6 ms·

Meta HN: About the quality of discussion or rather the lack therof

28 points by mrleiter 9y ago

Dear HN, over recent months I have felt that the quality of the discussions has fallen below previous levels in terms of subject-related talk. Specifically, I find it annoying that more and more top comments or top replies to top comments are puns and/or variations thereof. A good laugh is healthy, I agree. But, to me, HN feels more and more like reddit. Phrases like "I'll probably get downvoted for..." are nonsensical, as it does not help a meaningful discussion at all. So, I ask of you - do you have the same feeling? Kind regards,

dang 9y ago
These perceptions are notoriously subject to bias: first, to sample bias, because no one reads all the posts. And second, to whatever the bias is called where we notice what we dislike or annoys us far more than what doesn't, and thus overestimate how much of it there is. We see this most of all in claims of HN's political bias. Because of that, it's best to post links to specific posts to give examples of what you're talking about. You might find that other people read those posts quite differently, which can be interesting in its own right. Alternatively, if they're posts that break the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), we should moderate them. You, and anyone else, are also welcome to email such links to hn@ycombinator.com.
- jnordwick 9y ago
  Why isn't this ever upheld anymore? > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points.
  - dang 9y ago
    It's upheld all the time. The proportion of that stuff is no greater than it used to be. As pg once put it, "note those words most and probably". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380
    - jnordwick 9y ago
      In writing you call those "weasel words": "words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that a specific or meaningful statement has been made" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word Essentially, if you were being honest, you would just say on topic is whatever we decided it is, since the intentional ambiguity basically comes down to that.
      - dang 9y ago
        Can you please stop posting these tedious harangues? You've been doing it a lot, and it's off topic. Since you started doing it after we chided you for breaking the site guidelines, it also seems a bit petty.
      - yesenadam 9y ago
        Throwing what seem utterly baseless accusations of dishonesty and bad faith ('intentional ambiguity', 'aimed at creating an impression that' etc), and somehow you're the good guy here? Would somehow "Topic X is never allowed" be somehow better? That would be silly, but even then there would be arguments about whether a story was topic X. Well, anyway, that guideline seems sensible to me. Not hard to understand why every word is there, for those not blinded by frustration (or whatever you were blinded by when you wrote that). I'm a huge fan of Weasel Words, Don Watson's excellent book, and I can't see a similarity. If you're so sure this place is controlled by evil forces, you should live somewhere else, no?
- jcahill 9y ago
  There is no mechanism whatsoever that identifies you as a mod. You don't even indicate this in your posts. Most of your interactions with unruly users are farcical in this regard.
hawktheslayer 9y ago
I personally haven't found that. I find quality typically rises to the top, and only an occasional worthy pun will make it up there. But of course my opinion is anecdotal and heavily subject to bias. I just try to be a good citizen here and add to the quality conversation whenever I feel like my experience on a topic makes me able to contribute something of value.
oceanghost 9y ago
I feel that only a very narrow range of opinions are acceptable.
verdverm 9y ago
Seems to me like a general trend not limited to HN.
twouhm 9y ago
You might be noticing the eternal September effect, which is sadly starting to affect HN.
- krapp 9y ago
  Eternal September seems to have "sadly started to affect HN" since the very beginning, or about a few months ago, depending on who you ask, and how old their account is.
wpasc 9y ago
I find that HN discussion are the most relevant, least trolled discussions of most well-known sites. However, I am biased because my exposure to comments and discussions is mostly HN, some reddit, WSJ/NYTimes comments, and the notorious YouTube comment sections.
jpalomaki 9y ago
I've had this feeling, but not sure if it's justified. Could be also the result of more users writing comments. Since the down-voting is the tool we have been given, I have tried to be more active in using it to mark comments that take discussion to wrong direction. Some UI innovations might help here as well. Sometimes when inside thread, you see it's heading to useless direction. Would be nice to be able to collapse the thread without scrolling back up.
- gt_ 9y ago
  >Since the down-voting is the tool we have been given, I have tried to be more active in using it to mark comments that take discussion to wrong direction. I thought downvotes were to be used on posts which don’t move the discussion or contribute to it. For example, non-sequitors or inaccuracies. Judging which direction is “wrong” sounds like opinion abuse to me. One of my favorite parts of HN is intelligent and diverse discussion, two things I believe must exist hand in hand. Maybe this is what you meant, but I would not choose to downvote you either way.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >I thought downvotes were to be used on posts which don’t move the discussion or contribute to it. For example, non-sequitors or inaccuracies. Judging which direction is “wrong” sounds like opinion abuse to me. Downvotes can be used for any reason at all, as can upvotes. AFAIK only flagging has guidelines.
    - bjourne 9y ago
      Obviously, it CAN. But down voting for "any reason" (for example, should I down vote your comment because I think you are wrong?) is unlikely to foster a collegial environment. For example, many Ask HN posts are questions asking for opinions. So you help the poster out and write your opinion. Then some dofus comes around who is to lazy to write an opinion of his or her own but wants to express disagreement by down voting your post. These dofuses' downvotes are annoying and results in people not bothering to reply to Ask HN posts anymore.
mod 9y ago
I don't agree. I love the quality of HN discussions, and frankly it's the entire reason I use the site. I also hate to see puns and jokes on HN, but I'm glad to report that when I do see them, they are usually downvoted at the bottom of the page. I'm sure it's happened that a joke made the top comment, but I can't remember ever seeing it in the thousands of comment sections I've read here.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
On days when I am in a lot of pain and throwing up, discussion here often sucks. People are mean to me and they don't understand me. The rest of the time, it's pretty darn good. ;) Also, some of the humor here makes obscure references and brings to light excellent tidbits of science, history and wisdom I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to.
jnordwick 9y ago
Group think is getting worse. If you have a minority opinion it is more difficult to avoid the bottom of the heap, the standards for a post rise dramatically, and even then there is no guarantee. Sometimes you comments will hit the negatives regardless. ( Edit: heres my latest -2 comment which i really don't understand https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16401221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16401221 ) There are some sacred cow on HN too that you cannot go against: meltdown/spectre is overblown, Google tech isn't the greatest, or numerous economic or political opinions. It also seems like there has been a relaxing of posting subject matter requirements. Naked politics now hit the front page daily when mods used to give at least lip service to deleting it. I think this has done a lot of bring in tribalism - online political discussing seems to bring it out in people and it spreads like a cancer to the rest of the site. I think if you shoved the political discussion to a side channel, the discussion all around would improve.
- yesenadam 9y ago
  Hehe I had a look at your comment.. It started: "Not new. Only read the first and last page if the paper.." And you have no idea why that might be downvoted? I don't think you can have tried to understand. Maybe the downvoters got no further than me (i.e. the bit I quoted) which already has arrogance, ignorance, carelessness—or so it seems—and had already had enough.
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    Quite ironic "I didn't read the whole paper but..." "I didn't read your whole comment but I got to that bit and I downvoted you!"
    - yesenadam 9y ago
      Hehe yeah. Hypocritical, you mean maybe. At least I didn't say there was nothing new, and I restricted my..criticism to the bit I actually read. But I'll upvote that. :-)
      - 9y ago
rabboRubble 9y ago
No, I do not have the same feeling. You can always try Reddit, Facebook, Fark, or your favorite topic-specific forum for a different flavor of commentary.
xstartup 9y ago
> "I'll probably get downvoted for..." are nonsensical It's a psychological trick.
xstartup 9y ago
I've stopped posting interesting comments because I get downvoted just because my opinion is different. Lately, I began to feel HN is full of people who sell their time. They just can't believe that anyone might be willing to work for free. Here is the evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400111 Albeit, it's not enough to draw this kind of conclusion. See this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391332 Here I simply asked for people's opinion of the experience on different platforms. From now I'll just read and rarely post. My work area is ad tech and people here seem not like ads much and will downvote/ignore ad tech questions.
- auxbuss 9y ago
  My perception is that downvoting has increased. I often upvote downvoted comments that are perfectly reasonable, though I might disagree with them (or simply not care much), because downvoting can alienate folk from commenting – I've had that before myself – and I want to read the best content. re ads: I hate them, but I would only contemplate downvoting someone claiming that the internet would die without them – the whole entitlement to push them to my eyeballs thing – unless the comment cited evidence.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  Most of the downvotes that most people on HN will receive simply mean: "I sure hope that isn't true." (Even though you've cited a peer-reviewed journal and they've got nothing but hope.) So the more novel and significant the contribution, the better the chance of being downvoted into oblivion, in my experience. But keep commenting, some will read it and knowledge that challenges prejudice (prejudgments) always spreads quite slowly at first. Then later nearly everybody convince themselves they've ever believed anything else. Note that the above is true for most contributors, but most downvotes on the site are directed at a small minority of people who commonly comment without reading the article, or didn't understand it, or blunder through general ignorance or profound bias; so most downvotes are still legit.
- yesenadam 9y ago
  Well, why care about downvotes? Maybe 20 people read it and are glad you wrote it, 1-2 people downvote. Don't let that stop you. I've put more thought into the strange ratings of movies on IMDb. There are many reasons for this, but one is - it seems the, er, less discerning movie-goers tend to do more voting. Many people never vote. Just that alone means the crap movies get more and often higher votes. Similarly with music topping the charts. But on IMDb the voting's not everything. There are user comments where you can have your say. People know the movie ratings are often silly. p.s. Do people anywhere like ads much? People in advertising aside perhaps.
mercer 9y ago
I often use HN as an archive, so I end up in very old threads when I search for particular things. As a result I quite often have tabs open with threads that are years old. And more than once I tried commenting/upvoting, thinking it was a recent thread. I don't think you're wrong, but I do agree that it's easy to only remember the good bits. Anecdotally at least apparently old threads can be just as bad, and that's even after search for specific topics!
sharmi 9y ago
For what its worth: The same discussion was held on HN 8 years back on how the quality of discussion has fallen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041 There are recurrent discussions in the same vein echoing back in (HN's) time. I suppose they crop up whenever HN goes through a growth spurt. Just guessing. I am not against quips and puns. HN is a gathering of people with a certain area of interest and there is great fun is sharing puns that the community identifies with. There are rarely such outlets outside this arena sans an in-person meetup of aspiring startup geeks. Having said that, such comments are usually in the mid rung and the tops ones (within an hour of posting) tends to be indepth thoughtful ones by relevant people. I have seen doctors, life guards, teachers, lawyers, and so many others from various walks of life give profound insights in the comment sections of relevant articles. So I would not discount the quality. But discussions like this are worth for keeping the focus where it needs to be.

28 points by mrleiter 9y ago

dang 9y ago

These perceptions are notoriously subject to bias: first, to sample bias, because no one reads all the posts. And second, to whatever the bias is called where we notice what we dislike or annoys us far more than what doesn't, and thus overestimate how much of it there is. We see this most of all in claims of HN's political bias. Because of that, it's best to post links to specific posts to give examples of what you're talking about. You might find that other people read those posts quite differently, which can be interesting in its own right. Alternatively, if they're posts that break the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), we should moderate them. You, and anyone else, are also welcome to email such links to hn@ycombinator.com.

jnordwick 9y ago
Why isn't this ever upheld anymore? > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points.
- dang 9y ago
  It's upheld all the time. The proportion of that stuff is no greater than it used to be. As pg once put it, "note those words most and probably". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380
  - jnordwick 9y ago
    In writing you call those "weasel words": "words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that a specific or meaningful statement has been made" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word Essentially, if you were being honest, you would just say on topic is whatever we decided it is, since the intentional ambiguity basically comes down to that.
    - dang 9y ago
      Can you please stop posting these tedious harangues? You've been doing it a lot, and it's off topic. Since you started doing it after we chided you for breaking the site guidelines, it also seems a bit petty.
    - yesenadam 9y ago
      Throwing what seem utterly baseless accusations of dishonesty and bad faith ('intentional ambiguity', 'aimed at creating an impression that' etc), and somehow you're the good guy here? Would somehow "Topic X is never allowed" be somehow better? That would be silly, but even then there would be arguments about whether a story was topic X. Well, anyway, that guideline seems sensible to me. Not hard to understand why every word is there, for those not blinded by frustration (or whatever you were blinded by when you wrote that). I'm a huge fan of Weasel Words, Don Watson's excellent book, and I can't see a similarity. If you're so sure this place is controlled by evil forces, you should live somewhere else, no?
jcahill 9y ago
There is no mechanism whatsoever that identifies you as a mod. You don't even indicate this in your posts. Most of your interactions with unruly users are farcical in this regard.

hawktheslayer 9y ago

I personally haven't found that. I find quality typically rises to the top, and only an occasional worthy pun will make it up there. But of course my opinion is anecdotal and heavily subject to bias. I just try to be a good citizen here and add to the quality conversation whenever I feel like my experience on a topic makes me able to contribute something of value.

oceanghost 9y ago

I feel that only a very narrow range of opinions are acceptable.

verdverm 9y ago

Seems to me like a general trend not limited to HN.

twouhm 9y ago

You might be noticing the eternal September effect, which is sadly starting to affect HN.

krapp 9y ago
Eternal September seems to have "sadly started to affect HN" since the very beginning, or about a few months ago, depending on who you ask, and how old their account is.

wpasc 9y ago

I find that HN discussion are the most relevant, least trolled discussions of most well-known sites. However, I am biased because my exposure to comments and discussions is mostly HN, some reddit, WSJ/NYTimes comments, and the notorious YouTube comment sections.

jpalomaki 9y ago

I've had this feeling, but not sure if it's justified. Could be also the result of more users writing comments. Since the down-voting is the tool we have been given, I have tried to be more active in using it to mark comments that take discussion to wrong direction. Some UI innovations might help here as well. Sometimes when inside thread, you see it's heading to useless direction. Would be nice to be able to collapse the thread without scrolling back up.

gt_ 9y ago
>Since the down-voting is the tool we have been given, I have tried to be more active in using it to mark comments that take discussion to wrong direction. I thought downvotes were to be used on posts which don’t move the discussion or contribute to it. For example, non-sequitors or inaccuracies. Judging which direction is “wrong” sounds like opinion abuse to me. One of my favorite parts of HN is intelligent and diverse discussion, two things I believe must exist hand in hand. Maybe this is what you meant, but I would not choose to downvote you either way.
- krapp 9y ago
  >I thought downvotes were to be used on posts which don’t move the discussion or contribute to it. For example, non-sequitors or inaccuracies. Judging which direction is “wrong” sounds like opinion abuse to me. Downvotes can be used for any reason at all, as can upvotes. AFAIK only flagging has guidelines.
  - bjourne 9y ago
    Obviously, it CAN. But down voting for "any reason" (for example, should I down vote your comment because I think you are wrong?) is unlikely to foster a collegial environment. For example, many Ask HN posts are questions asking for opinions. So you help the poster out and write your opinion. Then some dofus comes around who is to lazy to write an opinion of his or her own but wants to express disagreement by down voting your post. These dofuses' downvotes are annoying and results in people not bothering to reply to Ask HN posts anymore.

mod 9y ago

I don't agree. I love the quality of HN discussions, and frankly it's the entire reason I use the site. I also hate to see puns and jokes on HN, but I'm glad to report that when I do see them, they are usually downvoted at the bottom of the page. I'm sure it's happened that a joke made the top comment, but I can't remember ever seeing it in the thousands of comment sections I've read here.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

On days when I am in a lot of pain and throwing up, discussion here often sucks. People are mean to me and they don't understand me. The rest of the time, it's pretty darn good. ;) Also, some of the humor here makes obscure references and brings to light excellent tidbits of science, history and wisdom I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to.

jnordwick 9y ago

Group think is getting worse. If you have a minority opinion it is more difficult to avoid the bottom of the heap, the standards for a post rise dramatically, and even then there is no guarantee. Sometimes you comments will hit the negatives regardless. ( Edit: heres my latest -2 comment which i really don't understand https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16401221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16401221 ) There are some sacred cow on HN too that you cannot go against: meltdown/spectre is overblown, Google tech isn't the greatest, or numerous economic or political opinions. It also seems like there has been a relaxing of posting subject matter requirements. Naked politics now hit the front page daily when mods used to give at least lip service to deleting it. I think this has done a lot of bring in tribalism - online political discussing seems to bring it out in people and it spreads like a cancer to the rest of the site. I think if you shoved the political discussion to a side channel, the discussion all around would improve.

yesenadam 9y ago
Hehe I had a look at your comment.. It started: "Not new. Only read the first and last page if the paper.." And you have no idea why that might be downvoted? I don't think you can have tried to understand. Maybe the downvoters got no further than me (i.e. the bit I quoted) which already has arrogance, ignorance, carelessness—or so it seems—and had already had enough.
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  Quite ironic "I didn't read the whole paper but..." "I didn't read your whole comment but I got to that bit and I downvoted you!"
  - yesenadam 9y ago
    Hehe yeah. Hypocritical, you mean maybe. At least I didn't say there was nothing new, and I restricted my..criticism to the bit I actually read. But I'll upvote that. :-)
    - 9y ago

rabboRubble 9y ago

No, I do not have the same feeling. You can always try Reddit, Facebook, Fark, or your favorite topic-specific forum for a different flavor of commentary.

xstartup 9y ago

> "I'll probably get downvoted for..." are nonsensical It's a psychological trick.

xstartup 9y ago

I've stopped posting interesting comments because I get downvoted just because my opinion is different. Lately, I began to feel HN is full of people who sell their time. They just can't believe that anyone might be willing to work for free. Here is the evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400111 Albeit, it's not enough to draw this kind of conclusion. See this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391332 Here I simply asked for people's opinion of the experience on different platforms. From now I'll just read and rarely post. My work area is ad tech and people here seem not like ads much and will downvote/ignore ad tech questions.

auxbuss 9y ago
My perception is that downvoting has increased. I often upvote downvoted comments that are perfectly reasonable, though I might disagree with them (or simply not care much), because downvoting can alienate folk from commenting – I've had that before myself – and I want to read the best content. re ads: I hate them, but I would only contemplate downvoting someone claiming that the internet would die without them – the whole entitlement to push them to my eyeballs thing – unless the comment cited evidence.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Most of the downvotes that most people on HN will receive simply mean: "I sure hope that isn't true." (Even though you've cited a peer-reviewed journal and they've got nothing but hope.) So the more novel and significant the contribution, the better the chance of being downvoted into oblivion, in my experience. But keep commenting, some will read it and knowledge that challenges prejudice (prejudgments) always spreads quite slowly at first. Then later nearly everybody convince themselves they've ever believed anything else. Note that the above is true for most contributors, but most downvotes on the site are directed at a small minority of people who commonly comment without reading the article, or didn't understand it, or blunder through general ignorance or profound bias; so most downvotes are still legit.
yesenadam 9y ago
Well, why care about downvotes? Maybe 20 people read it and are glad you wrote it, 1-2 people downvote. Don't let that stop you. I've put more thought into the strange ratings of movies on IMDb. There are many reasons for this, but one is - it seems the, er, less discerning movie-goers tend to do more voting. Many people never vote. Just that alone means the crap movies get more and often higher votes. Similarly with music topping the charts. But on IMDb the voting's not everything. There are user comments where you can have your say. People know the movie ratings are often silly. p.s. Do people anywhere like ads much? People in advertising aside perhaps.

mercer 9y ago

I often use HN as an archive, so I end up in very old threads when I search for particular things. As a result I quite often have tabs open with threads that are years old. And more than once I tried commenting/upvoting, thinking it was a recent thread. I don't think you're wrong, but I do agree that it's easy to only remember the good bits. Anecdotally at least apparently old threads can be just as bad, and that's even after search for specific topics!

sharmi 9y ago

For what its worth: The same discussion was held on HN 8 years back on how the quality of discussion has fallen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041 There are recurrent discussions in the same vein echoing back in (HN's) time. I suppose they crop up whenever HN goes through a growth spurt. Just guessing. I am not against quips and puns. HN is a gathering of people with a certain area of interest and there is great fun is sharing puns that the community identifies with. There are rarely such outlets outside this arena sans an in-person meetup of aspiring startup geeks. Having said that, such comments are usually in the mid rung and the tops ones (within an hour of posting) tends to be indepth thoughtful ones by relevant people. I have seen doctors, life guards, teachers, lawyers, and so many others from various walks of life give profound insights in the comment sections of relevant articles. So I would not discount the quality. But discussions like this are worth for keeping the focus where it needs to be.