10 ms·

Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

155 points by mjfern 16y ago

I've been visiting Hacker News for just under two years, and recently I've noticed a significant uptick in mean-spirited comments. This echos a recent comment by PG, "There are more dumb and/or mean comments than there used to be..." As you are commenting, or up-voting and down-voting comments, please be conscious of how comments might affect others. This is a fantastic community of incredibly bright people. We should be able to engage in thoughtful debate and discussion, while remaining friendly and polite. Thank you everyone!

daeken 16y ago
I upvoted this because I agree with the concept, but I don't believe such things are necessary. General rule of life: assholes will be assholes. This isn't going to make anyone more polite. Most of us are already polite, and quite content to simply downvote people who aren't.
- mjfern 16y ago
  If mean-spirited comments are down-voted, then it's not much of an issue. The problem is that I've started seeing mean-spirited comments receiving up-votes, and rising to the top of discussions. How do we solve this as a community?
  - boundlessdreamz 16y ago
    Where have you seen that? I have seen most of them getting downvoted and some getting 1 or 2 upvotes
    - mjfern 16y ago
      I would rather not single out any individuals/comments. In any event, it appears like a growing issue across the community, and is not isolated to just one or two people.
      - plinkplonk 16y ago
        "I thought this question might come up, but I would rather not single out any individuals or comments." So, you state a claim (and it is an interesting claim!). Other people ask for instances or examples and you decline to point them out. How are we supposed to "deal with it as a community" if we don't know what you are talking about? I really would like to see an example of a mean spirited comment receiving plenty of upvotes and being on top of a discussion. I suggest (just suggesting, since I don't have any examples of what exactly you mean) that what you consider "mean spirited" may not appear so to others (and hence the upvotes)? Sounds like a simpler explanation (or at least an equally valid one) to me. What I have seen is that empty/mean comments get downvoted to oblivion very fast. Comments with plenty of upvotes generally have some valid points/insights/value, even if the tone is sharp or sarcastic (neither of which is necessarily "mean"). Posting a mean comment which gets a lot of upvotes and making it to the top of a discussion on HN, without getting flagged etc, would seem to take some real skill in writing. I would really appreciate any examples.
        mahmud 16y ago
        I actually think it's a good idea not to single out anybody; you don't want to attract the attention of somebody who is already belligerent and vile.
        plinkplonk 16y ago
        "you don't want to attract the attention of somebody who is already belligerent and vile." I would rather these folks/comments are flushed out (the OP claims that someone belligerent and vile are getting a lot of upvotes, which seems strange to me - I don't doubt that mean people post on HN but if they are getting tonnes of upvotes (vs being downvoted or flagged) it would be really nice to see examples), but I appreciate that other people have different approaches to confrontation. The problem is that then it is very hard to take a claim like "general uptick in mean spirited comments" seriously. A asking for evidence of any claim is valid in any discussion. Heck if anyone wants to point these out but don't want to be seen doing it, just create a throw away account and use that?
    - nailer 16y ago
      The recent NoSQL discussion. There's a user called gaius who spent a lot of time abusing anyone who mentioned why they used a nosql database. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847978 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847978 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847836 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847836 everything is a sarcastic take on the parent, a comparison without any justification, or a straight out insult ie 'it makes me laugh'. The parents one of whom is me are all making polite comments about why we use nosql in our projects, and paraphrased sarcastic insults are sitting there upmodded. Who seem to agree with the sentiment but don't care about the tone, civility or lack of supporting arguments.
  - MarkSweep 16y ago
    Slashdot attempts to fix this with meta moderation. Users are given the chance to judge up-votes essentially. Whether that is actually effective for them or applicable to Hacker News, I could not say. http://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml http://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml
- jberryman 16y ago
  I think I'm a pretty nice guy, but I've written some mean comments when I strongly disagreed with someone here. Imagine most of the mean comments here are coming from nice people who would rather (if they thought about it for a second) not respond in a negative way in those types of situations.
ihodes 16y ago
Not trying to be passive aggressive here, at all; I agree with you here. The reason I didn't post anything was that HN has gotten pretty damn meta recently too. I'm not sure posts like this will help anything, much; probably something needs to come from the top, or the community needs to focus on enforcing the behavioral norm by down-voting (even if they normally wouldn't put in the effort) comments that are of an assholish nature. As an aside: http://twitter.com/#!/ihodes/status/29059931658 http://twitter.com/#!/ihodes/status/29059931658
- pg 16y ago
  It's a weekend. There's always more random stuff on weekends.
gsivil 16y ago
I have noticed that a negative comment(against the main point of the post) tends to be sometime initially down-voted by some superficial prejudice that it should be also mean-spirited. It seems that the community naturally upvotes that comment to support diversity of opinions. Of course such support tends to bring some of the provocative comments up in the list- in my view.
- mjfern 16y ago
  I'm highly supportive of thoughtful debate, but my impression is that some of the up-voted comments lately have crossed the line from debate to ridicule.
jrockway 16y ago
No social news site is going to be perfect. If it's people that are writing comments, some comments will be good and some will be bad. Read them and decide for yourself. If a comment hurts your feelings, get over it. If you like a comment, upvote it, and help other people find the best comments. Really, I kind of get tired of reading stuff like this because there is always some subtext to it. "mean-spirited" usually means, "someone disagreed with me". If people disagree with you, you can either get over it or learn to argue better. Passive aggressive, "oh noes everyone is so mean" is not going to change what people think. Good writing will.
- codexon 16y ago
  When it comes to things like politics/religion/etc no amount of good writing can convince the other person.
  - ugh 16y ago
    I don’t think that’s true at all.
  - davorak 16y ago
    I would make the argument that it depends more on the rationality of the person receiving the argument then what the argument is about. A rational person is capable and willing to change their mind when new evidence is offered. A irrational person may easily change their mind on some topics with no evidence and never change their mind on other topics(politics/religion/etc) even with the best evidence.
  - bloomshed 16y ago
    I think the trick is staying calm while you confront somebody about something. If you set them off, they stop hearing what you're saying and the whole "discussion" turns into a spitting match. Everybody knows that crazy talk is a waste of everyone's time. I get depressed every time I find myself reading the comments on CNN or YouTube. . . .
- mjfern 16y ago
  This post was not a reaction to a discussion that I was engaged in, so in fact there is no subtext and it's not personal. :-)
sp4rki 16y ago
Sometimes mean spirited comments can be full of usable ideas, or at least they can fuel a debate between contrasting opinions. Remember that what looks to be a mean spirited comment by you, might be taken a completely different way by someone else. In any case I'd say that more important than mean comments is a the downvote everything I dislike regardless of if it contributes to the discussion in any way. It stalls actual conversation between different opinions.
mahmud 16y ago
FWIW, I discovered that people take disagreements personally and will stalk you across threads if you're not careful with their egos. For some reason I am incapable of remembering names and can only identify about 10 - 15 people here other than the ones I have met or know from somewhere else. So the whole thing feels to me like detached, anonymous discussion. I was surprised to be 1) remembered, and 2) "punished" in another, unrelated context. There are also times when I withhold contributing to a thread because of its strong fanboy/flamer possibilities. Certain companies have .. enthusiastic supporters/haters.
- paraschopra 16y ago
  I am surprised people "punishing" online but I did realize that people used downvoting for disagreement (or if they are frustrated) while it should be used only if a comment is irrelevant to the topic or is frivolous. I usually upvote the comments I disagree with because a healthy debate always helps me fill gaps in my knowledge. But when passions and emotions rule, "healthy debate" is simply impossible. Some people seem to be too stuck up with their beliefs. Come On guys, many times it is good to be _wrong_.
- petercooper 16y ago
  I wasn't going to reply until I noticed I had a long line of comments with 2s a couple of hours ago, now they're all 1s after this morning's little scuffle: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851115 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851115 You can never prove anything unless you have the logs so there's not much point worrying, just play with and enjoy the furore. The best defence, if there is any, is to have a lot of karma and only engage with these folks if you can bear to lose some of it.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    Err, that thread was fine until you linked to his history, Peter. But yeah, drug related threads, red flag :-) I hope you learned your lesson.
    - petercooper 16y ago
pointillistic 16y ago
Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every open online community. This is the flip side of the anonymity and what Jaron Lanier calls "the mob switch" (google it). In other words, human tendency to gang-up/gang-down, up-vote/down-vote in batches, regardless a content. I also noticed that often here the polite but critical comments are down-voted if they don't share the "main theme" of a post. Again, this is the part and parcel of every online community.The alternative are the one-liners and up-likes you get on Facebook, the same Facebook that coincidently is responsible for the internet-wide decline of the commenting culture.
- davorak 16y ago
  "Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every open online community." I often hear comments along these lines, I fear that people who write and read them then think that there is nothing to be done. That there is not point in trying, that there is no cultural or satisfactory technical solution possible. If nothing else it is better try/do something then do nothing at all.
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8ren 16y ago
pg's quoted comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833255 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833255 I've noticed that if you reply to a mean-spirited comment with a straightforward and dispassionate counter-argument, completely ignoring its rudeness and tone, you get massive upvotes. Transcending meanness also feels really clean; it is neutralized. By framing the meanness, the site's collegiality is not undermined, but demonstrated.
- mjfern 16y ago
  Great point 8ren, and perhaps this is a solution to the issue. A concern is that the mean-spirited comments are not always countered in a thoughtful manner, or in time before the post drops off the front page. That said, perhaps we can draw on your suggestion, and as a community be more vigilant in quickly responding to mean-sprited comments in a logical and dispassionate manner to counter their effect.
sutro 16y ago
If we could dispense with all of the boo-hoo-someone-was-mean-and-downvoted-me meta posts and comments, this could be a great site. Posts like this are the biggest problem with HN.
- deleted 16y ago
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- pjscott 16y ago
  Here's what you can do: 1. Avoid meta threads. 2. Downvote off-topic meta-discussion in other threads. 3. Do not add to the meta-discussion; just downvote and move on. In this way, you can express your distaste for such discussion and avoid most of it with very minimal effort.
  - hasenj 16y ago
    isn't this a mean-spirited comment?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
alnayyir 16y ago
It seems my brief back and forth with PG is the subject of this post. (indirectly?) I'm not sure if my criticism of blind positivity (boosterism) is intended to be what you're concerned about, or if you're just referring to the popularity of banal and frequently unkind commentary. I'd really like to know, because if it was my words that raised your concerns, I want to address it.
_delirium 16y ago
This is only for a subset of comments, but one common case that's sometimes sort of accidental: a commenter disagrees with a submitted article strongly, but doesn't realize that the article is written by the submitter or by another HN user. If they had, they probably would've phrased their disagreement differently. Of course it's nice to be polite when disagreeing with any article, but I notice myself making more of an effort to be polite when disagreeing with an HN user's own submission, compared to disagreeing with, say, a New York Times article, because the NYT reporter isn't present or going to read my comment. HN's greater volume of user-written content (compared to, say, reddit) makes this something not everyone expects to encounter; it's like ranting about how Daikatana sucks and then realizing that John Romero was standing right next to you, and then you feel bad. (This doesn't explain mean-spirited comments that are responding to other comments, though.)
pg 16y ago
Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I work on. It has been since practically the beginning.
- DannoHung 16y ago
  You could try fragmenting HN in the same way that Reddit allows; this makes it possible to turn off the bullshit that invariably rises to the top. I mean, I don't even read reddit main or /r/programming anymore; they're just garbage. Otherwise... aggressively ban people that don't contribute well enough. It is literally the only non-fragmentary way to fix the problem, because it's not a technical issue. People are just terrible. (I'm of the opinion that fragmenting is simply a less aggressive version of banning: leave the trolls to their shit-heaps, forge new ground.) I'd say you should be banning at a rate over half of the new users you see. And if you look at my posting history, you'll probably see that I'm not exactly grade A material, so I'd expect to get chopped off eventually, probably sooner than later.
  - froo 16y ago
    What about perhaps a combination of the two ways? Fragmentation and access restriction (lets face it, banning is just complete access restriction) Those users who are noted as being excessively mean spirited should have to learn to play in a sandbox nicely with others before they're let back into more active areas of the site. The net effect is perhaps less of a knee jerk negative reaction so that users can eventually learn to contribute again in a positive manner and it keeps the more frequented areas clean again.
  - alex_c 16y ago
    In my experience, aggressive moderation often ends up having a worse effect than the symptoms it's trying to treat. Clamping down on a popular (but, in the moderators' opinion, negative) voice usually spawns arguments and discussion that are very rarely productive. Moderating this follow-up discussion leads to a spiral of arguing, resentment, and mistrust between users and moderators. It happens all to easily, and it's not pretty.
pissflute 16y ago
u mad
DocuMaker 16y ago
It's not just Hacker News. It's everywhere on all forums, blogs, etc. I have no idea what's causing it other than economic stress!
- DocuMaker 16y ago
  Which got me thinking a few nights ago -- what a way to stimulate the economy. Hire some damn moderators!! ;-)
  - Kaizyn 16y ago
    Yeah, but we don't want to actually pay them much. Though, the Amazon Mechanical Turk might make it cost effective. $0.01 per every 10 posts moderated.
- davorak 16y ago
  Maybe, I do not think the internet has not had a stable population in terms of demographics for a long enough time for a dominant productive culture to emerge.
codefisher 16y ago
How about people with low karma (like myself) not being allowed to comment on articles that appear on the front page. Then only people really interested in following HN, and trying to form some kind of reputation in the community would be able to get much exposure. Trolls in general I would think are much more interested in putting out comments that a number of people will see.
- usedtolurk 16y ago
  That would result in a relatively small panel of generalists and censor specialists who might otherwise make the occasional invaluable contributions.
tlrobinson 16y ago
I've been on HN for a few years, and I'm usually extremely skeptical of people claiming a decline in the quality of HN, but I agree, and furthermore I have noticed an increase in acceptance of clever but empty Reddit-esque one-liners. I don't mind them, but I think it's unfortunately a very slippery slope...
8ren 16y ago
Previous insightful submission and discussion, for background: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133 (9 months ago)
stukhomsimdrone 16y ago
Considering the perspective of a logged in user, simply give them the opportunity to deselect others by username and then record their deselections with their account. This wouldn't require unique pages to be served, except for a deselected_users array to be picked up and processed at the client side. The same lightweight approach can be used give shape to a user's own view with stuff like: 'preferred users', 'out-right scum' etc. Same principles apply to personal topic preferences and their viewed ranking.
deleted 16y ago
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ashedryden 16y ago
I've been seeing a lot of this lately, too. I wonder how much of it is related to the Digg mass exodus?
csomar 16y ago
As someone who was a "bad" user (under another username); posting rather useless, short, unsighted comments and submissions; I think the best way is to "educate people". This is not only a HN culture, it's a civilian culture. Limit the freedom of newbies until they are more mature. When you are committed to the community, you become more responsible and work toward creating a name/friends. When you are new, you pretty much don't care.
- mehmeh 16y ago
  I am a bad user who was a good user. I stopped bothering after a few incidents where content-free snarky bullshit written in response to my genuine comments was upvoted, and pg was unwilling to remove any of it. Then, I got banned for some very genuine, but negative, opinions. I don't expect people to agree with them, but banning me for them again seemed asinine. I didn't bother changing my proxy, so this will probably auto-dead, but that's true. pg's lack of action was an endorsement of shitty, snarky, content-free behavior. Unsurprisingly, shitty, snarky, content-free behavior has grown since then. Want to fix HN? Fire pg.
  - csomar 16y ago
    There is no genuine and negative comment. If it's a good comment, then it's positive whether you agree with the OP or not. Can you point me to some comments if they are still available?
mvalente 16y ago
Reasons: "The difference between the two societies is that in the society which performs poorly: a) the stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members to become more active and take more actions; b) there is a change in the composition of the non-stupid section with a relative decline of populations of areas I, H1 and B1 and a proportionate increase of populations H2 and B2." http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidity.htm http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidit... Solutions: "1.) If you were going to build a piece of social software to support large and long-lived groups, what would you design for? The first thing you would design for is handles the user can invest in. 2.) Second, you have to design a way for there to be members in good standing. Have to design some way in which good works get recognized. The minimal way is, posts appear with identity. You can do more sophisticated things like having formal karma or "member since." 3.) Three, you need barriers to participation. This is one of the things that killed Usenet. You have to have some cost to either join or participate, if not at the lowest level, then at higher levels. There needs to be some kind of segmentation of capabilities. 4.) And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale." http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
chailatte 16y ago
I would say the phenomenon is merely a sign of the times. An echoing of the cries from the world and its people. People are frustrated with rising food/gas/health insurance, with layoffs after layoffs and local businesses closing, with governments that work with banks to steal from the citizen, with corporations that pollute the environment and food source without consequences. Their mood is sour. Their heart is heavy. They know the good times is over, but they can't see when the bad times will stop, if ever. They weep for their children, yet they intoxicate themselves with alcohol and tv and sports and video games, unable to rise up to fight for themselves. And so they come online and vent their frustration and anger on others, because its just easier. Because nothing of consequence happens anyways, except we all drag each down further and further.
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FiddlerClamp 16y ago
I have become a lot more circumspect since I've been on the receiving end of things. I used to slam books I hated having read on Amazon, but after being published, I realized how crushing something like that can be. Just because I think www.linttrapsforsale.com is a dumb idea doesn't mean that there wasn't a team behind it that thought they had a great vision, emitted blood and sweat in pursuit of it, and hung their hopes and dreams on it. Short of replying to things that are actively malicious (bigoted, etc.), I try to rein in my online 'road rage' and let other people take things to task. There are so many of them out there willing to do it, in any event...
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Mz 16y ago
Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I work on. It has been since practically the beginning. My observation has been that hackers tend to look for technical solutions for moderating a forum but forum moderation is a people problem, not a technical problem. Deal with people first, tweak technical stuff second. My experience has been that an assumption of ignorance is generally more accurate and more productive than an assumption of guilt. The antidote to ignorance is easy access to information. A prominent (top bar) link explaining how the forum works (both technically and socially) and allowing for "dumb" questions would likely do more to promote polite, thoughtful interaction than a million assumption-of-guilt based tweaks to the voting system. I am not really a hacker, though I do know a little (x)html and css and I am not new to online forums (and have been a moderator in a forum). I found the extremely minimalist design of HN hard to fathom. I did not understand why I sometimes couldn't find the "reply" button and on several occasions I replied anyway, via another means, and then sometimes edited it once the reply button appeared. In spite of the fact that the "logo" being linked to the "home" or "front" page is standard practice, it took me months to figure out that was the link to the 'top stories' everyone talked about so much. I just didn't view the words 'Hacker News' as being part of the menu and I just didn't make the connection. With so many more people from so many different walks of life and even countries now using the forum, there are probably quite a lot of people who, like me, just don't initially have the info they need to effectively participate. Frustrated people who don't know how to make something work often sound gruffer/have poor 'tone'. Enlightening them and assisting them will likely do a lot more for their tone than finding creative, subtle ways to secretly spank them for it (a la "the beatings will continue until morale improves"). Good luck with this. Edit: I probably put this in the wrong place. I am not having a good day. I have added pg's remarks (at the top), which is basically what I am replying to. I hope that makes more sense. :-/
sdgasfgas 16y ago
The price of popularity is interest from assholes, unfortunately.

155 points by mjfern 16y ago

daeken 16y ago

I upvoted this because I agree with the concept, but I don't believe such things are necessary. General rule of life: assholes will be assholes. This isn't going to make anyone more polite. Most of us are already polite, and quite content to simply downvote people who aren't.

mjfern 16y ago
If mean-spirited comments are down-voted, then it's not much of an issue. The problem is that I've started seeing mean-spirited comments receiving up-votes, and rising to the top of discussions. How do we solve this as a community?
- boundlessdreamz 16y ago
  Where have you seen that? I have seen most of them getting downvoted and some getting 1 or 2 upvotes
  - mjfern 16y ago
    I would rather not single out any individuals/comments. In any event, it appears like a growing issue across the community, and is not isolated to just one or two people.
    - plinkplonk 16y ago
      "I thought this question might come up, but I would rather not single out any individuals or comments." So, you state a claim (and it is an interesting claim!). Other people ask for instances or examples and you decline to point them out. How are we supposed to "deal with it as a community" if we don't know what you are talking about? I really would like to see an example of a mean spirited comment receiving plenty of upvotes and being on top of a discussion. I suggest (just suggesting, since I don't have any examples of what exactly you mean) that what you consider "mean spirited" may not appear so to others (and hence the upvotes)? Sounds like a simpler explanation (or at least an equally valid one) to me. What I have seen is that empty/mean comments get downvoted to oblivion very fast. Comments with plenty of upvotes generally have some valid points/insights/value, even if the tone is sharp or sarcastic (neither of which is necessarily "mean"). Posting a mean comment which gets a lot of upvotes and making it to the top of a discussion on HN, without getting flagged etc, would seem to take some real skill in writing. I would really appreciate any examples.
      - mahmud 16y ago
        I actually think it's a good idea not to single out anybody; you don't want to attract the attention of somebody who is already belligerent and vile.
        plinkplonk 16y ago
        "you don't want to attract the attention of somebody who is already belligerent and vile." I would rather these folks/comments are flushed out (the OP claims that someone belligerent and vile are getting a lot of upvotes, which seems strange to me - I don't doubt that mean people post on HN but if they are getting tonnes of upvotes (vs being downvoted or flagged) it would be really nice to see examples), but I appreciate that other people have different approaches to confrontation. The problem is that then it is very hard to take a claim like "general uptick in mean spirited comments" seriously. A asking for evidence of any claim is valid in any discussion. Heck if anyone wants to point these out but don't want to be seen doing it, just create a throw away account and use that?
  - nailer 16y ago
    The recent NoSQL discussion. There's a user called gaius who spent a lot of time abusing anyone who mentioned why they used a nosql database. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847978 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847978 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847836 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1847836 everything is a sarcastic take on the parent, a comparison without any justification, or a straight out insult ie 'it makes me laugh'. The parents one of whom is me are all making polite comments about why we use nosql in our projects, and paraphrased sarcastic insults are sitting there upmodded. Who seem to agree with the sentiment but don't care about the tone, civility or lack of supporting arguments.
- MarkSweep 16y ago
  Slashdot attempts to fix this with meta moderation. Users are given the chance to judge up-votes essentially. Whether that is actually effective for them or applicable to Hacker News, I could not say. http://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml http://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml
jberryman 16y ago
I think I'm a pretty nice guy, but I've written some mean comments when I strongly disagreed with someone here. Imagine most of the mean comments here are coming from nice people who would rather (if they thought about it for a second) not respond in a negative way in those types of situations.

ihodes 16y ago

Not trying to be passive aggressive here, at all; I agree with you here. The reason I didn't post anything was that HN has gotten pretty damn meta recently too. I'm not sure posts like this will help anything, much; probably something needs to come from the top, or the community needs to focus on enforcing the behavioral norm by down-voting (even if they normally wouldn't put in the effort) comments that are of an assholish nature. As an aside: http://twitter.com/#!/ihodes/status/29059931658 http://twitter.com/#!/ihodes/status/29059931658

pg 16y ago
It's a weekend. There's always more random stuff on weekends.

gsivil 16y ago

I have noticed that a negative comment(against the main point of the post) tends to be sometime initially down-voted by some superficial prejudice that it should be also mean-spirited. It seems that the community naturally upvotes that comment to support diversity of opinions. Of course such support tends to bring some of the provocative comments up in the list- in my view.

mjfern 16y ago
I'm highly supportive of thoughtful debate, but my impression is that some of the up-voted comments lately have crossed the line from debate to ridicule.

jrockway 16y ago

No social news site is going to be perfect. If it's people that are writing comments, some comments will be good and some will be bad. Read them and decide for yourself. If a comment hurts your feelings, get over it. If you like a comment, upvote it, and help other people find the best comments. Really, I kind of get tired of reading stuff like this because there is always some subtext to it. "mean-spirited" usually means, "someone disagreed with me". If people disagree with you, you can either get over it or learn to argue better. Passive aggressive, "oh noes everyone is so mean" is not going to change what people think. Good writing will.

codexon 16y ago
When it comes to things like politics/religion/etc no amount of good writing can convince the other person.
- ugh 16y ago
  I don’t think that’s true at all.
- davorak 16y ago
  I would make the argument that it depends more on the rationality of the person receiving the argument then what the argument is about. A rational person is capable and willing to change their mind when new evidence is offered. A irrational person may easily change their mind on some topics with no evidence and never change their mind on other topics(politics/religion/etc) even with the best evidence.
- bloomshed 16y ago
  I think the trick is staying calm while you confront somebody about something. If you set them off, they stop hearing what you're saying and the whole "discussion" turns into a spitting match. Everybody knows that crazy talk is a waste of everyone's time. I get depressed every time I find myself reading the comments on CNN or YouTube. . . .
mjfern 16y ago
This post was not a reaction to a discussion that I was engaged in, so in fact there is no subtext and it's not personal. :-)

sp4rki 16y ago

Sometimes mean spirited comments can be full of usable ideas, or at least they can fuel a debate between contrasting opinions. Remember that what looks to be a mean spirited comment by you, might be taken a completely different way by someone else. In any case I'd say that more important than mean comments is a the downvote everything I dislike regardless of if it contributes to the discussion in any way. It stalls actual conversation between different opinions.

mahmud 16y ago

FWIW, I discovered that people take disagreements personally and will stalk you across threads if you're not careful with their egos. For some reason I am incapable of remembering names and can only identify about 10 - 15 people here other than the ones I have met or know from somewhere else. So the whole thing feels to me like detached, anonymous discussion. I was surprised to be 1) remembered, and 2) "punished" in another, unrelated context. There are also times when I withhold contributing to a thread because of its strong fanboy/flamer possibilities. Certain companies have .. enthusiastic supporters/haters.

paraschopra 16y ago
I am surprised people "punishing" online but I did realize that people used downvoting for disagreement (or if they are frustrated) while it should be used only if a comment is irrelevant to the topic or is frivolous. I usually upvote the comments I disagree with because a healthy debate always helps me fill gaps in my knowledge. But when passions and emotions rule, "healthy debate" is simply impossible. Some people seem to be too stuck up with their beliefs. Come On guys, many times it is good to be _wrong_.
petercooper 16y ago
I wasn't going to reply until I noticed I had a long line of comments with 2s a couple of hours ago, now they're all 1s after this morning's little scuffle: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851115 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851115 You can never prove anything unless you have the logs so there's not much point worrying, just play with and enjoy the furore. The best defence, if there is any, is to have a lot of karma and only engage with these folks if you can bear to lose some of it.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Err, that thread was fine until you linked to his history, Peter. But yeah, drug related threads, red flag :-) I hope you learned your lesson.
  - petercooper 16y ago

pointillistic 16y ago

Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every open online community. This is the flip side of the anonymity and what Jaron Lanier calls "the mob switch" (google it). In other words, human tendency to gang-up/gang-down, up-vote/down-vote in batches, regardless a content. I also noticed that often here the polite but critical comments are down-voted if they don't share the "main theme" of a post. Again, this is the part and parcel of every online community.The alternative are the one-liners and up-likes you get on Facebook, the same Facebook that coincidently is responsible for the internet-wide decline of the commenting culture.

davorak 16y ago
"Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every open online community." I often hear comments along these lines, I fear that people who write and read them then think that there is nothing to be done. That there is not point in trying, that there is no cultural or satisfactory technical solution possible. If nothing else it is better try/do something then do nothing at all.

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8ren 16y ago

pg's quoted comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833255 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833255 I've noticed that if you reply to a mean-spirited comment with a straightforward and dispassionate counter-argument, completely ignoring its rudeness and tone, you get massive upvotes. Transcending meanness also feels really clean; it is neutralized. By framing the meanness, the site's collegiality is not undermined, but demonstrated.

mjfern 16y ago
Great point 8ren, and perhaps this is a solution to the issue. A concern is that the mean-spirited comments are not always countered in a thoughtful manner, or in time before the post drops off the front page. That said, perhaps we can draw on your suggestion, and as a community be more vigilant in quickly responding to mean-sprited comments in a logical and dispassionate manner to counter their effect.

sutro 16y ago

If we could dispense with all of the boo-hoo-someone-was-mean-and-downvoted-me meta posts and comments, this could be a great site. Posts like this are the biggest problem with HN.

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pjscott 16y ago
Here's what you can do: 1. Avoid meta threads. 2. Downvote off-topic meta-discussion in other threads. 3. Do not add to the meta-discussion; just downvote and move on. In this way, you can express your distaste for such discussion and avoid most of it with very minimal effort.
- hasenj 16y ago
  isn't this a mean-spirited comment?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

alnayyir 16y ago

It seems my brief back and forth with PG is the subject of this post. (indirectly?) I'm not sure if my criticism of blind positivity (boosterism) is intended to be what you're concerned about, or if you're just referring to the popularity of banal and frequently unkind commentary. I'd really like to know, because if it was my words that raised your concerns, I want to address it.

_delirium 16y ago

This is only for a subset of comments, but one common case that's sometimes sort of accidental: a commenter disagrees with a submitted article strongly, but doesn't realize that the article is written by the submitter or by another HN user. If they had, they probably would've phrased their disagreement differently. Of course it's nice to be polite when disagreeing with any article, but I notice myself making more of an effort to be polite when disagreeing with an HN user's own submission, compared to disagreeing with, say, a New York Times article, because the NYT reporter isn't present or going to read my comment. HN's greater volume of user-written content (compared to, say, reddit) makes this something not everyone expects to encounter; it's like ranting about how Daikatana sucks and then realizing that John Romero was standing right next to you, and then you feel bad. (This doesn't explain mean-spirited comments that are responding to other comments, though.)

pg 16y ago

DannoHung 16y ago
You could try fragmenting HN in the same way that Reddit allows; this makes it possible to turn off the bullshit that invariably rises to the top. I mean, I don't even read reddit main or /r/programming anymore; they're just garbage. Otherwise... aggressively ban people that don't contribute well enough. It is literally the only non-fragmentary way to fix the problem, because it's not a technical issue. People are just terrible. (I'm of the opinion that fragmenting is simply a less aggressive version of banning: leave the trolls to their shit-heaps, forge new ground.) I'd say you should be banning at a rate over half of the new users you see. And if you look at my posting history, you'll probably see that I'm not exactly grade A material, so I'd expect to get chopped off eventually, probably sooner than later.
- froo 16y ago
  What about perhaps a combination of the two ways? Fragmentation and access restriction (lets face it, banning is just complete access restriction) Those users who are noted as being excessively mean spirited should have to learn to play in a sandbox nicely with others before they're let back into more active areas of the site. The net effect is perhaps less of a knee jerk negative reaction so that users can eventually learn to contribute again in a positive manner and it keeps the more frequented areas clean again.
- alex_c 16y ago
  In my experience, aggressive moderation often ends up having a worse effect than the symptoms it's trying to treat. Clamping down on a popular (but, in the moderators' opinion, negative) voice usually spawns arguments and discussion that are very rarely productive. Moderating this follow-up discussion leads to a spiral of arguing, resentment, and mistrust between users and moderators. It happens all to easily, and it's not pretty.

pissflute 16y ago

u mad

DocuMaker 16y ago

It's not just Hacker News. It's everywhere on all forums, blogs, etc. I have no idea what's causing it other than economic stress!

DocuMaker 16y ago
Which got me thinking a few nights ago -- what a way to stimulate the economy. Hire some damn moderators!! ;-)
- Kaizyn 16y ago
  Yeah, but we don't want to actually pay them much. Though, the Amazon Mechanical Turk might make it cost effective. $0.01 per every 10 posts moderated.
davorak 16y ago
Maybe, I do not think the internet has not had a stable population in terms of demographics for a long enough time for a dominant productive culture to emerge.

codefisher 16y ago

How about people with low karma (like myself) not being allowed to comment on articles that appear on the front page. Then only people really interested in following HN, and trying to form some kind of reputation in the community would be able to get much exposure. Trolls in general I would think are much more interested in putting out comments that a number of people will see.

usedtolurk 16y ago
That would result in a relatively small panel of generalists and censor specialists who might otherwise make the occasional invaluable contributions.

tlrobinson 16y ago

I've been on HN for a few years, and I'm usually extremely skeptical of people claiming a decline in the quality of HN, but I agree, and furthermore I have noticed an increase in acceptance of clever but empty Reddit-esque one-liners. I don't mind them, but I think it's unfortunately a very slippery slope...

8ren 16y ago

Previous insightful submission and discussion, for background: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133 (9 months ago)

stukhomsimdrone 16y ago

Considering the perspective of a logged in user, simply give them the opportunity to deselect others by username and then record their deselections with their account. This wouldn't require unique pages to be served, except for a deselected_users array to be picked up and processed at the client side. The same lightweight approach can be used give shape to a user's own view with stuff like: 'preferred users', 'out-right scum' etc. Same principles apply to personal topic preferences and their viewed ranking.

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ashedryden 16y ago

I've been seeing a lot of this lately, too. I wonder how much of it is related to the Digg mass exodus?

csomar 16y ago

As someone who was a "bad" user (under another username); posting rather useless, short, unsighted comments and submissions; I think the best way is to "educate people". This is not only a HN culture, it's a civilian culture. Limit the freedom of newbies until they are more mature. When you are committed to the community, you become more responsible and work toward creating a name/friends. When you are new, you pretty much don't care.

mehmeh 16y ago
I am a bad user who was a good user. I stopped bothering after a few incidents where content-free snarky bullshit written in response to my genuine comments was upvoted, and pg was unwilling to remove any of it. Then, I got banned for some very genuine, but negative, opinions. I don't expect people to agree with them, but banning me for them again seemed asinine. I didn't bother changing my proxy, so this will probably auto-dead, but that's true. pg's lack of action was an endorsement of shitty, snarky, content-free behavior. Unsurprisingly, shitty, snarky, content-free behavior has grown since then. Want to fix HN? Fire pg.
- csomar 16y ago
  There is no genuine and negative comment. If it's a good comment, then it's positive whether you agree with the OP or not. Can you point me to some comments if they are still available?

mvalente 16y ago

Reasons: "The difference between the two societies is that in the society which performs poorly: a) the stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members to become more active and take more actions; b) there is a change in the composition of the non-stupid section with a relative decline of populations of areas I, H1 and B1 and a proportionate increase of populations H2 and B2." http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidity.htm http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidit... Solutions: "1.) If you were going to build a piece of social software to support large and long-lived groups, what would you design for? The first thing you would design for is handles the user can invest in. 2.) Second, you have to design a way for there to be members in good standing. Have to design some way in which good works get recognized. The minimal way is, posts appear with identity. You can do more sophisticated things like having formal karma or "member since." 3.) Three, you need barriers to participation. This is one of the things that killed Usenet. You have to have some cost to either join or participate, if not at the lowest level, then at higher levels. There needs to be some kind of segmentation of capabilities. 4.) And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale." http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

chailatte 16y ago

I would say the phenomenon is merely a sign of the times. An echoing of the cries from the world and its people. People are frustrated with rising food/gas/health insurance, with layoffs after layoffs and local businesses closing, with governments that work with banks to steal from the citizen, with corporations that pollute the environment and food source without consequences. Their mood is sour. Their heart is heavy. They know the good times is over, but they can't see when the bad times will stop, if ever. They weep for their children, yet they intoxicate themselves with alcohol and tv and sports and video games, unable to rise up to fight for themselves. And so they come online and vent their frustration and anger on others, because its just easier. Because nothing of consequence happens anyways, except we all drag each down further and further.

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FiddlerClamp 16y ago

I have become a lot more circumspect since I've been on the receiving end of things. I used to slam books I hated having read on Amazon, but after being published, I realized how crushing something like that can be. Just because I think www.linttrapsforsale.com is a dumb idea doesn't mean that there wasn't a team behind it that thought they had a great vision, emitted blood and sweat in pursuit of it, and hung their hopes and dreams on it. Short of replying to things that are actively malicious (bigoted, etc.), I try to rein in my online 'road rage' and let other people take things to task. There are so many of them out there willing to do it, in any event...

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Mz 16y ago

Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I work on. It has been since practically the beginning. My observation has been that hackers tend to look for technical solutions for moderating a forum but forum moderation is a people problem, not a technical problem. Deal with people first, tweak technical stuff second. My experience has been that an assumption of ignorance is generally more accurate and more productive than an assumption of guilt. The antidote to ignorance is easy access to information. A prominent (top bar) link explaining how the forum works (both technically and socially) and allowing for "dumb" questions would likely do more to promote polite, thoughtful interaction than a million assumption-of-guilt based tweaks to the voting system. I am not really a hacker, though I do know a little (x)html and css and I am not new to online forums (and have been a moderator in a forum). I found the extremely minimalist design of HN hard to fathom. I did not understand why I sometimes couldn't find the "reply" button and on several occasions I replied anyway, via another means, and then sometimes edited it once the reply button appeared. In spite of the fact that the "logo" being linked to the "home" or "front" page is standard practice, it took me months to figure out that was the link to the 'top stories' everyone talked about so much. I just didn't view the words 'Hacker News' as being part of the menu and I just didn't make the connection. With so many more people from so many different walks of life and even countries now using the forum, there are probably quite a lot of people who, like me, just don't initially have the info they need to effectively participate. Frustrated people who don't know how to make something work often sound gruffer/have poor 'tone'. Enlightening them and assisting them will likely do a lot more for their tone than finding creative, subtle ways to secretly spank them for it (a la "the beatings will continue until morale improves"). Good luck with this. Edit: I probably put this in the wrong place. I am not having a good day. I have added pg's remarks (at the top), which is basically what I am replying to. I hope that makes more sense. :-/

sdgasfgas 16y ago

The price of popularity is interest from assholes, unfortunately.