4 ms·

I had hoped that this article would be a focused point by point response to the anonymous pastebin rant. Unfortunately, it was less about 10gen or MongoDB, and

I had hoped that this article would be a focused point by point response to the anonymous pastebin rant. Unfortunately, it was less about 10gen or MongoDB, and more about the efficacy of Hacker News as a forum for disseminating information. Plug in any controversial technology and the article sounds about the same: Al Gore on Global Warming vs a report claiming to debunk it, Microsoft on Silverlight vs a report claiming that it's no longer supported, James Randi on his $1,000,000 challenge vs someone claiming that their version of ESP really is real. "... the reaction on HN is heartening. Though it's disappointing it made it to the front page at all, it also seems that the bulk of the audience at HN took it with the grain of salt it deserved." I'm unimpressed with this assessment. HN participants were quick to identify the key issues of provenance while simultaneously picking apart the claims. Regardless of whether this was a hoax -- I personally think it was an exaggerated rant of someone who was seriously frustrated -- isn't this how peer review is supposed to work? Someone makes a claim. The claim and the claimant are assessed. Conclusions are drawn. There's nothing disappointing about it. In my opinion, HN worked efficiently and quickly to debunk or validate the claims. The article needed to reach the front page in order to achieve a critical mass of participation in order to discover a consensus which seems to be that many of the claims were overblown or based on out-of-date information, but some were real. This conclusion was validated by 10gen's president Max Schireson, "... rather than deflecting the entire thing, Schireson and Horowitz were fairly candid about MongoDB's shortcomings. Of the nine sections, Schireson says that "some are definitely valid, some we haven't heard or seen."" Rather than feeling disappointed, the newsworthy aspect of this episode is how well the HN community and moderation system worked in this case, and how reasonable 10gen was in their response. Many companies (e.g. British Petroleum on the Deep Horizon disaster) will continue to spin the news even when there is video evidence. It would have been nice if ReadWriteWeb focused on that rather than attempting to paint a negative picture of community sourced news.

jzb 15y ago
"There's nothing disappointing about it." There's a lot disappointing about it. HN, like it or not, has gotten to a point where many people use it for tech news and don't read comments. When a story makes it to the top of HN, it gets tweeted to an audience of about 40K people - who generally don't see the comments at all. (links go straight to stories, not to the HN site.) So there's a huge potential for misinformation when a piece like this makes it to the front page at all. The peer review worked, but in my opinion a better system wouldn't even put this in front of a large enough audience to matter. It was an anonymous pastebin - it's not like this was debunking something on CNet or RWW that would have been widely seen anyway.
- bigiain 15y ago
  I don't see that as "disappointing" for HN regulars. We vote on things that are interesting to discuss, not to indicate there's any validity to the article. If non-discussion-participants are relying on the voting mechanism to provide "accurate tech news", they've only got themselves to blame for the "huge potential for misinformation".
  - Joakal 15y ago
    It is disappointing to me as well. People should be upvoting articles based on quality, not headline-bait or baseless rants (no data of bugs, no logs, etc) or rants where the person is oblivious (locks are in the docs). Unfortunately, I can't downvote links. Like other sites, I can only ignore it for so long before it's drowned in noise (lack of interesting quality links).
    - politician 15y ago
      Many submissions don't make it to the front page given what I've seen on "new", but here we had a rant that - like it or not - made a number of serious allegations against MongoDB; some number of which, after examination by HN regulars, were confirmed by 10gen in a follow-up piece by RWW. I don't really understand your position or complaint - are you suggesting that the anonymous nature of the source is sufficient to disqualify it outright? Who determines 'baselessness', isn't that a consensus process? Are you commenting on a general feeling that HN promotes a lower number of quality links then "in the earlier days"?
    - bigiain 15y ago
      "People should be upvoting articles based on quality" Yeah, but by what measure of "quality"? I don't hang around here with the intention of curating non-participating readers news feeds, I keep coming back for the interestingness of the discussions that result from submitted links. The true or falseness of the linked article is way less important (to me) than the opportunity for interesting comments. ('course, maybe _I'm_ doing it wrong...)
- politician 15y ago
pork 15y ago
> isn't this how peer review is supposed to work? Someone makes a claim. The claim and the claimant are assessed. Generally, the claimant is irrelevant in peer review. That's a hard standard to hold up though.
- Joakal 15y ago
  Generally, there's data to support the submission as well. The submission did not have the data (logs, bug reports, etc). So it's pretty much easy to disprove the rant as nothing more than a rant.

jzb 15y ago

"There's nothing disappointing about it." There's a lot disappointing about it. HN, like it or not, has gotten to a point where many people use it for tech news and don't read comments. When a story makes it to the top of HN, it gets tweeted to an audience of about 40K people - who generally don't see the comments at all. (links go straight to stories, not to the HN site.) So there's a huge potential for misinformation when a piece like this makes it to the front page at all. The peer review worked, but in my opinion a better system wouldn't even put this in front of a large enough audience to matter. It was an anonymous pastebin - it's not like this was debunking something on CNet or RWW that would have been widely seen anyway.

bigiain 15y ago
I don't see that as "disappointing" for HN regulars. We vote on things that are interesting to discuss, not to indicate there's any validity to the article. If non-discussion-participants are relying on the voting mechanism to provide "accurate tech news", they've only got themselves to blame for the "huge potential for misinformation".
- Joakal 15y ago
  It is disappointing to me as well. People should be upvoting articles based on quality, not headline-bait or baseless rants (no data of bugs, no logs, etc) or rants where the person is oblivious (locks are in the docs). Unfortunately, I can't downvote links. Like other sites, I can only ignore it for so long before it's drowned in noise (lack of interesting quality links).
  - politician 15y ago
    Many submissions don't make it to the front page given what I've seen on "new", but here we had a rant that - like it or not - made a number of serious allegations against MongoDB; some number of which, after examination by HN regulars, were confirmed by 10gen in a follow-up piece by RWW. I don't really understand your position or complaint - are you suggesting that the anonymous nature of the source is sufficient to disqualify it outright? Who determines 'baselessness', isn't that a consensus process? Are you commenting on a general feeling that HN promotes a lower number of quality links then "in the earlier days"?
  - bigiain 15y ago
    "People should be upvoting articles based on quality" Yeah, but by what measure of "quality"? I don't hang around here with the intention of curating non-participating readers news feeds, I keep coming back for the interestingness of the discussions that result from submitted links. The true or falseness of the linked article is way less important (to me) than the opportunity for interesting comments. ('course, maybe _I'm_ doing it wrong...)
politician 15y ago

pork 15y ago

> isn't this how peer review is supposed to work? Someone makes a claim. The claim and the claimant are assessed. Generally, the claimant is irrelevant in peer review. That's a hard standard to hold up though.

Joakal 15y ago
Generally, there's data to support the submission as well. The submission did not have the data (logs, bug reports, etc). So it's pretty much easy to disprove the rant as nothing more than a rant.