4 ms·

Still my favorite site on the whole internet, but yeah, things have definitely changed. Stories, yeah, they're a bit worse but that's not the main thing. I ski

Still my favorite site on the whole internet, but yeah, things have definitely changed. Stories, yeah, they're a bit worse but that's not the main thing. I skip stories that don't appeal to me, and you can always go a few pages deep if you want more stories. It's the comment quality sliding down that's scary to me... it's becoming much more okay to engage in standard-internet-level discussion here, which is to say, much less civil than HN used to be. Perhaps liberally killing any comment that's primarily insulting, sarcastic, pedantic would help? For instance, I just saw a link to this two year old thread today, look how civil and friendly it is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554889 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554889 The only halfway insult on there - "Dunno but she has a Twitter page. Not sure why PG would quote such a weirdo." - was voted to zero. And the 2-3 jokes/sarcasm stood still at 1, none of it voted up. Also, I'd love to see people who just consistently left substance-less comments get put on auto-kill, but I know that'd never happen for a ton of reasons. I'm thinking of one guy who just posts about how outraged he is about anything remotely politics related, and nothing else. Joined in the last six months. Actually, that probably describes a lot of users now, which might be part of the problem...

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Case in point: here's a thread from 2 years ago where we all talked about atheism. Civilly. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=236808 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=236808 You couldn't get anywhere near that today. Discussing tough and interesting subjects civilly with some of the smartest people I know wasn't what brought me to hn (startups were), but it was a big factor in keeping me here. I knew if I posted some crazy half-assed startup idea that might piss people off that the community could talk about it logically and dispassionately. That allowed each of us to open up more. Those days are gone.
- po 16y ago
  Those days are gone. I blame karma. I know it existed back then too but I don't think people talked about it. There should be no "top users" page. Having a measuring stick drives competition and there should be no metric to civil discussion besides the rewarding feeling of discovery and helping people.
- spoondan 16y ago
  That thread contains this comment decrying the state of HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=237127 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=237127 Admittedly, it wasn't voted up, but there was some agreement with it. You're looking back wistfully at a point where another user thought HN had fallen off precipitously. I don't see a significant difference between HN now versus about 3 years ago (when I first started lurking), and I believe the community could and (on most days) would have the very discussion you've linked. There are cycles where many of the submissions aren't interesting to me. I usually chalk those up to slow news days. And there have been situations where I've been appalled and infuriated by (what I perceived as) the poor quality of articles/comments that the community was voting up. Some of that is the community offending my own biases. Some of that is just bad days. You can't discern the climate by just looking at today's weather. The other cycle I've noticed is these efforts at self-policing and reflection. I'm almost annoyed by them because I don't see HN as getting worse. But I'll allow that others are more sensitive to HN's quality. Perhaps these reflective posts are what keep HN's quality high enough for my tastes. Or maybe, as I suspect, they are more about the tastes and perceptions of the long-time users changing. It's more than a little reminiscent of the "golden age" thinking of older generations, where the past was simpler and more innocent because they were younger and insulated from the time's complexity and injustice. (Sorry for rambling there.)
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    You're looking back wistfully at a point where another user thought HN had fallen off precipitously. Yes, I think that's what made it a good example. The other cycle I've noticed is these efforts at self-policing and reflection. I'm almost annoyed by them because I don't see HN as getting worse. Yes, it's almost an inside joke. One of the "classic" HN stories is the meta story where we all lament the decaying state of HN. The "naval gazing" stories. You learn either to ignore them or vent (politely) After watching them for a while, I think they serve to help release a lot of frustration people have. I would note that many of the folks early on who said HN was fine are now also saying there are problems. To me, HN's core problem was the problem you always have when speaking to more than five people: trying to anticipate reactions. You end up trying to cover every possible response, and it kills the tone. One of the reasons my comments run on so long is that I have to cover every obvious way they could be misunderstood. You're stuck either not replying to anybody, writing long comments, or getting in endless debates. All of that is distasteful to me. One of the hard lessons I had to learn blogging was not to tease people. I used to put pictures of girls in bikinis up or joke around about making money tricking people online -- to me I was just playing. I live by my reputation: being an internet porn mogul is not on my list of future plans. But there were a heckuva lot of folks who didn't understand my posts, who thought that made me some kind of evil person. It was really sad to have to give up the playful part of my personality simply to get along with people because of the many ways things can be misunderstood. I hate that. But the real problem is that everybody's personality will piss somebody off somewhere. I know I probably rub thousands of people the wrong way just because I'm the way I am. Others do the same. So then I end up commenting something like "Looks like it is raining outside" and I get 3 or 4 downvotes. Sure, the upvotes outweigh them, but it's just silly nonsense. Vengeance voting. Hey now I've rambled too, so we're even :)

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Case in point: here's a thread from 2 years ago where we all talked about atheism. Civilly. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=236808 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=236808 You couldn't get anywhere near that today. Discussing tough and interesting subjects civilly with some of the smartest people I know wasn't what brought me to hn (startups were), but it was a big factor in keeping me here. I knew if I posted some crazy half-assed startup idea that might piss people off that the community could talk about it logically and dispassionately. That allowed each of us to open up more. Those days are gone.

po 16y ago
Those days are gone. I blame karma. I know it existed back then too but I don't think people talked about it. There should be no "top users" page. Having a measuring stick drives competition and there should be no metric to civil discussion besides the rewarding feeling of discovery and helping people.
spoondan 16y ago
That thread contains this comment decrying the state of HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=237127 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=237127 Admittedly, it wasn't voted up, but there was some agreement with it. You're looking back wistfully at a point where another user thought HN had fallen off precipitously. I don't see a significant difference between HN now versus about 3 years ago (when I first started lurking), and I believe the community could and (on most days) would have the very discussion you've linked. There are cycles where many of the submissions aren't interesting to me. I usually chalk those up to slow news days. And there have been situations where I've been appalled and infuriated by (what I perceived as) the poor quality of articles/comments that the community was voting up. Some of that is the community offending my own biases. Some of that is just bad days. You can't discern the climate by just looking at today's weather. The other cycle I've noticed is these efforts at self-policing and reflection. I'm almost annoyed by them because I don't see HN as getting worse. But I'll allow that others are more sensitive to HN's quality. Perhaps these reflective posts are what keep HN's quality high enough for my tastes. Or maybe, as I suspect, they are more about the tastes and perceptions of the long-time users changing. It's more than a little reminiscent of the "golden age" thinking of older generations, where the past was simpler and more innocent because they were younger and insulated from the time's complexity and injustice. (Sorry for rambling there.)
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  You're looking back wistfully at a point where another user thought HN had fallen off precipitously. Yes, I think that's what made it a good example. The other cycle I've noticed is these efforts at self-policing and reflection. I'm almost annoyed by them because I don't see HN as getting worse. Yes, it's almost an inside joke. One of the "classic" HN stories is the meta story where we all lament the decaying state of HN. The "naval gazing" stories. You learn either to ignore them or vent (politely) After watching them for a while, I think they serve to help release a lot of frustration people have. I would note that many of the folks early on who said HN was fine are now also saying there are problems. To me, HN's core problem was the problem you always have when speaking to more than five people: trying to anticipate reactions. You end up trying to cover every possible response, and it kills the tone. One of the reasons my comments run on so long is that I have to cover every obvious way they could be misunderstood. You're stuck either not replying to anybody, writing long comments, or getting in endless debates. All of that is distasteful to me. One of the hard lessons I had to learn blogging was not to tease people. I used to put pictures of girls in bikinis up or joke around about making money tricking people online -- to me I was just playing. I live by my reputation: being an internet porn mogul is not on my list of future plans. But there were a heckuva lot of folks who didn't understand my posts, who thought that made me some kind of evil person. It was really sad to have to give up the playful part of my personality simply to get along with people because of the many ways things can be misunderstood. I hate that. But the real problem is that everybody's personality will piss somebody off somewhere. I know I probably rub thousands of people the wrong way just because I'm the way I am. Others do the same. So then I end up commenting something like "Looks like it is raining outside" and I get 3 or 4 downvotes. Sure, the upvotes outweigh them, but it's just silly nonsense. Vengeance voting. Hey now I've rambled too, so we're even :)