8 ms·

Opinion vs. Skill on Hacker News

137 points by richardw 8y ago

comesee 8y ago
I find that lobste.rs has a higher rate of "skill" articles. They also don't arbitrarily censor comments, which is nice.
- Boulth 8y ago
  Yes, but they generally have less comments and most of the comments that they have are from a small number of top users. (Source: I have lobste.rs account and used the site for some time).
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  I have to disagree. In my experience the censorship on Lobsters is worse than on HN.
- pvg 8y ago
  They don't 'arbitrarily censor comments' on HN either. Whoever the 'they' are.
  - comesee 8y ago
    'they' here refers to the mods. Should have clarified, I thought it was clear from the context.
    - pvg 8y ago
      The mods especially don't 'arbitrarily censor' comments.
      - comesee 8y ago
        Okay, I think they do. They've censored my comments many times.
        pvg 8y ago
        They have? Which ones?
        yesenadam 8y ago
        You said 'arbitrarily censored'. Of course you don't think it was for a good reason. My comments are never downvoted for any good reason. :-) In my limited experience, people develop that evil-conspiracy tone you have by assuming it's what they said that wasn't wanted here, not how they said it, which is usually the problem. I'd like to see examples of that. Well, like is too strong. But provide evidence for your claim please, if you can. P.s. So why on earth are you still here on a forum where your comments have been censored many times?!
        comesee 8y ago
        I'm respectful and polite in this forum. I've been blocked simply for saying things with which some largish group of down voters don't agree. I am trying to leave this site but boredom always pulls me back :) That and I really do like to browse the posts and comment, engage with, and challenge people. Here's one such arbitrarily blocked comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17517643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17517643 You can't read it but I screenshotted it for you. Dang calls me a troll simply for asking him to clarify and tells me to leave the site. "Legalistic Gambit of the troll," as if I'm trying to win some game. All I want is to be treated fairly on this site. It was very hurtful. https://ibb.co/hoSMHK https://ibb.co/hoSMHK
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        That comment was flagged to death. Members can flag. Blaming the mods suggests that, at best, you don't actually understand how the forum works.
        comesee 8y ago
        Admittedly I'm not an expert on the censorship rules of the site but I was under the impression that the mods had the ability to unflag comments. It was never made clear to me why that comment was flagged or why it was considered "flamebait" and that's why I consider HN's censorship rules arbitrary. There was nothing rude or personally antagonistic or unscientific about that post.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  HN censorship is not arbitrary, it follows a very specific ideology.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    So, could you write more than 1/2 a line about that? Like 1/2 a page? I'd be very interested in reading that. Try to sound calm and restrained; it's how you say it rather than what that mostly gets downvotes, it seems to me. And your comment seems like a throwaway, low-effort, pill of resentment. Edit carefully, make every word count. If you're 'the enemy', (I assume you have fallen victim to the 'specific ideology', not sure if that's right) you have to try so much harder than everyone else just to be heard.
- sbuttgereit 8y ago
  I agree with the "skill" part of your comment and read it because of that; the other part of your comment I have no knowledge about one way or the other... I know what they claim, I don't know what the practice actually is. However, I find that this "skill" focused quality seems to be degrading over time with lobste.rs. My feeling is that I'm seeing an increasing number of posts moving to the opinion side (politics/culture) and the quality of comments overall seems to be waning a bit too. I'm not saying the these are dramatic shifts, but nonetheless shifting. Perhaps this is inevitable with more and more members. (For the record I do not have a lobste.rs account) I do agree with the parent article here... most of HN is a wasteland of "opinion" stories and comments (much like my comment here). I'm guilty of contributing to this, too... I do my best to not get baited, but sometimes emotion overcomes my reason. However, when there are "skill" oriented stories, the comments here on HN tend to have some outstanding entries, the quality of which I don't see as frequently on lobste.rs. lobste.rs is generally good, but doesn't achieve great as frequently. The challenge of HN is sorting through all the crap... I don't use the HN front page. So far http://hn.elijames.org/ http://hn.elijames.org/ this has been helpful at the story level.
BloodyHands 8y ago
all of the threads on hn are garbage democracy is a garbage algorithm
deleted 8y ago
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hyperpape 8y ago
It's true that there's some distinction between opinion based topics and skill based ones. However, I think the more important issue is that there are topics where people are more or less aware of their own ignorance, and topics where they are not. Politics is a great example. Politics threads are typically uninformed. However, it's not that there are no facts involved, it's that people who don't know the facts won't let that stop them from aggressively commenting.[0] Of course, by facts, I don't mean things like "Democrats/Republicans are evil", but basic facts about what laws have been passed, how the supreme court works, etc. This isn't a distinction that's about the topics, it's a distinction about people's attitude towards those topics. After all, questions about Java's GCs compared to Go's GC, or Android vs. iOS security are equally grounded in facts, but attract almost as much uninformed commentary. [0] I don't want to be an elitist. There's plenty of good ways to comment on a subject you don't know about, to ask good questions, etc. It's the certainty of the uninformed that's a problem.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
  - hyperpape 8y ago
    I have mixed feelings about that essay. One point is exactly what I was trying to say, but I suspect the observation about identity is wrong. Many great discoveries have come from people who were powerfully attached to an ideal: to take an odd assortment, consider Hilbert, Keynes and Milton Friedman. I suspect there's an availability bias. Consider a table: | | Has Identity | No Identity | |----------------+--------------+-------------| | Thoughtful | Insightful | Insightful | | Not Thoughtful | Obnoxious | Silent | We confuse having an identity with being thoughtless because we see so many people who combine the two, not because their identity actually makes them less thoughtful. Flat Earthers are an interesting example in this case. There wasn't an identity attached to it, it doesn't support some political or religious cause (maybe it's not become an identity, but it didn't start as one). It's just catnip for people who think they're skeptical and free-thinkers, but are actually just bad at reasoning.
wgerard 8y ago
Maybe I've spent too much time on the other parts of the internet, but I kinda disagree with this: > Very often, useful comments are crowded out by one-uppy point scorers and the top half of a reasonable thread can be filled by long side-discussions that can’t be scrolled past fast enough. Vitriol abounds. Compared to other discussion boards, I usually find HN threads are far more thoughtful and less antagonistic. I mean, from the author's own example, compare the Brexit threads on HN[1] and Reddit[2]. The top comment on the HN thread is a thoughtful comment on why the EU is important and what the EU should aspire to be - whether you agree with the author or not, it's not overly charitable to say the author wasn't simply making a "one-uppy point scorer". The top comment on the Reddit thread is a joke about making a bet on Brexit. There absolutely are HN threads full of vitriol and "one-uppy point scorers", but they're more rare - compared to, again, other parts of the internet. And yes, there are other online discussion boards that are even more thoughtful. Still, I don't think the characterization is entirely fair. I guess my point is that the opinion threads can also often be very illuminative. The top thread on that HN Brexit post is actually a pretty interesting discussion about 18th century revolutions. Perhaps a bit basic to someone well-versed in modern western history, and certainly needs to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, but still interesting nonetheless. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forecasts_uk_votes_to_leave_the_european_union/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forec...
- lolikoisuru 8y ago
  >Compared to other discussion boards, I usually find HN threads are far more thoughtful and less antagonistic. You realize this is because HN shadowbans people whose opinions don't fit the crowd, right?
  - jachee 8y ago
    It may not be a literal shadow ban, but don't get too left/socialist/anti-capitalist/"SJW" or the cis-het white capitalist tech bros will downvote you into oblivion. e.g. Any post about removing "master/slave" terminology.
tigrehue 8y ago
HN is full of very try hard contrarians. People disagree for the sake of it. Very often comments have theme of "that's okay or meh, but this or that". People are extremely passive aggressive on HN similar to people from Bay area. They try hard to appear nice. I also wonder if most men and women here practice "cuckold" lifestyle. At least, that's what it looks like from the comments.
- tigrehue 8y ago
  HN can't take criticism. See my comment is downvoted as soon as truth is spoken.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Well, considering you’re a new account calling people on the forums “cuckolds”, I don’t see why you thought you would be upvoted.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  Is that a Bay Area thing? Just wondering since I grew up in the Bay Area (though haven't lived there since '88) and have developed passive aggressiveness to truly magical heights over the course of my life.
  - tigrehue 8y ago
    Boston come to mind after bay area. I have never seen so many spineless people as in bay area followed by Boston.
jarboot 8y ago
While HN is also one of my most visited websites, I agree about the "opinion" articles. I have enough of an intuition now to spot them and not click through them, focusing more on news, technical articles, and releases of software. For most of these comments, it just comes down to "why are you right? What's your experience?" There's so many armchair speculators that get upvoted. If I can't go through your post history or look at your cred, why should I trust you to be correct about complicated topics that I might not understand? Do you even write code? Humans judge this stuff based on accomplishments and reputation in real life so why not on the internet? I only realized this after coming across these kinds of comments about fields I specialize in or have a lot of experience with, and seeing blatantly wrong comments being upvoted and affirmed by other comments. If it's like this for exporting I have experience with, it's probably the same for stuff I don't know. Upvotes and affirmed comments should not be taken as truth. And in the end opinion doesn't really matter unless you have influence in a community. Otherwise nobody that matters will really listen. Write a longform blog or something more captivating rather than some sneaky comment on HN that people will forget about after a week. Same goes for this comment I guess ;)
- FighterMafia 8y ago
  Well said!
- coldtea 8y ago
  >For most of these comments, it just comes down to "why are you right? What's your experience?" There's so many armchair speculators that get upvoted. If I can't go through your post history or look at your cred, why should I trust you to be correct about complicated topics that I might not understand? It's a discussion, you're supposed to evaluate the other's arguments and exchange ideas, knowledge and opinions about the subject, not a lecture where you're supposed to trust the other to educate you.
  - btrask 8y ago
    I would go farther and say that when credentialism creeps into a community, it's done. That said I very much appreciate the genuine experts who post here, and hate seeing them driven away by disrespectful people. HN walks the line between experience and openness better than any other community I know of. It's not perfect but it's still amazing.
ChrisSD 8y ago
Since we're throwing ideas out there, how about weekends vs. weekdays? ;)
danso 8y ago
> Look for high vote-to-comment ratios. This is a pretty good metric for finding high quality threads (isn’t a low ratio something the HN algorithm uses in weighting front page rank?). The only problem is that sometimes a great comment will, understandably, generate a lot of responses. I wish there were a variant of the /bestcomments endpoint [0] that surfaced highly-voted comments within the last 12 hours. Not that days-old threads aren’t worthwhile to read, it’s just that they no longer have active participation. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
newscracker 8y ago
> We don’t want to be educated with every post or thread. I completely disagree with this article. It sounds really elitist. Opinions are how we understand the world and the changing situations, complexities and nuances. They (may) help us refine our views and develop newer and/or better mental models that we can relate to and use elsewhere. To state that topics/threads high on opinions are essentially worthless is a generalization taken too far.
buboard 8y ago
this one will count as an opinion thread
almostdeadguy 8y ago
I can't stand this tendency among software engineers to think that their life is made worse by contact with the judgements of others and that this kind of thing muddies the purity of some kind of monastic, apolitical life of software engineering. Everything is political and largely subjective and it's off-putting to me to see people who think they have a duty to avoid contact with this crucial part of life. Most professions, hell most circumstances in life involve judgements. You can have disagreements as to how those judgements are handled, or find the nature of how conflict is handled to be overly contentious or disconnected from seeking resolution or for it to be fought over low stakes, and that's fine I don't disagree with any of that. But judgements are important, politics are important, and frankly I find it disgusting that places like hacker news foster this idea that our profession needs to be disconnected from these things.
CoolGuySteve 8y ago
I'm finding there are a lot fewer articles on the stuff i am an expert onto which I can contribute these days. Very little about low level systems programming, HFT, or Apple's software stack. But even when I do write sonething technical here, it's only a matter of time until I get "corrected" by some pedantic try-hard trying to score internet points. Half the time they're wrong, half the time they miss the point of what I'm saying or trying to derail the conversation . About 80% of the time these people have a username that's 'first initial-last name', so maybe they're trying to build some kind of name cred? Anyways these days, the only time I comment is when I get baited into one of these opinion articles. Hnews is becoming more like Reddit to me. Edit: why not comment instead of censoring with your down votes.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Ok, since you asked. You've explained why 100% of 'pedantic try-hards' who reply to your technical posts, shouldn't. Now you want comments? You even have a conspiracy theory about their usernames. You were 'baited' into this article, now people who (I assume) don't like to read your whiny, abusive tone are 'censoring' you? I don't know why you ever comment on anything, since it sounds like, according to you, it's worse than a total waste of time. Except when you get to return the ill-feeling in a rant like that. Please do something you enjoy instead! Life's too short.
  - CoolGuySteve 8y ago
    What makes you think the set is 100%? People can both be wrong and derail, like you did just now.
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      Rhetorical question: Can you really not see the irony of complaining about pedants who miss the point, then commenting like that on here? Well, I've learnt my lesson about explaining downvotes - you just wanted someone to attack.
      - 8y ago
qwerty456127 8y ago
Opinions are hugely undervalued nowadays.
- sidstling 8y ago
  I think they are highly overrated and underrated at the same time. I think that useful opinions based on the practical experience of making stuff work, are extremely undervalued. A lot of opinions aren’t bought by experience though. Opinions on the best x, are largely useless in my eyes, and easy to come by. You’ll see it in almost any HN discussion on a specific tech these days. I mean, when is the last time you saw a HN thread about JavaScript where half of it wasn’t a debate on why JS is good/shit and how WASM is the next Jesus? I wouldn’t call all of those opinions undervalued, because they have no real use and serve no purpose. X is typically terrible and unproductive, but it’s also lovable and very productive. With almost everything there are pros and cons, and the only truly valuable opinions on anything are from people who make it work or crashed trying and then succeeded by doing something else. I think this world needs a whole lot of “talk is cheap, show me the code”, but once someone actually does the work, I think we should learn from their experience. I think HN has been great at sharing the useful opinions, at least so far. This was a semi-useless opinion by the way.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    > useful opinions based on the practical experience of making stuff work A kind of opinions from people who are far from being established experts in a particular area are called "a fresh look" and may occasionally happen to be useful too as well as opinions of people who are more of generalists and theorists than specialists and practics. Opinions from skilled experts may occasionally happen to be a way too biased. > Opinions on the best x are largely useless... half of it wasn’t a debate on why JS is good/shit and how WASM is the next Jesus? If they uncover a lot about why and do it concisely I would not consider them useless. That's my opinion :-)
    - mmt 8y ago
      > "a fresh look" and may occasionally happen to be useful The use of three words to hedge the usefulness aspect, somewhat contradicts the original assertion of opinions being undervalued. I happen to agree that a fresh look, in the form of an opinion from a non-expert, can be extremely valuable, especially since I'm acutely aware that I'm certain to be biased on any topic where I have expertise from experience. However, that value seems to be proportional to how well-informed it is. That is, if the opinion is based on insufficient knowledge (that can be obtained other than by experience, such as with a Web search), it can easily result in a subtle form of talking past each other that doesn't reveal itself until after a long back-and-forth. Sadly, that mostly just reveals fundamental gaps in knowledge, rather than any fresh perspective.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Ironically: Sounds like an opinion piece about how best to use HN if you are this specific person. That's not snark. There's nothing wrong with writing something like this. But use of HN is not a scientific thesis and there are experts in the field of HN participation. Cool if people want to use it as a jumping off point for talking about stuff, but ironic nonetheless.
- richardw 8y ago
  Correct! Both on opinion and it being for me. I'm not optimising for "HN participation", rather my own enjoyment of the site. The participation experts are exactly who I'm (sometimes) trying to avoid, since their motivation is to participate optimally, often for their own benefit. There's no rule - some post daily and that's great for them. They also often drive the discussions and the "feel". Awesome, it's their watercooler. But there's another way to maximise enjoyment of HN, and my post is for those who might benefit from better signal/noise. I still miss PG.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I actually meant to say there are no experts in the field of HN participation. I accidentally dropped the no and didn't notice it before the edit window closed. On a different forum, the lead moderator retired, but then stuck around and de facto retained a small unpaid staff role. I think it has had a poisonous effect on the site. It would be wonderful if pg could continue participation as just a member without it going weird and problematic places. But I don't think that's very realistic and I feel he did the right thing for the health of the forum. Though I certainly understand why some people miss him.
xfitm3 8y ago
Opinion vs. Skill isn't limited to HN. It happens in the workplace, too. My opinion is that it might be impossible to avoid the echo chamber fallacy. Perhaps opinions are reinforced by social proof. My mind really starts to warp when I read back this comment. I'm calling out echo chambers by participating in my own. Trippy.
exodust 8y ago
After clicking the "Richard Watson" site logo to see his homepage and getting a broken link, I've formed a negative opinion about his HTML skills. Apart from that, people with skills have opinions, and vice versa. There's cross-over, noise, debate, and sparks. If all that causes someone to think about the problem, and get informed before firing back a response, then that's a good thing for discussion and learning.
- richardw 8y ago
  Thanks for the bug report! I was testing Jekyll and then Hugo as static site generators after moving from Ghost, and there might be a few issues in translation.
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
I think it is more politics vs technical stuff. Political stuff is recognized by headlines 'bigcorp does X' kind of story, political news, huge number of comments, and lots of downvotes for me :-) technical content is usually very relevant, but lately the noise tends to drown out the techies, very sad development - if you ask me. I would love some filter that just makes the political stories disappear.

137 points by richardw 8y ago

I find that lobste.rs has a higher rate of "skill" articles. They also don't arbitrarily censor comments, which is nice.

Boulth 8y ago
Yes, but they generally have less comments and most of the comments that they have are from a small number of top users. (Source: I have lobste.rs account and used the site for some time).
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
I have to disagree. In my experience the censorship on Lobsters is worse than on HN.
pvg 8y ago
They don't 'arbitrarily censor comments' on HN either. Whoever the 'they' are.
- comesee 8y ago
  'they' here refers to the mods. Should have clarified, I thought it was clear from the context.
  - pvg 8y ago
    The mods especially don't 'arbitrarily censor' comments.
    - comesee 8y ago
      Okay, I think they do. They've censored my comments many times.
      - pvg 8y ago
        They have? Which ones?
      - yesenadam 8y ago
        You said 'arbitrarily censored'. Of course you don't think it was for a good reason. My comments are never downvoted for any good reason. :-) In my limited experience, people develop that evil-conspiracy tone you have by assuming it's what they said that wasn't wanted here, not how they said it, which is usually the problem. I'd like to see examples of that. Well, like is too strong. But provide evidence for your claim please, if you can. P.s. So why on earth are you still here on a forum where your comments have been censored many times?!
        comesee 8y ago
        I'm respectful and polite in this forum. I've been blocked simply for saying things with which some largish group of down voters don't agree. I am trying to leave this site but boredom always pulls me back :) That and I really do like to browse the posts and comment, engage with, and challenge people. Here's one such arbitrarily blocked comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17517643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17517643 You can't read it but I screenshotted it for you. Dang calls me a troll simply for asking him to clarify and tells me to leave the site. "Legalistic Gambit of the troll," as if I'm trying to win some game. All I want is to be treated fairly on this site. It was very hurtful. https://ibb.co/hoSMHK https://ibb.co/hoSMHK
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        That comment was flagged to death. Members can flag. Blaming the mods suggests that, at best, you don't actually understand how the forum works.
        comesee 8y ago
        Admittedly I'm not an expert on the censorship rules of the site but I was under the impression that the mods had the ability to unflag comments. It was never made clear to me why that comment was flagged or why it was considered "flamebait" and that's why I consider HN's censorship rules arbitrary. There was nothing rude or personally antagonistic or unscientific about that post.
joejerryronnie 8y ago
HN censorship is not arbitrary, it follows a very specific ideology.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  So, could you write more than 1/2 a line about that? Like 1/2 a page? I'd be very interested in reading that. Try to sound calm and restrained; it's how you say it rather than what that mostly gets downvotes, it seems to me. And your comment seems like a throwaway, low-effort, pill of resentment. Edit carefully, make every word count. If you're 'the enemy', (I assume you have fallen victim to the 'specific ideology', not sure if that's right) you have to try so much harder than everyone else just to be heard.
sbuttgereit 8y ago
I agree with the "skill" part of your comment and read it because of that; the other part of your comment I have no knowledge about one way or the other... I know what they claim, I don't know what the practice actually is. However, I find that this "skill" focused quality seems to be degrading over time with lobste.rs. My feeling is that I'm seeing an increasing number of posts moving to the opinion side (politics/culture) and the quality of comments overall seems to be waning a bit too. I'm not saying the these are dramatic shifts, but nonetheless shifting. Perhaps this is inevitable with more and more members. (For the record I do not have a lobste.rs account) I do agree with the parent article here... most of HN is a wasteland of "opinion" stories and comments (much like my comment here). I'm guilty of contributing to this, too... I do my best to not get baited, but sometimes emotion overcomes my reason. However, when there are "skill" oriented stories, the comments here on HN tend to have some outstanding entries, the quality of which I don't see as frequently on lobste.rs. lobste.rs is generally good, but doesn't achieve great as frequently. The challenge of HN is sorting through all the crap... I don't use the HN front page. So far http://hn.elijames.org/ http://hn.elijames.org/ this has been helpful at the story level.

BloodyHands 8y ago

all of the threads on hn are garbage democracy is a garbage algorithm

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hyperpape 8y ago

It's true that there's some distinction between opinion based topics and skill based ones. However, I think the more important issue is that there are topics where people are more or less aware of their own ignorance, and topics where they are not. Politics is a great example. Politics threads are typically uninformed. However, it's not that there are no facts involved, it's that people who don't know the facts won't let that stop them from aggressively commenting.[0] Of course, by facts, I don't mean things like "Democrats/Republicans are evil", but basic facts about what laws have been passed, how the supreme court works, etc. This isn't a distinction that's about the topics, it's a distinction about people's attitude towards those topics. After all, questions about Java's GCs compared to Go's GC, or Android vs. iOS security are equally grounded in facts, but attract almost as much uninformed commentary. [0] I don't want to be an elitist. There's plenty of good ways to comment on a subject you don't know about, to ask good questions, etc. It's the certainty of the uninformed that's a problem.

enraged_camel 8y ago
http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- hyperpape 8y ago
  I have mixed feelings about that essay. One point is exactly what I was trying to say, but I suspect the observation about identity is wrong. Many great discoveries have come from people who were powerfully attached to an ideal: to take an odd assortment, consider Hilbert, Keynes and Milton Friedman. I suspect there's an availability bias. Consider a table: | | Has Identity | No Identity | |----------------+--------------+-------------| | Thoughtful | Insightful | Insightful | | Not Thoughtful | Obnoxious | Silent | We confuse having an identity with being thoughtless because we see so many people who combine the two, not because their identity actually makes them less thoughtful. Flat Earthers are an interesting example in this case. There wasn't an identity attached to it, it doesn't support some political or religious cause (maybe it's not become an identity, but it didn't start as one). It's just catnip for people who think they're skeptical and free-thinkers, but are actually just bad at reasoning.

wgerard 8y ago

Maybe I've spent too much time on the other parts of the internet, but I kinda disagree with this: > Very often, useful comments are crowded out by one-uppy point scorers and the top half of a reasonable thread can be filled by long side-discussions that can’t be scrolled past fast enough. Vitriol abounds. Compared to other discussion boards, I usually find HN threads are far more thoughtful and less antagonistic. I mean, from the author's own example, compare the Brexit threads on HN[1] and Reddit[2]. The top comment on the HN thread is a thoughtful comment on why the EU is important and what the EU should aspire to be - whether you agree with the author or not, it's not overly charitable to say the author wasn't simply making a "one-uppy point scorer". The top comment on the Reddit thread is a joke about making a bet on Brexit. There absolutely are HN threads full of vitriol and "one-uppy point scorers", but they're more rare - compared to, again, other parts of the internet. And yes, there are other online discussion boards that are even more thoughtful. Still, I don't think the characterization is entirely fair. I guess my point is that the opinion threads can also often be very illuminative. The top thread on that HN Brexit post is actually a pretty interesting discussion about 18th century revolutions. Perhaps a bit basic to someone well-versed in modern western history, and certainly needs to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, but still interesting nonetheless. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forecasts_uk_votes_to_leave_the_european_union/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forec...

lolikoisuru 8y ago
>Compared to other discussion boards, I usually find HN threads are far more thoughtful and less antagonistic. You realize this is because HN shadowbans people whose opinions don't fit the crowd, right?
- jachee 8y ago
  It may not be a literal shadow ban, but don't get too left/socialist/anti-capitalist/"SJW" or the cis-het white capitalist tech bros will downvote you into oblivion. e.g. Any post about removing "master/slave" terminology.

tigrehue 8y ago

HN is full of very try hard contrarians. People disagree for the sake of it. Very often comments have theme of "that's okay or meh, but this or that". People are extremely passive aggressive on HN similar to people from Bay area. They try hard to appear nice. I also wonder if most men and women here practice "cuckold" lifestyle. At least, that's what it looks like from the comments.

tigrehue 8y ago
HN can't take criticism. See my comment is downvoted as soon as truth is spoken.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Well, considering you’re a new account calling people on the forums “cuckolds”, I don’t see why you thought you would be upvoted.
UncleEntity 8y ago
Is that a Bay Area thing? Just wondering since I grew up in the Bay Area (though haven't lived there since '88) and have developed passive aggressiveness to truly magical heights over the course of my life.
- tigrehue 8y ago
  Boston come to mind after bay area. I have never seen so many spineless people as in bay area followed by Boston.

jarboot 8y ago

While HN is also one of my most visited websites, I agree about the "opinion" articles. I have enough of an intuition now to spot them and not click through them, focusing more on news, technical articles, and releases of software. For most of these comments, it just comes down to "why are you right? What's your experience?" There's so many armchair speculators that get upvoted. If I can't go through your post history or look at your cred, why should I trust you to be correct about complicated topics that I might not understand? Do you even write code? Humans judge this stuff based on accomplishments and reputation in real life so why not on the internet? I only realized this after coming across these kinds of comments about fields I specialize in or have a lot of experience with, and seeing blatantly wrong comments being upvoted and affirmed by other comments. If it's like this for exporting I have experience with, it's probably the same for stuff I don't know. Upvotes and affirmed comments should not be taken as truth. And in the end opinion doesn't really matter unless you have influence in a community. Otherwise nobody that matters will really listen. Write a longform blog or something more captivating rather than some sneaky comment on HN that people will forget about after a week. Same goes for this comment I guess ;)

FighterMafia 8y ago
Well said!
coldtea 8y ago
>For most of these comments, it just comes down to "why are you right? What's your experience?" There's so many armchair speculators that get upvoted. If I can't go through your post history or look at your cred, why should I trust you to be correct about complicated topics that I might not understand? It's a discussion, you're supposed to evaluate the other's arguments and exchange ideas, knowledge and opinions about the subject, not a lecture where you're supposed to trust the other to educate you.
- btrask 8y ago
  I would go farther and say that when credentialism creeps into a community, it's done. That said I very much appreciate the genuine experts who post here, and hate seeing them driven away by disrespectful people. HN walks the line between experience and openness better than any other community I know of. It's not perfect but it's still amazing.

ChrisSD 8y ago

Since we're throwing ideas out there, how about weekends vs. weekdays? ;)

danso 8y ago

> Look for high vote-to-comment ratios. This is a pretty good metric for finding high quality threads (isn’t a low ratio something the HN algorithm uses in weighting front page rank?). The only problem is that sometimes a great comment will, understandably, generate a lot of responses. I wish there were a variant of the /bestcomments endpoint [0] that surfaced highly-voted comments within the last 12 hours. Not that days-old threads aren’t worthwhile to read, it’s just that they no longer have active participation. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments

newscracker 8y ago

> We don’t want to be educated with every post or thread. I completely disagree with this article. It sounds really elitist. Opinions are how we understand the world and the changing situations, complexities and nuances. They (may) help us refine our views and develop newer and/or better mental models that we can relate to and use elsewhere. To state that topics/threads high on opinions are essentially worthless is a generalization taken too far.

buboard 8y ago

this one will count as an opinion thread

almostdeadguy 8y ago

I can't stand this tendency among software engineers to think that their life is made worse by contact with the judgements of others and that this kind of thing muddies the purity of some kind of monastic, apolitical life of software engineering. Everything is political and largely subjective and it's off-putting to me to see people who think they have a duty to avoid contact with this crucial part of life. Most professions, hell most circumstances in life involve judgements. You can have disagreements as to how those judgements are handled, or find the nature of how conflict is handled to be overly contentious or disconnected from seeking resolution or for it to be fought over low stakes, and that's fine I don't disagree with any of that. But judgements are important, politics are important, and frankly I find it disgusting that places like hacker news foster this idea that our profession needs to be disconnected from these things.

CoolGuySteve 8y ago

I'm finding there are a lot fewer articles on the stuff i am an expert onto which I can contribute these days. Very little about low level systems programming, HFT, or Apple's software stack. But even when I do write sonething technical here, it's only a matter of time until I get "corrected" by some pedantic try-hard trying to score internet points. Half the time they're wrong, half the time they miss the point of what I'm saying or trying to derail the conversation . About 80% of the time these people have a username that's 'first initial-last name', so maybe they're trying to build some kind of name cred? Anyways these days, the only time I comment is when I get baited into one of these opinion articles. Hnews is becoming more like Reddit to me. Edit: why not comment instead of censoring with your down votes.

yesenadam 8y ago
Ok, since you asked. You've explained why 100% of 'pedantic try-hards' who reply to your technical posts, shouldn't. Now you want comments? You even have a conspiracy theory about their usernames. You were 'baited' into this article, now people who (I assume) don't like to read your whiny, abusive tone are 'censoring' you? I don't know why you ever comment on anything, since it sounds like, according to you, it's worse than a total waste of time. Except when you get to return the ill-feeling in a rant like that. Please do something you enjoy instead! Life's too short.
- CoolGuySteve 8y ago
  What makes you think the set is 100%? People can both be wrong and derail, like you did just now.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Rhetorical question: Can you really not see the irony of complaining about pedants who miss the point, then commenting like that on here? Well, I've learnt my lesson about explaining downvotes - you just wanted someone to attack.
    - 8y ago

qwerty456127 8y ago

Opinions are hugely undervalued nowadays.

sidstling 8y ago
I think they are highly overrated and underrated at the same time. I think that useful opinions based on the practical experience of making stuff work, are extremely undervalued. A lot of opinions aren’t bought by experience though. Opinions on the best x, are largely useless in my eyes, and easy to come by. You’ll see it in almost any HN discussion on a specific tech these days. I mean, when is the last time you saw a HN thread about JavaScript where half of it wasn’t a debate on why JS is good/shit and how WASM is the next Jesus? I wouldn’t call all of those opinions undervalued, because they have no real use and serve no purpose. X is typically terrible and unproductive, but it’s also lovable and very productive. With almost everything there are pros and cons, and the only truly valuable opinions on anything are from people who make it work or crashed trying and then succeeded by doing something else. I think this world needs a whole lot of “talk is cheap, show me the code”, but once someone actually does the work, I think we should learn from their experience. I think HN has been great at sharing the useful opinions, at least so far. This was a semi-useless opinion by the way.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  > useful opinions based on the practical experience of making stuff work A kind of opinions from people who are far from being established experts in a particular area are called "a fresh look" and may occasionally happen to be useful too as well as opinions of people who are more of generalists and theorists than specialists and practics. Opinions from skilled experts may occasionally happen to be a way too biased. > Opinions on the best x are largely useless... half of it wasn’t a debate on why JS is good/shit and how WASM is the next Jesus? If they uncover a lot about why and do it concisely I would not consider them useless. That's my opinion :-)
  - mmt 8y ago
    > "a fresh look" and may occasionally happen to be useful The use of three words to hedge the usefulness aspect, somewhat contradicts the original assertion of opinions being undervalued. I happen to agree that a fresh look, in the form of an opinion from a non-expert, can be extremely valuable, especially since I'm acutely aware that I'm certain to be biased on any topic where I have expertise from experience. However, that value seems to be proportional to how well-informed it is. That is, if the opinion is based on insufficient knowledge (that can be obtained other than by experience, such as with a Web search), it can easily result in a subtle form of talking past each other that doesn't reveal itself until after a long back-and-forth. Sadly, that mostly just reveals fundamental gaps in knowledge, rather than any fresh perspective.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Ironically: Sounds like an opinion piece about how best to use HN if you are this specific person. That's not snark. There's nothing wrong with writing something like this. But use of HN is not a scientific thesis and there are experts in the field of HN participation. Cool if people want to use it as a jumping off point for talking about stuff, but ironic nonetheless.

richardw 8y ago
Correct! Both on opinion and it being for me. I'm not optimising for "HN participation", rather my own enjoyment of the site. The participation experts are exactly who I'm (sometimes) trying to avoid, since their motivation is to participate optimally, often for their own benefit. There's no rule - some post daily and that's great for them. They also often drive the discussions and the "feel". Awesome, it's their watercooler. But there's another way to maximise enjoyment of HN, and my post is for those who might benefit from better signal/noise. I still miss PG.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I actually meant to say there are no experts in the field of HN participation. I accidentally dropped the no and didn't notice it before the edit window closed. On a different forum, the lead moderator retired, but then stuck around and de facto retained a small unpaid staff role. I think it has had a poisonous effect on the site. It would be wonderful if pg could continue participation as just a member without it going weird and problematic places. But I don't think that's very realistic and I feel he did the right thing for the health of the forum. Though I certainly understand why some people miss him.

xfitm3 8y ago

Opinion vs. Skill isn't limited to HN. It happens in the workplace, too. My opinion is that it might be impossible to avoid the echo chamber fallacy. Perhaps opinions are reinforced by social proof. My mind really starts to warp when I read back this comment. I'm calling out echo chambers by participating in my own. Trippy.

exodust 8y ago

After clicking the "Richard Watson" site logo to see his homepage and getting a broken link, I've formed a negative opinion about his HTML skills. Apart from that, people with skills have opinions, and vice versa. There's cross-over, noise, debate, and sparks. If all that causes someone to think about the problem, and get informed before firing back a response, then that's a good thing for discussion and learning.

richardw 8y ago
Thanks for the bug report! I was testing Jekyll and then Hugo as static site generators after moving from Ghost, and there might be a few issues in translation.

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

I think it is more politics vs technical stuff. Political stuff is recognized by headlines 'bigcorp does X' kind of story, political news, huge number of comments, and lots of downvotes for me :-) technical content is usually very relevant, but lately the noise tends to drown out the techies, very sad development - if you ask me. I would love some filter that just makes the political stories disappear.