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This is a sensible policy only until you have to define what is and isn't substantive. Since "substantive" tends to evaluate to "it changed my mind or I don't

This is a sensible policy only until you have to define what is and isn't substantive. Since "substantive" tends to evaluate to "it changed my mind or I don't believe it to be completely wrong," it becomes a subjective game very quickly. Arguing something that many people disagree with outright is inherently going to look negative no matter how 'substantive' it turns out to be.

tptacek 12y ago
The post we're commenting on addresses this: this concern is why the guideline is enforced only as a community norm, not with code.
- throwawaymaroon 12y ago
  In other words, it's a policy with no teeth, a simple admonishment? I mean, I don't disagree: I think this changes absolutely nothing. If anything it's a renewal of the old guidelines, not an addition to them. I suppose I think there's some ambiguity into what is intended, and there's therefore some investigation into HN's relationship with negativity going on. There's a kneejerk reaction to view this as an attempt to prevent people like me from spouting their usual hostility towards the tech scene, and I demand the right to be booed off stage!
Squarel 12y ago
I run with "Would I say this to their face using these exact words if I was introduced to them in a room" If not, then perhaps I should rephrase it, to convey the same message, but perhaps without it being a personal attack.
- throwawaymaroon 12y ago
  Online discussion simply isn't the same as being in a room with someone, or more precisely, it's a type of 'room' all its own. We're not being introduced to each other by mutual acquaintances who then have to get along with one another for the remainder of an evening. We're not even at a house party in a city we've never been to before meeting people that may become good friends. Nor are we at a press conference asking questions of a PR representative. Instead we can take up and discard facets of these situations as we see fit. ...I'm not saying it's a bad idea to consider your hypothetical when talking with other people online. It's probably a good idea in almost every discussion. But this room also allows us to be marvelously direct. The questions that everyone is thinking but don't get asked in a press conference can be addressed. That's why I back the right to be negative so heavily. Even if it means that we have totally rude, toxic threads that no one likes, I'd rather have that if it means we get to keep our online rooms open. (Partially because we're going to have those toxic threads anyway.) Everyone's an equal in the comment section, even if that means we're all equally poisoned.
  - dang 12y ago
    The flaw in your argument is its assumption that the community would remain intact under such poisoning. When the threads degenerate, smart people leave. When smart people leave, the threads get less substantive. That vicious cycle leads to the death of the community, not the vital online place where people are free to speak their minds which you're positing. HN started as [1] and remains an experiment in seeing whether an internet forum can avoid that dynamic. It's more fragile than your comment implies. I do think we can have the benefits you're talking about, such as people bringing up the questions they're really thinking, as long as the bulk of the community will consciously practice the values of the site. Those values are substantiveness and civility, and there's nothing in the good parts of what you're talking about that contradict them. Unleashing the online id, though, is another matter. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
    - throwawaymaroon 12y ago
      The flaw in yours is that a community without poison isn't worth having (and probably doesn't exist anyway). And nothing makes people happier than seeing poison dissolved amicably, right? In fact, from a certain point of view poison is a valuable resource, and needs to be harvested. Good criticism is hard to find. Limiting it to that which is polite towards you is a good way to end up in a filter bubble, especially if there is a one-sidedness in how politeness is determined. This thread divides commenters into roughly two camps. There's the "Yes, sir! Let's all get along!" camp, and there's the "You can't make people get along, why are you trying?" camp. And I suppose it might be a good idea to stoke the enthusiasm of the first camp, so maybe I'm just not the intended audience. But in that case you're either just stirring the pot, or you're actively driving away those that favor substantive criticism when it's called for. Maybe those people aren't really listening to the specifics of what Altman is saying, but that just means it's being communicated poorly. Smart people leave for a multitude of reasons. I've been rate-limited, or maybe you've got this topic rate-limited, or whatever, but you responded to me: doesn't that mean you want to hear my point of view? I mean, maybe I'm not smart, maybe I'm just presumptuous and acerbic. But either way, you've got policies that increase the poison. I'd have been done with this topic by now, but having had another comment written up already I'm not going to discard it. I'm going to wait, and grow irritated that your system is attempting a patronizing herding tactic to 'tame' discourse. A tactic that isn't working, because the poison always leaks through, and this topic is already poisoned, why are you even bothering to stop me from responding to you? And I think... it's true. You're just another authority, making sure that points of view you agree with are given preferential treatment. You don't want me here. You don't want dissent. I'm not free to speak my mind here, because you don't like the bitterness I want to share earnestly and substantively. You're poisonous. Another group of shunners shunning other shunners. And the poison concentrates: if I can never make this comment, I'll still have the poison from having been treated like this, and it will spill over some other way. Maybe in a meaner way. Or you'll succeed in driving off everyone that stirs up trouble. I sympathize with you because internet moderation is an unsolved problem because people are an unsolved problem. It sounds like you have some awareness that the current penalties are too much (when you talk about rescuing flagged or downvoted or hellbanned comments). But there's a difference between moderating the id and amputating it. This topic doesn't moderate the id because the cheerful collaborative people you're not worried about are the ones theorizing on how to make conversation better. It does, however, successfully marginalize people that disagree and honor the process of disagreement. (Which is funny, because we're not even talking about practical policy enforcement, we're just socially reinforcing what was already a general guideline. Nothing changes for this site as a result of this discussion, the discussion is the only end result of the discussion.) --- Here is some fragment of the comment I had written, in response to your comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9318451 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9318451) --- Sometimes the other isn't in good faith, or it's necessary that that good faith be constructed or established in a critical environment. I sympathize with you, because there's something utopian you're striving for, and I mean that as mostly a compliment. But I don't want to live in your utopia, because living in a community where people never take their negative feelings out on one another is equivalent to a community where no one has negative feelings.

tptacek 12y ago

The post we're commenting on addresses this: this concern is why the guideline is enforced only as a community norm, not with code.

throwawaymaroon 12y ago
In other words, it's a policy with no teeth, a simple admonishment? I mean, I don't disagree: I think this changes absolutely nothing. If anything it's a renewal of the old guidelines, not an addition to them. I suppose I think there's some ambiguity into what is intended, and there's therefore some investigation into HN's relationship with negativity going on. There's a kneejerk reaction to view this as an attempt to prevent people like me from spouting their usual hostility towards the tech scene, and I demand the right to be booed off stage!

Squarel 12y ago

I run with "Would I say this to their face using these exact words if I was introduced to them in a room" If not, then perhaps I should rephrase it, to convey the same message, but perhaps without it being a personal attack.

throwawaymaroon 12y ago
Online discussion simply isn't the same as being in a room with someone, or more precisely, it's a type of 'room' all its own. We're not being introduced to each other by mutual acquaintances who then have to get along with one another for the remainder of an evening. We're not even at a house party in a city we've never been to before meeting people that may become good friends. Nor are we at a press conference asking questions of a PR representative. Instead we can take up and discard facets of these situations as we see fit. ...I'm not saying it's a bad idea to consider your hypothetical when talking with other people online. It's probably a good idea in almost every discussion. But this room also allows us to be marvelously direct. The questions that everyone is thinking but don't get asked in a press conference can be addressed. That's why I back the right to be negative so heavily. Even if it means that we have totally rude, toxic threads that no one likes, I'd rather have that if it means we get to keep our online rooms open. (Partially because we're going to have those toxic threads anyway.) Everyone's an equal in the comment section, even if that means we're all equally poisoned.
- dang 12y ago
  The flaw in your argument is its assumption that the community would remain intact under such poisoning. When the threads degenerate, smart people leave. When smart people leave, the threads get less substantive. That vicious cycle leads to the death of the community, not the vital online place where people are free to speak their minds which you're positing. HN started as [1] and remains an experiment in seeing whether an internet forum can avoid that dynamic. It's more fragile than your comment implies. I do think we can have the benefits you're talking about, such as people bringing up the questions they're really thinking, as long as the bulk of the community will consciously practice the values of the site. Those values are substantiveness and civility, and there's nothing in the good parts of what you're talking about that contradict them. Unleashing the online id, though, is another matter. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
  - throwawaymaroon 12y ago
    The flaw in yours is that a community without poison isn't worth having (and probably doesn't exist anyway). And nothing makes people happier than seeing poison dissolved amicably, right? In fact, from a certain point of view poison is a valuable resource, and needs to be harvested. Good criticism is hard to find. Limiting it to that which is polite towards you is a good way to end up in a filter bubble, especially if there is a one-sidedness in how politeness is determined. This thread divides commenters into roughly two camps. There's the "Yes, sir! Let's all get along!" camp, and there's the "You can't make people get along, why are you trying?" camp. And I suppose it might be a good idea to stoke the enthusiasm of the first camp, so maybe I'm just not the intended audience. But in that case you're either just stirring the pot, or you're actively driving away those that favor substantive criticism when it's called for. Maybe those people aren't really listening to the specifics of what Altman is saying, but that just means it's being communicated poorly. Smart people leave for a multitude of reasons. I've been rate-limited, or maybe you've got this topic rate-limited, or whatever, but you responded to me: doesn't that mean you want to hear my point of view? I mean, maybe I'm not smart, maybe I'm just presumptuous and acerbic. But either way, you've got policies that increase the poison. I'd have been done with this topic by now, but having had another comment written up already I'm not going to discard it. I'm going to wait, and grow irritated that your system is attempting a patronizing herding tactic to 'tame' discourse. A tactic that isn't working, because the poison always leaks through, and this topic is already poisoned, why are you even bothering to stop me from responding to you? And I think... it's true. You're just another authority, making sure that points of view you agree with are given preferential treatment. You don't want me here. You don't want dissent. I'm not free to speak my mind here, because you don't like the bitterness I want to share earnestly and substantively. You're poisonous. Another group of shunners shunning other shunners. And the poison concentrates: if I can never make this comment, I'll still have the poison from having been treated like this, and it will spill over some other way. Maybe in a meaner way. Or you'll succeed in driving off everyone that stirs up trouble. I sympathize with you because internet moderation is an unsolved problem because people are an unsolved problem. It sounds like you have some awareness that the current penalties are too much (when you talk about rescuing flagged or downvoted or hellbanned comments). But there's a difference between moderating the id and amputating it. This topic doesn't moderate the id because the cheerful collaborative people you're not worried about are the ones theorizing on how to make conversation better. It does, however, successfully marginalize people that disagree and honor the process of disagreement. (Which is funny, because we're not even talking about practical policy enforcement, we're just socially reinforcing what was already a general guideline. Nothing changes for this site as a result of this discussion, the discussion is the only end result of the discussion.) --- Here is some fragment of the comment I had written, in response to your comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9318451 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9318451) --- Sometimes the other isn't in good faith, or it's necessary that that good faith be constructed or established in a critical environment. I sympathize with you, because there's something utopian you're striving for, and I mean that as mostly a compliment. But I don't want to live in your utopia, because living in a community where people never take their negative feelings out on one another is equivalent to a community where no one has negative feelings.