4 ms·
Ask HN: Has HN become overwhelmingly negative?
I was looking at this thread, and couldn't help feel bad for the programmer who made something nice and decided to share it (for free) with everyone out here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624737
From the top comment: "As a personal project for kicks? Sure it's cool. Would I let me company run it? Hell no!"
Another user: "What I'm saying is that "pull requests welcome" is a really lazy way of telling someone to support themselves. That's fine if you have a unique set of needs, in that case you should be building things out specific to you." - perhaps in reference to "So if you'd like to be part of the project, please check out the roadmap and issues to see if there's anything you can help with."
Really, what's happening to people here?
- noobie 11y agoDon't take this as negative but your post reads more like a rant than a question. Which contradicts the "Ask" tag. Edit: To address your "question", no HN hasn't become a negative place. A simple read throughout the comments of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628682 will show the great sense of human empathy that thread reflects. There, an example and a counter-example, until someone runs a full analysis of the "negativity" of HN, we can safely say HN is "neutral" :p
- jeswin 11y agoNot taking this as negative, and I agree it was partly a rant. Maybe I should remove the Ask HN tag? But again, it's not a non-question either. Negativity is a general sentiment I've often seen within threads these days and it probably needs to be looked at. This forum should encourage people building new stuff. While the quality of submissions may not have gone down over the years, the negativity has certainly gone up. ADD: To answer your edit. > To address your "question", no HN hasn't become a negative place. A simple read throughout the comments of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628682 will show the great sense of human empathy that thread reflects. That's a totally different type of article and I wouldn't be surprised if comments are supportive when someone is struggling with cancer. Not saying we've devolved into that level of inhumaneness. Not at all. OTOH, discouraging people who build stuff (and try to share what they have built) is my central point.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 11y agoI've noticed a lot more bad natured bickering over the past week. I think this is just me noticing it more rather than an actual rise. Here's one example but there are lots. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624703
- zeeed 11y agoSame sentiment here, thanks to OP for voicing it. I was taken abash by some personal attacks, the most recent being the thread about airbnb and the nyc eviction/blacklisting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9622711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9622711
- zeeed 11y ago> until someone runs a full analysis of the "negativity" of HN, we can safely say HN is "neutral" :p I'm not completely certain that lack of a full analyis implies neutrality :)
- lucaspiller 11y agoI've also been feeling this recently. I find Reddit to be a lot less hostile. The thing is you shouldn't really take notice of this, when Dropbox was first announced on HN, people were critical as ever :-)
- caminante 11y agoIMHO, Reddit's too balkanized to compare Reddit at-large (and not personalized subreddits) with HN. I appreciate HN's self-policing of CommentsLite™. We could easily flood the threads with feel good "+1's" and nested memes, but that impairs the discussion. HN opened my eyes to the value of that norm for discussions.
- caminante 11y agoFYI, Altman made a post (April '15) re: HN conduct policy, encouraging folks to "Avoid gratuitous negativity."[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317916 Just doing a quick pass over the examples you provided, I don't think any of them impart negativity, let alone gratuitous negativity. If anything, I'm seeing constructive feedback. edit: Wait, in your example, are you sure that it was the actual creator that linked the software? If so, he should've used the Show HN feature, which Altman addresses -- along with YOUR concerns -- in [1] above.