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While I agree with you that all of those things are ridiculous (and I was vocal in arguing against them), is it fair to characterize the entire forum as being s

While I agree with you that all of those things are ridiculous (and I was vocal in arguing against them), is it fair to characterize the entire forum as being so easily swayed by ant-state sentiments? During the two week "freak out", I saw a lot of linkbait about the NSA having massive conspiracies, but I saw relatively fewer actual comments where people were clearly being swayed by anti-government sentiment. For every comment I read that was outlandish, fallacious and clearly media spoon-fed, I have to say I can recall a thread of people saying, "No, that doesn't make sense, you're trying to disprove a negative", etc. tl;dr - My point here is that I think the baseline intelligence of Hacker News is higher than we might think it is just by observing the front page, and that there are actually a lot more savvy people gaming the front page who are just driven by a relative few who act as the passionate, vocal majority. That's just my opinion. I could be wrong. But I like to think there's a lot of under the radar intellectual activity, and people are just being really opportunistic for karma or some such. As for legal acumen, I agree completely - I don't have nearly as much as, for example, 'rayiner. But that's exactly why we have people with niche expertise or domain knowledge. It's a real problem when people get frenzied and decide they know Constitution without having read it. I haven't been here as long, but I believe that we have sampling bias from the hugely outspoken minority who know it's trendy to be anti-state. EDIT: I want to submit my experience about the site being gameable - it's true it's easy to get the top comment for news stories that are heavily politically loaded, but I have to say it's easy to karma farm even if you're not anarchist/cynical/conspiracy mongering. I do not try to game the forum to get high comments, but I can still personally attest to having some top comments in the high 40s during the NSA scandal while being incredibly vocal against the "popular opinion" that Google was directly aiding the government. I probably had the top comment on at least half of those stories, arguing against the tone of the story profusely. I don't have a sockpuppet ring, so those numbers of people who upvoted me are to the best of my knowledge genuine. They may not have been as vocal in their agreement with me as the detractors who replied to my comments, but they certainly exist. I guess I just want to try to dispel pessimism. I don't think all is lost regarding the political climate of Hacker News :)

read 13y ago
Sometimes I wish comments were shorter so you could easily tell what's going on in a discussion. The parent comment says X, the one below says the opposite, and then someone says X again. Do people click and write mainly to get karma? Should posting also cost karma? The longer you write the easier it is to say something that's not true and harder for people to follow it accurately. (I know I'm guilty of this.)
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  Haha, I'm assuming you're speaking to my comment length...sorry, that's pretty par for the course with my comment history :) I like to write with a level of verbosity. But...I do agree with you. It becomes harder to sift through facts when a post is very long. I do it because I enjoy writing long prose on topics I'm interested in - I don't think it's particularly correlated with getting high karma. I've seen very high comments that consist of a little paragraph (albeit packed with technical information). But I think a lot of people do just click and write for karma. As long as there is a karma system, this is somewhat unavoidable. I really wish we could do away with the entire karma system entirely, but your suggestion about posts "costing" karma sounds really neat, I'd definitely test that on a small forum...not sure how you'd deal with throwaways though, and how would new users accrue karma?
- krapp 13y ago
  One problem with posts costing karma is that it would all but guarantee to stifle long discussions amongst any but the highest karma members -- especially if you end up autobanned when you run out.
  - ricardobeat 13y ago
    That could be a good thing. It's very rare to see a deeply nested thread actually worth reading.
    - krapp 13y ago
      I know pg's added things like a progressive delay to the reply box further into threads. The curve of quality going into a thread is an interesting problem, I can see how the subjects of discussion would go from general to specific (and thus likely less interesting to general readers) the further down branches you go, but also sort of by definition those branches become more and more relevant to the people involved. Maybe a flat or hybrid flat/tree layout would help keep discussions more linear? I don't know if giving that much more power to older posters is necessarily the answer, although it might help reinforce the perception of the community maintaining a certain tone in discussion, if the same posters are more likely to be heard and heard more often. On the other hand, with that scenario, karma would actually mean something (though that just brings up the possibility of karma-farming posts.)

read 13y ago

Sometimes I wish comments were shorter so you could easily tell what's going on in a discussion. The parent comment says X, the one below says the opposite, and then someone says X again. Do people click and write mainly to get karma? Should posting also cost karma? The longer you write the easier it is to say something that's not true and harder for people to follow it accurately. (I know I'm guilty of this.)

dylangs1030 13y ago
Haha, I'm assuming you're speaking to my comment length...sorry, that's pretty par for the course with my comment history :) I like to write with a level of verbosity. But...I do agree with you. It becomes harder to sift through facts when a post is very long. I do it because I enjoy writing long prose on topics I'm interested in - I don't think it's particularly correlated with getting high karma. I've seen very high comments that consist of a little paragraph (albeit packed with technical information). But I think a lot of people do just click and write for karma. As long as there is a karma system, this is somewhat unavoidable. I really wish we could do away with the entire karma system entirely, but your suggestion about posts "costing" karma sounds really neat, I'd definitely test that on a small forum...not sure how you'd deal with throwaways though, and how would new users accrue karma?
krapp 13y ago
One problem with posts costing karma is that it would all but guarantee to stifle long discussions amongst any but the highest karma members -- especially if you end up autobanned when you run out.
- ricardobeat 13y ago
  That could be a good thing. It's very rare to see a deeply nested thread actually worth reading.
  - krapp 13y ago
    I know pg's added things like a progressive delay to the reply box further into threads. The curve of quality going into a thread is an interesting problem, I can see how the subjects of discussion would go from general to specific (and thus likely less interesting to general readers) the further down branches you go, but also sort of by definition those branches become more and more relevant to the people involved. Maybe a flat or hybrid flat/tree layout would help keep discussions more linear? I don't know if giving that much more power to older posters is necessarily the answer, although it might help reinforce the perception of the community maintaining a certain tone in discussion, if the same posters are more likely to be heard and heard more often. On the other hand, with that scenario, karma would actually mean something (though that just brings up the possibility of karma-farming posts.)