I am not sure why you believe that universally enduring the public's contribution to discourse is morally superior to not doing so, especially on a moderated message board.
The act of self control and simply not responding is too much for some people I suppose...
While there is a user I often wish I could block - and this addon gives me the opportunity to - they do occasionally offer good arguments and counterpoints. Just because I don't agree with their political views and am amazed with how frequently they display their cognitive dissonance does not mean I have nothing to learn from them, on the rare occasions.
If I blocked them and silenced them entirely - I do myself a disservice. There are also many people who will try to respond to someone who may have blocked them long ago for some other comment, in which both may be at a disservice. Or perhaps a user's views have since changed but the blocker will never know, for they have blocked the user.
These features do more harm than good - and merely increase the number of people living in their little bubbles, unwilling to interact with anyone who does not hold the same beliefs as them.
We can debate the pros and cons of "living life in a bubble", but I find that people who think living in a bubble is perfectly acceptable are impossible to convince otherwise, because the thought that bubbles can be harmful itself is not part of their bubble so does not merit any further thought.
These are definitely good points and I considered them in the development of the extension.
The biggest choice I made was not to hide blocked comments completely. They're still on the page, just collapsed, so if you see that a user has a comment with a lot of upvotes or interesting replies you can unblock them easily.
The primary reason I made the plugin is because occasionally users will repeat the same point over and over throughout the comments of an article (in multiple subthreads). In such cases, I find it much less distracting to simply block them.
If that's how it works then I would say it doesn't fit the usual definition of a blocklist. I can't say what you would call it but it might go a long way to nullify some of the negativity of it being called a "blocklist".
Well obviously you can ignore people completely and downvote as necessary but sometimes it's just better to not have to deal with their comments at all. I mean sure, some people aren't pro-censoring and that's fine, they don't have to - but some people prefer self-moderation to annoyances.
Rather than an approach like this, which can only serve to produce an echo-chamber effect, can I recommend the Hacker News Enhancement Suite for Chrome (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...)? It remembers the upvotes and downvotes you cast per-user, which provides a very quick at-a-glance reminder of your past opinions of a given member's contributions, and allows you to make a more informed decision about whether or not to engage with them.
This is coming from someone with showdead on, FWIW. I rather like seeing the things that others have deemed "not worth seeing".
> This is coming from someone with showdead on, FWIW. I rather like seeing the things that others have deemed "not worth seeing".
FYI I also have "showdead" on and like the approach taken with Enhancement Suite.
The biggest reason I had for writing this extension is when certain users spam a thread with their repetitive points. At that point, it's easiest to just block them. (Though blocking doesn't hide their comment completely, so it's easy to toggle people back on.)
I guess I haven't really encounted that. Blocking is something that I've always really reserved for spammers and the really blatant trolls, and those tend to be killed really quickly on HN as is.
There are certainly commenters who don't contribute to a given discussion, but I personally think that the reaction of "block them so I never have to see them again!" is extreme and probably not really conducive to the spirit of community.
It's a funny trend in recent years that people are so offended by the opinions and ideas of others that they cannot bare to expose themselves to anything that person has to say.
Discourse and logical thinking are the basis of modern society and all of it's afforded comforts. If the inventors of the past had coddled themselves in a hugbox for their entire lives we would still be saying things along the lines of "A train can never go more than 10 miles an hour", "there wont be a market for more than 10 computers in the world", and "you wont ever need more than 64k of ram" because there would have been no one who would have heard--or even said for that matter--"No!"
If someone disagrees with you, just explain your points rationally and calmly. If it something you are passionate about, like the OP has pointed out in https://xkcd.com/386/, then isn't it worth the 15 minutes it will take to explain your viewpoint as I am doing here?
It's a funny trend in recent years that people are entitled enough to believe that their opinion is important enough that everyone has to read it.
No-one is stopping HN users from commenting, they're just allowing themselves the opportunity to easily ignore it. I don't see anything wrong with that. Why is someone obliged to spend 15 minutes of their time indulging you?
Yes, it is the duty of every thinking person on this planet to examine viewpoints of others.
A famous Aristotle quote that you may not have heard of: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
If you disagree, that is fine! No one is saying you must agree with everyone, just endorse the possibility they are presenting and think reasonably about the evidence they provide to support their claims. Who knows, they might be right.
Do you think Roman forums would have yielded the intellectual progress they where responsible for if people just ignored everyone they didn't agree with 100% of the time?
To consider alternate/opposing viewpoints, perhaps.
But there are many viewpoints, and to consider all of them would take an excessive amount of time.
As such, it seems there may be uses in narrowing down the ones to consider in some way.
One option I've considered would be to focus on the boundary of what viewpoints one considers to be plausible.
So, in each "direction", the viewpoint that, of all the ones which seem implausible, seems the least implausible, and also the viewpoint that, of all the ones which seem plausible, seems the least plausible.
Another idea might be, if one has already considered a viewpoint, and the viewpoint isn't changing, there might cease to be much use in considering it further (suppose, for example, that one can pass an ideological turing test of it with flying colors). Does it not seem implausible that it might not be worth spending more time on exposing oneself to that viewpoint?
After all, I doubt you believe that you have an obligation to consider the viewpoints of off brand viagra sellers whenever you receive spam in your inbox.
If you have somehow proven to yourself that something is better or worse than the standard practice, is it not in your best interest to share such an insight with everyone else?
Take, for example, doctors washing their hands. Once, it was crazy take to mandate this. Literally, Semmelweis was driven crazy from proposing this and becoming ostracized. Read the NPR story "The Doctor Who Championed Hand-Washing And Briefly Saved Lives", it will give some insights into this.
If you limit things you expose yourself as what you see is "correct" then you will never come to learn something new.
killfiles have been around for a couple of decades now, actually. I think they would have been around 100 years ago if technology permitted. I don't think it's necessarily evidence of a troubling trend. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
(That said, I don't personally see the need for it on HN. The obvious trolls get killed, and it's easy enough to ignore people who are simply annoying.)
Unfortunately, the post-modernist idea that everyone is entitled to their own subjective reality (and that those subjective realities are all equally valid) has resulted in unparalleled lows.
Not only does much of the public discourse consist of people talking past each other, but the need to create "safe spaces" where we can be sure not to hurt anyone's feelings.
In the context of hacker news you're spot on however blocking rude ego-maniacs and bigots on facebook and other such platforms has improved the overall ux there for me.
The problem is not those who say "A train can never go more than 10 miles an hour". The problem is (for example) the users who, on any story ever which mentioned women, trot out multiple posts on how women are actually the source of all problems in tech, and are oppressing men. There is also (in my experience) no point trying to have a discussion with such people.
It gets tiring to read such posts, and after the first couple they provide no value. Why not skip them?
Well, for starters, they may have useful and valuable contributions on stories which aren't about the hotbutton issues on which you find their opinions disagreeable.
I agree cheald and I'd like to build upon your stipulation. CJefferson, I disagree with you on this account but I do agree with your position from the "A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative" from a few days ago.
Had I not been able to come to the conclusion you had on my own, I might have endorsed something that was ultimately worse than another solution.
Nice extension, and I use something similar on Reddit. However, I feel on HN (given the tighter moderation standards), if a user comments and contributes to the discussion there shouldn't be a need to block them. If a comment is not contributing to the discussion, then flag it!
It's an interesting approach at controlling the signal to noise ratio. Unfortunately, my experiments with that sort of thing over at reddit show me that blocking some people and "following" others isn't all that effective. People are dynamic. They have hot days and cold days, interesting days and not so interesting days. I've started looking into machine learning to see if I can train it to recognize what I consider a "good" post based on the word content of the post. I haven't gotten it to work yet. :P
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadAll the logic is included in a simple JS file: https://github.com/morgante/hn_blocklist/blob/master/src/inj...
While there is a user I often wish I could block - and this addon gives me the opportunity to - they do occasionally offer good arguments and counterpoints. Just because I don't agree with their political views and am amazed with how frequently they display their cognitive dissonance does not mean I have nothing to learn from them, on the rare occasions.
If I blocked them and silenced them entirely - I do myself a disservice. There are also many people who will try to respond to someone who may have blocked them long ago for some other comment, in which both may be at a disservice. Or perhaps a user's views have since changed but the blocker will never know, for they have blocked the user.
These features do more harm than good - and merely increase the number of people living in their little bubbles, unwilling to interact with anyone who does not hold the same beliefs as them.
We can debate the pros and cons of "living life in a bubble", but I find that people who think living in a bubble is perfectly acceptable are impossible to convince otherwise, because the thought that bubbles can be harmful itself is not part of their bubble so does not merit any further thought.
The biggest choice I made was not to hide blocked comments completely. They're still on the page, just collapsed, so if you see that a user has a comment with a lot of upvotes or interesting replies you can unblock them easily.
The primary reason I made the plugin is because occasionally users will repeat the same point over and over throughout the comments of an article (in multiple subthreads). In such cases, I find it much less distracting to simply block them.
Anyway, congrats on getting your work out there.
Wait, shit...
This is coming from someone with showdead on, FWIW. I rather like seeing the things that others have deemed "not worth seeing".
FYI I also have "showdead" on and like the approach taken with Enhancement Suite.
The biggest reason I had for writing this extension is when certain users spam a thread with their repetitive points. At that point, it's easiest to just block them. (Though blocking doesn't hide their comment completely, so it's easy to toggle people back on.)
There are certainly commenters who don't contribute to a given discussion, but I personally think that the reaction of "block them so I never have to see them again!" is extreme and probably not really conducive to the spirit of community.
Discourse and logical thinking are the basis of modern society and all of it's afforded comforts. If the inventors of the past had coddled themselves in a hugbox for their entire lives we would still be saying things along the lines of "A train can never go more than 10 miles an hour", "there wont be a market for more than 10 computers in the world", and "you wont ever need more than 64k of ram" because there would have been no one who would have heard--or even said for that matter--"No!"
If someone disagrees with you, just explain your points rationally and calmly. If it something you are passionate about, like the OP has pointed out in https://xkcd.com/386/, then isn't it worth the 15 minutes it will take to explain your viewpoint as I am doing here?
No-one is stopping HN users from commenting, they're just allowing themselves the opportunity to easily ignore it. I don't see anything wrong with that. Why is someone obliged to spend 15 minutes of their time indulging you?
A famous Aristotle quote that you may not have heard of: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
If you disagree, that is fine! No one is saying you must agree with everyone, just endorse the possibility they are presenting and think reasonably about the evidence they provide to support their claims. Who knows, they might be right.
Do you think Roman forums would have yielded the intellectual progress they where responsible for if people just ignored everyone they didn't agree with 100% of the time?
But there are many viewpoints, and to consider all of them would take an excessive amount of time.
As such, it seems there may be uses in narrowing down the ones to consider in some way.
One option I've considered would be to focus on the boundary of what viewpoints one considers to be plausible.
So, in each "direction", the viewpoint that, of all the ones which seem implausible, seems the least implausible, and also the viewpoint that, of all the ones which seem plausible, seems the least plausible.
Another idea might be, if one has already considered a viewpoint, and the viewpoint isn't changing, there might cease to be much use in considering it further (suppose, for example, that one can pass an ideological turing test of it with flying colors). Does it not seem implausible that it might not be worth spending more time on exposing oneself to that viewpoint?
After all, I doubt you believe that you have an obligation to consider the viewpoints of off brand viagra sellers whenever you receive spam in your inbox.
Take, for example, doctors washing their hands. Once, it was crazy take to mandate this. Literally, Semmelweis was driven crazy from proposing this and becoming ostracized. Read the NPR story "The Doctor Who Championed Hand-Washing And Briefly Saved Lives", it will give some insights into this.
If you limit things you expose yourself as what you see is "correct" then you will never come to learn something new.
Why do you feel obligated to indulge me?
This is how ideas are shared. Everyone should keep an open mind, even if that means you are upset by someone else from time to time.
That's probably why OP wants to block certain people on HN
(That said, I don't personally see the need for it on HN. The obvious trolls get killed, and it's easy enough to ignore people who are simply annoying.)
Not only does much of the public discourse consist of people talking past each other, but the need to create "safe spaces" where we can be sure not to hurt anyone's feelings.
It gets tiring to read such posts, and after the first couple they provide no value. Why not skip them?
Had I not been able to come to the conclusion you had on my own, I might have endorsed something that was ultimately worse than another solution.
Why not, I bet you can do that just fine without a tool? Do you always have to reply to everything that you read?
It's funny what you consider "recent": http://catb.org/jargon/html/K/kill-file.html