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One part of being a community is slowly building values in new members. Many communities, many subreddits as an example, form monocultures and ruthlessly stamp

One part of being a community is slowly building values in new members. Many communities, many subreddits as an example, form monocultures and ruthlessly stamp out opinions not aligned to the deigned philosophy (and then being monocultures, they die a slow death). HN as a community places value on interesting, well informed debates, but that value isn't universally shared outside of HN. It takes regular exposure to build that value in new members but over time they'll either embrace it or wash out of the community as long as we do our best to consistently embrace it positively. Keep debating and pushing forward on interesting conversations, keep doing it politely and in the interest of meaningful debate.

mistermann 7y ago
> One part of being a community is slowly building values in new members. Many communities, many subreddits as an example, form monocultures and ruthlessly stamp out opinions not aligned to the deigned philosophy (and then being monocultures, they die a slow death). Yes indeed. Reddit is famous for this, and getting worse by the day. But how might we know, for sure, the degree to which that also happens here? And I don't mean that rhetorically. We can all instantaneously generate "an" answer to that question, based on heuristics, but how accurate is that answer? To gain some certainty, it would require looking at actual data, which is firstly dependent on a willingness to look at the data, which is firstly dependent on a willingness to consider the idea that there may be a problem. This last point seems like a rather touchy subject. "building values in new members" also seems like a well-accepted but heuristically-based idea. Is it, in fact, only new members who lack these values? Luckily, HN profiles contain an "accounted_created" attribute...with a little effort writing some scraping code (something I don't presently know how to do), I suspect some more precise, evidence-based answers would quickly reveal themselves. What would be even more revealing would be if one had access to voting history. This way, we could get a decent feel for how certain individuals feel about this general topic. But alas, you and I don't have access to that data. But someone does (see: willingness to look at the data). Shall we truly pursue righteousness, or should we just declare ourselves to be, by fiat, as seems to be the most popular approach in broad society? > HN as a community places value on interesting, well informed debates... In the abstract, principled[1] sense, sure. But, how well do we "walk the talk"? Once again: what does the data say? > as long as we do our best to consistently embrace it positively And consistently. But now we're back to where we started. > Keep debating and pushing forward on interesting conversations, keep doing it politely and in the interest of meaningful debate. Despite the obvious unpopularity, and repeatedly inconsistent (again, based on topic) evaluation of "meaningful debate", as well as the HN Guidelines in general, I seem unable to stop lol [1] "Lord, I promise not to sin!" Inconsistent adherence to an ideology, however strongly held in theory or principle, is not a problem only within the domain of religion, I suspect. Rather, it seems more like something inherent in human beings. Failure rates may vary fairly significantly across domains (or may not!), but this is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  You're right that at least large parts of this can be tested and answered with data. Obviously short of a magical classifier for questions like "is this a productive debate" and "is this ideological fighting or a search for truth?" then we're going to need someone to hand classify a bunch of things which is expensive, slow and only as accurate as the person making the judgement call. In other words, we'd just be making ad hoc judgements again, but calling them something else because we made those ad hoc judgements in a csv instead of a comment. The other issue is that communities are dynamic, and behaviors trend. You're probably not going to see a flat correlation, you're going to see something that resembles a wave function.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    > then we're going to need someone to hand classify a bunch of things which is expensive, slow True. But not impossible. And I would recommend comparing effort to potential reward. Imagine, just for fun, the possibility that HN could find a way to discuss climate change[1] in a disciplined, truthful, and non-heuristic manner. What might the value of that discovery be? And if we could find a way do it, perhaps others could as well? > and only as accurate as the person making the judgement call How deeply have you thought about that? Like, say it was an engineering problem you've been asked to solve - have you put as much effort into thinking about it as you would if it was a paid assignment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws > In other words, we'd just be making ad hoc judgements again, but calling them something else because we made those ad hoc judgements in a csv instead of a comment. Do you realize you are: a) predicting the future b) making several assumptions c) utilizing loaded terms (which is harmful not only to others, but sometimes also to oneself) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language > The other issue is that communities are dynamic, and behaviors trend. This is true. > You're probably not going to see a flat correlation, you're going to see something that resembles a wave function. Your prediction may be correct. But it also may be incorrect. [1] A topic we seem to loooooove to talk about as if it only involves climate science, and has no psychological aspect whatsoever.

mistermann 7y ago

> One part of being a community is slowly building values in new members. Many communities, many subreddits as an example, form monocultures and ruthlessly stamp out opinions not aligned to the deigned philosophy (and then being monocultures, they die a slow death). Yes indeed. Reddit is famous for this, and getting worse by the day. But how might we know, for sure, the degree to which that also happens here? And I don't mean that rhetorically. We can all instantaneously generate "an" answer to that question, based on heuristics, but how accurate is that answer? To gain some certainty, it would require looking at actual data, which is firstly dependent on a willingness to look at the data, which is firstly dependent on a willingness to consider the idea that there may be a problem. This last point seems like a rather touchy subject. "building values in new members" also seems like a well-accepted but heuristically-based idea. Is it, in fact, only new members who lack these values? Luckily, HN profiles contain an "accounted_created" attribute...with a little effort writing some scraping code (something I don't presently know how to do), I suspect some more precise, evidence-based answers would quickly reveal themselves. What would be even more revealing would be if one had access to voting history. This way, we could get a decent feel for how certain individuals feel about this general topic. But alas, you and I don't have access to that data. But someone does (see: willingness to look at the data). Shall we truly pursue righteousness, or should we just declare ourselves to be, by fiat, as seems to be the most popular approach in broad society? > HN as a community places value on interesting, well informed debates... In the abstract, principled[1] sense, sure. But, how well do we "walk the talk"? Once again: what does the data say? > as long as we do our best to consistently embrace it positively And consistently. But now we're back to where we started. > Keep debating and pushing forward on interesting conversations, keep doing it politely and in the interest of meaningful debate. Despite the obvious unpopularity, and repeatedly inconsistent (again, based on topic) evaluation of "meaningful debate", as well as the HN Guidelines in general, I seem unable to stop lol [1] "Lord, I promise not to sin!" Inconsistent adherence to an ideology, however strongly held in theory or principle, is not a problem only within the domain of religion, I suspect. Rather, it seems more like something inherent in human beings. Failure rates may vary fairly significantly across domains (or may not!), but this is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.

vorpalhex 7y ago
You're right that at least large parts of this can be tested and answered with data. Obviously short of a magical classifier for questions like "is this a productive debate" and "is this ideological fighting or a search for truth?" then we're going to need someone to hand classify a bunch of things which is expensive, slow and only as accurate as the person making the judgement call. In other words, we'd just be making ad hoc judgements again, but calling them something else because we made those ad hoc judgements in a csv instead of a comment. The other issue is that communities are dynamic, and behaviors trend. You're probably not going to see a flat correlation, you're going to see something that resembles a wave function.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > then we're going to need someone to hand classify a bunch of things which is expensive, slow True. But not impossible. And I would recommend comparing effort to potential reward. Imagine, just for fun, the possibility that HN could find a way to discuss climate change[1] in a disciplined, truthful, and non-heuristic manner. What might the value of that discovery be? And if we could find a way do it, perhaps others could as well? > and only as accurate as the person making the judgement call How deeply have you thought about that? Like, say it was an engineering problem you've been asked to solve - have you put as much effort into thinking about it as you would if it was a paid assignment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws > In other words, we'd just be making ad hoc judgements again, but calling them something else because we made those ad hoc judgements in a csv instead of a comment. Do you realize you are: a) predicting the future b) making several assumptions c) utilizing loaded terms (which is harmful not only to others, but sometimes also to oneself) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language > The other issue is that communities are dynamic, and behaviors trend. This is true. > You're probably not going to see a flat correlation, you're going to see something that resembles a wave function. Your prediction may be correct. But it also may be incorrect. [1] A topic we seem to loooooove to talk about as if it only involves climate science, and has no psychological aspect whatsoever.