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> Was the "be civil" experiment really a success?

I think it mostly has. You occasionally get the odd person who is clearly New At This™ as is a complete dick, or even a seasoned veteran who goes out of their way to ignore "being civil."

However, since I've joined I have been noticing that they are becoming fewer and farther between. Good debate comes out most comments: even if those comments are fringe or flawed at best. "All in it together" isn't conducive to extremely intelligent discussion: if I'm wrong or being a dick I want to know it and if everyone is pretending to be on my side I'll never find out. There is a nuance to breaking that kind of news and the HN community seems to be slowly working it out.

If "goodness", aka entertainment value to the reader is what you're judging based on, then yes, I suppose I agree. HN is good for reader entertainment.

In that case, HN is basically the equivalent of a tabloid. Written civilly, while communicating very bad things about whatever it's talking about, while the reader is throughly entertained.

That sounds to me like PH's community standards are very close to "be civil", where they've unpacked the word "civil".

Can you give an example of something that you think would be considered civil by HN standards, but fail to meet PH's standards? (Note that a post being upvoted on HN, doesn't mean it meets HN's civility standards.)

> I'm still ranked-banned for pointing out YC's reversal on their stance about board members

I am deeply skeptical of this belief. I do not believe such a thing exists, and there are alternate explanations for the behavior you are seeing (other top-level comments have more points).

How skeptical? How much BTC will you, or anyone, be willing put down on either of these:

1) Just bet me that it's not real, and I'll give you some very strong evidence.

2) How about I write a web-app that exposes HN's rank-banning - who's getting rank-banned and what for. You'd be surprised at how it's being used. I found a way of proving it that I'm sure you'll agree is quite accurate, for cases where this approach can be used.

:)

Edit:

Re: lucb1e, the reason is that I'm far from being the only person who's rank-banned / dead here. Sometimes several comment in the same thread.

Re: scott_s, Hey man, no need to insult me. If you don't want to see the hard evidence, then I won't show it to you. Don't worry.

As I said, deeply skeptical, as I rather like and respect the individuals who run this place. But I will not spend any effort betting someone on that, as it is not a good use of my time, and I feel it is insulting to those individuals who I greatly respect.

I will note, however, that I am continually disturbed by the preponderance of conspiratorial thinking that pervades discussion of how HN works. In particular, how often individuals tend to use their own theory for evidence of their own theory.

Looking at one of your most recent comments, it's not at the bottom of the page. And besides, if you're broke, perhaps betting is not the best thing to do.

I looked too, and solve's comments all seemed to be either at the bottom, or below every comment that wasn't downvoted or dead. Do you have a counterexample?

I think it's reasonably likely that rank-banning is real and that solve is rank-banned. I think it's unlikely that ve was rank-banned for pointing out YC's reversal on their stance about board members; but plausible that ve was rank-banned for other reasons, in a comment where ve did that.

> or below every comment that wasn't downvoted

That could be yeah, but he isn't stuck at dead-bottom.

Rank-banning is a thing. I'm not sure about the cause in this user's case.

I know that some submissions can get penalized based on their domain, and that non-URL submissions have a penalty, but I am unaware of any point-penalty against particular user comments outside of banning. What makes you say rank-banning is a thing?

Have a look at this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9438610

Some of the deleted comments are me not wanting to get drawn into a discussion about particular users and etc.

On the other hand I find PH comments pretty useless and that it's usually a waste time to read them. The first thing I want to know about the new product is its limitations and possible pitfalls of its usage, and the product's page itself is unlikely to provide that. The "encouraging" comments from "carefully vetted" PH community are just as vacuous as the landing page copy.

Is that really appropriate for things that are just launched? Out of infinite possibilities, the number of things an app doesn't do are practically infinite. Is there really value in always whining about all the things a just launched app doesn't do yet?

Why am I talking about only new apps? Because that's what these kinds of sites are always going to mostly be about. Scoops on new things - news - is what drives votes on these kinds of news sites. Therefore, you're always going to get mostly new, incomplete things.

Encouraging people to point out the flaws, on a platform that only votes new flaw-filled brand new things to the top -- results in a very predictable outcome: incomplete stuff always voted to the top and people always whining about the incompleteness.