5 ms·

Look I just really disagree sorry. The flavor is different but the beneath it's the same stuff. You can pretty much be as cruel as you want on HN as long as yo

by _r0fz 5y ago

Look I just really disagree sorry. The flavor is different but the beneath it's the same stuff. You can pretty much be as cruel as you want on HN as long as you don't swear or call people names too much. You can find joy on here sure but it's despite the culture here not because of it.

zemo 5y ago
right, HN only cares about conforming to protocols. If you conform to the social protocol, you can advocate for the most horrible of positions on this site.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Just to clarify - why would we ever not want that to be the case? If someone is making a well reasoned argument that's clearly wrong then I'm happy to read it - I have faith in myself and those on this forum that they'll be able to comprehend the statement and read out the same conclusion - if it's hidden or using underhanded conversation techniques those will generally be called out but there might be a few interesting nuggets in an otherwise incorrect argument.
  - zemo 5y ago
    because if you have one party that is nice and polite and uses proper decorum and they are actively doing harm to another party, and that other party is upset because harm was done to them, and your response is "I will listen to the person that is behaving according to decorum", you are taking the wrong side. Bad actors -love- decorum, especially when access to understanding the rules of that decorum is itself a marker of class, tribe, or belonging in some way.
    - throwamon 5y ago
      It's really pretty simple: Being polite is better than not being polite. This doesn't mean you should never listen to someone who is angry, but it makes perfect sense to make it a site-wide policy to disallow this sort of behavior when the goal is to have productive discussions. The problem is not politeness vs. impoliteness, but rather acting in good faith vs. pretending to do so. As readers, it's our responsibility (now more than ever) to tell good faith from trollish decorum.
      - lovegoblin 5y ago
        > Being polite is better than not being polite. And if it is those aforementioned bad actors who get to define and gatekeep what it means to be "polite"?
        throwamon 5y ago
        I don't think that's the case on HN, which is what is being discussed on this comment chain. If you're indeed referring to HN, I'd be glad to read an expanded argument. I agree that on Twitter this is a much more complicated matter.
        munk-a 5y ago
        Considering that downvoting and flagging have karma thresholds - coupled with the vouching mechanic for dead comments. I honestly think HN has a pretty good setup for this. We've also got something miles better than Reddit - a limit on how much Karma you can lose on a given comment. I think that works wonders against echo chambers by allowing objections and clarifications to be raised without any real fear of being karma bombed for it.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        I think it's also our responsibility as commentors to provide civil counter arguments so that other readers are able to see both sides of whatever topic is being discussed while not being pre-disposed to either angle. If you're an expert on a topic and see an error being stated you should clarify the discrepancy so that other folks less versed on the topic can see the error as well. HN does have an assumption built into the guidelines that we should assume all arguments are being made in good faith - I don't actually have an issue with reading arguments made in bad faith in good faith myself - if someone makes a baseless claim that is refuted soundly and sanely in a comment then readers will be able to parse the two comments and will generally favor the one more clearly made in good faith. Ad hominem attacks actually hurt your argument here while on twitter they can bolster it - most of hackernews has no respect for "sick burns".
    - oceanplexian 5y ago
      I'm not sure that it is true that there is even such thing as decorum on social media, or if there was, if you could reasonably define it. The Internet is a global communications system linking hundreds of countries, thousands of cultures, and perhaps millions of sub-cultures, class affiliations, and tribes. Even the fact that we are here, on HN, speaking English puts us squarely in the minority of people who use the Internet.
- JW_00000 5y ago
  For me, that's exactly what I want: any opinion is okay to be expressed, as long as it's expressed respectfully. My problem with Twitter is exactly its "social protocol", which is often leaving out all nuance, taking things out of context, and provoking on purpose (in anything vaguely related to politics).
- mr_toad 5y ago
  > If you conform to the social protocol, you can advocate for the most horrible of positions on this site. You shouldn’t assume that every argument made against a particular solution to social injustice is an argument advocating for social injustice. While there are some people who are just plain racist or bigoted or have certain religious views; and therefore believe that racial/gender/etc injustice is inevitable, many others are just arguing against a particular solution. For example, not everyone agues against dialectical materialism because they want people to be poor. They just don’t think communism can work.
munk-a 5y ago
I don't know about that, I'll occasionally post lightly trolling comments out of whimsy and not malice and they generally don't get downvoted into oblivion. I also really disagree that tone is a minor and unimportant factor, keeping the discussion civil manages to open up the door to a lot more discussion between people who disagree strongly. One of the users I recognize on here I recognize not because we agree - but because usually when we're talking in a thread it's an interesting conversation despite a really deep philosophical disagreement.
dang 5y ago
> You can pretty much be as cruel as you want on HN as long as you don't swear or call people names too much. That is deeply not the case, and if you or anyone finds examples of it, you should let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. If people are being cruel and not getting moderated, the likeliest explanation is that we haven't seen it, because we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. Oh and we don't give a fuck about swearing. The generalization you're making is so false and so mean that I would call it a slur, both of this community and of the people who work on it.
- samatman 5y ago
  You do a great job, dang. Frankly I'm baffled at how you do it, and I can see why this comment would upset you. But all you can do is push the nastiness below a certain threshold of passive aggression. It's literally impossible to do more than that. I've found it just a bit more unpleasant to post here with every few months which pass. Insults still get moderated and downvoted, sure, but bad-faith dismissals and pugnacious pedantry become incrementally more common, not to mention drive-by downvotes on neutral and factual posts which maybe signal some kind of tribal affiliation, no matter how weakly. I don't think this can be solved, but it's real.
  - dtx1 5y ago
    > I don't think this can be solved, but it's real. Of course it can be solved, just not on a public pseudonymous forum. As long as people exist that are entertained by trolling, derailing or just in general making the internet a little worse every day you cannot win. Filtering content or accounts is a fools errand, filtering people allowed to comment and post on the other hand would trivially solve this, especially when their real reputation is on the line with every comment but then you don´t get the network effects that low effort account creation and pseudonymity give you.
    - eitland 5y ago
      > Of course it can be solved, just not on a public pseudonymous forum. Here is an important observation I think I've made over the years: All else being equal, the HN model (full names voluntary, IRL connection voluntary i.e only username and password, long lived profiles encouraged) has been better for interesting civil discussions. Why? Full name policies only encourage this explosive mix: - People who don't realize the foolishness of commenting publicly using their full name on a controversial case. - People with fake but real-looking accounts. - People who realize it is stupid but does it anyway sometimes because even newspaper comments sections deserve some adult voices. Very many of the people you'd want to hear from are silent because they don't want your name mixed in with the regulars in the comments there.
itsoktocry 5y ago
People have been talking about how "superior" the conversation on HN is compared to other fora for as long as I've been participating (over a decade). I don't find it much different. It certainly has its share of silliness, especially around the subjects of VC and Silicon Valley culture generally. And economics...

by _r0fz 5y ago

zemo 5y ago

right, HN only cares about conforming to protocols. If you conform to the social protocol, you can advocate for the most horrible of positions on this site.

munk-a 5y ago
Just to clarify - why would we ever not want that to be the case? If someone is making a well reasoned argument that's clearly wrong then I'm happy to read it - I have faith in myself and those on this forum that they'll be able to comprehend the statement and read out the same conclusion - if it's hidden or using underhanded conversation techniques those will generally be called out but there might be a few interesting nuggets in an otherwise incorrect argument.
- zemo 5y ago
  because if you have one party that is nice and polite and uses proper decorum and they are actively doing harm to another party, and that other party is upset because harm was done to them, and your response is "I will listen to the person that is behaving according to decorum", you are taking the wrong side. Bad actors -love- decorum, especially when access to understanding the rules of that decorum is itself a marker of class, tribe, or belonging in some way.
  - throwamon 5y ago
    It's really pretty simple: Being polite is better than not being polite. This doesn't mean you should never listen to someone who is angry, but it makes perfect sense to make it a site-wide policy to disallow this sort of behavior when the goal is to have productive discussions. The problem is not politeness vs. impoliteness, but rather acting in good faith vs. pretending to do so. As readers, it's our responsibility (now more than ever) to tell good faith from trollish decorum.
    - lovegoblin 5y ago
      > Being polite is better than not being polite. And if it is those aforementioned bad actors who get to define and gatekeep what it means to be "polite"?
      - throwamon 5y ago
        I don't think that's the case on HN, which is what is being discussed on this comment chain. If you're indeed referring to HN, I'd be glad to read an expanded argument. I agree that on Twitter this is a much more complicated matter.
        munk-a 5y ago
        Considering that downvoting and flagging have karma thresholds - coupled with the vouching mechanic for dead comments. I honestly think HN has a pretty good setup for this. We've also got something miles better than Reddit - a limit on how much Karma you can lose on a given comment. I think that works wonders against echo chambers by allowing objections and clarifications to be raised without any real fear of being karma bombed for it.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I think it's also our responsibility as commentors to provide civil counter arguments so that other readers are able to see both sides of whatever topic is being discussed while not being pre-disposed to either angle. If you're an expert on a topic and see an error being stated you should clarify the discrepancy so that other folks less versed on the topic can see the error as well. HN does have an assumption built into the guidelines that we should assume all arguments are being made in good faith - I don't actually have an issue with reading arguments made in bad faith in good faith myself - if someone makes a baseless claim that is refuted soundly and sanely in a comment then readers will be able to parse the two comments and will generally favor the one more clearly made in good faith. Ad hominem attacks actually hurt your argument here while on twitter they can bolster it - most of hackernews has no respect for "sick burns".
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    I'm not sure that it is true that there is even such thing as decorum on social media, or if there was, if you could reasonably define it. The Internet is a global communications system linking hundreds of countries, thousands of cultures, and perhaps millions of sub-cultures, class affiliations, and tribes. Even the fact that we are here, on HN, speaking English puts us squarely in the minority of people who use the Internet.
JW_00000 5y ago
For me, that's exactly what I want: any opinion is okay to be expressed, as long as it's expressed respectfully. My problem with Twitter is exactly its "social protocol", which is often leaving out all nuance, taking things out of context, and provoking on purpose (in anything vaguely related to politics).
mr_toad 5y ago
> If you conform to the social protocol, you can advocate for the most horrible of positions on this site. You shouldn’t assume that every argument made against a particular solution to social injustice is an argument advocating for social injustice. While there are some people who are just plain racist or bigoted or have certain religious views; and therefore believe that racial/gender/etc injustice is inevitable, many others are just arguing against a particular solution. For example, not everyone agues against dialectical materialism because they want people to be poor. They just don’t think communism can work.

munk-a 5y ago

I don't know about that, I'll occasionally post lightly trolling comments out of whimsy and not malice and they generally don't get downvoted into oblivion. I also really disagree that tone is a minor and unimportant factor, keeping the discussion civil manages to open up the door to a lot more discussion between people who disagree strongly. One of the users I recognize on here I recognize not because we agree - but because usually when we're talking in a thread it's an interesting conversation despite a really deep philosophical disagreement.

dang 5y ago

> You can pretty much be as cruel as you want on HN as long as you don't swear or call people names too much. That is deeply not the case, and if you or anyone finds examples of it, you should let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. If people are being cruel and not getting moderated, the likeliest explanation is that we haven't seen it, because we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. Oh and we don't give a fuck about swearing. The generalization you're making is so false and so mean that I would call it a slur, both of this community and of the people who work on it.

samatman 5y ago
You do a great job, dang. Frankly I'm baffled at how you do it, and I can see why this comment would upset you. But all you can do is push the nastiness below a certain threshold of passive aggression. It's literally impossible to do more than that. I've found it just a bit more unpleasant to post here with every few months which pass. Insults still get moderated and downvoted, sure, but bad-faith dismissals and pugnacious pedantry become incrementally more common, not to mention drive-by downvotes on neutral and factual posts which maybe signal some kind of tribal affiliation, no matter how weakly. I don't think this can be solved, but it's real.
- dtx1 5y ago
  > I don't think this can be solved, but it's real. Of course it can be solved, just not on a public pseudonymous forum. As long as people exist that are entertained by trolling, derailing or just in general making the internet a little worse every day you cannot win. Filtering content or accounts is a fools errand, filtering people allowed to comment and post on the other hand would trivially solve this, especially when their real reputation is on the line with every comment but then you don´t get the network effects that low effort account creation and pseudonymity give you.
  - eitland 5y ago
    > Of course it can be solved, just not on a public pseudonymous forum. Here is an important observation I think I've made over the years: All else being equal, the HN model (full names voluntary, IRL connection voluntary i.e only username and password, long lived profiles encouraged) has been better for interesting civil discussions. Why? Full name policies only encourage this explosive mix: - People who don't realize the foolishness of commenting publicly using their full name on a controversial case. - People with fake but real-looking accounts. - People who realize it is stupid but does it anyway sometimes because even newspaper comments sections deserve some adult voices. Very many of the people you'd want to hear from are silent because they don't want your name mixed in with the regulars in the comments there.

itsoktocry 5y ago

People have been talking about how "superior" the conversation on HN is compared to other fora for as long as I've been participating (over a decade). I don't find it much different. It certainly has its share of silliness, especially around the subjects of VC and Silicon Valley culture generally. And economics...