5 ms·

The dark side of HackerNews: negativity at best, suppression at worst

27 points by dorkitude 14y ago

wmf 14y ago
Speaking as a HN regular, I think we've drawn attention to this topic over and over, which would explain the flagging. And every new article resets the discussion to zero, giving room for uninformed comments and the resulting drama to be posted for the Nth time.
- mwetzler 14y ago
  I don't understand. I took the time to write this post because it's something that is important to me as a person in the tech community. It's obviously something that impacts many people in this line of work, otherwise this community would not have such strong opinions about it. Does Hacker News suppress other topics or just gender bias? This is so hurtful.
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    HN is (trying) to stay focused on technology and startup related posts, not cultural posts like these.
  - chc 14y ago
    > Does Hacker News suppress other topics or just gender bias? Hacker News does not suppress this topic. But this topic has been very well covered, so the bar for what constitutes a novel contribution is fairly high. There are also a lot of "Your rights online" stories on Hacker News. A lot of these get flagged into oblivion as well. This isn't because we don't care about our rights, but that the topic is sufficiently well-covered that it takes an exceptional story to actually bring something new to the conversation instead of just flaring up old arguments. It isn't that we don't think the topic your blog post is important. It is. But just because a topic is important doesn't mean every article on that topic will be widely upvoted. In general, it's actually harder to rank with an "important" topic because you have a lot of competition and there is only so much space for stories. So, please don't take it personally or interpret this as people suppressing the topic. It's just Hacker News trying to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. We don't have very good organizational tools here, so we kind of have to resort to blunt weapons that can look overly harsh when you're on the receiving end.
  - wmf 14y ago
    I want to second chc's comment that something can be important and impact many people, yet still not be news. (Also, HN meta-discussions or any articles about Bitcoin tend to get flagged into oblivion as well. I guess people are just tired of reading that stuff.)
  - protomyth 14y ago
    How long did you expect the article to stay on the front page? Which story currently on the front page should be replaced by your article? As I write this it has 41 pts and 121 comments - that seems like an article that got some attention.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - mpyne 14y ago
    I truly don't mean to be snarky but I don't think taking the time to write up a post, even about something you care deeply about, is sufficient justification on its own for HN to care about a topic. That is, if the topic is important and valuable to HN it will be valuable even if you didn't necessarily care so much about the topic.
    - mwetzler 14y ago
      Agreed with you that not all stories need be shared. However, this one made it to the front page because it generated a lot of conversation. In fact, people cared so much that it set off the flame detector and it sank the post. That's sad, because there was good discussion going about objectification in marketing, and if the tech industry should be held to a higher standard as compared to other industries.
imnot 14y ago
I just can't take people seriously when they talk about women as if they were a minority. Women are the majority of the population, and the government goes out of its way to favour them, usually at the cost of men (and sometimes children). Feminism is a mental illness, and I'm glad more people than ever are waking up to this. Edit: downvote me all you want, it doesn't change the fact that I'm right.
armored_mammal 14y ago
The goal of Y Combinator is not to encourage discussion of controversial issues. If something is divisive and not related to a debate strictly to do with technical topics they probably consider it in their best interests to bury it. Sadly. Hence why special people seem to have super down vote powers, etc. Remember, the goal is to create the illusion of community in order to market.
- mwetzler 14y ago
  Hacker News just did a great job showing me that I'm not welcome in this community.
  - thallium205 14y ago
    Yet you continue to post here?
    - chc 14y ago
      Please, don't be a dick.
      - mwetzler 14y ago
        Thank you.
  - armored_mammal 14y ago
    I try not to view it as a community. Cynicism helps.
    - armored_mammal 14y ago
      ^ And point proven.
  - obituary_latte 14y ago
    You are as welcome as anyone else. I don't think anyone hit the "instaban" button nor did I see anyone advocate you go away. You put yourself out there and this is how the community reacted -- don't take it personally. Take your passion and keep fighting for what you believe in. So long as your actions align with your values, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks, says, or does. :)
DanBC 14y ago
Just a quick point: 51687a on white is unreadable. It's especially hard to read the MLK quote in Helvetica Neue.
chc 14y ago
So, I'm not one of the people who downvoted that story, but I understand why they did it. Although I am sympathetic to the subject of sexism in our industry, this doesn't mean every article about it deserves to be on top of Hacker News. Michelle's piece was perfectly fine as blog posts go, and I'm glad she shared her thoughts, but it didn't really offer any new insights in the way that a Hacker News submission should. The purpose of Hacker News is not, as this follow-up post seems to believe, to "draw attention to justice-oriented problems." I personally feel Hacker News has too much content based on politics and outrage these days, and it crowds out interesting technical content. I am sympathetic to many of the causes espoused, but just because I agree with you doesn't mean I'll upvote something that doesn't substantially contribute. Stories like that that don't introduce something new tend to just reignite old arguments, which isn't interesting or productive. If Michelle had actually been calling attention to a novel problem in need of a solution, that would be a different story. But as far as I can tell, she was just kind of summarizing something that happened that made her upset. Again, I'm sympathetic and find the same things upsetting, but that still doesn't make it relevant. None of this is a judgment of Michelle's post, and it doesn't mean what she was writing about is unimportant. It just means that, like 90% of things that interest me, it's not a good fit for this particular forum.
dorkitude 14y ago
Okay it's actually pretty amazing that this post made it to the frontpage immediately, then was flagged down and buried. I like justice and all, but ironic humor trumps even that ;)
- chc 14y ago
  Heh. I've found HN meta-discussion actually is really controversial, so it usually goes that way. Some people will upvote it because they think it makes a good point, and then others will downvote it because they feel like, "I don't come to Hacker News to talk about Hacker News."
tokenadult 14y ago
From the submitted blog post: "Either: "The post is being flagged en masse by our fellow HackerNews community members." That is the most likely reason the submission dropped rapidly from the main page to a lower page. People who participate here regularly use flagging power to keep the submissions with thoughtful, interesting comment threads that are essentially on-topic higher than submissions with arguing, repetitive comment threads that aren't as close to the core topics of Hacker News. That, and luck of the draw as to which time of the day the blog post was submitted (meaning which HN participants happened to see it) is explanation enough for why the submission sank. The moral of the story? Submit something next time that is closer to the core topics of HN, and write it very carefully to maximize the probability of thoughtful, interesting comments. Especially make sure that you have a new take on one of the recurrent issues, or are bringing up an issue that is fresh and rarely discussed here. Good luck.
Humjob 14y ago
Maybe HN is becoming more negative. Or maybe, just maybe, HN users weren't in the mood for holier-than-thou moralistic berating about how evil the tech industry is for focusing on the bottom line of innovation and profits rather than trying to bend reality to fit some postmodern wet dream of inherent equality in STEM-skills based aptitudes between genders. In other words, Larry Summers was probably right. Then again, he was fired shortly afterwards for daring to express disagreement with one of the popular ideologies of our era.
pg 14y ago
Actually what happened was that the post triggered the flamewar detector. And judging from the comments, correctly so.
- mwetzler 14y ago
  Good to know, thanks for responding. I fear that Hacker News flaggers are now over-generalizing "complaining about sexism" and lumping anything near that into the category of "nothing left to say". My post was about what companies can do when they are faced with a gender PR problem. I'm glad it got some reads from the community, but I'm sad it got dismissed so quickly due to flaming in the comments. This leads me to question the algorithm for flamewar detection, since it seemed like a valuable conversation. I also fear Hacker News readers are mistaking "complaining about sexism" as an attack or complaint about males in general. I think that's why we get so many defensive, flaming comments in threads discussing gender bias. This behavior only proves how much being male is engrained into the identity and culture of the tech community. When a woman says something about the tech community, males feel their gender is being attacked and very emotional posts result. I consider myself a member of the tech community working on building it, not a person attacking it, so this response was unexpected. This is a good lesson to consider when writing about gender in the future. There is a lot of good work we can do together to get more women into tech, and to give women here more confidence (did you know there has been a flight of women from the industry?). As tech becomes such a vital part of every company, I feel women are missing a huge opportunity if we don't become more involved here. Women need more encouragement than men do to make a go in this industry. I think that's worth writing about. So many bay area companies are doing great things to help with this cause. That's part of why I was so shocked that the online community was so dismissive of this post. I have another post planned to try to inspire the tech community to get more engaged. The reason these posts keep coming up is that there is still a lot we can do to make working in this industry better (if we can agree that having more technically skilled women is something worth working toward). I believe discussions about how to attract, maintain, and train developers are important to this community. I also believe there is a lot of opportunity in encouraging women to build skills and join us. I ask the Hacker News admins and flaggers of my post today to please consider the value of this discussion. PS: I think I will make it a point not to use "Sexism" in the title for future posts. Hopefully that will help.

27 points by dorkitude 14y ago

wmf 14y ago

Speaking as a HN regular, I think we've drawn attention to this topic over and over, which would explain the flagging. And every new article resets the discussion to zero, giving room for uninformed comments and the resulting drama to be posted for the Nth time.

mwetzler 14y ago
I don't understand. I took the time to write this post because it's something that is important to me as a person in the tech community. It's obviously something that impacts many people in this line of work, otherwise this community would not have such strong opinions about it. Does Hacker News suppress other topics or just gender bias? This is so hurtful.
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  HN is (trying) to stay focused on technology and startup related posts, not cultural posts like these.
- chc 14y ago
  > Does Hacker News suppress other topics or just gender bias? Hacker News does not suppress this topic. But this topic has been very well covered, so the bar for what constitutes a novel contribution is fairly high. There are also a lot of "Your rights online" stories on Hacker News. A lot of these get flagged into oblivion as well. This isn't because we don't care about our rights, but that the topic is sufficiently well-covered that it takes an exceptional story to actually bring something new to the conversation instead of just flaring up old arguments. It isn't that we don't think the topic your blog post is important. It is. But just because a topic is important doesn't mean every article on that topic will be widely upvoted. In general, it's actually harder to rank with an "important" topic because you have a lot of competition and there is only so much space for stories. So, please don't take it personally or interpret this as people suppressing the topic. It's just Hacker News trying to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. We don't have very good organizational tools here, so we kind of have to resort to blunt weapons that can look overly harsh when you're on the receiving end.
- wmf 14y ago
  I want to second chc's comment that something can be important and impact many people, yet still not be news. (Also, HN meta-discussions or any articles about Bitcoin tend to get flagged into oblivion as well. I guess people are just tired of reading that stuff.)
- protomyth 14y ago
  How long did you expect the article to stay on the front page? Which story currently on the front page should be replaced by your article? As I write this it has 41 pts and 121 comments - that seems like an article that got some attention.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mpyne 14y ago
  I truly don't mean to be snarky but I don't think taking the time to write up a post, even about something you care deeply about, is sufficient justification on its own for HN to care about a topic. That is, if the topic is important and valuable to HN it will be valuable even if you didn't necessarily care so much about the topic.
  - mwetzler 14y ago
    Agreed with you that not all stories need be shared. However, this one made it to the front page because it generated a lot of conversation. In fact, people cared so much that it set off the flame detector and it sank the post. That's sad, because there was good discussion going about objectification in marketing, and if the tech industry should be held to a higher standard as compared to other industries.

imnot 14y ago

I just can't take people seriously when they talk about women as if they were a minority. Women are the majority of the population, and the government goes out of its way to favour them, usually at the cost of men (and sometimes children). Feminism is a mental illness, and I'm glad more people than ever are waking up to this. Edit: downvote me all you want, it doesn't change the fact that I'm right.

armored_mammal 14y ago

The goal of Y Combinator is not to encourage discussion of controversial issues. If something is divisive and not related to a debate strictly to do with technical topics they probably consider it in their best interests to bury it. Sadly. Hence why special people seem to have super down vote powers, etc. Remember, the goal is to create the illusion of community in order to market.

mwetzler 14y ago
Hacker News just did a great job showing me that I'm not welcome in this community.
- thallium205 14y ago
  Yet you continue to post here?
  - chc 14y ago
    Please, don't be a dick.
    - mwetzler 14y ago
      Thank you.
- armored_mammal 14y ago
  I try not to view it as a community. Cynicism helps.
  - armored_mammal 14y ago
    ^ And point proven.
- obituary_latte 14y ago
  You are as welcome as anyone else. I don't think anyone hit the "instaban" button nor did I see anyone advocate you go away. You put yourself out there and this is how the community reacted -- don't take it personally. Take your passion and keep fighting for what you believe in. So long as your actions align with your values, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks, says, or does. :)

DanBC 14y ago

Just a quick point: 51687a on white is unreadable. It's especially hard to read the MLK quote in Helvetica Neue.

chc 14y ago

So, I'm not one of the people who downvoted that story, but I understand why they did it. Although I am sympathetic to the subject of sexism in our industry, this doesn't mean every article about it deserves to be on top of Hacker News. Michelle's piece was perfectly fine as blog posts go, and I'm glad she shared her thoughts, but it didn't really offer any new insights in the way that a Hacker News submission should. The purpose of Hacker News is not, as this follow-up post seems to believe, to "draw attention to justice-oriented problems." I personally feel Hacker News has too much content based on politics and outrage these days, and it crowds out interesting technical content. I am sympathetic to many of the causes espoused, but just because I agree with you doesn't mean I'll upvote something that doesn't substantially contribute. Stories like that that don't introduce something new tend to just reignite old arguments, which isn't interesting or productive. If Michelle had actually been calling attention to a novel problem in need of a solution, that would be a different story. But as far as I can tell, she was just kind of summarizing something that happened that made her upset. Again, I'm sympathetic and find the same things upsetting, but that still doesn't make it relevant. None of this is a judgment of Michelle's post, and it doesn't mean what she was writing about is unimportant. It just means that, like 90% of things that interest me, it's not a good fit for this particular forum.

dorkitude 14y ago

Okay it's actually pretty amazing that this post made it to the frontpage immediately, then was flagged down and buried. I like justice and all, but ironic humor trumps even that ;)

chc 14y ago
Heh. I've found HN meta-discussion actually is really controversial, so it usually goes that way. Some people will upvote it because they think it makes a good point, and then others will downvote it because they feel like, "I don't come to Hacker News to talk about Hacker News."

tokenadult 14y ago

From the submitted blog post: "Either: "The post is being flagged en masse by our fellow HackerNews community members." That is the most likely reason the submission dropped rapidly from the main page to a lower page. People who participate here regularly use flagging power to keep the submissions with thoughtful, interesting comment threads that are essentially on-topic higher than submissions with arguing, repetitive comment threads that aren't as close to the core topics of Hacker News. That, and luck of the draw as to which time of the day the blog post was submitted (meaning which HN participants happened to see it) is explanation enough for why the submission sank. The moral of the story? Submit something next time that is closer to the core topics of HN, and write it very carefully to maximize the probability of thoughtful, interesting comments. Especially make sure that you have a new take on one of the recurrent issues, or are bringing up an issue that is fresh and rarely discussed here. Good luck.

Humjob 14y ago

Maybe HN is becoming more negative. Or maybe, just maybe, HN users weren't in the mood for holier-than-thou moralistic berating about how evil the tech industry is for focusing on the bottom line of innovation and profits rather than trying to bend reality to fit some postmodern wet dream of inherent equality in STEM-skills based aptitudes between genders. In other words, Larry Summers was probably right. Then again, he was fired shortly afterwards for daring to express disagreement with one of the popular ideologies of our era.

pg 14y ago

Actually what happened was that the post triggered the flamewar detector. And judging from the comments, correctly so.

mwetzler 14y ago
Good to know, thanks for responding. I fear that Hacker News flaggers are now over-generalizing "complaining about sexism" and lumping anything near that into the category of "nothing left to say". My post was about what companies can do when they are faced with a gender PR problem. I'm glad it got some reads from the community, but I'm sad it got dismissed so quickly due to flaming in the comments. This leads me to question the algorithm for flamewar detection, since it seemed like a valuable conversation. I also fear Hacker News readers are mistaking "complaining about sexism" as an attack or complaint about males in general. I think that's why we get so many defensive, flaming comments in threads discussing gender bias. This behavior only proves how much being male is engrained into the identity and culture of the tech community. When a woman says something about the tech community, males feel their gender is being attacked and very emotional posts result. I consider myself a member of the tech community working on building it, not a person attacking it, so this response was unexpected. This is a good lesson to consider when writing about gender in the future. There is a lot of good work we can do together to get more women into tech, and to give women here more confidence (did you know there has been a flight of women from the industry?). As tech becomes such a vital part of every company, I feel women are missing a huge opportunity if we don't become more involved here. Women need more encouragement than men do to make a go in this industry. I think that's worth writing about. So many bay area companies are doing great things to help with this cause. That's part of why I was so shocked that the online community was so dismissive of this post. I have another post planned to try to inspire the tech community to get more engaged. The reason these posts keep coming up is that there is still a lot we can do to make working in this industry better (if we can agree that having more technically skilled women is something worth working toward). I believe discussions about how to attract, maintain, and train developers are important to this community. I also believe there is a lot of opportunity in encouraging women to build skills and join us. I ask the Hacker News admins and flaggers of my post today to please consider the value of this discussion. PS: I think I will make it a point not to use "Sexism" in the title for future posts. Hopefully that will help.