3 ms·

Sadly accurate. And unfortunately the tone here has been getting nastier. There was a thread a few days ago where I found myself thinking "I feel like I'm on r

by pg 17y ago

Sadly accurate. And unfortunately the tone here has been getting nastier. There was a thread a few days ago where I found myself thinking "I feel like I'm on reddit." Nastiness is a problem intrinsic to forums. But I'm optimistic that it's solvable. So few things have been tried so far. Plus I think a lot of users here would be happy to try out (or at least put up with) design changes intended to increase civility, because that's why a lot of them came here in the first place. So this is going to be my main focus for improving HN in 2010.

Brushfire 17y ago
I agree - Thanks for acknowledging it. I've seen a lot more down voting of well-reasoned comments and arguments just because of disagreement, and I've seen a lot more snide, unhelpful, almost belligerent comments across the board. I cant speak for others, but its good to know you are working on it, as I dont want to find another place.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  Down-voting for disagreement vs objection is one of the issues at play. Previously, we were encouraged to down-vote for disagreement but as the masses came, the use of down-voting as a punishment less harsh than flagging started to become more common.
  - qw 17y ago
    There's more discussion about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006725 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006725
- pg 17y ago
  My plan for dealing with downvoting is just not to display points on comments any more. The hard part is that to make that work, I also have to come up with alternative ways for people to find the comments they're most interested in on big threads.
  - ytNumbers 17y ago
    I'm sure you're smart enough to make changes that will boost the level of civility, and not reduce it. At the moment, the biggest reason not to zing someone with a cheap shot comment is the fact that you will soon find a negative number attached to the comment (how humiliating!). I suppose you could hide the points and completely hide comments that wind up with negative points (and, to have the discussion flow make sense, you'd have to also hide the responses to that comment). I'm sure you'll iterate, and find out what works best. Good luck, and thanks for caring enough to try to improve things around here.
  - jefffoster 17y ago
    Could each user get a customized view based on similarity to comments they've previously up-voted? This could be based on a simple Bayesian filter, similar to the "Plan for Spam". This could also encourage users to vote more as voting would (hopefully) improve the filtering.
  - chipsy 17y ago
    An idea I just had that might help civility is to require every post to "explain itself" with a limited set of tags. Sort of like the ./ point system in reverse; you would get some set of options like "Information," "Opinion," "Related," "Off-topic" and you pick one or more. So if you want to start making a fuss or interject something outside the immediate discussion, you have to announce it. Doing this adds filtering metadata and an gives additional incentive to downvote comments that don't contribute - they're going to be more likely to use few tags or inappropriate ones. On the other hand, posts that use a lot of tags simultaneously and actually encompass all of them are probably detailed and well-considered. Downsides: more work to post(not always a bad thing), more room for nasty rules lawyering("This is not Hacker News").
    - stuntgoat 17y ago
      I guess my reply to you would be under 'meta' because my questions to you are: What do you mean by: 'more room for nasty rules lawyering("This is not Hacker News")'? I like your idea; how would I choose between 'information' and 'related'- or 'opinion' and 'related'? Would 'factual' and 'insightful' be more useful as labels?
aaronblohowiak 17y ago
I hope the design changes work. There is an odd aspect to online culture where pointing out rudeness is voted down or dismissed as being overly sensitive or stuffy. So, some less overt way to signal to someone that they are being uncouth might a) be less threatening to receive and b) encourage more conscientious "watchdogs" to participate in bringing social pressure to bear.
flatline 17y ago
It is often fun to play devil's advocate and argue a particular point, but a conversation (particularly when not face to face) can rapidly progress from differing opinions to a flame fest, and once the first fist has flown there is no going back. Work email exchanges are famous for misinterpretations, oversensitivity, etc., that would never happen in a personal conversation. I look forward to your efforts at increasing civility in a somewhat impersonal forum, I'd definitely be interested in seeing what comes from it.
Pistos2 17y ago
If you ever get around to testing out having multiple voting axes, one of those axes could be civility or charitability. (I suppose that would more frequently be used in the negative direction, though.)
Silhouette 17y ago
> There was a thread a few days ago where I found myself thinking "I feel like I'm on reddit." Here's a little friendly advice: the frequent, unconstructive Reddit-bashing around here is boring, and typically just makes the basher look petty and/or arrogant. It has, regrettably, been done by someone in every single thread I have read here in recent weeks. I doubt I'm the only person who discovered HN a while back, signed up for an account a while later, but now participates only occasionally on HN while actively contributing to Reddit. If you want the nastiness reduced around here, trying implementing an automatic 48 ban on any user who uses the word "Reddit" in a post. And for the record, I wrote that before I noticed who I was replying to. (Edit: Looking back over my own posts here from the past few months, I see that I have become part of the "negative commenting" problem. Strange: reading my posts on other forums, under this nickname or others, I post much more positively. I shall try to do better.)
- J3L2404 17y ago
  If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) At karma 56k it's true ;)
steveklabnik 17y ago
For what it's worth, when my blog recently hit both sites, the discussion was still pretty good here, and pretty terrible on Reddit. You've done a better job holding on to original culture than most forums. Not that I'm a subject matter expert, but I made the /. -> Digg -> Reddit -> HN move like a lot of other people. I'd certainly fall under the 'happily try out changes to increase civility.'
smokinjuan 17y ago
Who's to say nothing good comes from a heated (nasty) debate? Sure, a casual user doesn't want the comment section flooded with tripe, but to shut down a discussion may be picking and discarding fruit off the vine before it's ripe. A solution to this might be rating comment pairs. Any thread that becomes over-heated could be taken "offline" between the two users (or groups), possibly so far as scheduling a live chat if they're so passionate about their topic. The (abbreviated) conversation would only re-appear in the thread (possibly by the readers choice) if the two came to a civil conclusion. Granted, it sounds like a nightmare to implement, but I'd grant the Nobel Peace Prize to anyone who solved the online discussion conundrum.
- pg 17y ago
  Nasty comments can certainly contain interesting ideas. But I believe all those ideas could be expressed just as well if not better without the nastiness.

by pg 17y ago

Brushfire 17y ago

I agree - Thanks for acknowledging it. I've seen a lot more down voting of well-reasoned comments and arguments just because of disagreement, and I've seen a lot more snide, unhelpful, almost belligerent comments across the board. I cant speak for others, but its good to know you are working on it, as I dont want to find another place.

aaronblohowiak 17y ago
Down-voting for disagreement vs objection is one of the issues at play. Previously, we were encouraged to down-vote for disagreement but as the masses came, the use of down-voting as a punishment less harsh than flagging started to become more common.
- qw 17y ago
  There's more discussion about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006725 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006725
pg 17y ago
My plan for dealing with downvoting is just not to display points on comments any more. The hard part is that to make that work, I also have to come up with alternative ways for people to find the comments they're most interested in on big threads.
- ytNumbers 17y ago
  I'm sure you're smart enough to make changes that will boost the level of civility, and not reduce it. At the moment, the biggest reason not to zing someone with a cheap shot comment is the fact that you will soon find a negative number attached to the comment (how humiliating!). I suppose you could hide the points and completely hide comments that wind up with negative points (and, to have the discussion flow make sense, you'd have to also hide the responses to that comment). I'm sure you'll iterate, and find out what works best. Good luck, and thanks for caring enough to try to improve things around here.
- jefffoster 17y ago
  Could each user get a customized view based on similarity to comments they've previously up-voted? This could be based on a simple Bayesian filter, similar to the "Plan for Spam". This could also encourage users to vote more as voting would (hopefully) improve the filtering.
- chipsy 17y ago
  An idea I just had that might help civility is to require every post to "explain itself" with a limited set of tags. Sort of like the ./ point system in reverse; you would get some set of options like "Information," "Opinion," "Related," "Off-topic" and you pick one or more. So if you want to start making a fuss or interject something outside the immediate discussion, you have to announce it. Doing this adds filtering metadata and an gives additional incentive to downvote comments that don't contribute - they're going to be more likely to use few tags or inappropriate ones. On the other hand, posts that use a lot of tags simultaneously and actually encompass all of them are probably detailed and well-considered. Downsides: more work to post(not always a bad thing), more room for nasty rules lawyering("This is not Hacker News").
  - stuntgoat 17y ago
    I guess my reply to you would be under 'meta' because my questions to you are: What do you mean by: 'more room for nasty rules lawyering("This is not Hacker News")'? I like your idea; how would I choose between 'information' and 'related'- or 'opinion' and 'related'? Would 'factual' and 'insightful' be more useful as labels?

aaronblohowiak 17y ago

I hope the design changes work. There is an odd aspect to online culture where pointing out rudeness is voted down or dismissed as being overly sensitive or stuffy. So, some less overt way to signal to someone that they are being uncouth might a) be less threatening to receive and b) encourage more conscientious "watchdogs" to participate in bringing social pressure to bear.

flatline 17y ago

It is often fun to play devil's advocate and argue a particular point, but a conversation (particularly when not face to face) can rapidly progress from differing opinions to a flame fest, and once the first fist has flown there is no going back. Work email exchanges are famous for misinterpretations, oversensitivity, etc., that would never happen in a personal conversation. I look forward to your efforts at increasing civility in a somewhat impersonal forum, I'd definitely be interested in seeing what comes from it.

Pistos2 17y ago

If you ever get around to testing out having multiple voting axes, one of those axes could be civility or charitability. (I suppose that would more frequently be used in the negative direction, though.)

Silhouette 17y ago

> There was a thread a few days ago where I found myself thinking "I feel like I'm on reddit." Here's a little friendly advice: the frequent, unconstructive Reddit-bashing around here is boring, and typically just makes the basher look petty and/or arrogant. It has, regrettably, been done by someone in every single thread I have read here in recent weeks. I doubt I'm the only person who discovered HN a while back, signed up for an account a while later, but now participates only occasionally on HN while actively contributing to Reddit. If you want the nastiness reduced around here, trying implementing an automatic 48 ban on any user who uses the word "Reddit" in a post. And for the record, I wrote that before I noticed who I was replying to. (Edit: Looking back over my own posts here from the past few months, I see that I have become part of the "negative commenting" problem. Strange: reading my posts on other forums, under this nickname or others, I post much more positively. I shall try to do better.)

J3L2404 17y ago
If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) At karma 56k it's true ;)

steveklabnik 17y ago

For what it's worth, when my blog recently hit both sites, the discussion was still pretty good here, and pretty terrible on Reddit. You've done a better job holding on to original culture than most forums. Not that I'm a subject matter expert, but I made the /. -> Digg -> Reddit -> HN move like a lot of other people. I'd certainly fall under the 'happily try out changes to increase civility.'

smokinjuan 17y ago

Who's to say nothing good comes from a heated (nasty) debate? Sure, a casual user doesn't want the comment section flooded with tripe, but to shut down a discussion may be picking and discarding fruit off the vine before it's ripe. A solution to this might be rating comment pairs. Any thread that becomes over-heated could be taken "offline" between the two users (or groups), possibly so far as scheduling a live chat if they're so passionate about their topic. The (abbreviated) conversation would only re-appear in the thread (possibly by the readers choice) if the two came to a civil conclusion. Granted, it sounds like a nightmare to implement, but I'd grant the Nobel Peace Prize to anyone who solved the online discussion conundrum.

pg 17y ago
Nasty comments can certainly contain interesting ideas. But I believe all those ideas could be expressed just as well if not better without the nastiness.