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Ask HN: Has Hacker News been successful at minimizing trolling?
The discussion of pg's "Trolls" at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353593 got me wondering ... do people here think that the site has been successful at minimizing trolling and its impact?
If so, what do you think are the key factors?
- kls 15y agoYes I do believe it has, if it had not I would not be here and would not have been a member of the site as long as I have. That being said, I actually have a pretty good sense of humor, and find a lot of the trolling to be amusing. Even though I do, I have been around long enough that I have seen many a good sites ruined by it, HN created a culture where trolls, memes and humor are quickly down-voted, a new member usually comes in, gets down voted, asks why and is educated on the subject, they then tend to reinforce the culture. The down-voting has been surprisingly successful, as of recent though down-voting has been used more and more for "I don't agree" as opposed to "this is not worthy of this site" I wish it would head back towards a tool against unworthy information but such is the nature of these things, so long as it keeps the trolling to a minimum I think HN will continue to be a great site.
- polyfractal 15y agoWhile I think the downvoting keeps trolling low, I actually believe that the short lifespan of most articles/conversations does more to prevent trolling. Trolling is most prevalent in forums, since you can carry on sophisticated conversations and see a long, linear conversation thread. It is a lot easier to bait and troll serious posters. On HN, discussions are often dead within two days, and you can typically only follow conversations that you are directly involved in. Any time an article pushes past 100 comments it becomes basically impossible to keep long-running conversations alive.