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Did HN do any kind of survey to demonstrate their user demographics? And it is absolutely toxic on certain topics, particularly anything economics related or t

Did HN do any kind of survey to demonstrate their user demographics? And it is absolutely toxic on certain topics, particularly anything economics related or that challenges capitalism and the "line go up" mentality of the VC culture. If you offer anything that criticizes that at all, you're in for an earful.

dang 5y ago
Everyone with strong ideological passions thinks that HN is stacked against them ideologically. People routinely say that not only about the community, but about the mods. These perceptions are entirely predictable from the passions of the perceiver. I just happened to write a long comment about this to a commenter who sees HN in just the opposite way to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346954. Who's right? Neither. It's exactly the same perception, just with opposite polarity, because the polarity is coming from inside the person. More precisely, both are right in the sense that HN generates enough data points for everybody to run into whatever they dislike the most; and both are wrong in that they dramatically overweight that sample, because that's what the brain does with samples like that. What makes this perception so common on all sides is that HN doesn't partition the site into like-minded silos (e.g. follow lists or social graphs or subforums). Everyone is in the same non-siloed room, so everyone is frequently bumping into views they dislike and normally don't have to deal with as much, at least not in their home base. The irony is that this is actually a step closer both to reality (society is divided on divisive topics) and to genuine tolerance (bearing the presence of what one dislikes). There's more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
- projectazorian 5y ago
  I don't think HN is stacked against me ideologically, quite the contrary, my views are fairly pedestrian and middle of the road for the West Coast tech industry. I do think that when it comes to politics and social justice HN is content to let people who aggressively hold certain viewpoints have an outsize role in the discussion, despite engaging in toxic behaviors that wouldn't be tolerated on other threads. This may be because the people running the show here are sympathetic to such views, or maybe they're just naive.
  - dang 5y ago
    No we are not "content" to do that, and generalizations like this are notoriously unreliable. I'd like to see specific examples, and I'm sure interested readers would appreciate links as well, so they can make up their own minds.
    - giraffe_lady 5y ago
      dude the fact that you are sooo touchy about this and jump immediately to the defensive with this sea lion shit the second someone impugns the conversational style of hn. it really undercuts that sense of detached impartiality you like to front with otherwise. anyway man we made up our minds already that's kinda the point. hn has a lot going for it but it also sucks pretty hard, in some ways that are very difficult to quantify but nevertheless are real! I'm sorry that hurts to hear and I'm more sorry that you're so sure it can't be the case that you can't see it.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        This comment is far below the expected HN standards of civility and decorum ("you are sooo touchy about this" and pointless accusations of "sealioning" in response to a reasonable question would not be generally OK here). I point this out not so much to engage in foolish 'tone policing' and purposely ignore its substantive points (such as they may be - the OP is actually more helpful here! And you have quoted a New Yorker description elsewhere in this thread that also provides a valuable outside perspective; we of course appreciate that) but rather to point out that HN takes criticism of itself very seriously, to the point of routinely giving comments like this one what amounts to special treatment. As a user base, we really, really want to avoid the tone-policing trap. And we'd like to see accurate information about these things even when that's hard to quantify.
        giraffe_lady 5y ago
        that is the point I'm trying to make. we judge comments on how well they adhere to our standards of civility and decorum, but not by their actual effects. having a mod jump on you demanding peer-reviewed validation if you criticize the place is bad, even if they do it civilly. hn surely does "take criticism seriously" in the sense that when any is detected, it is fully and publicly focused on. but in all the cases I've seen it comes with a hostile degree and intensity of interrogation that makes it hard to believe it is a good faith exercise in organizational-self improvement. it just puts such a high burden and consequence on publicly pointing out the faults that people don't want to do it. shit I try not to do it on purpose because it's such a draining unpleasant experience to be the center of attention of dang and whoever has decided to be his crew for the day. being civil doesn't protect you from these arguments! these things are bad, no matter how civil people are being about them. and I am sometimes not that civil about them, but that doesn't make me wrong, or a moral inferior to people who can keep their cool.

dang 5y ago

Everyone with strong ideological passions thinks that HN is stacked against them ideologically. People routinely say that not only about the community, but about the mods. These perceptions are entirely predictable from the passions of the perceiver. I just happened to write a long comment about this to a commenter who sees HN in just the opposite way to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346954. Who's right? Neither. It's exactly the same perception, just with opposite polarity, because the polarity is coming from inside the person. More precisely, both are right in the sense that HN generates enough data points for everybody to run into whatever they dislike the most; and both are wrong in that they dramatically overweight that sample, because that's what the brain does with samples like that. What makes this perception so common on all sides is that HN doesn't partition the site into like-minded silos (e.g. follow lists or social graphs or subforums). Everyone is in the same non-siloed room, so everyone is frequently bumping into views they dislike and normally don't have to deal with as much, at least not in their home base. The irony is that this is actually a step closer both to reality (society is divided on divisive topics) and to genuine tolerance (bearing the presence of what one dislikes). There's more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

projectazorian 5y ago
I don't think HN is stacked against me ideologically, quite the contrary, my views are fairly pedestrian and middle of the road for the West Coast tech industry. I do think that when it comes to politics and social justice HN is content to let people who aggressively hold certain viewpoints have an outsize role in the discussion, despite engaging in toxic behaviors that wouldn't be tolerated on other threads. This may be because the people running the show here are sympathetic to such views, or maybe they're just naive.
- dang 5y ago
  No we are not "content" to do that, and generalizations like this are notoriously unreliable. I'd like to see specific examples, and I'm sure interested readers would appreciate links as well, so they can make up their own minds.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    dude the fact that you are sooo touchy about this and jump immediately to the defensive with this sea lion shit the second someone impugns the conversational style of hn. it really undercuts that sense of detached impartiality you like to front with otherwise. anyway man we made up our minds already that's kinda the point. hn has a lot going for it but it also sucks pretty hard, in some ways that are very difficult to quantify but nevertheless are real! I'm sorry that hurts to hear and I'm more sorry that you're so sure it can't be the case that you can't see it.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      This comment is far below the expected HN standards of civility and decorum ("you are sooo touchy about this" and pointless accusations of "sealioning" in response to a reasonable question would not be generally OK here). I point this out not so much to engage in foolish 'tone policing' and purposely ignore its substantive points (such as they may be - the OP is actually more helpful here! And you have quoted a New Yorker description elsewhere in this thread that also provides a valuable outside perspective; we of course appreciate that) but rather to point out that HN takes criticism of itself very seriously, to the point of routinely giving comments like this one what amounts to special treatment. As a user base, we really, really want to avoid the tone-policing trap. And we'd like to see accurate information about these things even when that's hard to quantify.
      - giraffe_lady 5y ago
        that is the point I'm trying to make. we judge comments on how well they adhere to our standards of civility and decorum, but not by their actual effects. having a mod jump on you demanding peer-reviewed validation if you criticize the place is bad, even if they do it civilly. hn surely does "take criticism seriously" in the sense that when any is detected, it is fully and publicly focused on. but in all the cases I've seen it comes with a hostile degree and intensity of interrogation that makes it hard to believe it is a good faith exercise in organizational-self improvement. it just puts such a high burden and consequence on publicly pointing out the faults that people don't want to do it. shit I try not to do it on purpose because it's such a draining unpleasant experience to be the center of attention of dang and whoever has decided to be his crew for the day. being civil doesn't protect you from these arguments! these things are bad, no matter how civil people are being about them. and I am sometimes not that civil about them, but that doesn't make me wrong, or a moral inferior to people who can keep their cool.