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Absolutely not. HN is far too insular and full of self-assured personalities who think themselves experts on topics far outside their expertise to be considere

Absolutely not. HN is far too insular and full of self-assured personalities who think themselves experts on topics far outside their expertise to be considered healthy. It is also filled to the brim with groupthink, reality denial, and often a complete lack of both empathy and perspective. A significant chunk of this is likely due to the demographic skew of commenters here combined with the negative aspects of being technically-minded enough to want to participate in HN in the first place. That being said, it's still superior to most online communities due to its focus specifically on technical topics (you get a lot of focused content and actual experts chiming in) and the moderation (both from the HN org and self-policing to prevent inane meme comments typical of communities like reddit). Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. How and why I arrived here: the subreddits I frequented degraded in quality to the point where I wanted a less-mainstream tech news aggregator, and several redditors recommended HN. I actually had no interest in commenting here until I got far enough along in my career to have actual insight to share on relevant topics. I suspect I'm quite a bit older than most HN participants these days. Why I stay: a larger portion of content here aligns with my interests and career than elsewhere online and the overall experience has not yet degraded to reddit levels of picking through trash to find gems.

PaulHoule 7y ago
I disagree. I think technical concerns are underrated in the general population. The other day I was watching some lectures by a quant finance prof who started out telling people that "you can still be smart even if you don't like repetitive math" -- there is so much mollycoddling of people whose main ability is the "social skill" of coming up with the same wrong answers that most other people come up with. I like HN because it is a place where technology and business are taken equally seriously. I think of the programming subreddit which is overrun by communists who think that if money has any effect on your motivation as a programmer you're like a pedophile or something. Also HN is mostly free of the unproductive "culture wars" discussions that have led to the heat death of so many fora.
- mekoka 7y ago
  None of the things that you said qualifies to make HN itself a "healthy community". Your dislike of communities where technical concerns are underrated may be warranted, but the dichotomy you're creating as a result may just be an illusion. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. It's ok to dislike them all, some less than others.
- non-entity 7y ago
  I like HN because it is a place where technology and business are taken equally seriously. I think of the > programming subreddit which is overrun by communists who think that if money has any effect on your motivation as a programmer you're like a pedophile or something Theres a level of irony in trying to claim some sort of level of superior intelligence and then following it up with a paragraph of nonsense demonstrating you know little about the community you've attacked and the ideology you've attempted to label it with.
- shadowbanthrow 7y ago
  > Also HN is mostly free of the unproductive "culture wars" discussions that have led to the heat death of so many fora. This is objectively and demonstrably false. The wars just manifest differently and happen to lead to an outcome that you prefer. There's a reason this site has "avoid controversial topics unless you have something new to add" or however it's phrased in the guidelines. Let me be completely and plainly clear: there is an HN culture. You will be banned, often quietly, if you wander off that reservation. --- Edit: Dan, I'm rate limited, so you get the edit here because I can't be bothered to account hop again. Grandiose? You ban people for not adhering to a culture. How is that even a remotely controversial statement? What else would you ban them for? There is a set of guidelines and approaches you want in place for HN behavior. When people fail to meet those, you give them a couple chances and then remove them from the community. Examples: "We've asked you to be nicer," or "we've asked you not to bring up gender politics," or whatever nice explanation you give. There's a word for that kind of thing; that word is culture. I wasn't even criticizing moderation, because I'm not sure what I could add there because it's your employment to manage this stupidity, but you sure showed up fast assuming I was. Is it really like that now? Nobody can speak objectively about how this site works and point out an incontrovertible fact without you taking it personally and trying to rally a bunch of usernames you've never met to believe you? While I have you, I appreciated that you declined to share your age in that fawning profile you and Scott got. That was tacit admission of your own site's culture, and you know it. --- Edit 2: I'm really enjoying watching your comment evolve via edits into reading back exactly what I'm saying from a position of authority and then challenging me to find authority.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sankalpb 7y ago
Thanks for this thorough response! I'm fascinated by the point you raise about 'having no interest in commenting' until being far enough along in your career to 'have actual insight to share on relevant topics'. Can you say more about what it was that made you feel ready to comment, and how doing so at that time, as opposed to commenting before, may or may not have changed your sense of participation in the HN community?
- andrewzah 7y ago
  Reddit is much more social. What I mean is people just post whatever whenever, and a lot of times it's bullshit. You wouldn't know unless you're knowledgeable about that topic/domain, and even then actual experts can be downvoted if what they say goes against that subreddit's hivemind. Each subreddit has a hivemind that you need to be aware of. The few exceptions are subreddits that are moderated with an iron fist: /r/AskHistorians, and to a lesser degree, /r/neutralpolitics. I think everyone being anonymous is a big factor. Source: I've used reddit under various anonymous handles since 2012. I've only been using HN for ~3 years now (lurking, mostly) but I've noticed that a lot more people use their real names and identities. I would think that helps towards not spouting bullshit without resources. (but controversial threads, e.g. highly political ones, tend to throw that out the window). Lobste.rs has the concept of "hats" that are given to specific people, and they can wear them to answer something in a specific capacity. [0] I wish HN had something like that. HN is moderated enough that I think a system like that could work. Other things about HN: 1) There are no thumbnails or image links, just links to articles or similar. Reddit suffers from images being allowed, because images take a few seconds to process and upvote, versus a longer article. Reddit is very good for sharing memes and cat pictures, but not so good for lengthy articles. Tild.es [1] is how reddit would be if it were text only (and orders of magnitude smaller). Picture and joke/meme replies also completely derail threads. 2) HN is highly focused and consistently moderated (in my opinion). At times more controversial discussion happens with political news, but it generally is focused on business / research / technology news, etc. Reddit is a mishmash of subreddits and each one is moderated differently (usually very minimally). With HN's culture I usually feel no need to comment on something unless I have experience with that or it's something I'm interested in. [0]: https://lobste.rs/hats https://lobste.rs/hats [1]: https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/
rankam 7y ago
> Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. How do you know this? What data verifies that this is what a healthy online community looks like? Why is strong moderation part of a healthy online community, where strong moderation in a real life would be a signal of unhealthiness (it's censorship)? If an online community is mature, empathetic, and self-aware - why would it require strong moderation?
- bla3 7y ago
  See their first paragraph for how.
- PaulHoule 7y ago
  Moderation isn't necessarily censorship. Think of the evening news on TV. You have half an hour to fill, you are going to have to pick the most relevant things. Some things will make the cut, some won't. Once you get to 24 hours news then it is another thing, because they are repeating the same 15 minutes over and over again. The model to describe that is not censorship, it is spam, electronic warfare, jamming -- an entirely disingenuous communication that superficially looks like "speech" but has nothing to do with "free speech" and such. In fact, it inhibits real communication the same way weed killer kills plants.
  - rankam 7y ago
    Online isn't the evening news or a 24 hour news station - I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. HN doesn't only moderate so that the "best" content makes it to the top, they also moderate (censor) certain topics - you don't see a lot about politics on HN because they don't want those subjects discussed on the HN platform.
- TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
  Strong moderation in real life occurs all the time, but because the feedback is immediate, behavior modification of the individual generally occurs much faster than online. For example, if someone calls you a derogatory name to your face, you will either disengage or get mad back, both of which providing negative reenforcement for that behavior. Such negative feedback loops exist everywhere in our social communications.
avmich 7y ago
> and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. Which communities do you know, if any, which are better than HN, in your view, by these two parameters?
- mdorazio 7y ago
  I don't know of any, which is why I'm still on HN. That doesn't make HN a healthy community, however.
starpilot 7y ago
Can you give an example of a healthy online community?
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Nope. Haven't found any yet.
  - starpilot 7y ago
    If all I see is the worst in everything / That's all I'm gonna get - AJJ
misterCrowley 7y ago
Give us an example of a healthy online comunity
- thewebcount 7y ago
  This type of response is another example of the typical unhealthy responses you get on this forum. People express an opinion and others immediately demand that they show concrete evidence for their opinion. It's like dealing with children who are learning about logic for the first time: Child A: I like Batman! Child B: Prove that Batman is better than all the other super heroes!
rjbwork 7y ago
I 100% agree with you, and furthermore I assert that I am far more qualified to make this assertion than you.
dgrin91 7y ago
> ... full of self-assured personalities who think themselves experts on topics ... It is also filled to the brim with groupthink ... Aren't those two clauses basically antithetical? The experts are the ones who don't group think. You can't be full of both.
- krapp 7y ago
  They think themselves experts, they are not actually experts.
  - shadowbanthrow 7y ago
    This is why I often, and loudly, make the point that Hacker News is a great reflection of SV at large. It is also not the only example. The indictments here regarding perceived expertise outside of one's lane are not necessarily indictments of Hacker News. Hacker News reflects its constituency, a large number of whom unconsciously feel that software engineering expertise is a gateway to understanding other disciplines better than those actually practicing them. Just throw some code at it, right? Misplaced competency in far-ranging topics thanks to software engineering and VC exit is only validated by, say, essays written by two very famous people here that get a clap circle every time they're posted. I've studied this effect in my own life (I am far from immune) and I think it's because software engineering, and architecture especially, gives one a systems approach to thinking. It feels natural to apply your systems thinking to all of the problems in the world that look like they need a system. The problem is that the world is a plethora of imperfect variables, and what seems to be a "simple" system to fix the world in the eyes of a Ruby developer lacks the nuance to understand all of the reasons things are the way they are. Ironically, those same engineers often perceive the danger of a wholesale rewrite of code which discards the same exact hard-won nuance in their own system. My life got immeasurably better once I was banned from this community and exited SV. I can assure you that the summaries on N-Gate and such, no matter how much shooting of that messenger is expended by people who believe themselves to be right, reflect how this site, and SV at large, are perceived outside of the community. Yeah, all that venture capital and world-changing hubris and "software will eat the world and give us flying cars" thinking, and here we are with half the world rotting on Facebook and the other half showing up on ClearviewAI.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
> Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. Your view it's very interesting. When I took a psychology course one of the first things that hit me was the fact that what in psychology is considered "normal" personality is full of internal struggle, sometimes violent - depending on the particular circumstances of the individual. Whereas the absence of such struggle is associated with some personality disorders. When you look at it from that angle, the HN community, in spite of its flaws, is very healthy. And I really appreciate it, in spite of occasionally getting 10 downvotes a day.
tracker1 7y ago
By your definition, no online community could ever be healthy...
- yellowapple 7y ago
  That might very well be the case.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  In general, I agree. The online medium in its current form simply isn't suited to making healthy communities.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    I think it's relative, and for the most part a little friction and dysfunction are okay and necessary to make stronger people and communities.
iorrus 7y ago
Hacker News is healthy in that it has a number of interesting links, these can be found in the new section not the upvoted section. The actual discussion is medicore for the most part and heavily policed.
- sankalpb 7y ago
  Hey, I'm curious what makes having 'a number of interesting links' an indicator of being 'healthy' as an online community? Also, what makes a discussion 'mediocre' for you?
- mdorazio 7y ago
  I kind of agree and frequent the New section daily. However, I've noticed a trend that New is increasingly filled with what looks like a lot of auto-submitted content from large media companies and Medium authors. Finding quality links is getting more difficult. That could just be a perception, however.
rootusrootus 7y ago
> self-assured personalities who think themselves experts on topics far outside their expertise Or, put another way, computer programmers ;-). Sure there are plenty of other people who armchair quarterback, but there's just enough truth to this that I wonder if programmers are a little more prone to it. Like we think everything can be solved with an algorithm, and since we're pretty good with algorithms, we can solve any problem in the world.
yodsanklai 7y ago
> respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. I agree with these criteria (except "thought provoking"). Mostly I expect to be able to learn something from some of the comments, and I don't want to lose my time with political debates, flame wars and trolls. I think HN works pretty well for that (better than any other forum I know), which is why I stay. I agree it's somewhat insular and US-centric (as expected from an English language forum). It reduces the set of views and some opinions may be hard to express. But overall, I feel it's reasonably balanced, and it's possible to have "non standard HN views" if they fit the guidelines (they may not receive a lot of upvote, but they shouldn't have negative vote count). Besides a lot of the articles are technical so it's usually possible to avoid ideological discussions.
adwi 7y ago
“Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking.” These are all the reasons I love HN. I don’t know of anywhere else that approaches it from those perspectives. I’d sincerely love recommendations for more like it, tech-related or otherwise.
- shadowbanthrow 7y ago
  Hold up, you really think the HN community is generally empathetic and self-aware? Like, you believed that while typing it? Do we read the same people?
  - blast 7y ago
    I feel a lack of empathy in this comment, and, since empathy is the topic, a lack of self-awareness as well.
    - shadowbanthrow 7y ago
      I'm sure that felt like a celebratory victory while typing it, but there is no small measure of hilarious irony in attempting to score points about who's displaying more empathy and self-awareness, and feeling satisfied pointing out a perceived lack of it where none was warranted. I asked for information hoping to expand on a position so far from reality that it's almost nonsensical. Asking that question more nicely is orthogonal to empathy.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
dmoy 7y ago
> experts on topics far outside their expertise to be considered healthy I've noticed this more recently on HN as well. There are a few areas where I'll actually know what's going on under the hood in the specific niche area of industry or wherever, but then I'll come on HN and see the top comment completely off base, with maybe one or two refutations of that comment way down at the bottom. There's no actual verification by experts for each topic (not sure how there could be though). I also notice this happens more the farther away from HN's core focus area the subject matter is on. Internet security? Tons of great advice. Boeing? It gets a little iffier, with a lot of armchair small prop pilots, who give you a completely different outlook than going and talking to a pilot who actually flies large jets for decades (but then wait a bit longer and pilots who fly large jets for decades show up on HN, which is cool - and no offense to the small prop pilots, I actually enjoy reading a lot of that discussion). US Patent law? You see some very outright false info on HN, I guess because while there are some very good patent lawyers here, there aren't very many. Also HN being a global platform inevitably leads to discussions on law getting completely mixed up. But then of course Gell-Mann Amnesia sets in and I keep reading anyways. :) The moderation here is pretty strong for keeping it civil and polite, which helps HN be a much less anxiety-inducing place.
cryptica 7y ago
Agreed. A lot of people here are benefactors of the current economic reality brought on by the past 10 years or so of radical expansionary monetary policy and they will completely reject any criticism of the financial system and refuse to acknowledge the validity of any alternative views. I think probably as you say, it comes down to a lack of empathy. The startup scene is generally cut-throat and devoid of any empathy or higher principles besides money. So this is not surprising. They probably wouldn't like to acknowledge this about themselves either - Just like colonists of past centuries, many successful people today refuse to confront the simple reality that good lives are invariably built on the suffering of others. Ironically, it is successful people's collective inability to see this which makes it self-fulfilling. The name of the game is "coerce then moralize" and it hasn't changed much since colonial times.

PaulHoule 7y ago

I disagree. I think technical concerns are underrated in the general population. The other day I was watching some lectures by a quant finance prof who started out telling people that "you can still be smart even if you don't like repetitive math" -- there is so much mollycoddling of people whose main ability is the "social skill" of coming up with the same wrong answers that most other people come up with. I like HN because it is a place where technology and business are taken equally seriously. I think of the programming subreddit which is overrun by communists who think that if money has any effect on your motivation as a programmer you're like a pedophile or something. Also HN is mostly free of the unproductive "culture wars" discussions that have led to the heat death of so many fora.

mekoka 7y ago
None of the things that you said qualifies to make HN itself a "healthy community". Your dislike of communities where technical concerns are underrated may be warranted, but the dichotomy you're creating as a result may just be an illusion. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. It's ok to dislike them all, some less than others.
non-entity 7y ago
I like HN because it is a place where technology and business are taken equally seriously. I think of the > programming subreddit which is overrun by communists who think that if money has any effect on your motivation as a programmer you're like a pedophile or something Theres a level of irony in trying to claim some sort of level of superior intelligence and then following it up with a paragraph of nonsense demonstrating you know little about the community you've attacked and the ideology you've attempted to label it with.
shadowbanthrow 7y ago
> Also HN is mostly free of the unproductive "culture wars" discussions that have led to the heat death of so many fora. This is objectively and demonstrably false. The wars just manifest differently and happen to lead to an outcome that you prefer. There's a reason this site has "avoid controversial topics unless you have something new to add" or however it's phrased in the guidelines. Let me be completely and plainly clear: there is an HN culture. You will be banned, often quietly, if you wander off that reservation. --- Edit: Dan, I'm rate limited, so you get the edit here because I can't be bothered to account hop again. Grandiose? You ban people for not adhering to a culture. How is that even a remotely controversial statement? What else would you ban them for? There is a set of guidelines and approaches you want in place for HN behavior. When people fail to meet those, you give them a couple chances and then remove them from the community. Examples: "We've asked you to be nicer," or "we've asked you not to bring up gender politics," or whatever nice explanation you give. There's a word for that kind of thing; that word is culture. I wasn't even criticizing moderation, because I'm not sure what I could add there because it's your employment to manage this stupidity, but you sure showed up fast assuming I was. Is it really like that now? Nobody can speak objectively about how this site works and point out an incontrovertible fact without you taking it personally and trying to rally a bunch of usernames you've never met to believe you? While I have you, I appreciated that you declined to share your age in that fawning profile you and Scott got. That was tacit admission of your own site's culture, and you know it. --- Edit 2: I'm really enjoying watching your comment evolve via edits into reading back exactly what I'm saying from a position of authority and then challenging me to find authority.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sankalpb 7y ago

Thanks for this thorough response! I'm fascinated by the point you raise about 'having no interest in commenting' until being far enough along in your career to 'have actual insight to share on relevant topics'. Can you say more about what it was that made you feel ready to comment, and how doing so at that time, as opposed to commenting before, may or may not have changed your sense of participation in the HN community?

andrewzah 7y ago
Reddit is much more social. What I mean is people just post whatever whenever, and a lot of times it's bullshit. You wouldn't know unless you're knowledgeable about that topic/domain, and even then actual experts can be downvoted if what they say goes against that subreddit's hivemind. Each subreddit has a hivemind that you need to be aware of. The few exceptions are subreddits that are moderated with an iron fist: /r/AskHistorians, and to a lesser degree, /r/neutralpolitics. I think everyone being anonymous is a big factor. Source: I've used reddit under various anonymous handles since 2012. I've only been using HN for ~3 years now (lurking, mostly) but I've noticed that a lot more people use their real names and identities. I would think that helps towards not spouting bullshit without resources. (but controversial threads, e.g. highly political ones, tend to throw that out the window). Lobste.rs has the concept of "hats" that are given to specific people, and they can wear them to answer something in a specific capacity. [0] I wish HN had something like that. HN is moderated enough that I think a system like that could work. Other things about HN: 1) There are no thumbnails or image links, just links to articles or similar. Reddit suffers from images being allowed, because images take a few seconds to process and upvote, versus a longer article. Reddit is very good for sharing memes and cat pictures, but not so good for lengthy articles. Tild.es [1] is how reddit would be if it were text only (and orders of magnitude smaller). Picture and joke/meme replies also completely derail threads. 2) HN is highly focused and consistently moderated (in my opinion). At times more controversial discussion happens with political news, but it generally is focused on business / research / technology news, etc. Reddit is a mishmash of subreddits and each one is moderated differently (usually very minimally). With HN's culture I usually feel no need to comment on something unless I have experience with that or it's something I'm interested in. [0]: https://lobste.rs/hats https://lobste.rs/hats [1]: https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/

rankam 7y ago

> Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. How do you know this? What data verifies that this is what a healthy online community looks like? Why is strong moderation part of a healthy online community, where strong moderation in a real life would be a signal of unhealthiness (it's censorship)? If an online community is mature, empathetic, and self-aware - why would it require strong moderation?

bla3 7y ago
See their first paragraph for how.
PaulHoule 7y ago
Moderation isn't necessarily censorship. Think of the evening news on TV. You have half an hour to fill, you are going to have to pick the most relevant things. Some things will make the cut, some won't. Once you get to 24 hours news then it is another thing, because they are repeating the same 15 minutes over and over again. The model to describe that is not censorship, it is spam, electronic warfare, jamming -- an entirely disingenuous communication that superficially looks like "speech" but has nothing to do with "free speech" and such. In fact, it inhibits real communication the same way weed killer kills plants.
- rankam 7y ago
  Online isn't the evening news or a 24 hour news station - I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. HN doesn't only moderate so that the "best" content makes it to the top, they also moderate (censor) certain topics - you don't see a lot about politics on HN because they don't want those subjects discussed on the HN platform.
TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
Strong moderation in real life occurs all the time, but because the feedback is immediate, behavior modification of the individual generally occurs much faster than online. For example, if someone calls you a derogatory name to your face, you will either disengage or get mad back, both of which providing negative reenforcement for that behavior. Such negative feedback loops exist everywhere in our social communications.

avmich 7y ago

> and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. Which communities do you know, if any, which are better than HN, in your view, by these two parameters?

mdorazio 7y ago
I don't know of any, which is why I'm still on HN. That doesn't make HN a healthy community, however.

starpilot 7y ago

Can you give an example of a healthy online community?

mdorazio 7y ago
Nope. Haven't found any yet.
- starpilot 7y ago
  If all I see is the worst in everything / That's all I'm gonna get - AJJ

misterCrowley 7y ago

Give us an example of a healthy online comunity

thewebcount 7y ago
This type of response is another example of the typical unhealthy responses you get on this forum. People express an opinion and others immediately demand that they show concrete evidence for their opinion. It's like dealing with children who are learning about logic for the first time: Child A: I like Batman! Child B: Prove that Batman is better than all the other super heroes!

rjbwork 7y ago

I 100% agree with you, and furthermore I assert that I am far more qualified to make this assertion than you.

dgrin91 7y ago

> ... full of self-assured personalities who think themselves experts on topics ... It is also filled to the brim with groupthink ... Aren't those two clauses basically antithetical? The experts are the ones who don't group think. You can't be full of both.

krapp 7y ago
They think themselves experts, they are not actually experts.
- shadowbanthrow 7y ago
  This is why I often, and loudly, make the point that Hacker News is a great reflection of SV at large. It is also not the only example. The indictments here regarding perceived expertise outside of one's lane are not necessarily indictments of Hacker News. Hacker News reflects its constituency, a large number of whom unconsciously feel that software engineering expertise is a gateway to understanding other disciplines better than those actually practicing them. Just throw some code at it, right? Misplaced competency in far-ranging topics thanks to software engineering and VC exit is only validated by, say, essays written by two very famous people here that get a clap circle every time they're posted. I've studied this effect in my own life (I am far from immune) and I think it's because software engineering, and architecture especially, gives one a systems approach to thinking. It feels natural to apply your systems thinking to all of the problems in the world that look like they need a system. The problem is that the world is a plethora of imperfect variables, and what seems to be a "simple" system to fix the world in the eyes of a Ruby developer lacks the nuance to understand all of the reasons things are the way they are. Ironically, those same engineers often perceive the danger of a wholesale rewrite of code which discards the same exact hard-won nuance in their own system. My life got immeasurably better once I was banned from this community and exited SV. I can assure you that the summaries on N-Gate and such, no matter how much shooting of that messenger is expended by people who believe themselves to be right, reflect how this site, and SV at large, are perceived outside of the community. Yeah, all that venture capital and world-changing hubris and "software will eat the world and give us flying cars" thinking, and here we are with half the world rotting on Facebook and the other half showing up on ClearviewAI.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

> Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. Your view it's very interesting. When I took a psychology course one of the first things that hit me was the fact that what in psychology is considered "normal" personality is full of internal struggle, sometimes violent - depending on the particular circumstances of the individual. Whereas the absence of such struggle is associated with some personality disorders. When you look at it from that angle, the HN community, in spite of its flaws, is very healthy. And I really appreciate it, in spite of occasionally getting 10 downvotes a day.

tracker1 7y ago

By your definition, no online community could ever be healthy...

yellowapple 7y ago
That might very well be the case.
mdorazio 7y ago
In general, I agree. The online medium in its current form simply isn't suited to making healthy communities.
- tracker1 7y ago
  I think it's relative, and for the most part a little friction and dysfunction are okay and necessary to make stronger people and communities.

iorrus 7y ago

Hacker News is healthy in that it has a number of interesting links, these can be found in the new section not the upvoted section. The actual discussion is medicore for the most part and heavily policed.

sankalpb 7y ago
Hey, I'm curious what makes having 'a number of interesting links' an indicator of being 'healthy' as an online community? Also, what makes a discussion 'mediocre' for you?
mdorazio 7y ago
I kind of agree and frequent the New section daily. However, I've noticed a trend that New is increasingly filled with what looks like a lot of auto-submitted content from large media companies and Medium authors. Finding quality links is getting more difficult. That could just be a perception, however.

rootusrootus 7y ago

> self-assured personalities who think themselves experts on topics far outside their expertise Or, put another way, computer programmers ;-). Sure there are plenty of other people who armchair quarterback, but there's just enough truth to this that I wonder if programmers are a little more prone to it. Like we think everything can be solved with an algorithm, and since we're pretty good with algorithms, we can solve any problem in the world.

yodsanklai 7y ago

> respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. I agree with these criteria (except "thought provoking"). Mostly I expect to be able to learn something from some of the comments, and I don't want to lose my time with political debates, flame wars and trolls. I think HN works pretty well for that (better than any other forum I know), which is why I stay. I agree it's somewhat insular and US-centric (as expected from an English language forum). It reduces the set of views and some opinions may be hard to express. But overall, I feel it's reasonably balanced, and it's possible to have "non standard HN views" if they fit the guidelines (they may not receive a lot of upvote, but they shouldn't have negative vote count). Besides a lot of the articles are technical so it's usually possible to avoid ideological discussions.

adwi 7y ago

“Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking.” These are all the reasons I love HN. I don’t know of anywhere else that approaches it from those perspectives. I’d sincerely love recommendations for more like it, tech-related or otherwise.

shadowbanthrow 7y ago
Hold up, you really think the HN community is generally empathetic and self-aware? Like, you believed that while typing it? Do we read the same people?
- blast 7y ago
  I feel a lack of empathy in this comment, and, since empathy is the topic, a lack of self-awareness as well.
  - shadowbanthrow 7y ago
    I'm sure that felt like a celebratory victory while typing it, but there is no small measure of hilarious irony in attempting to score points about who's displaying more empathy and self-awareness, and feeling satisfied pointing out a perceived lack of it where none was warranted. I asked for information hoping to expand on a position so far from reality that it's almost nonsensical. Asking that question more nicely is orthogonal to empathy.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

dmoy 7y ago

> experts on topics far outside their expertise to be considered healthy I've noticed this more recently on HN as well. There are a few areas where I'll actually know what's going on under the hood in the specific niche area of industry or wherever, but then I'll come on HN and see the top comment completely off base, with maybe one or two refutations of that comment way down at the bottom. There's no actual verification by experts for each topic (not sure how there could be though). I also notice this happens more the farther away from HN's core focus area the subject matter is on. Internet security? Tons of great advice. Boeing? It gets a little iffier, with a lot of armchair small prop pilots, who give you a completely different outlook than going and talking to a pilot who actually flies large jets for decades (but then wait a bit longer and pilots who fly large jets for decades show up on HN, which is cool - and no offense to the small prop pilots, I actually enjoy reading a lot of that discussion). US Patent law? You see some very outright false info on HN, I guess because while there are some very good patent lawyers here, there aren't very many. Also HN being a global platform inevitably leads to discussions on law getting completely mixed up. But then of course Gell-Mann Amnesia sets in and I keep reading anyways. :) The moderation here is pretty strong for keeping it civil and polite, which helps HN be a much less anxiety-inducing place.

cryptica 7y ago

Agreed. A lot of people here are benefactors of the current economic reality brought on by the past 10 years or so of radical expansionary monetary policy and they will completely reject any criticism of the financial system and refuse to acknowledge the validity of any alternative views. I think probably as you say, it comes down to a lack of empathy. The startup scene is generally cut-throat and devoid of any empathy or higher principles besides money. So this is not surprising. They probably wouldn't like to acknowledge this about themselves either - Just like colonists of past centuries, many successful people today refuse to confront the simple reality that good lives are invariably built on the suffering of others. Ironically, it is successful people's collective inability to see this which makes it self-fulfilling. The name of the game is "coerce then moralize" and it hasn't changed much since colonial times.