticism in the comments. This seems like it goes against that...
You will learn to grow a thick skin, but also, to absorb any useful feedback from whatever source it might come from.
1. Negativity or skepticism against announcements related hacking or engineering projects is not beneficial unless it's very detailed or insightful. If you don't like it, move on. Don't give your two cents if it's critique.
2. Negativity or skepticism against announcements related to science should be default (unless they come from top notch publications like Nature or Science). The quality of science news and press releases related to science is abysmal. People consume science hype almost like religious people listen sermons about heaven and don't even realize it. Popularized science posted in HN is 99% rubbish.
– Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, 1930
In particular, it's not clear where constructive criticism ends and gratuitous negativity starts.
Q. Does everyone get equal access to moderation? If so, will equal access cause a skew in moderation?
> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.
Parallel comment is also correct - just flag it
Many people in the engineering and related fields often wish to ignore the political discussions and stay focused on the technology. This is an understandable desire. Technology is is often complicated leading to a general hatred of having to context switch into other topics. Experience teaches that it is a usually easier to achieve reliable results with technology you can logically prove or verify that with emotional, capricious, untrustworthy humans.
Unfortunately, technology brought us products such as "smart TV" that bring up serious questions about surveillance and evidence, cheap network clients that allow ubiquitous access to incredible amounts of knowledge that is certain to affect education and testing/grading, and self-driving cars that will require a serious refactoring of many aspects of society.
More importantly, I think it is important to remember that escaping the political side of anything simply cedes any disagreement to those that are addressing politics. I think JMS said it best in the closing lines of Babylon 5: "we had to create the future, or others will do it for us". Technology experts need to address these things, or important decisions will be left to those that are not qualified.
Now, that said, neither technology nor political discussions excuse rudeness, personal attacks, or generally disruptive behavior.
I am not so egotistical as to think this policy change was because of me, but I certainly, at times contributed to the fray, especially in political oriented threads. In terms of Show HN, I really think that constructive criticism is helpful, but also encouragement and praise is equally important. We should be rooting for our HN community, not trying to snipe or tear people down. The rest of the world is already really good at that!
I welcome the reminder to seek the best from each other and build each other up as a good mentor would do. No smoke-up-ass platitudes, but certainly we should think of ourselves as part of a huge team out to change the world and do something amazing.
If you haven't learned it elsewhere, HN is good place to start.
Seriously though, stick a fork in HN. It's over. Enjoy the echo chamber that this place will inevitably become.
Even so I'll take the good with the bad, you still get great insights on technology. It just morphs for the worse when YC companies post, or the topic turn to getting into YC.
The same regular startupy stories with different titles crop up as each new batch of folks discover HN. I'm talking about things like...
- How I increased my conversion funnel by x%
- What I learnt from my 3 failed startups
- [Entreporn Startup] Raises 50m
- How I earned $500k as an indie games developer
- Etc.
You obviously read this or you wouldn't comment. So can you explain how there's anything remiss about this statement?
'Nothing of substance' = hot air useful only for pushing up an empty skimpy container.
I will assure you that my very deep cynicism was reached through long and arduous resistance to such, but critical thinking, logic, rationality, and truth rank higher than happiness in my book. I will continue to be as negative as I see fit, without being constantly "gratuitously negative".
Edit: There are some salient points here about downvoting and how it's affected the community, and I am extremely interested in how "to turn more moderation power over to the community" is going to compound the problem of incentivizing positive-only feedback, id est if and how this "community moderation" mechanism will couple with downvoting to make disagreeing even more hazardous.
I see it different way. I think many times, people with terrible startup ideas get led along too far because they haven't been told enough it's not a very good idea. The result can be very harmful: life savings lost, dropping out of college, investors money lost (which could be friends and family).
"The human trait of being unhappy with other people's success is something we’ve all felt and should all try to avoid"
I don't think the negative comments is an example of this. Most of the negative comments I have seen are before a person is successful, not after.
Even so, they are just words. If overly negative comments discourage you from starting a company, maybe you shouldn't be starting a company. You just aren't ready. Negative comments, unless constructive, are meaningless. I just wish more people stopped taking these comments so personally and seriously.
Is this new policy also going to apply to the negative comments I see every day toward opposing political and ideological views?
Many communities have started this policy online, but I have found it's a tool used to silence critics and opposing viewpoints. I just hope this doesn't also happen to the HN community.
As I mentioned there, it may be helpful to explicitly differatiate negativity vs. gratuitous negativity in that case. (Most examples of gratuitous negativity I've seen are low effort "this site sucks" comments, which are downvoted for reasons unrelated to negativity, and ad hominem attacks are already covered in the guidelines.)
Maturity realizing empathy seconds, that line numbers need to grow exponentially for any form of -logy, requires a deeper stance for tense problem solving pain points.
So continues the descent of HN...
(I missed your social-emotional commentary because, well, hacker news lacks and blocks access and permission to basic data open filters needs sadly.)
Meanwhile the cloaked negativity where you're thinking cutting criticism but maintain a polite facade runs rampant. That's the toxicity I worry about.
When negativity becomes forbidden, it is only those with power whose negativity gets heard. They (read: you, Sam) only have to sit through negativity that's phrased appropriate to their 'position.'
This is a non-rule anyway. Suggestions aren't going to make the next gender hellhole thread any less toxic.
> Gentle reminders by peers are the best way we know to make the culture better.
Consider this a gentle reminder that you're trying to control the tone of conversations that can't be both polite and honest; it won't work, but that doesn't make you less of a meddling, controlling asshole for trying.
The problem is one man's success is another man's failure? Success is a very subjective term. I agree with the post, but not with what I feel is the author's view of success.
In my world, it's not about how much money you have; it's how you got that money, or what you do with it once you accumulated vast amounts.
To any wealthy person. Wealth has many different heads. You can have good genes--great wealth. You can have a kind heart--better wealth. You can have a great intelect--great wealth. You can have Morals--maybe the best success? And yes, you can have financial wealth, but that financial wealth will always be scrutinized because so many times it was made in unscrupulous ways.
Personally, I am not sure airbnb is a sucess, or even legal in most counties in the U.S.? I will fight for it if I ever see it helping out with Homelessness though?
Let me get my Uber out. Their latest commercial, "I don't need a special car to drive for Uber?" Yes--you need a special car to drive for Uber. It must be 2008 or newer. It must be four door. If you drive in NY, it must be on that list.(A list I can't figure out. It doesn't have anything to do with safety, but about aesthetics?)
I know Paul Graham is going after the multiple negative comments that occur too frequently when someone introduces their new app. This site has become more than just a Programmer's site though. Some discussions are going to get heated.
Triggering. Why do psychotechnological toolers resist persistent "shrinks for startups?"[1] versus recreating private wars by demanding forward-looking(-locking) statements and then having our data disappear at trauma random.
[1] http://twitter.com/mikellsolution/status/571590631304388608
grep 'u r a fag' | rm;