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> "quality content with a focus on... anything that appeals to the inquisitive mind" This is a source of a lot of uncivil behavior on HN. Startup founders/tech

> "quality content with a focus on... anything that appeals to the inquisitive mind" This is a source of a lot of uncivil behavior on HN. Startup founders/tech geeks are intellectually interested in a lot of topics but unqualified to discuss them in any detail. This results in comment threads full of knee-jerk reactions and bikeshedding.

marshray 13y ago
What the heck do you know about it? We're also full of sarcasm too.
xradionut 13y ago
Sometimes the truth is unpopular and seen to be uncivil when bluntly stated. Should we all rub blue mud into our belly-buttons and sing praise of everyone's opinions?
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  There is space between those two extremes.
- sthatipamala 13y ago
  Check out the /r/Askhistorians and /r/Askculinary subreddits. They are good examples of "civil" discussions without ass kissing.
  - ineedtosleep 13y ago
    Don't get me wrong, the contributors to those subreddits are amazing, but what makes those subreddits work the way they do is the strict moderation. Unsupported posts, memes, etc. are immediately k.o.s. and I believe that's what keeps the quality contributors from leaving.
  - lobster_johnson 13y ago
    The most exposed among the high-quality "ask" subreddits may be /r/askscience. There you will typically find that whole swathes of subthreads have been deleted by the moderators. There are lots of civil, high-quality contributors, to be sure; but it's the moderators that ensure that it stays civil and focused.
  - PommeDeTerre 13y ago
    The discussion there may be "civil", but it's not healthy. Truly healthy discussion inherently involves people expressing ideas and opinions that may be provocative. Some people very likely will be offended by these ideas. Some people will get angry. Some people won't believe what they're reading or hearing. But those are all good things. They indicate that there is a wide variety of thought going on. Communities that are kept "civil" through the use of excessive moderation, for example, thrive only in a very superficial way. Given enough time, intellectual inbreeding happens, where the vast majority of participants adhere to a very strict dogma. Any real contemplation is quickly extinguished. The end result is a very bland type of thought, devoid of real substance. It's not truly healthy, even though it might look good on the surface.
    - yarou 13y ago
      Very lucid and interesting post. However, if you look at other communities like Slashdot, a level of civility is enforced by the community, without necessarily stifling unpopular or dissenting viewpoints (at least once upon a time). It becomes a matter of filtering out inflammatory posts ("trolls"), and that will ultimately depend on the tastes and preferences of the community at large.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  I think it's possible to criticize someone or debate with them, without being uncivil. What scenario do you envision, where that wouldn't be true?
- rtpg 13y ago
  You can state an unpopular truth without being an asshole about it. "Javascript has some problems with larger codebases" is civil and has just as much information as "JS falls apart when you try to make more than some web 2.0 to-do list" (Don't think this opinion is very unpopular though) Or maybe for some opinions you can't, if so I'd like to hear an example (intellectual curiosity, not snarkiness).
tomsaffell 13y ago
There was a time when HN was populated by founders/tech geeks, and didn't have the problems that you're describing. That suggests to me that the presence of founders/tech geeks is not the proximate cause.
arkades 13y ago
I've personally resisted the urge to participate in that as I believe it's counter to the "hackers only" philosophy of HN but, as someone with a B.S. in Biology and an MPH in Health Policy, pretty much -ANY TIME- medicine, health, biology, etc. come up in HN it's a barrage of ignorance, errors, and the sort of intense nonsense bullshit that I would expect of corners of the internet populated by people far dumber than HN's crowd.
pg 13y ago
It's fine for people who aren't officially credentialled experts in something to talk about it. The best insights often come from outsiders. The problem comes when people express their ideas intemperately, either by making extreme statements that should be more qualified and tentative, or by being uncivil to one another. I believe I've finally come up with a solution for that, incidentally, after years of searching. It will require surprisingly little new code. I almost started implementing it during the 4th of July holiday, but I started writing a new essay instead.
- davidw 13y ago
  One thing that comes to mind is that the costs for informed comments with supporting arguments are often higher - much higher - than the costs for uninformed rants. It's easy to say any old thing off the cuff, but takes more effort to refute it. Also, truly expert people have less time, than, say, someone fresh out of college.
- antimora 13y ago
  What is the solution if you don't mind sharing?
- drhayes9 13y ago
  A truly marvelous solution too big to fit into the comment thread? ( = What's the broad strokes idea?
  - pg 13y ago
    Yeah, I realized as soon as I posted that that I'd have to explain. I'm going to define a state for comments between living and dead called pending, and I'll give everyone over a certain threshold of karma and/or age the ability to promote comments from pending to live. Pending comments should be promoted if they (a) make a positive contribution to the discussion, and (b) are not unnecessarily harsh or uncivil. I may try this out on individual threads before switching the whole site over.
    - collypops 13y ago
n_coats 13y ago
I see your perspective regarding quality content in the sense that inquisitive founders/geeks may not be "qualified" to weigh in with your standard of "quality". However, for some "inquisitive minds", discussion (flawed as it may be) yields insight and can create enough interest to further investigate a topic via "quality" sources. Of course there is erred content on HN, but it still provides an introduction for someone to determine whether or not they want to dig deeper into a subject from more credible perspectives.
beaker52 13y ago
Knowledge without inquiry is dead and lifeless. If HN was full of lifeless knowledge, it itself would be lifeless, stale, inanimate and cold.

marshray 13y ago

What the heck do you know about it? We're also full of sarcasm too.

xradionut 13y ago

Sometimes the truth is unpopular and seen to be uncivil when bluntly stated. Should we all rub blue mud into our belly-buttons and sing praise of everyone's opinions?

jamesaguilar 13y ago
There is space between those two extremes.
sthatipamala 13y ago
Check out the /r/Askhistorians and /r/Askculinary subreddits. They are good examples of "civil" discussions without ass kissing.
- ineedtosleep 13y ago
  Don't get me wrong, the contributors to those subreddits are amazing, but what makes those subreddits work the way they do is the strict moderation. Unsupported posts, memes, etc. are immediately k.o.s. and I believe that's what keeps the quality contributors from leaving.
- lobster_johnson 13y ago
  The most exposed among the high-quality "ask" subreddits may be /r/askscience. There you will typically find that whole swathes of subthreads have been deleted by the moderators. There are lots of civil, high-quality contributors, to be sure; but it's the moderators that ensure that it stays civil and focused.
- PommeDeTerre 13y ago
  The discussion there may be "civil", but it's not healthy. Truly healthy discussion inherently involves people expressing ideas and opinions that may be provocative. Some people very likely will be offended by these ideas. Some people will get angry. Some people won't believe what they're reading or hearing. But those are all good things. They indicate that there is a wide variety of thought going on. Communities that are kept "civil" through the use of excessive moderation, for example, thrive only in a very superficial way. Given enough time, intellectual inbreeding happens, where the vast majority of participants adhere to a very strict dogma. Any real contemplation is quickly extinguished. The end result is a very bland type of thought, devoid of real substance. It's not truly healthy, even though it might look good on the surface.
  - yarou 13y ago
    Very lucid and interesting post. However, if you look at other communities like Slashdot, a level of civility is enforced by the community, without necessarily stifling unpopular or dissenting viewpoints (at least once upon a time). It becomes a matter of filtering out inflammatory posts ("trolls"), and that will ultimately depend on the tastes and preferences of the community at large.
mindcrime 13y ago
I think it's possible to criticize someone or debate with them, without being uncivil. What scenario do you envision, where that wouldn't be true?
rtpg 13y ago
You can state an unpopular truth without being an asshole about it. "Javascript has some problems with larger codebases" is civil and has just as much information as "JS falls apart when you try to make more than some web 2.0 to-do list" (Don't think this opinion is very unpopular though) Or maybe for some opinions you can't, if so I'd like to hear an example (intellectual curiosity, not snarkiness).

tomsaffell 13y ago

There was a time when HN was populated by founders/tech geeks, and didn't have the problems that you're describing. That suggests to me that the presence of founders/tech geeks is not the proximate cause.

arkades 13y ago

I've personally resisted the urge to participate in that as I believe it's counter to the "hackers only" philosophy of HN but, as someone with a B.S. in Biology and an MPH in Health Policy, pretty much -ANY TIME- medicine, health, biology, etc. come up in HN it's a barrage of ignorance, errors, and the sort of intense nonsense bullshit that I would expect of corners of the internet populated by people far dumber than HN's crowd.

pg 13y ago

It's fine for people who aren't officially credentialled experts in something to talk about it. The best insights often come from outsiders. The problem comes when people express their ideas intemperately, either by making extreme statements that should be more qualified and tentative, or by being uncivil to one another. I believe I've finally come up with a solution for that, incidentally, after years of searching. It will require surprisingly little new code. I almost started implementing it during the 4th of July holiday, but I started writing a new essay instead.

davidw 13y ago
One thing that comes to mind is that the costs for informed comments with supporting arguments are often higher - much higher - than the costs for uninformed rants. It's easy to say any old thing off the cuff, but takes more effort to refute it. Also, truly expert people have less time, than, say, someone fresh out of college.
antimora 13y ago
What is the solution if you don't mind sharing?
drhayes9 13y ago
A truly marvelous solution too big to fit into the comment thread? ( = What's the broad strokes idea?
- pg 13y ago
  Yeah, I realized as soon as I posted that that I'd have to explain. I'm going to define a state for comments between living and dead called pending, and I'll give everyone over a certain threshold of karma and/or age the ability to promote comments from pending to live. Pending comments should be promoted if they (a) make a positive contribution to the discussion, and (b) are not unnecessarily harsh or uncivil. I may try this out on individual threads before switching the whole site over.
  - collypops 13y ago

n_coats 13y ago

I see your perspective regarding quality content in the sense that inquisitive founders/geeks may not be "qualified" to weigh in with your standard of "quality". However, for some "inquisitive minds", discussion (flawed as it may be) yields insight and can create enough interest to further investigate a topic via "quality" sources. Of course there is erred content on HN, but it still provides an introduction for someone to determine whether or not they want to dig deeper into a subject from more credible perspectives.

beaker52 13y ago

Knowledge without inquiry is dead and lifeless. If HN was full of lifeless knowledge, it itself would be lifeless, stale, inanimate and cold.