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New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.
There's been a big spike in new users the last couple days.
Unfortunately it's been visible not only in the traffic stats
but in the character of the comment threads.
New users: we'd appreciate it if you'd please read the site
guidelines before commenting. Most importantly, the principle
that you shouldn't say anything in a comment that you
wouldn't say to someone's face.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hacker News is an experiment. We're
trying to see whether by asking people to be civil we can
avoid the kind of nastiness that anonymity breeds by default.
The experiment has worked so far. And while the new users
may not realize it, this is why they're here. People like it here because one can have a civil conversation.
The principle that you shouldn't say things you wouldn't
say to someone's face means you can't express yourself the
way you might be used to doing on Reddit or Slashdot.
This, for example, would not stand out on either of those
sites,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=459250
but it's not cool here.
- jachee 18y agoI showed up here because a real-life acquaintance wrote a nice post about HN on his blog, here: http://www.robsayers.com/programming/HackerNews.html http://www.robsayers.com/programming/HackerNews.html I had visited in the past when it was purely Startup news, but I hadn't created an account. As I'm more of a tinkerer and explorer than entrepreneur, the bent is more toward my liking, since the revision. I really like the attitude--or rather lack thereof--and look forward to becoming a part of the community.
- Raphael 18y agoDuplicate submission. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=219081 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=219081 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133453 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133453
- iamelgringo 18y agoUm... Did you look at who made this submission? :)
- paulgb 18y agoOddly enough, a thread like this was front-paged just a few days ago, but was killed by the editors.
- cperciva 18y agoI didn't see the earlier thread, but perhaps the difference is in how things were worded? I quite often see pairs of comments posted at the same time and making exactly the same points, yet where one post gets voted up and the other doesn't, simply because one comment is better written than the other. I imagine that this is even more important than usual in this case, since when the message is "please be good" there's really nothing except how well the message is worded.
- whacked_new 18y agoIt wouldn't matter. I think some dupes are required. When you say "take care" to somebody it's not like you think they won't take care of themselves. But if you stop saying it altogether, I bet it will harm the basis of civility. I vaguely recall an experiment done on a classroom where everybody was required to say hi every morning. Soon after the entire class had a great spirit. I don't recall when, where, or who; if somebody does, please say.
- mlinsey 18y agoI think this may have been meant as an "ironic" joke. Then again, that kind of humor is also one of the common things on other sites that I'm thankful to not see rewarded here.
- michaelneale 18y agoI think that is pretty funny - in fact when I read digg (usually on the phone, sitting on the toilet) for a laugh I always check the comments first, but I NEVER participate (its pure theatre). Has its place, as does HN I think. Is HN the only civil place online ? ;)
- Raphael 18y ago
- zain 18y agoI'd also prefer to see less "linkbait" on the front page; i.e. stories with titles that are, at best, only tangentially related and are instead overdramatized just to get clicks.
- TooMuchNick 18y agoIt would be healthy for submitters to look at headlines before they copy them directly, realizing that what makes sense for a blogger (aware of Digg) seeking some well-deserved attention for a post might not make sense in an extremely specialized forum like Hacker News. What I mean is, a blogger is completely justified in naming a post "Why James Bond would never drink a Coke" (like I did for an environmentalist blog) if that blogger believed their purpose would be best served by alerting Digg users to the perfidies of the Coca-Cola company. But if a Hacker News reader appreciated the post's message -- that Coca-Cola is exploiting water rights laws in third-world countries to produce its products cheaply at the expense of the residents and their clean water supplies -- they would do well to use a different headline that what the desperate blogger, often paid by the pageview, had written with a view to Digg. That said, bloggers will more and more overhype their posts in the way that media have since their beginning, and those of us on small thinky web sites will have to get used to downvoting and moving on.
- michaelneale 18y agoExcept we can't downvote can we? at least not stories? (or is there a karma level for that?) (I am sure I am missing something obvious).
- Flemlord 18y agoAs a reddit convert myself, I'm terrified to post here. I hear that Paul Graham himself sometimes singles out dumb commenters and publicly ridicules them. ;-) Best to keep a low profile.
- TooMuchNick 18y agoUnless you have a not-so-secret smirking attitude toward Paul Graham, having publicly ridiculed him in an earlier stage of your career and now being lucky enough to have no need for his money.
- dreish 18y agoI can remember when -23 points would be reserved for something like a string of racial epithets, not merely a lame but inoffensive attempt at humor.
- Retric 18y agoAs more people use the site the Karma swings are going to increase. He got a + 24 on the same thread so IMO it balances out.
- dreish 18y agoYes, but it once was the case that noise comments were given a single downvote and left alone by everyone else. Negative numbers here are like a slap in the face, and when overused they will be even more corrosive to the community than a flood of juvenile comments would be. More to the point, those scores are not supposed to be used to represent entertainment value, because people are not participating here for pure mindless entertainment.
- Retric 18y agoI tend to down vote things that are at +50 karma and up vote stuff that get's really low unless they are extremely good or bad. However, think of it like a threading problem. If 30 people that think like I do see the comment at 10 and all up vote it it's going to hit 40 without updating it's value to those people.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- rw 18y agoWhat has caused the spike in new users?
- tsetse-fly 18y agoI think it may be related to acangiano's "Let's all grow up" post. He mentioned Hacker News and it seemed to be a popular submission, particularly on reddit. A few curious trolls probably wandered over and created new accounts. Of course, that's not Antonio's fault. I liked his post. :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=455474 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=455474 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7tbpl/lets_all_grow_up/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7tbpl/lets_all_...
- michaelneale 18y agowell if its just a few.. that is ok ;)
- SapphireSun 18y agoI'm not so sure about that. A single troll can do a lot of damage. A single person can acquire scripting software ( like the Arrington username ), abuse the page formatting on every page, and destroy the balance of conversation by pissing people off. It takes the ethos of the entire community to keep this all in check. Some trolls might assimilate, but a determined person would be hard to deal with.
- allenbrunson 18y agoyes, one troll can do a lot of damage. but trolls around here never get the chance, because their accounts are killed swiftly. the editors on this site are much more aggressive about curbing bad behavior than anywhere else i've ever seen.
- pg 18y agoI don't know (the web server doesn't keep track of referring urls), but it started on thursday.
- kaens 18y agoI'd personally like to say "Please keep HN civil, free from trolling, and intellectual." This site has been a great resource - and that's at least partially because the tone of the vast majority of the community here is pretty serious. I have an account on reddit as well, and my tone over there is different than my tone here. On reddit I make a decent amount of off-the-cuff remarks, occasionally troll a bit, participate in pun threads, and also have a decent amount of intelligent debate and discussion. Here I keep my mouth (fingers?) shut (stoppped?) unless I have something to say, because that's the vibe here. Here, I'm more likely to vote people up who have a differing opinion on an issue, or even if they have an opinion that offends me, if they are able of stating and defending their position logically. On reddit, I'd probably just skim over their post. Etc. The tone of this site has gotten a little lighter since the first time I was here, and it seems to have gotten a lot more of a focus on the business side of things, which is fine - but if people aren't careful, the site will devolve into yet another pick-your-favorite-site-here. So yeah. Please keep HN grown-up. It's nice to see mostly responsible discussion happening on a site like this, and I hope it continues to happen.
- TooMuchNick 18y agoAnd by "grown-up," we mean "like grown-ups who aren't from TechCrunch."
- kaens 18y agoI'm not familiar with this whole TechCrunch debacle, other than reading about that guy being spit on. By "grown-up", I mean "thinking before posting, and posting in a way that indicates that one has a generally 'mature' mental-model". This isn't something that can be measured objectively, more of an attribute that emerges from the sum of a users postings - and posters on HN have generally passed the "act-like-an-adult" test so far.
- icey 18y agoYou really should re-read the top level of this post. It's directed squarely at you.
- keizo 18y agoFeature request/experiment: Put a small second column on the right side with the 'new page' on the main page. I suggested this to reddit a long time ago when they first started to really get lame, but it never caught on.
- ojbyrne 18y agoThat principle doesn't work online. In general you can say stuff to people in person that's insulting and abusive, and then just give a wry smile and everybody laughs. You can't do that online. The guideline has it exactly wrong. The problem is that what you say online about someone is frozen forever, and takes on more significance than either the sender or the receiver actually meant. In person, I call you an asshole, you're impressed that I said it to your face, we both laugh and move on. On the web I call you an asshole, you call me an asshole, it escalates, shows up in google searches for both our names, people who aren't quite up to speed on things (recruiters) take it more seriously than it should be... bad stuff happens.
- pg 18y agoSome percentage of the nasty things people say on web forums are said half-jokingly and offend because half-jokingness is hard to convey in text, but I think the majority are genuinely nasty.
- nailer 18y agoHave you considered asking new users to enter their first and second names, and creating an available username from that? This is often credited for Facebook having more 'real' content than MySpace and Friendster.
- tsetse-fly 18y agoEnforcing specific types of usernames is rather lame. People would just enter fake names. Facebook depends on your real identity so people who have met you can locate you.
- nailer 18y agoSome people may enter fake names, but asking for their first and last names at least sets expectations. As you've touched on, allowing people to find you on hacker news would also be a benefit.
- sh1mmer 18y agoCuriously PG posting this gets 50 karma and counting, someone else posted a similar thing earlier in the week and got flagged dead. I don't want to see this topic regularly but maybe the guidelines could be made more prominent for new users?
- pg 18y agoGood idea. I should add some kind of welcome page.
- euccastro 18y agoThere is some available real estate in the navigation header. Maybe a "posting guidelines" link up there is warranted? If it clutters the interface, it could go away once you get 100 karma or so.
- unalone 18y agoI like tying it to karma rather than user date length. That way, long-time users that haven't done anything will still see the guidelines, as a sort of hint.
- adamc 18y agoWhy would long-time users that "haven't done anything" need the hint?
- diN0bot 18y agoOne may still benefit greatly from the experience of posting and commenting rather than observing. I was reading hn a while before I got an account, and never really thought about karma, submission titling or type, or comment voting. I have often wondered why the posting, submission, and voting guidelines haven't been more prominent. I appreciate Paul's active role in this community--I think it account's for much of the civility to have benevolent moderators--but definitely making the principles easier to access would be helpful, too.
- michaelneale 18y agoA suggestion: Any chance that news stories could be throttled or more heavily edited/moderated just after a spike in new users? Just a thought, it could help to filter out those who are interested versus those just looking for another forum to do their usual thing on.
- someperson 18y agoApparently, they already are: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=435705 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=435705
- pg 18y agoThe problem is more in the comments. The character of the submissions hasn't changed much. The best way to deal with nasty comments by new users may be just to ask them to stop. Several times lately I've noticed established users doing that, e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=457319 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=457319
- michaelneale 18y agoWell things seem to be going well. Dodged a bullet this time ! I am very interested to see how things maintained - increasing popularity is inevitable...
- xenophanes 18y ago> We're trying to see whether by asking people to be civil we can avoid the kind of nastiness that anonymity breeds by default. Plus liberal use of disabling people's accounts without notifying them let alone asking them to change something.
- allenbrunson 18y agoi've seen pg make polite suggestions to commenters who are out of line. they almost always completely ignore him. given that he's got other things to do besides just moderate this site, i don't blame him at all for killing the accounts of unruly posters. at that point, the onus is on them to do something to get back in his good graces, or just go somewhere else.
- mst 18y agoI think it basically boils down to: Hacker News logins are a privilege, not a right. Coming from a background of things like talkers where you needed to be explicitly invited by another user before you could get in, I don't really have a problem with that.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- freakball 18y agois there an IRC channel for HN?
- ktharavaad 18y agoI honestly hope that HN news does not degenerate into another reddit or digg-like news sites where comments and content are full of dramatized and useless material. So far, I've found the users of this site intellectual, technical and insightful in their comments and as a result, its been a joy to participate in this community and I hope the crowd which this site attract remain the same - smart and technical people.
- icefox 18y agoJust like when reddit started out. So what does HN do differently that will stop it?
- axod 18y agoI've also noticed comments modded down to <1 for no good reason. I like the idea that here, generally downmods to <1 are reserved for abusive or off topic comments, rather than just something you disagree with. To the new users: If you disagree with a comment, please reply to it, stating why. Don't just blindly downmod it. Just my 2c
- russell 18y agoI have noticed a piling on of downmods in the past couple of weeks. TooMuchNick seems to have lost 30+ points for a couple of comments. They didn't add much to the conversation but they weren't so offensive that he deserved that. He got the point. Probably -1 would have accomplished it. HN is the most civil site that I have seen. All it takes is a gentle tap to remind a commenter the s/he didn't contribute to the discussion.
- kragen 18y agoSure, but he's from Valleywag (he launched the site and eventually got fired for being too gossipy even for Gawker and Valleywag), and he's starting a site to encourage people to keep a visual online diary of their sex lives. He'd have to post thousands of fantastic comments here in order to compensate for the damage to civility he's done in his life so far. (I know this is kind of harsh, but if you think I wouldn't say it in person, you probably haven't met me.)
- mcargian 18y agoOn the flip side, I don't understand why someone should get 40 karma points for a two word witty comment, no matter how funny it was. Why isn't karma per comment limited to -1 to 10? Seems like it would limit karma bashing and karma mega-boosting.
- kwamenum86 18y agoIf you limit the karma to 10 then a particularly good comment will eventually sink below comments that are upmodded later because of the way the ordering algorithm works. Similarly, a particularly bad comment will stay visible. I don't see anything wrong with karma mega-boosting. At the end of the day it is just a number on your profile.
- lionhearted 18y agoIs it possible to change your username somehow? I'd switch over to using first name/last initial or first initial/last name if it is. I like being held personally accountable for what I write here, and the real life conversation standard.
- allenbrunson 18y agoi'd say putting your real name and contact information in your profile suffices.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- vaksel 18y agomaybe make this post a sticky, so that everyone will see it right away. Can be temporary one...i.e. first 90 days you see this thread at the top of the list, then it goes away?
- bitdiddle 18y agoWell I post here once in a blue moon when I see something of interest, and I also comment. My long term goal is to break 100 points on my next submission. It's a sad thing that it's been years now and we still have to have guidelines that essentially say what everyone was told by their mother when they were a child. I think this will improve some day when either 1. we ban dogs from the net or 2. we start shooting the bad ones :) As an aside, PG, congrats! I saw recently that you were promoted up a level. It's a wonderful thing, non?
- alain94040 18y agoJust a thought, but if you got modded down badly, being banned from HN for a few days, with a big banner that tells you why "sorry: your last comment was modded -5, we'll let you back in tomorrow", that might take care of the teaching once and for all.
- critic 18y agoFrom all the downmodding of the linked comment, I gather a lot of people are going to disagree, but I actually think the comment may have been the most helpful one in the thread. Its message was: Prioritize, focus on things that are relevant to your success, not on things that only matter after you've succeeded, i.e. see the bigger picture. Perhaps the delivery could have been better.
- Radix 18y agoThe method a person uses to convey that idea is important. The way it was said, there was likely too much work to be done extracting that simple idea compared to the ideas worth to the parent poster. I think everyone's opinion is that the way we communicate our ideas on this board is also important.
- mattmaroon 18y agoWhere did the new spike come from?
- Jasber 18y agoWhat about putting a cap on the number of users that can register per day? This keeps the community growing but in a controlled fashion.
- eande 18y agoFor some time I read hacker news nearly daily (one of the rare places) and mostly because of the comments. Some members here have good points, ideas and are right at the mark. Even with this valuable board discussion if many of these non sense comments increase it will turn away good members. With the anonymity of the internet there will be always some characters that need moderation and so far ycombinator did a good job. Keep it up.
- electromagnetic 18y agoWhile this is up on the front page, I'd like to say that I love HN and the people on it. There's lots of things I like about HN, like that links can't be down voted and that downvoting comments is an exclusive right to people with good karma. However, the main thing I like about HN is that I see lots of civil discussion and people giving useful comments and suggestions. When I have seen disagreements (I believe I've been in a few myself) I notice that people tend to do what they do in real life and simply 'walk away'. When I read something that really irks me I usually just close HN and will come back later or whenever when I've forgotten about it.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- zandorg 18y agoFrom my experience posting, I'm learning more about what's acceptable, and sometimes I even delete a post that's dragging down my karma. But more interesting - With the experience of posting here, I should be able to write a press release for my startup that appeals to hackers.
- jumper 18y agoI find that the site has definitely spread apart in it's values. And the real problem is as "undesireables" flood in, the people who are truer to the original culture get disgusted and back away. As a personal (though perhaps not universal) example, see here, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458256 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458256 , a +23 comment decrying the multi-page split of the article. See here, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=398185 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=398185 , my own comment railing against them wasting my time\effort like that.... modded down to -6. I don't want to be a whiny nuisance about it, but when that happened it really alienated me from the community and quite frankly I don't think I've contributed much anything of value since. I felt betrayed when I chose to stand against that kind of crap and I was stabbed in the back. Add in the fact that the "rules" are not being applied equally as the culture splits, and it just feels random and unfair. To conclude my soapbox, I could be doing approx. 50 trillion things on the internet right now, so stop trying to waste my time\effort with 11 three sentence pages, snarky\"witty" comments; and God save the YCNews
- jhickner 18y agoI think it just comes down to wording. The post that ends with "FAIL" got downvoted. That seems pretty harsh to me, but I think people are just hypervigilant against any hint of encroaching diggishness.
- niels_olson 18y agoEdward Tufte has a good thread of collected moderation advice and policies from over the years here: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000fT http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0... Here is the short essay he provides to anyone who cares to comment, at the top of the comment form: ----------------------- This board is only about evidence presentations and analytical design. For all business matters (book orders, courses, shipping, prices, delivery dates), please go to the Graphics Press contact information on our home page On the Ask ET forum, we seek to publish questions and contributions that advance the analytical content of the thread, provide a good example, or raise an interesting question. Contributions should be relevant to the chosen thread. Please no marketing pitches, gratuitous links, or incivilities. There are about 6,000 contributions in the 500 threads now published on this board; they provide good examples of what has been accepted for publication. Some new contributions go to a non-public queue, which is frequently reviewed by a member of the editorial board in order to decide whether the material should be posted. About 30% of submitted contributions are posted; after publication, about half survive the occasional reviews of published items. The editors are unable to reconsider their decisions or to answer any queries about editorial decisions (some of which may well be mistaken). Publication policies are described in detail at Moderating internet forums [Ed. the link I mention above] If your contribution is published, your email address will be masked on the board, and your identifying IP number will not be published. -----------------------
- giveyouup 18y agoSlashdot used to be (reasonably) well-informed discussion. Digg at the beginning too. And reddit as well. rec.sports.baseball.bos-redsox, too. All successful forums grow big and become worthless. The Y C kids need to learn this. Never gonna' give you up Never gonna' let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you.
- almost 18y agoThat's not a reason to give up. Maybe this time it will work. As pg says, this is an experiment. The problem of retaining the character of a site while not just letting it stagnate (as happens when you start doing things like cutting of new memberships or restricting new user posting) is a very hard, and as yet unsolved I believe, problem. But solving hard problems is what it's all about, right? :p
- trolltroll 18y agoAttack of the trolls!
- ABrandt 18y agohacker news is not digg. end of sentence.
- karthikk 18y agoThe group is indeed its own worst enemy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460624 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460624
- dhughes 18y ago> People like it here because one can have a civil conversation. It's true, I don't know how I stumbled across this site but one thing I noticed is the 'high quality' comments compared to other social news websites. I'd say to the regulars be patient with us, the new folks in town, since we may be a bit jaded by some of the other places we visit and, yes, the anonymous nature of the Internet does bring out the worst in people, including me. One thing I've learned when commenting is "less is more" (although you'd never know by this three paragraph 'comment').
- loe2007 18y agohossam
- TrevorJ 18y agoI agree wholeheartedly. It takes effort on the part of all of us to maintain a useful and constructive environment here at HN, and I have GREATLY appreciated the thoughtful, insightful and provocative discourse here.
- giles_bowkett 18y agodesign flaw. http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-open-door-heal-or-die.html http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-ope... hate to carp on it, nobody likes hearing I told you so, but a design flaw is a design flaw.