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> Since when has HN turned into Reddit? Read at least the last paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsg

> Since when has HN turned into Reddit? Read at least the last paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

baxuz 3y ago
I wasn't aware of that fine print, but in light of that, let me rephrase it: Certain topics on HN can induce commenting behaviour among seasoned HN users often attributed to Reddit users, including, but not limited to: - being contrarian without fully reading, understanding or contextualizing the article or comment in question - weaponizing downvotes - being overly cynical, lowering the overall quality of the discussion - repeating, or tersely acknowledging what has been said by most upvoted comments in order to gain more upvotes
- dahart 3y ago
  There are indeed sometimes less than stellar comments, and some topics are more prone than others, those things are true. Yes people comment without reading sometimes, and yes people are contrarian sometimes. Sturgeon’s law apples independently to any group or site, regardless of the average quality there. But, it is clear the average quality on HN is much higher and not very comparable to Reddit. That said, it’s not a good idea to make assumptions about behavior or why voting is happening, it lowers the overall quality of the discussion to state those assumptions or complain about comments, and it generally doesn’t work here to tersely acknowledge something to get upvotes. I don’t know what weaponizing downvotes means, but I haven’t seen much downvoting here that can’t be explained by comments being either wrong about something or rude about something. In my experience, it does often help to patiently respond to contrarians without negative judgement and explain how and why you value good animation tricks, and what problems they solve. That will probably earn you upvotes much faster trying to repeat or agree with another comment.

> Since when has HN turned into Reddit? Read at least the last paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

baxuz 3y ago

I wasn't aware of that fine print, but in light of that, let me rephrase it: Certain topics on HN can induce commenting behaviour among seasoned HN users often attributed to Reddit users, including, but not limited to: - being contrarian without fully reading, understanding or contextualizing the article or comment in question - weaponizing downvotes - being overly cynical, lowering the overall quality of the discussion - repeating, or tersely acknowledging what has been said by most upvoted comments in order to gain more upvotes

dahart 3y ago
There are indeed sometimes less than stellar comments, and some topics are more prone than others, those things are true. Yes people comment without reading sometimes, and yes people are contrarian sometimes. Sturgeon’s law apples independently to any group or site, regardless of the average quality there. But, it is clear the average quality on HN is much higher and not very comparable to Reddit. That said, it’s not a good idea to make assumptions about behavior or why voting is happening, it lowers the overall quality of the discussion to state those assumptions or complain about comments, and it generally doesn’t work here to tersely acknowledge something to get upvotes. I don’t know what weaponizing downvotes means, but I haven’t seen much downvoting here that can’t be explained by comments being either wrong about something or rude about something. In my experience, it does often help to patiently respond to contrarians without negative judgement and explain how and why you value good animation tricks, and what problems they solve. That will probably earn you upvotes much faster trying to repeat or agree with another comment.