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Disappointing to see this at 139 points in under an hour (and still going...). It's just a lot of bile. I like Zed when he's talking about software development

Disappointing to see this at 139 points in under an hour (and still going...). It's just a lot of bile. I like Zed when he's talking about software development. I like tptacek when he's talking about cryptography or money or cooking or any of the other several subjects he's reasonably skilled in. I like pg when he's talking about startups. All of them are capable of getting their hackles up, getting in fights, saying things they shouldn't, or talking with authority outside their expertise. It happens. But we shouldn't be feeding this kind of drama. pg isn't going to shut down HN because it hurt zed's feelings, zed has just introduced me and probably a bunch of other people to some video that I'd never heard about before (that I'm not going to bother tracking down), and hopefully whenever whatever's bothering zed now passes, he'll reconsider at least some of what he wrote. Also, it's sort of odd that it was directed to pg, considering pg has made exactly one comment on HN in the last year. (...which, to me, is pretty much the severest possible indictment of the HN community, though maybe I'm reading more into it than I should.) I'm flagging this. I know we're not supposed to say when we're flagging things, but I don't want zed getting the impression that it was pg that suppressed this. No, it was little ol' me, and, hopefully, a few other folks here.

derefr 11y ago
> Also, it's sort of odd that it was directed to pg, considering pg has made exactly one comment on HN in the last year. That's pretty much the point Zed was making, in an off-kilter way. Zed is all about real names, taking responsibility for things by putting your name on what you say, talking to people in real life to settle disputes because people aren't empathetic enough online, etc. The abusive comments on HN need to be "blamed" on someone. Someone has to take responsibility for them. If there's no way to blame the commenters themselves, then the most obvious thing to do is to blame the person under whose aegis those comments receive the protection of anonymity. PG has the ultimate authority (or near-enough) to change HN such that anonymous untracable abuse is no longer possible through it. Thus, he's responsible for not having done so. ...is, I guess, the logic.
- icebraining 11y ago
  I think you missed this part: "Apparently you will allow links to be posted repeatedly even after they’ve been voted down if it’s “gratuitously negative” of me, but take anything about one of your shitty startups down immediately." (Emphasis mine)
  - hueving 11y ago
    Is there proof of this happening? It sort of sounds like conspiracies a paranoid person would come up with.
    - myhf 11y ago
      No one doubts that it's happening. But the reasoning and the mechanisms are opaque, which leads people to speculate.
      - dang 11y ago
        Not sure what you mean by "no one doubts that it's happening", but we don't take down negative posts about YC startups. It's a perennial accusation, doubtless because it's so easy to make, but it's false. We try to be as careful as we can about this. I've written about it many times; a recent example is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635659.
  - derefr 11y ago
    I didn't, but I'm presuming a specific mechanism to that, because HN really doesn't have that much moderation (just dang, as far as I know, and previously just pg very part-time.) This might be overly charitable, so correct me if you know more: Probably these YC companies' founders—or, if they've gotten big enough, their social-media people—read HN. They see these things, and then, being wiser-than-most to how HN works, they report them directly to the HN email address. From there, maybe dang has specific orders to do things YC company founders ask him to do, but I doubt it; probably any contact to the moderation staff asking for a "gratuitously negative" (and possibly slanderous) post about you personally to be taken down, would be taken seriously. It's just that you'd have to do such policing and reporting yourself, like the YC companies do. What I don't expect, is that dang remembers every possible YC startup (or has some userscript highlight all mentions of their names for him or something), and then deletes posts if-and-only-if they're both "gratuitously negative" and about a YC company.
enraged_camel 11y ago
You should only flag things that are against the guidelines. In that regard, I don't see anything about this particular post that is problematic. It has some bile, sure, but the man makes some excellent points that we would benefit a lot from openly discussing here. The best communities are those that self-reflect. They don't sweep the criticisms under the rug -- and I perceive your flagging as an attempt to do just that.
- grey-area 11y ago
  I flagged this too for unnecessary drama, personal attacks, and off-target criticism - it is problematic because it encourages all the worst instincts of online forums - warring mobs taking binary positions, heated comments, and meta-debate over moderation. It's likely to produce lots of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Zed will enter a community, will contribute, will leave and burn his bridges behind him preferably in such a way that those that are still in the community will be seen in as negative light as possible. See also 'rails is a ghetto', this is in a way the HN variation on that theme. HN does plenty of introspection but it doesn't need Zed to shoot some more holes in his own foot to tell it what is wrong with it, especially not because Zed himself was an active participant and in fact instigator of some of the nastiest stuff seen here on HN. Addressing Paul like this shows how out of touch he is with respect to the state of affairs on HN. Note that Zed invariably attacks people when Zed's production is being criticised, this post is a nice example of exactly that. Zed seems to feel he is personally under attack quite a bit of the time and I've learned to read through his rants with that in mind so if you apply that filter you might get something out of it.
- hueving 11y ago
  How many little dick insults before you just consider the author to be inflammatory and small-minded? If this weren't for someone with a big name, it would have been dead on arrival.
  - 11y ago
algorias 11y ago
I agree with your points, but I'm not flagging it as I feel the resulting comments are actually quite good, and are pushing forwards the ongoing discussion about civility, assumption of good faith, etc.
ghshephard 11y ago
Regarding this Video - I follow tptacek religously, particularly when he's talking about cryptography, and I'm always interested in what Zed is up to. And, while I seem to recall a post by Zed somewhat negative about RoR, I've never heard about this "video". And if someone like me, who reads HN every day, and follows both Zed, and tptacek postings closely has never heard of it - it's pretty clear that next to 0% of the world even knows what Zed is ranting about.
- tlrobinson 11y ago
  I was at the talk Zed was ranting about and didn't know what Zed was ranting about until I looked it up.
DanBC 11y ago
But the bile is mostly correct. HN has a severe problem of a lack of civility between people actually here, and that problems gets worse the further away the person being talked about is. HN is a really unpleasant place to be sometimes. (I know I'm guilty of this sometimes, and I welcome downvotes to steer me)
- hueving 11y ago
  >But the bile is mostly correct. Really? Where did you get the stats for the average penis size of the HN commenter?
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Mostly ≠ totally
  - JacobAldridge 11y ago
    You get access when you reach 25,000 Karma points. You know, so you don't feel too bad if the data doesn't swing in your favor.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  You're active in a lot of threads, and the more time you spend on HN, the more toxic it will seem. There are a lot of argumentative personalities here and communication in the modern forum format isn't very good (where everyone always has to rush to write replies before a thread becomes inactive and is replaced by the next active thread). So it can lead to friction and people's nerves get frayed. It sounds like a silly thing to say at first glance, but the less actively you participate on HN (or Reddit, or Slashdot, or probably most places), the better the community seems. Otherwise it's too easy to make the mistake of getting really invested in the small dramas, like this one.
danso 11y ago
I like Zed, and his contributions and writing are a credit to the community. But yeah, this attack seems off-base for him. From what I can tell, this was sparked by a submission [1] and subsequent upvoting of a critique of his book, a critique that is months old. That it got upvotes means that, well, it got upvotes, from 50 or so of the thousands of HN users who might be reading the site at any given hour. It doesn't mean there's a high conspiracy to shit on his work. If there were, would his books be so highly upvoted as they've been over the years? I would love to see Zed critique the "Don't Learn C the Wrong Way"...it seems like a better use of his energy than ripping on Paul and the HN mods who don't seem to care directly either way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636605

derefr 11y ago

> Also, it's sort of odd that it was directed to pg, considering pg has made exactly one comment on HN in the last year. That's pretty much the point Zed was making, in an off-kilter way. Zed is all about real names, taking responsibility for things by putting your name on what you say, talking to people in real life to settle disputes because people aren't empathetic enough online, etc. The abusive comments on HN need to be "blamed" on someone. Someone has to take responsibility for them. If there's no way to blame the commenters themselves, then the most obvious thing to do is to blame the person under whose aegis those comments receive the protection of anonymity. PG has the ultimate authority (or near-enough) to change HN such that anonymous untracable abuse is no longer possible through it. Thus, he's responsible for not having done so. ...is, I guess, the logic.

icebraining 11y ago
I think you missed this part: "Apparently you will allow links to be posted repeatedly even after they’ve been voted down if it’s “gratuitously negative” of me, but take anything about one of your shitty startups down immediately." (Emphasis mine)
- hueving 11y ago
  Is there proof of this happening? It sort of sounds like conspiracies a paranoid person would come up with.
  - myhf 11y ago
    No one doubts that it's happening. But the reasoning and the mechanisms are opaque, which leads people to speculate.
    - dang 11y ago
      Not sure what you mean by "no one doubts that it's happening", but we don't take down negative posts about YC startups. It's a perennial accusation, doubtless because it's so easy to make, but it's false. We try to be as careful as we can about this. I've written about it many times; a recent example is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635659.
- derefr 11y ago
  I didn't, but I'm presuming a specific mechanism to that, because HN really doesn't have that much moderation (just dang, as far as I know, and previously just pg very part-time.) This might be overly charitable, so correct me if you know more: Probably these YC companies' founders—or, if they've gotten big enough, their social-media people—read HN. They see these things, and then, being wiser-than-most to how HN works, they report them directly to the HN email address. From there, maybe dang has specific orders to do things YC company founders ask him to do, but I doubt it; probably any contact to the moderation staff asking for a "gratuitously negative" (and possibly slanderous) post about you personally to be taken down, would be taken seriously. It's just that you'd have to do such policing and reporting yourself, like the YC companies do. What I don't expect, is that dang remembers every possible YC startup (or has some userscript highlight all mentions of their names for him or something), and then deletes posts if-and-only-if they're both "gratuitously negative" and about a YC company.

enraged_camel 11y ago

You should only flag things that are against the guidelines. In that regard, I don't see anything about this particular post that is problematic. It has some bile, sure, but the man makes some excellent points that we would benefit a lot from openly discussing here. The best communities are those that self-reflect. They don't sweep the criticisms under the rug -- and I perceive your flagging as an attempt to do just that.

grey-area 11y ago
I flagged this too for unnecessary drama, personal attacks, and off-target criticism - it is problematic because it encourages all the worst instincts of online forums - warring mobs taking binary positions, heated comments, and meta-debate over moderation. It's likely to produce lots of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
jacquesm 11y ago
Zed will enter a community, will contribute, will leave and burn his bridges behind him preferably in such a way that those that are still in the community will be seen in as negative light as possible. See also 'rails is a ghetto', this is in a way the HN variation on that theme. HN does plenty of introspection but it doesn't need Zed to shoot some more holes in his own foot to tell it what is wrong with it, especially not because Zed himself was an active participant and in fact instigator of some of the nastiest stuff seen here on HN. Addressing Paul like this shows how out of touch he is with respect to the state of affairs on HN. Note that Zed invariably attacks people when Zed's production is being criticised, this post is a nice example of exactly that. Zed seems to feel he is personally under attack quite a bit of the time and I've learned to read through his rants with that in mind so if you apply that filter you might get something out of it.
hueving 11y ago
How many little dick insults before you just consider the author to be inflammatory and small-minded? If this weren't for someone with a big name, it would have been dead on arrival.
- 11y ago

algorias 11y ago

I agree with your points, but I'm not flagging it as I feel the resulting comments are actually quite good, and are pushing forwards the ongoing discussion about civility, assumption of good faith, etc.

ghshephard 11y ago

Regarding this Video - I follow tptacek religously, particularly when he's talking about cryptography, and I'm always interested in what Zed is up to. And, while I seem to recall a post by Zed somewhat negative about RoR, I've never heard about this "video". And if someone like me, who reads HN every day, and follows both Zed, and tptacek postings closely has never heard of it - it's pretty clear that next to 0% of the world even knows what Zed is ranting about.

tlrobinson 11y ago
I was at the talk Zed was ranting about and didn't know what Zed was ranting about until I looked it up.

DanBC 11y ago

But the bile is mostly correct. HN has a severe problem of a lack of civility between people actually here, and that problems gets worse the further away the person being talked about is. HN is a really unpleasant place to be sometimes. (I know I'm guilty of this sometimes, and I welcome downvotes to steer me)

hueving 11y ago
>But the bile is mostly correct. Really? Where did you get the stats for the average penis size of the HN commenter?
- DanBC 11y ago
  Mostly ≠ totally
- JacobAldridge 11y ago
  You get access when you reach 25,000 Karma points. You know, so you don't feel too bad if the data doesn't swing in your favor.
thaumaturgy 11y ago
You're active in a lot of threads, and the more time you spend on HN, the more toxic it will seem. There are a lot of argumentative personalities here and communication in the modern forum format isn't very good (where everyone always has to rush to write replies before a thread becomes inactive and is replaced by the next active thread). So it can lead to friction and people's nerves get frayed. It sounds like a silly thing to say at first glance, but the less actively you participate on HN (or Reddit, or Slashdot, or probably most places), the better the community seems. Otherwise it's too easy to make the mistake of getting really invested in the small dramas, like this one.

danso 11y ago

I like Zed, and his contributions and writing are a credit to the community. But yeah, this attack seems off-base for him. From what I can tell, this was sparked by a submission [1] and subsequent upvoting of a critique of his book, a critique that is months old. That it got upvotes means that, well, it got upvotes, from 50 or so of the thousands of HN users who might be reading the site at any given hour. It doesn't mean there's a high conspiracy to shit on his work. If there were, would his books be so highly upvoted as they've been over the years? I would love to see Zed critique the "Don't Learn C the Wrong Way"...it seems like a better use of his energy than ripping on Paul and the HN mods who don't seem to care directly either way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636605