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It keeps me informed but it definitely has a few negative qualities. - I seem to spend too much time on it. Obsessively checking it. Reading the comments. I re

It keeps me informed but it definitely has a few negative qualities. - I seem to spend too much time on it. Obsessively checking it. Reading the comments. I recognize the behavior from when I was frequenting Slashdot back in the day. It definitely has some addictive qualities and I need to force myself to stop reading it so often. - The debate is a lot less fun than Slashdot used to be. I kind of miss the silliness. Humor is frowned upon and people are way too serious. - HN definitely has a techbros vibe. I guess that's by design but it's not very inclusive. - Moderation is a double edged sword. It's good at silencing the offensive and silly comments that make reddit such a dumpster fire. But you get a bit of overzealous "this conflicts with my world views" style moderation too which results in cancel culture style snuffing out of contrarian views. I've been down voted a few times where I struggled to understand why. I wasn't being offensive. I wasn't being contrarian. I was merely being inconvenient to someone who was what I would classify as in of the highly polarised camps in US politics that was out to cancel anything conflicting with their narrow world views. I'm from the EU so I might be a bit tone deaf on that front. I struck a nerve basically and I was being cancelled. Moderating the moderators should be a thing. I've went from negative 2 to positive 10 on the same comment in some cases. Basically people strongly agreeing or disagreeing with the same thing. Moderation should be strictly about weeding out the bad stuff not snuffing out debate. Moderating the moderators seems to be not a thing.

deltaonefour 5y ago
You should see the Blind community. HN is way better, but yes... everything you mention is true.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  And law students. HFS.
robertlagrant 5y ago
> HN definitely has a techbros vibe. I guess that's by design but it's not very inclusive. What does this mean?
- slyall 5y ago
  It means the stereotypical commenters are 20-30 year old, white, male, single, programmers, living in the Bay Area and making $400,000 per year. Which is good if you want to know the latest Google gossip or many tech questions. But not as good when we are talking about topics that are less directly in the experience of the above people. As an example when you are talking about public transport they have experience that comes from living in the US. Rather than somewhere a bit less car-centric. A tech example might be that money and VC dollars are plentiful but programmers are expensive and that non-programmers are less important in a business. There are plenty of people that are not like that, but the site has a definite bias that way.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    > It means the stereotypical commenters are 20-30 year old, white, male, single, programmers, living in the Bay Area and making $400,000 per year. I'm 2/6 on that scale, but I feel like a rather average commenter here. I suppose that the standard deviation is huge on this.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    > It means the stereotypical commenters are 20-30 year old, white, male, single, programmers, living in the Bay Area and making $400,000 per year I appreciate the clarity. What I don't understand is that given "stereotypical" and "typical" are definitely not synonyms, why do you think your stereotype reflects the actual demographics?
  - tpoacher 5y ago
    That would put the total number of stereotypical commenters here to about 100 people. The conjunction fallacy and all that.
- bantunes 5y ago
  Have a look here https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says
  - 5y ago
gryn 5y ago
the down-vote thing unfortunately is not unique, Reddit has the same problem, but worse. I once made a simple comment there where I just told an anecdote about something that happened, it wasn't anything serious, political or controversial or unrelated to the parent post, but apparently it rubbed someone the wrong way and he took it upon himself to go trough my comment history and down-vote the last 60 comments I've made.
Kaibeezy 5y ago
I find the lack of humor disturbing. I’m told/observe it’s due to the plethora of native tongues, neurodiversity, timezones, caffeination and other variability hereaboots. Idiomatic expressions and deadpan, in particular, seem to set off the kerfuffles, ke? In my experience, forum moderation is Sisyphus-complete and utterly thankless. The fact we have had this refuge that functions as well as it does for as long as it has, well, res ipsa loquitur. Thanks, mods, fwiw.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  > I find the lack of humor disturbing. I'm split on this. The occasional Monty Python reference in an otherwise informative post is terrific. But I don't want to see memes here all day, too many great Reddit subs were ruined by that. I don't know where the slippery slope starts, but I prefer the conservative approach.
  - SwiftyBug 5y ago
    I agree. I don't know where to draw the line either, but I notice some kinds of posts allow for more irreverent comments than others. I think it goes by the "seriousness" of the topic.
dotancohen 5y ago
> Reading the comments. I recognize the behavior from when I was frequenting Slashdot back in the day. I'm intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
rcarmo 5y ago
I regularly get downvoted for being humorous. I don’t care, life is too short.

deltaonefour 5y ago

You should see the Blind community. HN is way better, but yes... everything you mention is true.

Kaibeezy 5y ago
And law students. HFS.

robertlagrant 5y ago

> HN definitely has a techbros vibe. I guess that's by design but it's not very inclusive. What does this mean?

slyall 5y ago
It means the stereotypical commenters are 20-30 year old, white, male, single, programmers, living in the Bay Area and making $400,000 per year. Which is good if you want to know the latest Google gossip or many tech questions. But not as good when we are talking about topics that are less directly in the experience of the above people. As an example when you are talking about public transport they have experience that comes from living in the US. Rather than somewhere a bit less car-centric. A tech example might be that money and VC dollars are plentiful but programmers are expensive and that non-programmers are less important in a business. There are plenty of people that are not like that, but the site has a definite bias that way.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  > It means the stereotypical commenters are 20-30 year old, white, male, single, programmers, living in the Bay Area and making $400,000 per year. I'm 2/6 on that scale, but I feel like a rather average commenter here. I suppose that the standard deviation is huge on this.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  > It means the stereotypical commenters are 20-30 year old, white, male, single, programmers, living in the Bay Area and making $400,000 per year I appreciate the clarity. What I don't understand is that given "stereotypical" and "typical" are definitely not synonyms, why do you think your stereotype reflects the actual demographics?
- tpoacher 5y ago
  That would put the total number of stereotypical commenters here to about 100 people. The conjunction fallacy and all that.
bantunes 5y ago
Have a look here https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says
- 5y ago

gryn 5y ago

the down-vote thing unfortunately is not unique, Reddit has the same problem, but worse. I once made a simple comment there where I just told an anecdote about something that happened, it wasn't anything serious, political or controversial or unrelated to the parent post, but apparently it rubbed someone the wrong way and he took it upon himself to go trough my comment history and down-vote the last 60 comments I've made.

Kaibeezy 5y ago

I find the lack of humor disturbing. I’m told/observe it’s due to the plethora of native tongues, neurodiversity, timezones, caffeination and other variability hereaboots. Idiomatic expressions and deadpan, in particular, seem to set off the kerfuffles, ke? In my experience, forum moderation is Sisyphus-complete and utterly thankless. The fact we have had this refuge that functions as well as it does for as long as it has, well, res ipsa loquitur. Thanks, mods, fwiw.

dotancohen 5y ago
> I find the lack of humor disturbing. I'm split on this. The occasional Monty Python reference in an otherwise informative post is terrific. But I don't want to see memes here all day, too many great Reddit subs were ruined by that. I don't know where the slippery slope starts, but I prefer the conservative approach.
- SwiftyBug 5y ago
  I agree. I don't know where to draw the line either, but I notice some kinds of posts allow for more irreverent comments than others. I think it goes by the "seriousness" of the topic.

dotancohen 5y ago

> Reading the comments. I recognize the behavior from when I was frequenting Slashdot back in the day. I'm intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

rcarmo 5y ago

I regularly get downvoted for being humorous. I don’t care, life is too short.