HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do we no longer support our members?

246 points by covercash ↗ HN
I saw a link marked [dead] earlier today and decided to click through and check it out. The submitter had a simple post describing where the idea originated and then broke down the development into a nice timeline of events. He threw this little project together in a few hours with his buddy, working through the night. That sounds like it would be something HN members would support.

At this point, I wasn't sure why it was marked dead, so I visited the site and found some pretty disgusting submissions from what I can only assume are HN members. Comments along the lines of "keep this crappy site off HN" and one submission even telling him to die. These submissions have since been removed.

In any case, the response from HN made me angry and I've been thinking about it all afternoon. Who cares if it's not the prettiest site, or if it's not something you'll ever use. This guy built his project and shared his experience with us. The least we could do is give him some constructive feedback so he can improve it and maybe learn a thing or two.

Here's the link to his original post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800925

120 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] thread
chaosmachine
Weird, I saw it before it was [dead], seemed like an OK project, if a bit unpolished. I was going to make some suggestions (sort results by rating, etc).

Here's the url: http://www.notanewyorker.com/

One thing I would suggest to the OP: use a more descriptive title. Instead of "Are you a New Yorker?" maybe something like "Show HN: My one-day GAE project for New Yorkers".

bmelton
I didn't see it before-hand, but I suspect that it was inspired by a recent episode of "How I Met Your Mother", in which they were debating the qualifications necessary for being a New Yorker.

Because of that episode, I immediately recognized the purpose and intent of the website, though I'm certain it was far less obvious to those who didn't see it.

Of interest, the criteria they came up with were:

You're not a New Yorker until: - You've stolen a cab from someone who needed it more than you, - You've killed a cockroach with your bare hands - Seen Woody Allen and, - Cried on the subway, oblivious to what anyone else thinks

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rhizome
Jeff Foxworthy could sue.
symkat
Yes! 20 minutes after watching that episode I conned SimCop into doing the front-end for me. I was dismayed to see that RateMyTeacher already has real websites. :) We've been rapidly reiterating the site based on the comments from the thread here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800422), and other feedback. We got a rated view about 2 hours ago because everyone kept asking for it, and some UI changes. =)
gaius
I flagged it, but I didn't realize it was someone here's pet project, I just thought it was wildly off-topic. My bad.
Zev
The people who made the nasty posts aren't representative of the HN community in any sense.

I didn't see the posts you describe, but, if they did say what you're describing, good riddance at them being removed. Moderators exist for a reason, although its better when they don't have to do anything.

covercash
Sorry, my original post wasn't clear. The comments I mentioned took place on the submitter's site (notanewyorker.com), not on HN.
rriepe
It's funny. So many people come to HN to get their daily dose of commoditized inspiration. And yet, when it's their turn to help someone out and give real inspiration, they do things like this.

I don't think HN is getting worse, really, but I do think it's getting faster. Sometimes posts get lost in the flood of new stuff. Or sometimes posts just get stuck with a bad crowd who happened to click.

And it is a bad crowd, too-- it's one thing to give bad feedback; it's another to actively go on a site to misuse it only to insult the creator. Who does that?

That said, most of the time you still get the usual HN crowd, the good crowd, when you post things like this. And maybe those things boil down to "Your site sucks," but it's delivered in a helpful, constructive fashion.

riledhel
Change what you can change, and stop worrying about what other people do. Trolls will always exist. Maybe we all need some small change in the algorithm to make things slow down...
DiabloD3
When the hell did HN turn into Digg? Or 4chan, for that matter?
chegra
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)" - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
chimingin
ahem, not the best measuring device, regardless

my account is less than a year old yet I attended Startup School 2006.

passwords get lost, hard drives fail

DiabloD3
Not a really useful guideline. Just because my account is new doesn't mean I haven't been reading HN for awhile. I just never felt like commenting here.
techiferous
Agreed, it's not a useful guideline. It's creating a truth out of thin air: "HN is not turning into Reddit."

EDIT: I'm getting downvoted for this but I think I'm bringing up a valid point. "HN is not turning into Reddit" is taken to be true a priori and the guidelines call for us not to question this. This seems to go counter to the general spirit of HN of allowing intelligent discussion and opposing points of view. (However, if a comment merely says "HN is turning into Reddit" it's not valuable; it should go into more detail and contribute something new and useful.)

shrughes
Well, you're not bringing up a valid point. You see, HN is not turning into Reddit. The guideline is not creating a truth, it's stating a fact that has been true and remains true.
philwelch
No, it isn't. It's stating that claims that HN is turning into Reddit when authored specifically by people with newer accounts are less likely to be valuable. It's almost a direct corollary that long-term HN users have enough perspective that their complaints about the decline of HN's quality are at least potentially worthy of consideration.
absconditus
HN is turning into reddit.
code_duck
Seems like a natural progression; after all Reddit's transformation into a combination of Digg and 4chan is nearly complete.
code_duck
Who's to say that will still be an illusion in three years?
chimingin
why does this comment get hammered??

with the implosion of Digg, there has been an influx of users from digg to reddit and here, and surely from reddit to here.

trolls roll downhill, so to speak.

so why when a user asks what's going on with HN, the comment gets hammered? or is it the trolls doing the hammering.

I made a similar comment recently and it got just as quickly crushed.

something is awry at HN and some of us care. surely, the growth is good and there will be all types but shooting the messenger only proves the negative point.

techiferous
I'm guessing it was downvoted because the comment didn't have much substance and didn't further the discussion.
mfukar
You forgot to add:

"and not because it appears incendiary to suggest that the HN community may be changing for the worse."

That'd make for a convincing argument.

bdr
As HN's population grows, the social motivation for "let's help is each other make stuff" shrinks. Maybe there should be a dedicated subsection (or a different site) devoted to that.
derefr
It has always seemed to me that "let's help each other make stuff" is the agreed-upon "definitive purpose" of HN. The news, and the articles, and everything else posted here are just tools and information we share to help each other make stuff. In fact, I would define a "Hacker" to be "one who makes stuff." This is not Slashdot, and we are not "nerds"; we are makers all. Thus, shunting the "part" of HN that focuses on helping hackers (i.e. all of it) somewhere else wouldn't leave anything (except perhaps TechCrunch articles.)

If we want to keep HN purpose-focused, then perhaps we should just stop growing (or perhaps shard/undergo mitosis evenly, rather than dividing along topic lines and creating us/them enmity.)

bdr
As much as I'd like to be part of a community like that, you are wrong. The closest official definition of on-topic is "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Many people come here simply because they're smart and bored.
m-photonic
>If we want to keep HN purpose-focused, then perhaps we should just stop growing

How?

moxiemk1
Perhaps its not possible, but I think communities should aspire to never split like that.

If helping eachother build cool projects is a tenant of the community, then it should be included in everyone's feed. If it isn't, than we should not have such postings. Having splits of sections splits the community as well.

vaksel
it does seem like moderators are taking a heavy handed approach. But then again, take a look at the new page and see how much crap they have to deal with.

personally I think, HN needs to put some filters in place to stop newly registered spammers. Even a simple 200 point requirements to submit new posts should be enough to trim the "check out the awesome prices on this nikes!" posts.

ABrandt
I could certainly get on board with a better filter system, but I think a 200 point minimum might be setting the bar a little high. I've been moderately active on HN for about 2 years now and just barely have 200 karma. If I would have been unable to post anything during that time, the utility of HN would be greatly reduced.

Then again, perhaps it would just encourage me to be more active in discussions.

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mkr-hn
I've been lightly active for two months and am approaching 200. Maybe your writing style doesn't quite click with HN's readership.

People are weird.

ABrandt
Perhaps. My views, interests, and experiences invariably differ from the status quo around here. I'd like to think that has little effect though--my karma per post is within range of the top contributors'(http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)*

*To be fair, the list is quite sporadic. Min = 1.2, Max = 19.61, Avg = 4.909.

jjs
Or he could be a night owl, or live in a timezone that doesn't match prime upvoting hours.
ABrandt
Interesting, I never considered that voting would be so sensitive to these sorts of variables. Although this could have some effect, I'll be the first to admit my ability to communicate through this medium needs some serious work.
mkr-hn
I don't see how a comment's upvote-worthiness changes with time of day.
epochwolf
> comment's upvote-worthiness changes with time of day

You have fewer people around to upvote you.

bobds
Another issue is that if you read HN through the RSS feed, you will almost always be commenting on older submissions.
metamemetics
What? We usually get some good submissions from throw-away accounts with 0 prior karma, like people seeking out advice on how to deal with cofounders etc. Or people are long time readers and what to create an account to show us the project.

The debate forum for ideas like this is at "Feature Request" link at bottom of page.

AlexBlom
I remember reading the same post and Instapapering it to give feedback when I got home. As the community grows (I'm still relatively new here, 1 year) this will become a bigger problem. I just hope we collectively solve it.
metageek
Thanks for the reference to Instapaper; hadn't heard of it before. Nice app.
mattlanger
His project reminds me of this great passage from Colson Whitehead's Colossus of New York: "No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge. That before the internet cafe plugged itself in, you got your shoes resoled in the mom-and-pop operation that used to be there. You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now."

I suspect that same sentiment speaks to quite a few HN'ers as well.

gojomo
No one group of drive-by downvoters, flaggers, or downbeat commenters is representative of the HN community as a whole -- especially over weekends and times of thinner attention.

So it's fairly common for some initial votes/comments to be negative, and occasionally even legitimate articles get auto-killed by a group of grumpy flaggers before sufficient upvotes arrive. But then in time, the sentiment rises as other more good-natured people pass by. (It seems harder to reverse a hair-trigger auto-kill, though -- maybe upvotes are no longer counted and it requires an admin intervention?)

Some of the grumpiest people have the most time on their hands, so can constitute the first unrepresentative wave of downvotes/flags!

yaskyj
It might have been marked dead because both developers posted a submission for the site. The other post is at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800422 and contains some constructive comments.
edanm
If that's true, I wish whoever flagged would have left a comment on the thread explaining why they did so. Much more helpful than just flagging.
xenophanes
He should have linked to his website instead of putting the link in the text area. It's not OK to put the URL in the text field where it's intentionally not clickable, without a good reason. If you want to do commentary, either post a comment or make a blog post and submit that url.
jacquesm
I've seen that done hundreds of times and nobody ever made an issue of it, usually it gets reposted as a comment by someone else. That's insufficient reason for a flag or a deletion. Apparently it was a duplicate submission.
jacquesm
I understand that you're not referring to the post on HN that got killed but to the activity on their website.

What happened there is no different than what happens when someone posts a spreadsheet with useful stuff here. Within minutes it will get destroyed or defaced.

The 'griefers' have definitely discovered HN. I suspect that some of them are people that took rejection by YC a bit harder than they should have, and that some others are simply here because they can't see a good thing without being tempted to try to destroy it.

Anything - and I really mean anything - that you put out there on the internet needs to be designed with abuse in mind, because no matter how small it is the abusers will seek it out and will try to destroy it.

That's something that you need to be aware of as much as you need to be a coder or a designer when you plan on making a living online.

Better get used to it.

blacksmythe 

  >>  I suspect that some of them are people that took rejection by YC a bit harder than they should have
I suspect anyone with enough drive to get a funding decision from YC (even a negative one) will be moving on to new opportunities, not defacing websites.
NathanKP
I think you might be surprised. There are plenty of people with drive but no morals.
jdavid
it's hard to build a network without morals.
JoachimSchipper
These people are not "sociopaths" (nasty, effective) but "trolls" (nasty, losers): what do they have to gain?
steveklabnik
I'll answer your question with another:

What does a hacker have to gain from taking something apart, poking at it, and putting it back together again?

tgriesser
You gain knowledge of how things work, even if it's not anything that can be learned implicitly by looking at the insides of something you can get a general idea of how pieces fit together and can hopefully take something away from it that you might not have known before.

Also you gain skill of knowing that you can take something apart and be able to put everything back together again, which is often harder than it sounds.

steveklabnik
Absolutely.

The answer that's related that I was trying to elicit is "because it interests me to know how things work." By the same token, trolls derive the same sort of intellectual pleasure from trolling: to anger someone is to own them. They do it "because I can."

Real trolls aren't the ones that are going "lulz obama is a socialist," "ruby is better than python," or anything so obvious. The real trolls are the ones that sound reasonable, but slowly end up destroying your community by creating discord much more subtly.

fogus
> that you put out there on the internet

You can add to that list the medium of books, articles, presentations, artwork, fiction, poetry, non-fiction, drawings, music, film, interviews, and and other vehicle for personal expression.

terrym
I think it's also people who are scared of subjecting themselves to criticism, so they have to criticize others who share what they perceive as low-quality material that gets positive attention. It's a self-defense mechanism: he shouldn't be allowed to share his stuff because it's not good enough == I don't have to share my stuff and subject myself to outside criticism because it's not good enough.
bravura
I suspect that some of them are people that took rejection by YC a bit harder than they should have

This is a worrisome statement. You get enough flags on a submission and it's automatically deleted, right?

The YC deadline is coming up in two days. Should we not submit cool new hacks to YC right now? It seems like people who are insecure about their applications might be incentivized to kill submissions where people demo something cool, under the premise that they want to stifle potential competition for YC slots. (Which is dumb, because the URL will still be on the application, but I never said this was rational.)

[edit: I know jacquesm was talking about previous YC applicants, but this led me to speculate on whether flaggings were performed by current YC applicants.]

jacquesm
You are misinterpreting what I wrote I think.

I did not mean that you should not be submitting cool new hacks here, that's no problem at all.

What I meant was that there may be characters out there that have been rejected by YC in the past that vent their frustration by being less than good citizens of HN.

So it's nothing to do with people that are insecure about their applications or submissions to HN today, it's got to do with people that were rejected during previous rounds that took it personal instead of as constructive criticism and/or limited resources.

pg
I suspect that some of them are people that took rejection by YC a bit harder than they should have, and that some others are simply here because they can't see a good thing without being tempted to try to destroy it.

It's almost entirely the latter. Only a small percentage of HN users actually apply to YC, and I can only think of one who became abusive on HN after being rejected (and he sent me an email recently apologizing).

Most of the nastiness we get here is from new users who show up and think they can behave like they do on other sites. This has been happening for years. But I wouldn't attribute to them such complex motives as not being able to see a good thing without being tempted to destroy it. I think they're just 13, or nuts.

ryanwaggoner
Only a small percentage of HN users actually apply to YC

Slightly off-topic, but what about the inverse of that: how many YC applicants are active HN users [1]? Just curious as to how much of the applicant pool comes from HN.

1. Since you have to create a HN account to apply, I'm assuming 100% of YC applicants are HN users, so maybe how many actively participate?

navanit
Also interesting would be to get an idea of what percentage of people who get accepted into YC participate actively on HN.
pg
That would be hard to reconstruct, because we don't keep track of people's karma at the point when we accept them, but we usually have 1 or 2 startups per batch with founders whose usernames I recognize as being top contributors. 6 of the 100 users on the leaderboard are YC founders.
mlLK
Yeah, I think YC applicants or founders is statically insignificant, but I think your total user base is just as insignificant as this since it doesn't tell us much about what stories are showing up on the front-page and who is saying what about it. Instead, considering you're still only interested in comments, what if you filtered your user base for anyone that has posted a comment in the last 30 days then extrapolated the proportion of comments posted given a threshold of karma or "days alive" on HN against everyone else in your user base.

I think it's more revealing this way if you are interested in how increased traffic and site participation is effecting this 6% you mentioned above or that "days alive" value; IOW, how is increased traffic and new user participation effecting the rate at which this sample is posting comments?

In the end, I don't think increased traffic is effecting the discussion to the extent that it really matters; I think what really keeps everyone else in check is the frequency at which older members are posting comments.

bkrausz
I know my HN participation dropped offer during my summer in YC...understandably so given how busy I was. It's picked up more now and is probably about at the same level as before I started YC.

I was amazed that PG recognized my username at the acceptance brunch...I guess his statistics might explain why (I had ~1,000 karma but it was built up from small posts/comments, nothing too controversial).

pg
17% of people who've applied for w2011 have over 100 karma:

    > (let ids (applicant-ids "w2011") 
        (percent (/ (count [> (uvar _ karma) 100] ids) 
                    (len ids)))) 
    17
6% have over 1000 karma.
tyng
Does this percentage include other applying co-founders in the application, or just the lead applicants?
pg
Just the leads.
tyng
Cheers pg. The reason I asked was because when my cofounder and I submitted our application for w2011, we decided to use his account as the lead even though I had way more karma, which was due to him having a much cooler answer to the non-computer hack question specifically addressed at only the lead.

Anyway, not that it matters since a good application is still a good one (and vice versa), but it's possible to find a higher YC/HN participation rate if you include the cofounders.

jacquesm
> I suspect that some of them are people that took rejection by YC a bit harder than they should have

This was in part because some of the stuff I saw tossed around was very strongly targeted at YC and you personally, not so much against HN.

But I'll take your word for it and I really hope that those that get rejected by YC see it for what it is and don't take it personal.

greendestiny
That's just the topic that people are most likely to be defensive about here. It's probably a natural instinct for groups to test and provoke each other by the things which are most distinctive to them.
chipsy
Economic interdependence is what drives the niceness here. Anyone who seriously cares about startups or hacking and wants to benefit from this crowd is likely to follow the guidelines as best they can.

But people lacking the same incentives will probably unknowingly slide into some form of bad behavior even if they've been active on the site for years - it will just happen naturally, because their economic equation is "amuse myself" with no mitigating factors. But most of the time it probably doesn't cause overt vandalism, just poor commenting hygiene.

tomjen3
>But people lacking the same incentives will probably unknowingly slide into some form of bad behavior even if they've been active on the site for years - it will just happen naturally, because their economic equation is "amuse myself" with no mitigating factors. But most of the time it probably doesn't cause overt vandalism, just poor commenting hygiene.

I am not so sure about that - I come here and post comments in the hope that people will like them (doesn't work that well) because I derive my sense of worth from how much karma I have

Can't be the only one.

DrStalker
I personally feel a tiny amount of satisfaction in contributing something meaningful to a conversation, and I like to try and keep overall contributions to a community posative because if everyone did that it would make the community a better place for me.

Arguably selfish motivations, but they work out well for everyone.

DeusExMachina
Moreover I think that since these people can't express their nastiness directly, they go and "retaliate" on target websites.

I never read comments under the articles linked here because I know they are polluted by a lot of useless noise, so I just read comments here on HN. But it could be interesting to see if nasty comments related to HN, like the ones mentioned by the OP, appear in other places as well (not that we can do anything about it, anyway).

kuldeep_kap
Again off topic.

What percentage of HN users apply to YC?

jchonphoenix
You should expect abuse, but I think the OP is taking issue with the fact that HNers are the ones who are being abusive.

To those who would be abusive, all I have to say is to remember that everyone begins somewhere. There was a time when you yourself was very mediocre at coding. And if your work had been completely trashed, how likely would you have been to pursue a career in programming?

jacquesm
You don't need to be a HN'er to follow a link from HN to somewhere and start making a jerk of yourself. I don't see any proof that these people are 'HN'ers' other than that they are able to follow a link. They're just jerks, the kind that infest each and every place on the web where more than 10 people gather in order to spoil the mood.
code_duck
I'm sure it's more people who troll forums and cause trouble in general than people who applied to YC. There are always malcontents and people engaging in immature behavior in any group, especially public groups where one can be anonymous.
DanielBMarkham
Interesting.

I posted an article a couple of weeks ago. The point of the article was that get-rich-quick-by-blogging stories are a dime a dozen, when the formula is really very simple: write for yourself, make friends, and keep doing it.

Because it was so simple, I thought it was cute to do a 1 or 2 paragraph format. Here it is

http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/10/how-to-make-a...

Of course, it only got one vote. (Thanks mom!) But the weird thing was that somebody from HN came by my site and took the time to add a snide comment along the lines of "Why did you post this on HN?"

To which I (logically enough) replied: then don't vote it up.

Seems to me we are getting a fair share of drive-by trolls, downvoters, and flaggers. Ten guys hate you that are on HN all the time? They can zap your article no matter what it is.

Why folks from here would visit blog submission sites and berate the blog authors is beyond me.

That's not reddit, but that's definitely a change in the atmosphere.

IgorPartola
This is interesting. I wonder if this is an effect of HN elitism. As in "I read HN which makes me cooler than sliced bread." Disturbing nonetheless.
Tycho
If there really is 'vendetta downvoting' going on, perhaps it could be negated by limiting the number of times a user can downvote another specific user's comments/submissions within a certain time frame. Eg. you can't downvote the same person more than twice a day, and if it's a submission you can't downvote two in a row
sixtofour
The bury brigades had to go somewhere when digg own-goaled.
momotomo
This is probably the most unusual part - taking the time to leave that kind of comment outside of the HN submission itself.

It's one thing to interrogate if a link is valid on here (eg, by downvoting or through the comments), but taking the time to interact with the site itself and backreference HN is pointless, and damaging to the reputation of HN (regardless of if they are an accurate representation of the community or not).

mhill
I have seen comments in HN similar to what you have experienced, comments from frequent posters as well.

The unpleasant thing is that people expect to be hand-fed their daily dose of intellectual stimulant, and got upset if the dosage is off. I've seen comments like, "Your submission/post/blog are lame. It's very annoying it wastes my time." WTF?! The guy spent lots of time writing a blog and asked for feedback. If it's not up to your level, just move on, no point in bashing the guy on wasting your time just because you don't find it stimulating.

What is more disheartening is the upvotes for those kinds of comments. It's really a turn-off.

jbm
For what it's worth...

I was at the Tokyo hackernews shindig. Everyone was quite supportive of each other and everyone was willing to offer constructive criticism.

Your princess is in the castle but you do have to squash some gombas to get there. It's just an unfortunate reality.

famousactress
If we're being honest.. what percentage of people with accounts on HN are actually bashing together applications, pushing them live, and posting for feedback? A mammoth minority, I'm sure. For me this community is about putting in hustle, and having the guts to take ideas public. The submitter's post deserves encouragement.
cletus
If you think this is bad, go visit proggit (programming.reddit.com) sometime. It's a cesspit. Not only do I not post/comment there anymore, I don't even read it.

Submissions can't really expect more than a 4:1 ratio of upvotes to downvotes. Say anything negative about Python (even things that are demonstrably true like the performance degradation of CPU bound tasks on multi-core machines because of the GIL on CPython) or positive about Apple (even something demonstrably true like "the iPad is a successful new product launch") and get downvoted into oblivion (sadly, HN is starting to get a few knee-jerk Apple haters /sigh).

Someone posted a "Physics of Angry Birds" post here in the last week and someone took the time to post a snide, self-righteous "this doesn't belong here" comment, which is similar to what you're talking about. Frankly I don't understand this attitude at all: if the post doesn't interest you, move on. 3/4 of the HN posts are of no personal interest to me. That doesn't make them objectively bad.

SwellJoe
"sadly, HN is starting to get a few knee-jerk Apple haters /sigh"

I'll have you know I've always been a knee-jerk Apple hater, and I've been here for years.

awakeasleep
Look, even if you're joking, is that the sort of attitude you want represented here?

Knee-jerk hate might be a beneficial strategy if you're trying to survive in Darfur, but we safe people should try to minimize it for the benefit of our own minds. We learn and grow by studying things, especially the things that rub us the wrong way. The other benefits of arbitrary hate like feeling you belong to an in-group seem out of place on HN, a site mostly devoted to curiosity (from what I've seen).

I'm not saying you should or shouldn't feel or act a certain way, but for all of our sakes lets keep it mental and not bring that sort of thing into the public light here where it might be perceived as community endorsement of that point of view.

SwellJoe
"I'm not saying you should or shouldn't feel or act a certain way"

But, that I shouldn't say it at Hacker News?

I'm disappointed. First, I'm disappointed that you've suggested that my comment, whether a joke or sincere (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader as to whether I intended the former or the latter), is unacceptable speech. Second, I'm disappointed that 12 other HN readers agree with you.

I now have to conclude that, as others are talking about, HN is losing the culture it once had, and that saddens me.

invisible
I agree with you that it should be fine except that you are joking about it while we're talking about critiques of HN itself. He was talking about how posts get voted into oblivion for saying good things about Apple (which could be a serious problem with regard to addressing intellectual conversation) and you downplay the importance of that by making a joke.
v21
A joke which has as part of it's humour a reflection on how there is a tendency to glamorize the past. A joke designed to purposefully downplay that critique.
[deleted]
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cletus
I don't view your statement as unacceptable speech (whether it be a joke or not). Instead I view it as noise and a pointless distraction.

HN discourages "+1" type comments, anything that doesn't add to the conversation. I suspect your quote was trying to be funny. If so, it really falls into that same category of adding nothing at which point you have to ask: who exactly is losing the spirit of HN was/is all about?

jbooth
>Look, even if you're joking, is that the sort of attitude you want represented here?

Yes. He was obviously joking, and I smiled. It was funny.

mhill
I actually see quite a bit of the same mentality here. Anything deviated from the main stream of the latest fad will get downvoted. There's little appreciation of diverged opinions or opposite views.
cletus
I look back at my comment history and see that generally speaking, if I say something relatively thoughtful, almost without exception it doesn't get downvoted into oblivion. Were I insulting, rude or uncivil a different standard would apply.

The same simply can't be said for proggit. Proggit has gone the way most mature forums go: elitist, dismissive, intolerant and reactionary. You saw the same thing on Usenet (eg comp.lang.c) in years gone past (if you're old enough to remember that).

There is a certain personality type that seems to float to the top of such dank, stagnant pools of water. I call such people toxic. You see it on forums, in open source projects and the workplace. Such people seem to be attracted to the ability to exercise power without actually contributing anything (although they're convinced they are contributing). Once a certain number of such people are entrenched it's very difficult for any such organization to ever turn itself around rather than fade into irrelevancy so much effort needs to be spent simply keeping such people away from the controls.

Much of Zed's famous anti-Rails rant revolved around such people (a classic example being someone writing security code assuming there were 30 days in every month).

HN is not that way at all and any stay on Proggit should tell you how far off HN is from that in a very short time.

mhill
I'll show two of my encounters as a limited data point to illustrate that HN is not far from getting to the level of Progit.

In one post about shebang (#) being used in Facebook and Twitter, the discussion was about crawling Ajax pages. I asked a question on good practices to make a Ajax site crawler friendly. It got downvotes! I was truly puzzled. The question was purely technical, non-controversial, within the topic, and extending the discussion. Yet, there were people (long timers with downvote power) trying to discourage it. They were acting exactly like toxic as you described.

In another post about Joel's statement of SO being more scalable than Digg, people were giving this and that explanation but ignoring the obvious elephant in the room - .Net was faster PHP. I made that statement and got downvoted to oblivion. Of course people here hate Microsoft, are into dynamic-type languages, and prefer open-source but a technical fact is still a fact. This just shows how narrow-minded people here are who can't tolerate diverge approaches to problems.

Oh well, if they want it to be a toxic playground, they get it.

mquander
I don't think that you're accurately representing the state of affairs.

At the time I'm reading it, your second comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1799442) is neutral at 1 point. That is not a symptom of people acting "toxic" and trying to "discourage" you. It was a good question, but nobody seemed to know much about it, so it just sort of sat there.

Your first comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1787833) is at -3 points. Unfortunately, as it's five days old, I can no longer put it at -4. You stepped into an admittedly poor discussion about specific reasons why SO might need less servers than Digg, and posted a flamebaity generalization with absolutely no support; you didn't suggest a reason that .NET might be faster than LAMP, nor any evidence that it might be faster, or what it might be faster at. You just dropped a one-line load of an opinion and left. I absolutely am on board with being maximally toxic and discouraging toward the comment you made there.

mhill
The 2nd comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1799442) was downvoted. I saw it after I posted it. It was brought back up by others upto 1 later. Tried as I might I just couldn't understand the rational of the downvotes. I could only attribute it to the Reddit-like behavior where every submission has 33% downvotes, which is why I'm saying HN is heading the Reddit way.

For the first comment, it's pretty well-known that C#/VB.Net is way faster than PHP/Python/Ruby in raw performance. Benchmarks after benchmarks have shown that fact. Often it's just a matter of bringing it up as a reference in discussion. I don't want to prepare a benchmark for every statement I made.

I've seen plenty of opinionated single liners got plenty of upvotes, admittedly those stated the popular views, so single liner is not a good reason for downvote. But nevertheless I'm not into a popular contest. If HN can't tolerate diverge view/opinion, that's its loss.

chaostheory
I agree with calling out what happened, but I don't think it's good to make a big assumption using just one instance of a bad event.
simcop2387
I don't know about the disgusting submissions but I believe my post was marked dead as my friend had also submitted a very similar post here that I was originally unaware of, so no hard feelings there.
momotomo
Similar behaviours and reactions can be seen on a lot of otherwise professional internet forums. I think its the difference in the following kind of people

- A highly skilled professional

- A highly skilled, non-professional

Just because someone has a very well developed skillset, it doesn't necessarily dictate good conduct. Most art / illustration forums suffer from this problem - to generalize, they will have a subset of highly skilled people who ultimately aren't professional in their conduct and reply with some severely inappropriate responses.

It's the same scenario too - when a user submits content that is significantly below the general quality standard of the community (in earnest, being a legitimate effort on their behalf), two responses are generally provided due to the difference in these groups:

- Professionals tend to ignore the content or provide some indicators of which basics to cover

- Non-professionals flame and attack the user due to their level of ability

It's regrettable but the latter often has quite a negative effect. If you can look at someones work and recognise that they are highly skilled, but not understand that they are of poor professional character, you will take on board what they say as being correct or fair.

It's the kind of conduct that stunts a lot of people who aren't thick skinned about their trade.

mhill
You have very good points (I think you meant unprofessional instead of non-professional).

Amazing. There are downvotes on your comment. This just shows what kind of community this is.

momotomo
Not sure it reflects on the entire community. Proposition - that the majority of users are well intentioned and participate by either upvoting or not voting. The minority aggressively downvote for whatever reason. In this circumstance, the aggressive downvoters are misrepresented simply because they are more active / their behaviour is more recognised.

Additionally, due to a generally positive bias (supposing we all generally like YC, HN and have a common positive attitude towards startup culture), the downvotes are more noticable / memorable than things that are frequently upvoted.

Same reason all you can focus on is that chip in your windscreen when realistically its only 2% of the entire window. =)

jan_g
Yes, I think you are correct. Downvoters have to be people with otherwise insightful comments (they need certain amount of karma to be able to downvote). Newcomers cannot downvote.

On a side note: I think that too many people misunderstand the purpose of voting. If you agree, upvote. If you disagree, do nothing. Downvote only if a comment is trollish or completely off-topic. If you think that the commenter doesn't understand the topic, help him overcome his ignorance, don't downvote him.

prodigal_erik
As I see it, "upvote = agree" increases the danger of groupthink. I try to downvote complete wastes of time or detractions from the discussion, and upvote thought-provoking contributions even when I disagree.
noverloop
groupthink is a state where people self-censor in fear of rejection or repression. Only down-voting when disagreeing can cause groupthink since people who disagree with the consensus will stop posting disagreeing comments to preserve their karma.
davidmurphy
I hate the, uh, hate on the internet sometimes.

I posted a self post on Reddit about my startup, and the first comment was "Go F*ck yourself". The second comment, QED.

I ended up deleting the post. Not cool. :(

code_duck
Reddit is pretty much lost at this point. At one time, it was a community of college age people with above average intellects. These days, if someone posts something like "Did everyone stop caring about the oil spill?", the top comment will be something like "I never cared lol". Offensive racist comments end up with a positive vote balance.

You just have to pick your communities. It takes a bit of evaluation to see just who is on the other end of a forum.

cookiecaper
Someone is probably going to have to make a site for HN refugees to become the new good HN. As things become more popular and better-known, their userbase tends more toward the average just by the nature of popularity. In most cases involving online communities this is a bad thing.
xentronium
I think it's all about anonymity. I suspect there is a non-empty subset of HNers who like doing destructive things on anonymous basis.
c1sc0
Anonymity vs. Real Identity is a very influential variable in online communities. While I used to be a big fan of anonymity I've come to review that opinion in the last year or so. Maybe it's time for HN to start rewarding people who put their real identity on the line?