5 ms·

Part of "the glory days" was a much more interesting debate. Currently, lots of HN comments are either going for the cute/snide/sarcastic joke, or argue dogmati

by groby_b 16y ago

Part of "the glory days" was a much more interesting debate. Currently, lots of HN comments are either going for the cute/snide/sarcastic joke, or argue dogmatic points. Worse - the snide remarks get modded up. Being guilty of them myself, let me post an example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202958 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202958 The discussion was about Google's two factor auth. Somebody asks for a good API, poster #2 suggests OpenID. I joke "you read the part about 'good' API". It's by far the highest-modded comment I have. (Which makes me feel guilty every time I see it). Sure, I don't have a lot of comments or karma, so it might be a fluke, but it exemplifies what's wrong with the discussion. HN'08 would've modded me to 0 for that and moved on. HN'11 rewards playing to the audience.

Mz 16y ago
A couple of real quick and dirty thoughts: A) Meatier comments/debates require a certain level of trust that the debate is about ideas and not about pecking order. That is enormously hard to achieve in most settings. It gets harder when the community grows. A smaller group is much more able to know each other and all that. B) My best understanding is that formality is what older cultures with larger populations moved towards as a solution for such problems. I know I find some stuff at work endlessly annoying because of the disconnect between the setting and the social behaviors/assumptions. My mom is European and my dad was career military and my ex husband was career military. Europe and the American military are both more formal cultures than the American Deep South where I grew up (and live currently). I find some of the assumptions of more 'casual' cultures to be very uncouth. I don't know how to raise the bar on formality for a place like HN but my best guess is that would help with this particular issue. I like a good, healthy debate. I rarely engage in it because most "debates" are really fights (ie they are "arguments" in the other sense of the word -- emotional, social, ugly), not intellectual discussions. Anyway thanks for tossing me a clue. That does help me think about the issue, unlike most of what I read in these discussions.
- groby_b 16y ago
  That is an interesting thought.. I've never looked at it from that angle, but formality is certainly a buffer against "pecking order" fights. Then again, as much as I'm happy in a less casual setting, I wouldn't go so far as addressing fellow HN posters as "Sir" or "Ma'am" :) (But maybe I should...) It's also interesting that in the last 6 months or so I ran across a couple of sites that take your HN karma as a predictor of your geek-worthiness. Well-intentioned, I'm sure, but it encourages gaming the system. HN karma now is not only something valuable to the HN community, but outside. It would be very interesting to see if kuro5hin/slashdot/reddit "decline" periods correlate with wider acceptance of their karma metric.
  - Mz 16y ago
    I don't know that formal culture necessarily has that much to do with using titles (though that can be a part of it). I think it just doesn't assume familiarity. Informal cultures assume a degree of familiarity which you logically can't achieve with your 80K closest friends and I think that is one of the roots of evil here, so to speak. I read a story once about a young American man who had an affair with a British woman and then ran into trouble because when he met her in public, she was offended that he behaved in a familiar fashion merely because they had slept together. Her view: "We've never been formally introduced." That may make no sense to many people here. I can't think of a better example though right now. Formality gives people a certain degree of social space that a "small town" mentality (for lack of a better phrase) fails to provide. That space reduces friction enormously.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
The snide remarks got voted up in 2008 also. For a long time, my top rated comment (posted in 2008, 50 upvotes) was nothing but snark. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=318690 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=318690 (In contrast, my most valuable submission to HN ever only got 14 upvotes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250027 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250027 )

by groby_b 16y ago

Mz 16y ago

A couple of real quick and dirty thoughts: A) Meatier comments/debates require a certain level of trust that the debate is about ideas and not about pecking order. That is enormously hard to achieve in most settings. It gets harder when the community grows. A smaller group is much more able to know each other and all that. B) My best understanding is that formality is what older cultures with larger populations moved towards as a solution for such problems. I know I find some stuff at work endlessly annoying because of the disconnect between the setting and the social behaviors/assumptions. My mom is European and my dad was career military and my ex husband was career military. Europe and the American military are both more formal cultures than the American Deep South where I grew up (and live currently). I find some of the assumptions of more 'casual' cultures to be very uncouth. I don't know how to raise the bar on formality for a place like HN but my best guess is that would help with this particular issue. I like a good, healthy debate. I rarely engage in it because most "debates" are really fights (ie they are "arguments" in the other sense of the word -- emotional, social, ugly), not intellectual discussions. Anyway thanks for tossing me a clue. That does help me think about the issue, unlike most of what I read in these discussions.

groby_b 16y ago
That is an interesting thought.. I've never looked at it from that angle, but formality is certainly a buffer against "pecking order" fights. Then again, as much as I'm happy in a less casual setting, I wouldn't go so far as addressing fellow HN posters as "Sir" or "Ma'am" :) (But maybe I should...) It's also interesting that in the last 6 months or so I ran across a couple of sites that take your HN karma as a predictor of your geek-worthiness. Well-intentioned, I'm sure, but it encourages gaming the system. HN karma now is not only something valuable to the HN community, but outside. It would be very interesting to see if kuro5hin/slashdot/reddit "decline" periods correlate with wider acceptance of their karma metric.
- Mz 16y ago
  I don't know that formal culture necessarily has that much to do with using titles (though that can be a part of it). I think it just doesn't assume familiarity. Informal cultures assume a degree of familiarity which you logically can't achieve with your 80K closest friends and I think that is one of the roots of evil here, so to speak. I read a story once about a young American man who had an affair with a British woman and then ran into trouble because when he met her in public, she was offended that he behaved in a familiar fashion merely because they had slept together. Her view: "We've never been formally introduced." That may make no sense to many people here. I can't think of a better example though right now. Formality gives people a certain degree of social space that a "small town" mentality (for lack of a better phrase) fails to provide. That space reduces friction enormously.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

The snide remarks got voted up in 2008 also. For a long time, my top rated comment (posted in 2008, 50 upvotes) was nothing but snark. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=318690 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=318690 (In contrast, my most valuable submission to HN ever only got 14 upvotes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250027 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250027 )