5 ms·

I think I've noticed three things. It's hard to say for sure, but I think these three are true - 1. Raw nastyness has gone up. Profanity, insults, and sarcasm

I think I've noticed three things. It's hard to say for sure, but I think these three are true - 1. Raw nastyness has gone up. Profanity, insults, and sarcasm in disagreement. HN was super civil 2-3 years ago. Now it's still far more civil than anywhere else, but gently declining. 2. Stupid arguments that agreed with the dominant view of a thread used to be left alone or even get downvoted. Now I see sometimes where a reasoned critique is at 1 point, but a response going, "How could you even think that? Everyone knows that isn't true" - proof by assertion type stuff - get voted up. 3. Also, very lately there's been a marked increase in the class warfare/social justice/inequality vibe filtering in. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your views, but it was less like that a few years ago.

ThomPete 16y ago
Also more people seem to vote based on whether they agree with something rather than whether it adds to the conversation.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Voting based on agreement has been going on since at least 1078 days ago (which is before when I registered as a user, after about a year of lurking beforehand). http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
ErrantX 16y ago
I've observed this too. But I'm not sure it is related to this '08 article (I joined about half a year after it "aired" BTW, so have no data point on how HN was before that). I think a lot of the stuff you highlight has happened in the last year - and accelerated in the last 6 months. Views are appearing to be less informed and commenting lot less jovial. We do seem to be getting more content on politics and religion now too (more than there used to be). (r.e. civility; I totally agree - I distinctly remember getting into a disagreement in my first month here and it was about the most polite argument I ever had :D Pretty sure we both converted each other in the end!)
j_baker 16y ago
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's important to keep memory biases in mind. In particular, our penchant for rosy retrospection[1] seems pretty relevant. I'm just saying that this post has a very "kids these days" feel to it. :-) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
mycroftiv 16y ago
I believe there is actually a definite cultural fault line between the older, core HN community and many of the more recent arrivals. The old HN I believe was pretty tightly clustered around ycombinator's social graph. I think if you played "six degrees of PG" with commentators, the average score has probably risen from 2 to 4, at least. I believe that PG's essays articulate much of the ethos at the core of the HN community. My perception is that a fair number of "join us now and share the software, you'll be free" type hackers are not really enthusiastic about the whole startup culture of angel investors and "profitable exits". There has often been an anti-establishment character to hacker culture, and sometimes it takes on an anti-capitalist tone. I see a lot of people mention Reddit and Digg as cautionary examples, but isn't Slashdot really the first and foremost case study? For the first year or so I read HN, I didn't make an account because I didn't think I had anything to contribute that would help startup entrepreneurs make money. As the perspectives expressed on the site began to become more diverse, I started to feel like I might have something to contribute. I suppose that makes me part of the problem, at least in terms of diluting the solution's purity. I certainly try to avoid precipitating conflict, but I also see a certain amount of conflict as inevitable unless HN does something like split into a separate ycombinator related startup focused board and a general programming/technology area.
hugh3 16y ago
3. Also, very lately there's been a marked increase in the class warfare/social justice/inequality vibe filtering in. Which, if you ask me, is a subclass of a larger problem: people with agendas. The bonnet-dwelling bee is, as always, the most destructive parasite of all. In the good ol' days, discussions about politics were strictly banned, and this ban was pretty heavily enforced. Comments of the form "!HN" would be modded up. But then folks got bored with the meta-discussion about whether or not a given story was HN-worthy, so pg added a line to the guidelines: Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. which seems to have killed off the meta-discussion but also resulted in a bunch of rather political stories and discussions showing up.

ThomPete 16y ago

Also more people seem to vote based on whether they agree with something rather than whether it adds to the conversation.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tokenadult 16y ago
Voting based on agreement has been going on since at least 1078 days ago (which is before when I registered as a user, after about a year of lurking beforehand). http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

ErrantX 16y ago

I've observed this too. But I'm not sure it is related to this '08 article (I joined about half a year after it "aired" BTW, so have no data point on how HN was before that). I think a lot of the stuff you highlight has happened in the last year - and accelerated in the last 6 months. Views are appearing to be less informed and commenting lot less jovial. We do seem to be getting more content on politics and religion now too (more than there used to be). (r.e. civility; I totally agree - I distinctly remember getting into a disagreement in my first month here and it was about the most polite argument I ever had :D Pretty sure we both converted each other in the end!)

j_baker 16y ago

I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's important to keep memory biases in mind. In particular, our penchant for rosy retrospection[1] seems pretty relevant. I'm just saying that this post has a very "kids these days" feel to it. :-) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection

mycroftiv 16y ago

I believe there is actually a definite cultural fault line between the older, core HN community and many of the more recent arrivals. The old HN I believe was pretty tightly clustered around ycombinator's social graph. I think if you played "six degrees of PG" with commentators, the average score has probably risen from 2 to 4, at least. I believe that PG's essays articulate much of the ethos at the core of the HN community. My perception is that a fair number of "join us now and share the software, you'll be free" type hackers are not really enthusiastic about the whole startup culture of angel investors and "profitable exits". There has often been an anti-establishment character to hacker culture, and sometimes it takes on an anti-capitalist tone. I see a lot of people mention Reddit and Digg as cautionary examples, but isn't Slashdot really the first and foremost case study? For the first year or so I read HN, I didn't make an account because I didn't think I had anything to contribute that would help startup entrepreneurs make money. As the perspectives expressed on the site began to become more diverse, I started to feel like I might have something to contribute. I suppose that makes me part of the problem, at least in terms of diluting the solution's purity. I certainly try to avoid precipitating conflict, but I also see a certain amount of conflict as inevitable unless HN does something like split into a separate ycombinator related startup focused board and a general programming/technology area.

hugh3 16y ago

3. Also, very lately there's been a marked increase in the class warfare/social justice/inequality vibe filtering in. Which, if you ask me, is a subclass of a larger problem: people with agendas. The bonnet-dwelling bee is, as always, the most destructive parasite of all. In the good ol' days, discussions about politics were strictly banned, and this ban was pretty heavily enforced. Comments of the form "!HN" would be modded up. But then folks got bored with the meta-discussion about whether or not a given story was HN-worthy, so pg added a line to the guidelines: Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. which seems to have killed off the meta-discussion but also resulted in a bunch of rather political stories and discussions showing up.