I agree with Matt on about 75% of these points. That's why I have severely started limiting my time here.
Probably the worst part is the time-sink and the predictable nature of the comments. Most of the time I can tell from the title what all the comments are going to be like. Anybody that tries to swim against the stream, if only a little bit, can be mercilessly punished. In fact, it's somewhat of a game to see how even-handed I can make a thread -- human hacking. Which makes it even more of a time sink.
HN has changed for me from being a site where I can hang out with fellow hackers to being a site where people I like hang out and spend too much of their time. I'm trying very hard not to make the same mistake. Hopefully I won't be joining Matt. (Lunch is over. Back to work)
I have noticed a decline in the "interestingness" of the stories, so it seems inevitable that the comments will be less interesting. Though I attribute this to random fluctuations in the news and meta-news cycle, rather than to some failing of the HN community (which I think is awesome).
That Matt's blog post made the front page is a case in point.
Though I attribute this to random fluctuations in the news and meta-news cycle, rather than to some failing of the HN community (which I think is awesome).
I don't know. Do you monitor the 'new' page at all? The SNR there is certainly worse, but I do come across submissions I enjoy far more than practically anything on the front page these days. I realise that submission quality is subjective; I guess the community's average opinion on this has diverged far enough from mine that the front page isn't doing it for me anymore. Due to the low SNR (and rate of change) on the 'new' page, consuming HN via it is even more time consuming than normal.
I do catch myself idly looking through front page discussions and even commenting, but there is zero intellectual value in it most of the time. At least I don't upvote the stories.
/classic is slightly better on the surface. (currently 6 upvoted stories by me vs 3 on the frontpage) Unfortunately, submissions seem to hang around there for longer than on the frontpage, so it's like a distilled version of the front page's top 60 into 30, not a truly different set.
I think that to some extent the karma average score has encouraged too much homogeneity in the comments. I don't feel like I can disagree for fear of getting downvoted or not upvoted, which would lower my karma average and make my votes in turn worthless.
The time sink factor is also obvious. However, I tend to swing back and forth between very productive and not very productive. When I am in a coding mood I rarely browse HN or comment and instead I hack like crazy for hours every day. When I am burned out or feeling like I need a break from chasing some bug I'll stop by here and read.
So the time sink aspect is doable for me at least. No one can work constantly, without any breaks, and maintain their sanity.
I think that to some extent the karma average score has encouraged too much homogeneity in the comments. I don't feel like I can disagree for fear of getting downvoted or not upvoted, which would lower my karma average and make my votes in turn worthless
I disagree with HNers(mostly because I offered radical opinions) all the time. Sometime I get downvoted, sometime I got lot of points. There will alway be assholes who downvote people for simply disagreeing but they're outweighed by people who vote me up for adding to the conversation.
> I don't feel like I can disagree for fear of getting downvoted or not upvoted, which would lower my karma average and make my votes in turn worthless.
Its easy to say that I don't or won't worry about karma, but the truth is that karma systems are tied to body's endorphin system. You get a good feeling when you see that your karma or karma average has risen.
Naturally the reverse is also true and you can't help but not want either number to fall. In my case at least these feelings are involuntary, despite the fact that I know these are pretty much worthless numbers. (Except for the fact that karma average does effect the weight of your votes.)
some people are a lot more susceptible to this than others. if it's at the point where it's a significant issue for you, then you should treat it as you would any other kind of chemical dependency: learn ways to control it, or stay away from environments that trigger it.
I think they're all good points, though I disagree with #6. It doesn't steal comments from the source because I would never comment at the source and there's a lot of value in having conversations with people with whom you share a history and context. When patio11 comments on something, I know where he's coming from for the most part already so he can get right to the point without having to give background information I already have.
I agree with this. Follow up question: I've seen sites where HN comments appear in the source's comments (like trackbacks). Can someone point me how to do this with Posterous?
Your statement made me think. Looking at my friends, family, and colleagues, I can think of 2 small groups where your statement fits. The rest, I feel, do seek to understand and empathize. In my case, it is the minority.
I'd say the secret to self-actualization is having a noetic understanding of the fact that others are simultaneously far more similar to us and far more different from us than we can ever fully realize.
I saw this in a thread about poor people. I got in a long dialogue with a pretty prominent contributor about the nature of poverty and how it can be changed. You wouldn't believe how much people here feel that it truly is poor people's fault 100% that they're poor, rather than pointing at the myriad systemic fault lines pervading being poor in a poor community, such as family turmoil, substance abuse, decaying infrastructure, underfunded classrooms (and, no, you don't get to point at one school of knuckleheads in NYC as being the marker of the entire US school system and its students), and lack of skilled blue-collar work available.
Perhaps I'm just sensitive because I grew up poor, and perhaps they're not because they never, ever had to. But, it seems that they haven't even traveled outside their comfort zones to at least take a peek at the "other half". Because of that, most of them have "common sense" solutions that are about as "let them eat cake" as can be without actually coming out and saying that (such as "just go out and get a job! I have one, and I'm fine!").
Unfortunately, that won't change here. Entrepreneurs, by our very nature, need to be cool to these sorts of fundamental problems (unless that's our problem space); we simply need to hunker down, eyes on our work, and barrel forth.
Evaporative cooling...sigh. I can sympathize with some of his points here, and I've starting really limiting my time here as well, but it's disappointing to see the high-value members start to move on. It's only going to make it harder to keep quality high.
> 4. The community is often snobbish and out of touch with how the other half lives.
I suspect this is endemic to many (most?) community sites, especially as they grow. HN is no exception.
> 5. It’s a time suck. That one’s self-explanatory to anyone who has used the site.
So does the rest of the Internet.
> 6. It removes comments from where they should be, on the destination site.
Many sites linked to from Hacker News, like Daring Fireball, do not support commenting. Others require user registration. Either way, I read the HN comments on an article first, every time, and I use that discussion to help me evaluate if I even want to read the source article.
I think it shows how addicting it is. People wouldn't feel the need to broadcast if it wasn't an addiction.
I respect trying to get more time out of your day (RescueTime helps). But it seems here Matt has found an issue (TSA backlash) that is helping him go cold turkey. Since it is public resignation, it may help him regain some of his productive time.
If noone knows you quit, you can come back on Monday with no consequence.
If you feel a need to discuss it, perhaps that would be a more appropriate forum?
Not to mention featuring on sites like cnn.com. It's a pretty big issue that is certainly not "startups" or "tech". Yeah, there's tech involved, but the issue is how does society believe it should be used: politics.
Whether you like them or not, you really can't tell? To me it's pretty obvious what goes where, with a few things that are on the edge, like politics that are really important for tech and startups, like net neutrality. The TSA articles aren't tech or startups at all. I think the "pro-politics" people would still vote them up if there were no scanners and it was only about being groped by the goons.
The TSA isn't. The TSA articles are. They have almost nothing to do with startups, and even less to do with tech. They are the antithesis of intellectually interesting.
The site is currently called Hacker News, not Startup or Tech news. Even though the site is heavily associated with the ycombinator brand, for a lot of people, the hacker identity has a lot to do with personal freedom, even more so than technology. So if this site is really only about startups and tech then it is poorly named.
Startups can be very hacker-oriented, however forming a startup to sell out to a large corp. in the end is very anti-hacker in my opinion. But you don't see people complaining about every startup article on the site. The reality seems to be that the site attracts a cross section of visitors.
Resisting unjust searches and ridiculous security theatre procedures is hacking. The fact that it is also political is irrelevant. I have a hard time understanding a mentality where these issues are not considered interesting or important as they affect our most basic rights. Is your startup or your tech really worth anything without freedom?
Because the erosion of the constitutional protection against unreasonable search & seizure is implicit in every article about the TSA, and some people would rather we trade essential liberties for an immeasurably small increase in safety in silence. And, thank you sir, may I have another[1]. This makes it political.
I believe they are being filtered. I'm not sure how dead auto-killed articles appear from the submitter's point of view, but I submitted an article yesterday that included the TSA acronym and it appeared to me without a comment box. This, and the absence articles on the front page, makes me think that filtering is in place.
I'm not complaining --- this is probably a fine policy. But it does complicate how one reads Matt's post. I think that HN actually does a lot behind the scenes to promote a better community, which is what keeps it as good as it is.
Classifying TSA stories as "political" is just one way of looking at them, and I think it's a bit myopic. I suspect the reason we've seen a lot of TSA stories here is because they have to do with personal liberty to most folks, and this is a legit theme on a forum like HN-- there is a thematic overlap between stories like these and stories about Open Source, &c.
"Personal liberty" is a huge, and very political topic, because it's very connected with where one's freedom stops, what the rights and responsabilities of communities are, who should exercise power, and a whole host of other very political subjects that, while they may be fascinating, are generally toxic for internet forums, and are certainly not about tech or startups.
Open source is open source. It is not gun rights/free speech/right to privacy/any number of other things that are important, but are not open source.
Also, "myopic" presumes that I am not interested in politics. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, I dearly wish to keep it out of this site.
Shall we then ban stories on HN about the latest vim plugin, or that cool Emacs macro someone wrote? Those are fiery political topics, you know--maybe even "religious" topics for some users. I agree that all this is hugely political, but to me that only strengthens the point I was making. You can't avoid politics on forums like HN (in the broad, generalised sense in which we are discussing it here).
It certainly does seem that HN has become increasingly more political in recent days. Yes, I can understand a post on body-scanner technology and it's applications to travel security, but do we really need to see blog posts about how person n opted out, or how person x experienced an unusual pat-down? Yes, for Americans (and non-Americans alike), these are important issues, but HN does not need to become an aggregate site for stories such as these.
There is a strong commitment by the community to prevent the site becoming like digg, reddit, or slashdot. Losing focus on the topics that brought us here in the first place (technology, startup culture, and programming) is the first step on that path in my opinion.
All I can ask is please, try not to submit/vote up stories which are not particularly related to tech. It's not what I'm interested in discussing in this particular venue.
Or maybe I'm just in the minority. I guess time will tell.
P.S. Just because you put the word "Hacker" in your article/title, doesn't mean it belongs here.
The problem is the community can't really do anything about it. Without the ability to downvote a topic all you can do is watch and hope others don't upvote a story like that.
Which itself is a problem because the threshold is so low.
By even the most conservative estimates there are thousands of people visiting the site every day yet it only takes a handful or so to get an item to the front page.
So even if 99.5% of the people here make a "strong commitment" as you put it the front page will still be flooded with all those TSA stories
Does anyone know how many flags it takes before an article is automatically deleted? I'm just curious as to what percentage of the hacker news ecosystem would have to flag something to remove it from the front page.
I think an article is deleted when it reaches 10 flags (could be less, not sure) before reaching 10 votes. After 10 votes, it can't be flagged to death anymore.
It would be completely ridiculous to try to remove political discussion from HN.
Politics is involved with _everything_ the world has to offer; and more specifically, politics is fundamentally bound to technology.
The fact that people like making 'cool stuff', will always have a flip-side. We need to be able to talk about the way that technology is utilised and that (necessarily) involves political discussion.
Without this kind of discussion, people involved in the tech industry are destined to become unthinking drones .. consideration of ethics and politics is essential if technology stands any chance of making the world a better place.
Any way you slice it, discussion on ways to bypass scanners is not that relevant to technology. More importantly, there are a large number of sites where 'politics' can be discussed, don't infest a hacker site with it.
Whether you like it or not, technology doesn't happen in a vacuum. Technology relates to people and society in a big way.
When usage of a device (like the millimetre wave scanner) is misguided and unappreciated by a large number of people, why on earth _shouldn't_ it be discussed on a tech forum?
It's not enough to take the view that 'I just make the stuff .. other people can choose whether it's a good idea'.
We all have a responsibility to consider whether what we create is going to result in anything 'good' and what 'good' actually means.
What you're talking about are your opinions and your personal philosophical beliefs of only tangential relevance to technology. Discussing them is not what I signed up here for. You wanna talk about it? I have a reddit account, you know?
Did you read the grandparent comment? The point made was that politics suffuses everything. You can't exclude politics. Robert Heinlein once commented that politics is like peristalsis -- the result isn't very pretty, but it's necessary for life and you ignore it at your peril!
I didn't say you should ignore politics. I read real news, just like other people. I took offense at the parent comment's implication that just because I oppose talking about the TSA on HN that I'm somehow ignorant or amoral. Give me a fucking break, it's about the signal to noise ratio, It's about me being able to regard HN as my 'industry journal' vs random water cooler chat.
I think this type of discussion is much better suited for personal environments. Strike this discussion up at the next HN Meetup in your area, or with your co-workers when you go out for drinks after work. Anonymous discussion of such topics on a news collection website will neither change minds nor produce any constructive debate.
Perhaps you are misunderstanding my post, but I never said that people shouldn't change their minds or debate a subject (in fact I vehemently believe that they should). It's simply this forum is not a constructive place for that type of discussion. Debating online, through anonymous accounts, provides little context towards other people's experiences. Additionally, you lose the nuances of language and body language, which often leads to misunderstandings. Personally, I don't feel it's an effective medium for debate.
Additionally, you lose the nuances of language and body language, which often leads to misunderstandings.
I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't think that's reason to _not_ try to have decent discussions about politics when it relates to technology.
HN already has systems in place which make people pause before replying consecutively, which goes a long way to discouraging flame wars.
In any case, politics doesn't need to be about enforcing a point of view - it's about exploring options.
Net neutrality is almost completely political - should discussion about this be killed?
Copyright legislation is almost completely political - should this be killed too??
Limiting discussion to things which feel 'safe' isn't constructive imo.
Tech stuff can also go around in circles, the problem with just ignoring politics here and talking about it on other sites is that I haven't seen another community that I would rather discuss or hear their opinions on the subject.
In the 2+ years I've been coming to hacker news I don't really feel the subjects have changed, there has always been broader political, economics, education topics on top of tech and startups.
Your point of view doesn't baffle me, because you said this:
"Why shouldn't we be willing to debate and explore a subject in depth?"
Good question! I would be happy to debate and explore political ideas in depth. (That's why I hang around some politically- and economically-focused blogs, and I chat about politics with my friends, and I read the writing of experts.)
But how on earth can you call Hacker News posts about politics "debating" or "exploring a subject in depth?" They are the absolute opposite of depth! Pseudonymous, evanescent discussions, where you stick around for a few hours and a few comments at most; you have no commitment to defend your words or argue sincerely, and half of the commenters don't know what the other half said last week on the same topic. Could you possibly think of a worse format for "debating?"
At the very best I have ever seen, Hacker News debates are someone who sounds smart stating a reasonable-sounding position, and then someone else who sounds smart suggesting that there might be reasonable-sounding problems with the reasonable-sounding position. Then after a dozen posts about the position it's off the front page and forgotten. That is the nature of this medium. Usually, everyone just lines up behind their premeditated arguments and fires upvotes and downvotes at each other until they see another interesting post.
Places that are reasonable for debating and exploring a subject in depth: A small, focused community that's willing to build on their prior discussions over the course of months or years. Talking with friends with whom you have a shared, growing, and conscious context in common. Books, essays, and other long-form prose where you can present your whole position at once. NOT here. At least I've never seen it happen, and I don't see how it could.
I wouldn't want it here with the reason being "so we can have an argument about the merits of net neutrality." I would hope that there would be something concrete, interesting, or new about the arguments presented in the essay, or that some recent current events applied to make it worth noting, and then it would be nice to discuss the interesting new thing.
That may have been true for the first TSA post about backscatter scanners and pat-downs, for example. But it wasn't true for most of the next hundred.
Sure. But one of the excuses for repetition and redundancy in link content is "we can have a discussion about it," and I only think that's a good excuse if it's a good discussion that we haven't had ten times in the past year already.
Or at least .. little to do with banning political discussion.
I fully agree that a subject can only really be discussed a few times before it's boring - and only a few more after that before it becomes downright annoying - but I think this is a separate issue.
Politics is involved with _everything_ the world has to offer
I completely agree, but it is considered impolite on HN to call attention to the fact. Just as it is considered impolite to call too much attention to politics in many parts of real life.
And it is true, of course, that the impossibility of discussing certain issues on HN means that HN is a very poor substitute for the rest of your life. But that's true of any group. You need other communities, other activities, other obsessions than just one.
Well, I suppose that's one explanation for why so many people in society could be described as apathetic lame ducks :)
Perhaps a lot of people would like to question what goes on in the world, but don't wish to offend.
[..] and more specifically, politics is fundamentally bound to technology.
The fact is, technology is closely linked to politics. If you want to convince me that political discussion is out, I think I'd need more than guidelines re. etiquette to stop me ;)
> Politics is involved with _everything_ the world has to offer
There's a difference between something that happens to be politics and touches very directly on subjects germane to this site, and inviting in politics articles of every shape and form.
> Without this kind of discussion, people involved in the tech industry are destined to become unthinking drones
Uh, no we aren't. Our lives do not revolve around this site and many of us manage to think about politics, economics, history, bicycle racing, and many other fascinating topics without discussing them here.
"How to disclose security vulnerabilities" might be appopriate for HN, but "some technology somewhere is being misused" isn't.
Just because something is worth discussing doesn't mean it's appropriate here: I get my politics news from newspapers and my tech news from HN, and I like it that way.
I disagree that everything that is submitted should be related to tech. Opposite is also true, just cause it is related to tech, does not mean it is appropriate.
In any case, here is the official NH policy:
"What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
All I can ask is please, try not to submit/vote up stories which are not particularly related to tech. It's not what I'm interested in discussing in this particular venue.
As a community, is that true, or is it "submit/vote up stories which are not particularly related to technology, startup culture, and programming?" That's my preference, but I also came in a few generations after HN started.
This sentiment, which I would caricature as "the hoi-polloi are polluting our elite discussions" is risible. Enlightenment and insight comes from listening to a variety of sources, not all of them agreeable. Set up your own invite-only community and see how quickly the discussions become stilted and predictable.
It may well be true that the threshold for stories appearing on the front page needs to be revised, but if you only ever read the front page then you are also doing nothing to select stories of quality and relevance to appear there. Perhaps you should personally be doing more to raise the quality of the front page in whatever direction you feel appropriate.
agreed. Matt made some very good points, and i can see arguments for revising the voting scheme. but a long-time poster citing as his #1 issue the problem that "a vocal minority" (whose views he doesn't want to hear) is getting a handful of stories on the front page comes across as very elitist, and so do a lot of the comments in this thread
Enlightenment and insight comes from listening to a variety of sources, not all of them agreeable.
I believe the most appropriate of responses here is, no, not necessarily.
In the end, communities defined and redefine themselves, and they do so constantly. One way to keep the level and content of discussions in acceptable territory is to restate, emphasize or otherwise promote the original purpose of the community. Discussions such as this help, if each party isn't entirely focused on mindlessly arguing with other and actually try to understand where their fellow HN-er is coming from, I suppose.
Keep in mind that the sentiment, as you put it, of the grandparent does not necessarily imply the elitism you so readily cauterize. Like it or not, communities have a narrow focus, at least narrow in the sense that contradicts a sentence like "Politics are ubiquitous!". Insight and enlightenment in this particular area of focus usually has a prerequisite the deep and fundamental familiarity with said subject.
Your point about the front page I liked alot. I noticed I only view the front page, deliberate as that may be. I wonder what gems I might be missing..
This "original purpose" ("charter" perhaps?) is new to me, is it written down anywhere? Don't communities evolve? Aren't they supposed to?
Or are people perhaps bemoaning the current state of HN just like so many old folks complaining that everything is going downhill and "it's not as good as it was in my day?"
I've answered your questions; have you read my post? Some people (eg. OP) merely point out the community is deviating from its focus. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing and it's not complaining rather than introspection of the community. Some people don't like the end result and leave, others stay behind to "evolve" the community.
I don't understand why you're (and others, admittedly) being so fast to condemn the "old folk". Even if you don't agree with their style of writing or their attitude, they have experience (inside the community, of course) you don't and know its issues quite well.
> 6. It removes comments from where they should be, on the destination site.
I think this is the reason Hacker News exists. The comment threads on destination sites are scattered across the Internet and do not bring any one community together. They are also often filled with some of the least desirable commentary possible. Read any of the comments on a Washington Post article, say, for an example of the rubbish that is exceeded only by Youtube commentary.
The Well actually has a discourse level that's comparable or even higher than HN on some subjects, but you need to pay $99 to join. The next discourse level up would be edge.org, but you're not allowed to contribute unless you're already a famous scholar.
After reading this I realize that I still vote up comments I agree with rather than comments that add value to the discussion. Why is it so hard to change your behavior in this regard?
The cases I see most often after reading a comment:
1) I was going to post the same comment. I'll just upvote him instead.
2) I had never thought of that. It makes sense and I agree. I'll upvote him.
Both cases are "I agree". But for 1) If I was going to post the same comment, then I clearly see it as something relevant to say in the discussion. Therefore his post is relevant and should be upvoted. 2) is also a case of something being relevant.
Should I also be spending my time finding things I disagree with but find insightful and upvoting them? Insightful generally falls under category 2.
Basically, agreement and value go hand in hand, and as long as you aren't treating comments like a poll, most if not all of your upvotes should be the result of you agreeing with the comment.
I'm surprised people are so reluctant to use the flag as a downvote, since it has approximately the same effect. I make it a point to visit the 'new' page and use it liberally on TSA articles, political articles, Gruber articles, etc., as well as upvote the sorts of articles I'd like to see on HN.
I think he's just upset about the TSA articles. That point keeps coming up over and over again in his post. It weakens what he has to say.
It's clear he supports the TSA to "stop planes from getting blown up." Since the majority of HN doesn't agree with that sentiment (at least that's how he paints it), he's sort of being a baby about it and quitting because he can't handle disagreement. He masks this fact very thinly in a what is definitely a stereotypical flameout post.
Communities disagree, and they're not all perfect. Nothing new there. If there was no disagreement on HN, it'd be boring.
I'm guessing he's a Myers Briggs "Guardian" type who can't truly respect people he disagrees with :) Lots of people are this way, and it's not really a big deal, but it does explain a lot of the world's problems.
Guardians are also inclined to respect authority, which may also be part of his aversion to anti-TSA stories.
Instead of using Myers-Briggs as a tool for understanding, you've just it to pigeonhole someone based on one negative characteristic (which lets you disregard his opinions) and then blamed his personality type for "a lot of the world's problems."
Tools like Myers-Briggs are great for looking at yourself, understanding your strengths and weaknesses and learning to be a better person. However, when you start using them as weapons, the focus becomes other people's problems. I guess the benefit is you don't have to worry about self-improvement anymore when a personality typing system makes it so convenient to place the blame somewhere else.
Not at all. I simply attempted to explain how the lens of personality is often a useful way to understand someone's motivations which may at first seem highly counter-productive (as Matt's did upon my first reading of his post).
I must admit that I do judge people harshly for several Guardian characteristics, but I realize that those characteristics are also (in many cases) strengths.
Some of us are not fond of the TSA situation, but are vehemently opposed to this site being yet another place on the internet to chat about politics. You can get that elsewhere, but you can't get tech/startups/basically friendly attitude anywhere else I've found so far.
I'm with you on that. I flag articles that are political. That said, the posts about the science behind backscatter radiation, and subsequent discussion on HN, I've enjoyed.
It's clear he supports the TSA to "stop planes from getting blown up." Since the majority of HN doesn't agree with that sentiment (at least that's how he paints it), he's sort of being a baby about it and quitting because he can't handle disagreement.
This is an absolutely ridiculous, trollish statement. It bears no obvious relationship to the blog post linked. Do you actually believe this? If so, why?
On the one hand, he spends an entire multiple-page blog article mentioning reasons why he thinks the general quality of the site is poor, none of which have any direct connection to the TSA. On the other hand, he mentions the TSA by name twice. Which is more likely to be his primary concern?
I'm sure that if you try hard enough, you can read hidden, shameful motives into everything people write, but it's damn rude to use that as an excuse for ignoring what they actually wrote.
The TSA articles are annoying noise that undermine HN. Unless it's discussing the technology of the devices or heuristics of algorithms used to analyze it, it's pop political garbage that belongs on Reddit.
Though I'll disagree with him on one thing: HN should be more elitist, not less. HN's distinction was once that it really was where the smart technology people were. Of course once it gets that rep the hanger ons follow, and soon they're the ones stamping their feet and yapping about the TSA or even North and South Korea -- those are nice, calming, accessible topics, and it's how every community driven site, without oversight, eventually drifts to the mean.
He's been here almost 10 times as long as you have. I wouldn't be so quick to blow him off.
At the moment, nine people have voted up a comment on Matt's story that asserts that Matt's real issue is that he supports the TSA. I think that supports his point somewhat.
I agree with all the TSA articles on HN. I have also flagged all of them, because they're obviously preaching to the choir, and per the site guidelines, they're not specifically interesting for hackers.
I still don't understand why guys like this will complain about quality and then say that they don't flag anything!
Upvotes move posts up. Flags move posts down, and if you get a ton of them, it even makes the post disappear. That's all there is to it! What does it matter whether it's called a flag or a downvote?
You're missing his point about flagging. Flagging is for trolls, spam, etc. It isn't a 'downvote'. He wants downvoting to be the opposite of upvoting, meaning 'I don't like this' or 'I disagree with this'.
As Matt himself says, it is a nuance that is lost on most.
When you use it, it moves posts down, which is exactly the opposite of upvoting! The nuance is lost on me. I don't see why we would be provided with something that acts exactly like a downvote would act, and then expected to use it differently than a downvote.
I also draw no distinction between "spam" and "a link to someone's blog about how they were patted down at the airport." I would just as soon read about free Viagra and watches.
Flagging is also for things that are off-topic. If he's sick of 20 TSA stories every day, I don't think the flag is the wrong option. I personally flag things I see that are merely political.
Yes, and a Vice Grips is not a very good wrench, unless you are stuck on the side of the road and have nothing else. Is this nuance or unnecessary idealism? :)
A TSA worker, to them, is not some guy without a college degree who is feeding his family, he’s an amoral pawn of an evil bureaucracy that exists solely to ensure that peaceful Americans have to get their junk touched by the back of someone’s hand before boarding a plane.
I got eviscerated for suggesting an alternative to berating the front-line TSA workers. To repeat, they are working hard, in a shitty job, to feed their families. They are following the rule they're given, and have no input to the process. Treating them like shit isn't the answer.
The ideology is often anti-corporate to the point of naiveté, and that’s nothing compared to how anti-government it is.
This seems to be a problem in any tech community. Maybe the larger percentage of Asperger-like folks?
Looks like you got eviscerated for bragging about not reading the article and calling the author a 'douche.' Also, you didn't suggest an alternative to berating TSA workers, you suggested that such alternatives existed, and only in an edit to the original post.
I can respect their need for work. Everybody needs to survive. The issue is what they are willing to do to survive.
Are they going to actively participate in throwing their fellow citizens under the bus? Can you respect that?
Do you respect thieves, debt collectors (not the "call you on the phone" kind), domain squatters, or crack dealers? (Yes I did lump domain squatters in there. As a group, they are scum.) They are all just doing what they can to make ends meet. It doesn't mean one can't expect them to have some perspective on the morality of such methods of survival.
Every single citizen is responsible for the safeguarding of our collective rights and freedoms. There are no excuses.
I'm not sure it's the specific issue of TSO decorum that Matt is trying to communicate, so much as it is the perceived lack of life experience and corresponding biases that HN commenters appear to bring to issues like this. We do, in the large, sound like a bunch of 17 year olds when we talk about the TSA.
I disagree with Matt about TSOs, but I think that's probably survivable. What might be less survivable is the fact that a group of people who are overwhelmingly privileged young male knowledge workers are spending time talking about politics at all. This is a crappy place to talk about politics. Discussions seem to invariably devolve to Rand-ian libertarian software developer vs. WTO protester software developers.
Where's a better place? I watch CSpan on occassion, and the Hill is a much worse place. Political discussions tend to devolve, but so do discussions about Microsoft, Google, Apple, RoR, Python, typing, editors, IDEs, paradigms, SLC, etc...
With that said, everyone has to decide where to spend their time. And everyone has a preference as to what kind of discussions they prefer to have. I hope Matt finds a great community whereever he ends up going.
Finding a better place to talk about politics is not HN's problem; politics is specifically called out as off-topic in the site guidelines.
I don't think you'd keep someone with Matt Maroon's portfolio of complaints just by eliminating politics; after all, people do also write pointless comments about Apple. But that doesn't mean the politics stories aren't a correctible deficiency in the site.
Finding a better place to talk about politics is not HN's problem
To be clear, I was simply responding to something you said. You gave the impression that it was the quality of political discussion, not simply that it was against the rules.
A simple way to avoid problems would be to require all submissions to have code in the body of the text. The broad notion of "hacker" is too broad to be useful, IMO.
hmm, i haven't seen a lot of WTO protester types here ...
there certainly are a lot of privileged male knowledge workers here. that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad place to talk about politics, though. it depends a lot on your goals.
It bothers me that three people have (as I perceived it) now commented on this thread suggesting that there's nothing wrong with talking politics on HN. That's a shift in the norms of the site. We're talking about something that is specifically called out in the guidelines as off-topic.
No wonder there are so many TSA stories on the front page.
Is it true that there's a secret spinoff site, called 'Flouncer News', to which you only receive an invite if your public "I'm quitting HN" post makes it to the top HN position?
239 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 271 ms ] threadProbably the worst part is the time-sink and the predictable nature of the comments. Most of the time I can tell from the title what all the comments are going to be like. Anybody that tries to swim against the stream, if only a little bit, can be mercilessly punished. In fact, it's somewhat of a game to see how even-handed I can make a thread -- human hacking. Which makes it even more of a time sink.
HN has changed for me from being a site where I can hang out with fellow hackers to being a site where people I like hang out and spend too much of their time. I'm trying very hard not to make the same mistake. Hopefully I won't be joining Matt. (Lunch is over. Back to work)
That Matt's blog post made the front page is a case in point.
I don't know. Do you monitor the 'new' page at all? The SNR there is certainly worse, but I do come across submissions I enjoy far more than practically anything on the front page these days. I realise that submission quality is subjective; I guess the community's average opinion on this has diverged far enough from mine that the front page isn't doing it for me anymore. Due to the low SNR (and rate of change) on the 'new' page, consuming HN via it is even more time consuming than normal.
I do catch myself idly looking through front page discussions and even commenting, but there is zero intellectual value in it most of the time. At least I don't upvote the stories.
/classic is slightly better on the surface. (currently 6 upvoted stories by me vs 3 on the frontpage) Unfortunately, submissions seem to hang around there for longer than on the frontpage, so it's like a distilled version of the front page's top 60 into 30, not a truly different set.
The time sink factor is also obvious. However, I tend to swing back and forth between very productive and not very productive. When I am in a coding mood I rarely browse HN or comment and instead I hack like crazy for hours every day. When I am burned out or feeling like I need a break from chasing some bug I'll stop by here and read.
So the time sink aspect is doable for me at least. No one can work constantly, without any breaks, and maintain their sanity.
I disagree with HNers(mostly because I offered radical opinions) all the time. Sometime I get downvoted, sometime I got lot of points. There will alway be assholes who downvote people for simply disagreeing but they're outweighed by people who vote me up for adding to the conversation.
That's too bad, because you can.
Stop worrying about your karma.
Naturally the reverse is also true and you can't help but not want either number to fall. In my case at least these feelings are involuntary, despite the fact that I know these are pretty much worthless numbers. (Except for the fact that karma average does effect the weight of your votes.)
I have noticed this and unfortunately have to agree with this observation. I wonder what principle (teaching) lets hackernews people behave like that.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126923
Perhaps I'm just sensitive because I grew up poor, and perhaps they're not because they never, ever had to. But, it seems that they haven't even traveled outside their comfort zones to at least take a peek at the "other half". Because of that, most of them have "common sense" solutions that are about as "let them eat cake" as can be without actually coming out and saying that (such as "just go out and get a job! I have one, and I'm fine!").
Unfortunately, that won't change here. Entrepreneurs, by our very nature, need to be cool to these sorts of fundamental problems (unless that's our problem space); we simply need to hunker down, eyes on our work, and barrel forth.
http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-...
I suspect this is endemic to many (most?) community sites, especially as they grow. HN is no exception.
> 5. It’s a time suck. That one’s self-explanatory to anyone who has used the site.
So does the rest of the Internet.
> 6. It removes comments from where they should be, on the destination site.
Many sites linked to from Hacker News, like Daring Fireball, do not support commenting. Others require user registration. Either way, I read the HN comments on an article first, every time, and I use that discussion to help me evaluate if I even want to read the source article.
> 7. It reduces blogging time.
So does the rest of the Internet.
http://www.bluefroggaming.com/company
I respect trying to get more time out of your day (RescueTime helps). But it seems here Matt has found an issue (TSA backlash) that is helping him go cold turkey. Since it is public resignation, it may help him regain some of his productive time.
If noone knows you quit, you can come back on Monday with no consequence.
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/
If you feel a need to discuss it, perhaps that would be a more appropriate forum?
Not to mention featuring on sites like cnn.com. It's a pretty big issue that is certainly not "startups" or "tech". Yeah, there's tech involved, but the issue is how does society believe it should be used: politics.
Startups can be very hacker-oriented, however forming a startup to sell out to a large corp. in the end is very anti-hacker in my opinion. But you don't see people complaining about every startup article on the site. The reality seems to be that the site attracts a cross section of visitors.
Resisting unjust searches and ridiculous security theatre procedures is hacking. The fact that it is also political is irrelevant. I have a hard time understanding a mentality where these issues are not considered interesting or important as they affect our most basic rights. Is your startup or your tech really worth anything without freedom?
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFLPn30dvQ
I'm not complaining --- this is probably a fine policy. But it does complicate how one reads Matt's post. I think that HN actually does a lot behind the scenes to promote a better community, which is what keeps it as good as it is.
EDIT: pg's comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934367 describes the reason why -- they're being autotagged as "political" and a penalty applies
Open source is open source. It is not gun rights/free speech/right to privacy/any number of other things that are important, but are not open source.
Also, "myopic" presumes that I am not interested in politics. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, I dearly wish to keep it out of this site.
There is a strong commitment by the community to prevent the site becoming like digg, reddit, or slashdot. Losing focus on the topics that brought us here in the first place (technology, startup culture, and programming) is the first step on that path in my opinion.
All I can ask is please, try not to submit/vote up stories which are not particularly related to tech. It's not what I'm interested in discussing in this particular venue.
Or maybe I'm just in the minority. I guess time will tell.
P.S. Just because you put the word "Hacker" in your article/title, doesn't mean it belongs here.
Which itself is a problem because the threshold is so low. By even the most conservative estimates there are thousands of people visiting the site every day yet it only takes a handful or so to get an item to the front page.
So even if 99.5% of the people here make a "strong commitment" as you put it the front page will still be flooded with all those TSA stories
As you say, currently there's no way to say "there's nothing interesting on the front page" even if a majority think that.
Politics is involved with _everything_ the world has to offer; and more specifically, politics is fundamentally bound to technology.
The fact that people like making 'cool stuff', will always have a flip-side. We need to be able to talk about the way that technology is utilised and that (necessarily) involves political discussion.
Without this kind of discussion, people involved in the tech industry are destined to become unthinking drones .. consideration of ethics and politics is essential if technology stands any chance of making the world a better place.
Whether you like it or not, technology doesn't happen in a vacuum. Technology relates to people and society in a big way.
When usage of a device (like the millimetre wave scanner) is misguided and unappreciated by a large number of people, why on earth _shouldn't_ it be discussed on a tech forum?
It's not enough to take the view that 'I just make the stuff .. other people can choose whether it's a good idea'.
We all have a responsibility to consider whether what we create is going to result in anything 'good' and what 'good' actually means.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+i...
.. or are you claiming you only express facts ;)
Your point of view completely baffles me.
But clearly, you disagree with me.
I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't think that's reason to _not_ try to have decent discussions about politics when it relates to technology.
HN already has systems in place which make people pause before replying consecutively, which goes a long way to discouraging flame wars.
In any case, politics doesn't need to be about enforcing a point of view - it's about exploring options.
Net neutrality is almost completely political - should discussion about this be killed?
Copyright legislation is almost completely political - should this be killed too??
Limiting discussion to things which feel 'safe' isn't constructive imo.
For instance:
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?as_q=legitimate+use+o...
I'm sure it's possible to dig up more examples.
It just goes around and around and around. Please leave us our wonderful site for tech and startups and take the politics elsewhere.
I don't think it's a fair comparison.
Politics can directly relate to tech and startups.
In the 2+ years I've been coming to hacker news I don't really feel the subjects have changed, there has always been broader political, economics, education topics on top of tech and startups.
"Why shouldn't we be willing to debate and explore a subject in depth?"
Good question! I would be happy to debate and explore political ideas in depth. (That's why I hang around some politically- and economically-focused blogs, and I chat about politics with my friends, and I read the writing of experts.)
But how on earth can you call Hacker News posts about politics "debating" or "exploring a subject in depth?" They are the absolute opposite of depth! Pseudonymous, evanescent discussions, where you stick around for a few hours and a few comments at most; you have no commitment to defend your words or argue sincerely, and half of the commenters don't know what the other half said last week on the same topic. Could you possibly think of a worse format for "debating?"
At the very best I have ever seen, Hacker News debates are someone who sounds smart stating a reasonable-sounding position, and then someone else who sounds smart suggesting that there might be reasonable-sounding problems with the reasonable-sounding position. Then after a dozen posts about the position it's off the front page and forgotten. That is the nature of this medium. Usually, everyone just lines up behind their premeditated arguments and fires upvotes and downvotes at each other until they see another interesting post.
Places that are reasonable for debating and exploring a subject in depth: A small, focused community that's willing to build on their prior discussions over the course of months or years. Talking with friends with whom you have a shared, growing, and conscious context in common. Books, essays, and other long-form prose where you can present your whole position at once. NOT here. At least I've never seen it happen, and I don't see how it could.
So if someone wrote an essay about net-neutrality (which is almost entirely a political issue), that shouldn't be posted or discussed here?
That may have been true for the first TSA post about backscatter scanners and pat-downs, for example. But it wasn't true for most of the next hundred.
Or at least .. little to do with banning political discussion.
I fully agree that a subject can only really be discussed a few times before it's boring - and only a few more after that before it becomes downright annoying - but I think this is a separate issue.
I completely agree, but it is considered impolite on HN to call attention to the fact. Just as it is considered impolite to call too much attention to politics in many parts of real life.
And it is true, of course, that the impossibility of discussing certain issues on HN means that HN is a very poor substitute for the rest of your life. But that's true of any group. You need other communities, other activities, other obsessions than just one.
Well, I suppose that's one explanation for why so many people in society could be described as apathetic lame ducks :)
Perhaps a lot of people would like to question what goes on in the world, but don't wish to offend.
[..] and more specifically, politics is fundamentally bound to technology.
The fact is, technology is closely linked to politics. If you want to convince me that political discussion is out, I think I'd need more than guidelines re. etiquette to stop me ;)
There's a difference between something that happens to be politics and touches very directly on subjects germane to this site, and inviting in politics articles of every shape and form.
> Without this kind of discussion, people involved in the tech industry are destined to become unthinking drones
Uh, no we aren't. Our lives do not revolve around this site and many of us manage to think about politics, economics, history, bicycle racing, and many other fascinating topics without discussing them here.
Just because something is worth discussing doesn't mean it's appropriate here: I get my politics news from newspapers and my tech news from HN, and I like it that way.
In any case, here is the official NH policy:
"What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
As a community, is that true, or is it "submit/vote up stories which are not particularly related to technology, startup culture, and programming?" That's my preference, but I also came in a few generations after HN started.
It may well be true that the threshold for stories appearing on the front page needs to be revised, but if you only ever read the front page then you are also doing nothing to select stories of quality and relevance to appear there. Perhaps you should personally be doing more to raise the quality of the front page in whatever direction you feel appropriate.
And yes, I am a newcomer.
I believe the most appropriate of responses here is, no, not necessarily.
In the end, communities defined and redefine themselves, and they do so constantly. One way to keep the level and content of discussions in acceptable territory is to restate, emphasize or otherwise promote the original purpose of the community. Discussions such as this help, if each party isn't entirely focused on mindlessly arguing with other and actually try to understand where their fellow HN-er is coming from, I suppose.
Keep in mind that the sentiment, as you put it, of the grandparent does not necessarily imply the elitism you so readily cauterize. Like it or not, communities have a narrow focus, at least narrow in the sense that contradicts a sentence like "Politics are ubiquitous!". Insight and enlightenment in this particular area of focus usually has a prerequisite the deep and fundamental familiarity with said subject.
Your point about the front page I liked alot. I noticed I only view the front page, deliberate as that may be. I wonder what gems I might be missing..
Or are people perhaps bemoaning the current state of HN just like so many old folks complaining that everything is going downhill and "it's not as good as it was in my day?"
I've answered your questions; have you read my post? Some people (eg. OP) merely point out the community is deviating from its focus. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing and it's not complaining rather than introspection of the community. Some people don't like the end result and leave, others stay behind to "evolve" the community.
I don't understand why you're (and others, admittedly) being so fast to condemn the "old folk". Even if you don't agree with their style of writing or their attitude, they have experience (inside the community, of course) you don't and know its issues quite well.
[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Nonetheless, I find it incredibly helpful to take a critical look at the communities I am a part of and the thinking that pervades them.
I think this is the reason Hacker News exists. The comment threads on destination sites are scattered across the Internet and do not bring any one community together. They are also often filled with some of the least desirable commentary possible. Read any of the comments on a Washington Post article, say, for an example of the rubbish that is exceeded only by Youtube commentary.
1) I was going to post the same comment. I'll just upvote him instead.
2) I had never thought of that. It makes sense and I agree. I'll upvote him.
Both cases are "I agree". But for 1) If I was going to post the same comment, then I clearly see it as something relevant to say in the discussion. Therefore his post is relevant and should be upvoted. 2) is also a case of something being relevant.
Should I also be spending my time finding things I disagree with but find insightful and upvoting them? Insightful generally falls under category 2.
Basically, agreement and value go hand in hand, and as long as you aren't treating comments like a poll, most if not all of your upvotes should be the result of you agreeing with the comment.
Let me know when the community is full of libertarian nutcases, rather than ideologue hating HNers.
It's clear he supports the TSA to "stop planes from getting blown up." Since the majority of HN doesn't agree with that sentiment (at least that's how he paints it), he's sort of being a baby about it and quitting because he can't handle disagreement. He masks this fact very thinly in a what is definitely a stereotypical flameout post.
Communities disagree, and they're not all perfect. Nothing new there. If there was no disagreement on HN, it'd be boring.
Guardians are also inclined to respect authority, which may also be part of his aversion to anti-TSA stories.
Tools like Myers-Briggs are great for looking at yourself, understanding your strengths and weaknesses and learning to be a better person. However, when you start using them as weapons, the focus becomes other people's problems. I guess the benefit is you don't have to worry about self-improvement anymore when a personality typing system makes it so convenient to place the blame somewhere else.
I must admit that I do judge people harshly for several Guardian characteristics, but I realize that those characteristics are also (in many cases) strengths.
This is an absolutely ridiculous, trollish statement. It bears no obvious relationship to the blog post linked. Do you actually believe this? If so, why?
I'm sure that if you try hard enough, you can read hidden, shameful motives into everything people write, but it's damn rude to use that as an excuse for ignoring what they actually wrote.
The TSA articles are annoying noise that undermine HN. Unless it's discussing the technology of the devices or heuristics of algorithms used to analyze it, it's pop political garbage that belongs on Reddit.
Though I'll disagree with him on one thing: HN should be more elitist, not less. HN's distinction was once that it really was where the smart technology people were. Of course once it gets that rep the hanger ons follow, and soon they're the ones stamping their feet and yapping about the TSA or even North and South Korea -- those are nice, calming, accessible topics, and it's how every community driven site, without oversight, eventually drifts to the mean.
At the moment, nine people have voted up a comment on Matt's story that asserts that Matt's real issue is that he supports the TSA. I think that supports his point somewhat.
Upvotes move posts up. Flags move posts down, and if you get a ton of them, it even makes the post disappear. That's all there is to it! What does it matter whether it's called a flag or a downvote?
As Matt himself says, it is a nuance that is lost on most.
I also draw no distinction between "spam" and "a link to someone's blog about how they were patted down at the airport." I would just as soon read about free Viagra and watches.
A TSA worker, to them, is not some guy without a college degree who is feeding his family, he’s an amoral pawn of an evil bureaucracy that exists solely to ensure that peaceful Americans have to get their junk touched by the back of someone’s hand before boarding a plane.
I got eviscerated for suggesting an alternative to berating the front-line TSA workers. To repeat, they are working hard, in a shitty job, to feed their families. They are following the rule they're given, and have no input to the process. Treating them like shit isn't the answer.
The ideology is often anti-corporate to the point of naiveté, and that’s nothing compared to how anti-government it is.
This seems to be a problem in any tech community. Maybe the larger percentage of Asperger-like folks?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1902057
Looks like you got eviscerated for bragging about not reading the article and calling the author a 'douche.' Also, you didn't suggest an alternative to berating TSA workers, you suggested that such alternatives existed, and only in an edit to the original post.
Are they going to actively participate in throwing their fellow citizens under the bus? Can you respect that?
Do you respect thieves, debt collectors (not the "call you on the phone" kind), domain squatters, or crack dealers? (Yes I did lump domain squatters in there. As a group, they are scum.) They are all just doing what they can to make ends meet. It doesn't mean one can't expect them to have some perspective on the morality of such methods of survival.
Every single citizen is responsible for the safeguarding of our collective rights and freedoms. There are no excuses.
I disagree with Matt about TSOs, but I think that's probably survivable. What might be less survivable is the fact that a group of people who are overwhelmingly privileged young male knowledge workers are spending time talking about politics at all. This is a crappy place to talk about politics. Discussions seem to invariably devolve to Rand-ian libertarian software developer vs. WTO protester software developers.
Where's a better place? I watch CSpan on occassion, and the Hill is a much worse place. Political discussions tend to devolve, but so do discussions about Microsoft, Google, Apple, RoR, Python, typing, editors, IDEs, paradigms, SLC, etc...
With that said, everyone has to decide where to spend their time. And everyone has a preference as to what kind of discussions they prefer to have. I hope Matt finds a great community whereever he ends up going.
I don't think you'd keep someone with Matt Maroon's portfolio of complaints just by eliminating politics; after all, people do also write pointless comments about Apple. But that doesn't mean the politics stories aren't a correctible deficiency in the site.
To be clear, I was simply responding to something you said. You gave the impression that it was the quality of political discussion, not simply that it was against the rules.
A simple way to avoid problems would be to require all submissions to have code in the body of the text. The broad notion of "hacker" is too broad to be useful, IMO.
there certainly are a lot of privileged male knowledge workers here. that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad place to talk about politics, though. it depends a lot on your goals.
No wonder there are so many TSA stories on the front page.
"The term “evil” (the silliest and most counterproductive word to enter tech discussions ever) is thrown about haphazardly."
Interesting observation. Haven't seen it here before. Was there some talk about this on HN?
Looking forward to seeing you back soon under a new account name, Matt.