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> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. This is one of the more serious pain p
by nologic01 3y ago
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
This is one of the more serious pain points I notice (thankfully only occasionally).
Obviously getting some visibility is important for people launching new projects. Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons.
- antisthenes 3y agoA shallow article written in bad faith only deserves a shallow dismissal. Don't force me to fight an asymmetric warfare battle against malicious authors to participate.
- gingerbread-man 3y agoDoes a ‘shallow article’ even merit a dismissive comment? Wouldn’t it be better simply to ignore it and find another thread on which to engage?
- thecosas 3y agoThis makes sense to me since leaving a comment (even a negative one) would be a signal of engagement that would likely boost the likelihood of a given article being/remaining on the front page.
- DisgracePlacard 3y agoIIRC, submissions are downranked as the commment to vote ration gets higher and higher. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flame-war-detector https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flame-...
- kbenson 3y agoI agree, it's the same principal as spam. You don't reply calling them out as a spammer, as that only signals that they have access to your attention. You blackhole the spam or sender or submit to authorities of services that can help you block it in the future, but you do not engage with the originator.
- noduerme 3y agoSpam is the extreme example. What about family or acquaintances who compulsively forward every garbage blog post they come across on whatever their political obsession is? What do you do when they don't respect multiple polite requests to take you off their CC: list? At some point you go, "the hell with seeming disengaged and just letting this trash pass without comment." I'll happily forfeit my right to remain aloof and to give no signs of engagement if I get annoyed to the point where I'd prefer to go to war.
- antisthenes 3y agoIgnoring/Flagging it is akin to shallow dismissal. I make no distinction between the 2.
- post-it 3y agoBut the guidelines do. > Please don't post shallow dismissals,
- kbenson 3y agoThe rule is not to force you to be a better person by making you consider all comments you see, it's to keep discussion useful and help the site continue to provide a high level of usefulness for all users, including yourself. In that respect, ignoring, flagging, and shallow dismissals replies are three distinctly different outcomes with different utility to the users of this site.
- skeaker 3y agoThat's what flagging is for. Or just ignore the post. Participation here is never "forced"
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- Cpoll 3y agoA shallow dismissal just makes your position look weak, and theirs stronger by comparison.
- wilg 3y ago“look” is the operative word here
- Cpoll 3y agoI suppose it depends whether your goal is communicating your position or just winning a moral victory. "Weak" is the operative word. Being right doesn't do you much favors if you can't communicate it. In this context, "looking" weak is being weak.
- antisthenes 3y ago> Being right doesn't do you much favors if you can't communicate it. In this context, "looking" weak is being weak. No. Function over form.
- mistermann 3y agoPerception is reality - Mother Nature is the arbiter, and you lose.
- xpe 3y agoBoth of the points of view have merit. We can move beyond anchoring to just one. How? Hegel has a "three step process": Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/ One synthesis is this: wise strategies depend on the audience composition and time scale. More people should learn wise ways to quantify future rewards. Reinforcement learning, economics, and finance cover some simple ways. One way is a constant discount factor, but it is not the only nor best way.
- 3y ago
- ineedasername 3y agoIgnoring those articles is quite nearly the definition of “easy”
- dang 3y agoThe issue isn't justice, it's thread quality.
- dredmorbius 3y agoI'm coming to appreciate this view increasingly, why HN chooses to align itself this way, and the difficulty and precariousness with which that balance is attained. I'll still say that the instances of HN moderation with which I have the greatest reservations tend to resemble what antisthenes describes above: poorly-conceived articles which would themselves be legitimately flagged and admonished if posted as HN comments to which the rather understandably heated or snippy response instead draws moderator action. And yes, HN mods can't read everything or be everywhere,[1] so moderation is inconsistent, though I know what it strives toward. And I can often identify how a response might have been improved or what elements run aground on HN's policies. I'm not convinced that the occasional exception or leniency would utterly wreck the ship (though having seen what, in dang's words things that strongly encourage that a "thread will lose its mind"[2] there's some reason for caution). But in a world where, to borrow from Tim Minchin, there's frequently a contingent which "keeps firing off clichés with startling precision like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition", diplomacy dikes do on occasion break.[3] And tone-policing that, particularly unilaterally, strikes me as a greater wrong. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Which you've noted, 2 days ago <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37225175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37225175> and eight years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9979719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9979719>. Another HN perennial... 2. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176686> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715>. 3. Tim Minchin, "Storm" (2009), <https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Tim-Minchin/Storm https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Tim-Minchin/Storm>. Animated video: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U https://yewtu.be/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U> and live performance: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk https://yewtu.be/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk>.
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- noduerme 3y ago
- noduerme 3y ago>> Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons. Do you mean like, Alice shows her project and Bob gets on and becomes adversarial to get attention for his competing project? Or are you saying that Alice creates adversarial sock puppets just to increase the comment count and visibility?
- fknorangesite 3y agoAlice shows her project to Bob. Bob comes up with some mostly-unnecessary criticism of it as a way to shoehorn in a mention of his own project.
- InSteady 3y ago>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
- nextaccountic 3y agoWell at least this doesn't insinuate a specific comment is astroturfing but rather that this practice exists (and I think that the existence of this practice is a reasonable topic to talk about, at least in this thread)
- iLoveOncall 3y ago> Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons. No kidding. On most Launch / Show HN posts half of the comments are "CEO of yourdirectcompetitor.com here, cool project, good job, here are some irrelevant questions so that my obvious self-plug doesn't get deleted."
- xnx 3y agoMy favorite part of "Show HN" is when someone asks: "How is NewSaaS better than 15 year old open source project that has more features and is used by thousands of companies?" It's a great way to learn what's out there.