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"Idiocy Saturation: Online, people who don't think before they post are able to post more often than people who do. As a result, the average social media post

"Idiocy Saturation: Online, people who don't think before they post are able to post more often than people who do. As a result, the average social media post is stupider than the average social media user. Worth remembering whenever Twitter dumbassery drives you to despair."¹² This covers it all, in my opinion. By the time someone is done posting a six paragraph long analysis that includes sources, a dozen of less pertinent comments will have been posted. This is what the downvote feature and the flag feature are for. Ideally, all of us are downvoting cheap humor and unrelated online trends ("first!", etc.) ¹https://twitter.com/G_S_Bhogal/status/1492256294023143426 https://twitter.com/G_S_Bhogal/status/1492256294023143426 ²Apologies for the wording, I personally would have avoided using "stupid" and "idiocy"

pklausler 5y ago
An idea for combatting less-thoughtful more-frequent posting: allow at most one post per day. If one gets but one chance to express something, the choice of topic and the care taken in expression may be more thoughtful. (Or maybe one post and one reply to a response; otherwise, nobody would get a question answered in a timely manner.)
- Karawebnetwork 5y ago
  I manage a lot of spaces on Facebook and they recently'ish added a feature like this that moderators can enable on posts. It limits users to one comment every 5 minutes. It makes a difference - a big one. Some posts that would not have been approved end up being approved when this feature is enabled. Instead of wars of words and knee-jerk reactions, people know they can only leave one post every five minutes, so the first few replies take a few minutes to appear. Then, responses to those responses are even more cautious. People avoid commenting on multiple threads because they can't interact with all of them at once.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Potential downside: Evaporative cooling. Your best and brightest people are often prolific posters who may interact sporadically and post a lot in fits and spurts. When they can't get their needs met they may leave and then others grow bored and stop bothering.
    - Karawebnetwork 5y ago
      It's for individual posts, so at least they can still leave comments elsewhere.
jlkuester7 5y ago
Idiocy Saturation: I find this to be very true in many parts of the internet. What keeps me coming back to HN, though, is the outstanding signal-to-noise ratio in the comments that seems like the exception to this rule. I value the very constructive and thoughtful discussions that happen out here. It can add a lot of value to the originally posted link! (And honestly there are many times where I have felt that the HN discussion was more interesting and profound than the article or blog post, itself...)
minkzilla 5y ago
I wonder if a timer for comments to be shown could be useful. They could be batched or the time is inversely proportional to the length. Anyone know of any website that implements this or something similar?
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  I've mused over the idea of a Twitter that delayed tweets by some number of hours. You could cancel during that timeframe, but not edit. I think it would be a radically different form of interaction, but I doubt it would catch on.
notacoward 5y ago
It's not only an unfortunate happenstance; often it's a deliberate tactic. "Gish gallop" and "flooding the zone" are two of many terms for it. It's trivial for one troll to tie up a dozen good-faith interlocutors with wild claims of their own and demands for proof of others'. It's very hard to devise or enforce rules that would prevent such behavior (far easier to police the reactions), so it's common on practically all forums. For various reasons related to what kinds of people are drawn to computing and what behaviors are rewarded there, it's inevitably going to be even more common here.

pklausler 5y ago

An idea for combatting less-thoughtful more-frequent posting: allow at most one post per day. If one gets but one chance to express something, the choice of topic and the care taken in expression may be more thoughtful. (Or maybe one post and one reply to a response; otherwise, nobody would get a question answered in a timely manner.)

Karawebnetwork 5y ago
I manage a lot of spaces on Facebook and they recently'ish added a feature like this that moderators can enable on posts. It limits users to one comment every 5 minutes. It makes a difference - a big one. Some posts that would not have been approved end up being approved when this feature is enabled. Instead of wars of words and knee-jerk reactions, people know they can only leave one post every five minutes, so the first few replies take a few minutes to appear. Then, responses to those responses are even more cautious. People avoid commenting on multiple threads because they can't interact with all of them at once.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Potential downside: Evaporative cooling. Your best and brightest people are often prolific posters who may interact sporadically and post a lot in fits and spurts. When they can't get their needs met they may leave and then others grow bored and stop bothering.
  - Karawebnetwork 5y ago
    It's for individual posts, so at least they can still leave comments elsewhere.

jlkuester7 5y ago

Idiocy Saturation: I find this to be very true in many parts of the internet. What keeps me coming back to HN, though, is the outstanding signal-to-noise ratio in the comments that seems like the exception to this rule. I value the very constructive and thoughtful discussions that happen out here. It can add a lot of value to the originally posted link! (And honestly there are many times where I have felt that the HN discussion was more interesting and profound than the article or blog post, itself...)

minkzilla 5y ago

I wonder if a timer for comments to be shown could be useful. They could be batched or the time is inversely proportional to the length. Anyone know of any website that implements this or something similar?

TigeriusKirk 5y ago
I've mused over the idea of a Twitter that delayed tweets by some number of hours. You could cancel during that timeframe, but not edit. I think it would be a radically different form of interaction, but I doubt it would catch on.

notacoward 5y ago

It's not only an unfortunate happenstance; often it's a deliberate tactic. "Gish gallop" and "flooding the zone" are two of many terms for it. It's trivial for one troll to tie up a dozen good-faith interlocutors with wild claims of their own and demands for proof of others'. It's very hard to devise or enforce rules that would prevent such behavior (far easier to police the reactions), so it's common on practically all forums. For various reasons related to what kinds of people are drawn to computing and what behaviors are rewarded there, it's inevitably going to be even more common here.