You can't really compare skate-boarding critics to 'nerds' behind a screen.
For 1, the reason we have so much of this is because of the anonymity of it all. It's quite easy to criticise others in an abusive manner when nobody/barely anybody knows who you are. In real life that wouldn't happen to such a degree.
but why this is happening? why people have that trait of behaving like this when they are confident about anonymity? probably it's consequence of problems in teenage-hood, or something. and adding to this topic, i'm also curious about reasons why people are 'trolling', especially when their 'trolling' is offensive, angry. and i have no clue what causes that behavior..
Actually, the bit about being a jerk behind anonymity isn't particular to nerds: studies show it cutting across pretty much all walks of life. That doesn't excuse the nerds, but it does mean that examining the problem in the context of nerds alone probably isn't very useful. Nobody is immune, and as it turns out, nerds are not especially susceptible. Whatever causes this, it speaks to something much more universal than nerddom.
In a way I suppose because it's easy. A lot of people are unsure of themselves and feel better after they tell someone else just how dumb he is. The thought is: "Gee, I 'm not so dumb, just look at that guy!" Most designers I know tend to be unsure deep inside. Nerds? Could be just the same.
Is it anonymity, or is it the venue? As I type this I do not particularly feel like I am talking directly to you, rather leaving a mark for future readers to stumble upon, so to speak, under the context you have set.
I am thinking about what other people would want to read, not how you personally might feel about what I say. I expect that leads to things said that would not be said if I were speaking directly to you, such as in an email, for instance.
I don't know if that fully explains offensive and angry posts, but that could simply be a matter of someone having a bad day and wanting the world to know it.
Most of the people I work with (professionally and personally) are perpetually self-critical despite being very intelligent and more than capable. The humility comes from growth over time and being able to remember doing work they'd consider terribly flawed today. If you're working with arrogant people, they're probably not growing and it'll make it harder for you to as well.
I took it to be more about nerds online. I haven't met too many people face to face that are even a tenth as rude as 90% of the people I see online. Of course, I arbitrarily picked those numbers. I'm going to point that out before I get flamed.
Louis CK touched upon this in his "Oh MY God" show on HBO. Empirically speaking, people tend to act with less accountability when they're inside of cars, behind protective barriers, including the internet.
I like it to a degree, the 'geek' culture (how I hate typing that) cuts through bullshit faster than others.
I don't mind being insulted if it comes with a helpful suggestion. I LOVE IRC channels where you get the answers: "You're shit for asking that question, but the answer is X".
Yeah, I don't mind some heavy criticism at all when it's deserved-- but not everyone can take critism as well.
I don't know if this is true, but the stereotype of geeks is that they lack "emotional intelligence". I think it's important to recognize the people we talk to on irc, news lists, etc. are people too and it's important to be truthful & helpful, not just needlessly hurtful.
That works sometimes, even many times. However, it assumes good-faith, rational, and informed discussion: three qualifications that do not always apply. When they don't, civil discourse breaks down into precisely the sort of thing that needs to be cut through.
It can easily be argued that nerd culture takes this too far, reaching for the metaphorical cutting blade long before it is truly necessary. I'd agree with that statement, in fact. But nerd culture's refusal to treat it as a non-option is one of the major reasons we've proven so effective at getting things done and, in so doing, effecting change. Is this dickish? Sometimes, yes; even often. That doesn't mean it's never appropriate.
I totally agree, there is always room for constructive criticism, but it should be tempered with a soft hand and helpful suggestions. As a person who was picked on most of my life, it's pretty disheartening to endure the same thing inside a group I consider my community.
I'm glad the OP brought this up and I think its an important topic for the HN 'community'. Innovation loves support. When innovation is supported, you get more innovation.
On several occasions, I've seen a poor soul post a project on here that represents a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. There will be enthusiastic support, constructive criticism, and often too many haters. I'd love it if the haters left -- maybe all head off to hate picnic or something where they can spit pickles at each other.
Perhaps a basic issue is that people say things in online commentary that they wouldn't say face to face. I think that's fundamentally wrong and mostly accidental -- a result of people's cognitive models not catching up to what's actually happening. Thanks for listening :)
>Innovation loves support. When innovation is supported, you get more innovation.
The same thing can be said for mediocrity and outright regressions.
>people say things in online commentary that they wouldn't say face to face.
This is definitely often true, but not usually. I'm nicer online than I am in person, because in person I can smile, apologize, and make goofy faces to blunt honest criticism. Online, all I have is smileys and exclamation points, which make you read like a wide-eyed idiot, but don't always make you read like a nice wide-eyed idiot:)
Nerds generally aren't any more mature than jocks. We just don't fight as well, so we (wisely) keep quiet in situations where the risk of eating a knuckle sammich is high.
The appropriateness of this showing up on Hacker News, the Internet's favorite dream killer in Show HN threads and perpetual contest to see who can be most correct in comments, should be lost upon no one.
If you participate here -- myself included -- this is a message to heed.
In my day, the internet was for porn. Now it's for porn AND self-righteous lectures about how many hugs everyone deserves because they're an 'innovator' or 'female' or 'lgbt' or 'autistic.'
Welcome to HN. I'd rate that troll 2/10, as it was a pretty obvious troll for a community of smart people. Hopefully nobody here would bite on something so obvious; that might have worked better on Reddit.
I agree. I think the worst of HN comes out whenever anyone submits a personal blog post.
If you read the comments for ANY blog post submitted, you will see how it has become a giant game to discredit everything the author says. I think it's good to be skeptical, and as nerds we have plenty of skepticism to go around, but there are ways to be do it with a little more taste and respect.
I've been looking at some of the profiles of the main cynics I see time and time again and they have like 6000 karma, but only 3 submissions in their entire lives. Crazy to think they just get all of that karma from tearing down other people's work while not creating anything themselves.
From reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, I think it boils down to self importance. We like to put others down because it makes us feel more important. If you recognize and let go of that desire as the book tells you to do, you can use the phenomenon to your advantage instead, and you learn that making others feel important makes you win them over.
This post is extremely stupid. What is this, the first grade? If you can't take honest criticism, you suck. If you think computer technology is full of mean people, try working in finance. My peers don't hesitate to give me honest criticism and that's one of the things I like most about CS. Maybe you should start your own company called "we should be super nice to each other all the time" and have your product be an email subscription service where your clients receive affirmations like "you are a skilled person with value and you have a cute chin" along with some heart graphics and sound effects.
If you think computer technology is full of mean people, try working in finance.
Finance: saying "you fucked up" means "I respect you enough to offer honest criticism, and here's what you did that I don't like."
Tech startup: saying "you're awesome" means "I'd slit your throat for a 0.05%[0] more in equity. You're awesome because I'll get promoted at your expense."
[0] A nickel. As in, Shadow from FF6 and "He'd slit his mama's throat for..."
Can't we give honest feedback without going into an epic fit of nerd rage over it?
Besides, the worst fights I see among programmers are over trivial matters of opinion anyway. Ever seen people fight over indentation styles, or the proper way to merge upstream changes into a local git repository, or whether functional or object-oriented programming is the One True Way?
The anger in these debates isn't teaching anyone a damn thing, except that the color of someone else's bike shed is really, really important to some people.
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.
Though in all seriousness, I've seen closed questions provide a lot of good information on something in their answers despite people feeling the question wasn't a good fit. In some ways it's like closing a question is a form of what the article is talking about, though I do understand the need for those rules on there.
The worst thing that can happen to a Show HN post is people totally ignoring it. When I post something of my own here, I expect a certain amount of honesty and criticism, as long as it is constructive.
Being "constructive" does not mean being congratulatory, shoulder-patting, praising, or anything like that. It means that the feedback itself should provide some kind of value, preferably for the benefit of the project creator.
"What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
Meta discussions can also be OK.
The infamous "does the world really need another X", almost invariably deserves the answer "yes, why not?".
Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
As the article stated, comments in the form of "Y U MD5 STOOPID" is never OK and generally don't do anything to raise the level of the discourse. As a general guideline, comments designed to make the commenter look good or smart or superior do not usually improve the quality of the discussion, even though mods sometimes tend to reward this behavior for some reason. They shouldn't.
> "What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
> Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
By my reading, these two statements contradict each other. The quote you claim is not constructive seems to me to be saying the author sees no value in the hypothetical contribution, as it offers no additional power and less convenience than what he already uses, and therefore he won't be using it. Isn't that exactly what say is constructive in the second statement I quoted? If I'm misunderstanding you here, can you explain what I'm missing?
That first example was from a specific thread that actually happened when someone made a command-line tool, and the whole discussion was incredibly unproductive and full of "look at me, I solved this eons ago, this developer sucks" messages. You're probably right there is a fine line between those two, but they are not identical. It's the difference between saying why you wouldn't necessarily use something on the one hand, and showing off while berating someone on the other.
Asserting that a project's existence is unjustified is a bold and unfriendly claim. Saying that it's simly not for you is another matter entirely.
As an example, this would be a constructive way of saying something similar in my opinion, though some may still find it close to the line:
"I have found my own solution to this problem that involves piping these commands together, so this project isn't for me, but good job for creating a simpler solution for people who don't necessarily need control over every step of the solution, but rather just care about the final result."
This indicates why it's not useful for the poster, but it acknowledges that not everyone is a CLI genius and that the new solution could work for people with different tools requirements.
> "What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
> I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
I think you're confusing critique with mentorship. What you're expecting is something wise to be said, or at least something useful to you. Critique is not necessarily like that. Critique is encompassing pretty much everything that others answer you freely, like it or not.
Seriously, America is going to drown in shoulder-patting and hooray cheering. This taboo on negative opinions is ridiculous. We're teaching entire generations that we cannot fail as long as we try hard enough, and that it's the attempt that counts. Seriously, screw that.
It is a vital skill to be able to filter through feedback, take the useful parts to heart, and shrug about low, nasty, useless comments. To learn from mistakes and do better next time. Why is that bad?
Sure, we should attempt to stop the low/nasty/useless feedback, but that's not so clear cut as we'd like it to be. Until we figure out a clear line, I'd prefer honest (and sometimes nasty) feedback over a culture of non-stop shoulder patting.
"....it's the attempt that counts. Seriously, screw that."
"To learn from mistakes and do better next time. Why is that bad?"
You said both things. Attempting does not mean you will always succeed. You could still fail but it does matter that you tried. And sure, you learn from mistakes and do better. So I would say that don't screw the attempting part. Also, you are probably being a little hard on this post by saying "shoulder patting".
I come to HN precisely because the comments are incisive and questioning. It's a breath of fresh air and trains me to analyze ideas more effectively. If that makes me an "anti-social curmudgeon" by society's capricious standards, then so be it.
> I'd prefer honest (and sometimes nasty) feedback over a culture of non-stop shoulder patting.
No one is suggesting a never ending hug fest of positive comments. But criticism should be constructive. You might not care that all feedback is on the level of idiotic YouTube comments, but that's a toxic environment and it's causing harm to the Internet. A bunch of projects would have more volunteers if they weren't such hateful environments.
I think this is a false dichotomy. You can refuse to accept sub-par performance without being an asshole. You can help a person get better at something without making sure they know how much better/smarter/awesomer you are than they are. You can be critical while still having empathy.
And that, IMO, is the problem. Whatever it is that draws us to computers seems to select very well for poor empathy. I've spent 20 years actively trying to be more empathetic, and I still suck at it. For people who don't care, you wind up with the kind of behavior TFA talks about (and that I see echoed in your response).
Every excuse I've ever seen comes down to "I didn't care enough about the other person's feelings to put any extra effort into my communication." We aren't robots. Feelings matter.
This isn't the sort of thing author is talking about.
We're talking about the nasty, mean-spirited, no-holds-barred evisceration of each other by hiding behind the guise of criticism.
Take a few days ago:
"GitHub Gracious Helps Female Programmers Cower in Fear"[1]
Nobody is saying you have to agree with everything GitHub does re: sexism, or that they are above criticism. Nobody is saying you should be patting everyone on the back and giving gold stars for effort.
But what is that, really? You couldn't just say "this is wrong and doesn't help" or "your solution makes the problem worse"? No, author in this case had to go with the most needlessly inflammatory, mean-spirited, and downright asshole-ish comment possible.
Presentation matters. Criticism wrapped in vitriol becomes just vitriol, and vitriol wrapped in criticism still doesn't become good criticism.
Disagree away, but the way the geek community behaves it's clear many members take a perverse glee in eviscerating each other via "criticism". We revel in others being wrong, and we positively wet ourselves at the opportunity to point out this wrongness with gusto and vitriol. This perversity is what the author was railing against, not your ability to disagree in general.
> Presentation matters. Criticism wrapped in vitriol becomes just vitriol, and vitriol wrapped in criticism still doesn't become good criticism.
As if it would help you prove your point, that's completely braindead. What you describe is just a different form of shooting the messenger; you don't like the way they said it so you ignore what they said. For example if I point out your solution is N^2 and you're an idiot for doing it that way instead of N log N you may not be an idiot, but the solution is still a bad one.
If vitriol is the motive for the criticism then by banning the vitriol you've also lost the criticism. This is really a huge problem for Hacker News; by banning unkind critics they've lost a lot of actual criticism. The result is HN exists in a bubble of trends and fads because the people who take glee in deflating them get banned.
> [GitHub Gracious Helps Female Programmers Cower in Fear]... author in this case had to go with the most needlessly inflammatory, mean-spirited, and downright asshole-ish comment possible.
This is a good example, but not of what you think. The content of the blog is reasonably and calmly presented, but if you throw that away because of the flame title then you've lost that.
> "but if you throw that away because of the flame title then you've lost that"
Yes, and rightfully so. I have no problems with the author's views, I have every problem with people being assholes and douchebags with each other.
I have zero qualms about missing the thoughts of people who haven't the least modicum of respect for their fellow man. I don't care how smart you are, at the end of the day intelligence, or being right, is not the measure of a human being.
> "you don't like the way they said it so you ignore what they said"
Yes. Like I said, presentation matters.
The antisocial, the arrogant, the whatevers of the world who cannot massage their thoughts into something worth communicating will rage impotently at the fact that no one is listening to them. Us nerds have a bad habit of letting this turn into a superiority complex, but no matter how superior you might feel, still no one is listening.
At the end of the day, we're each only on this lonely rock for a short amount of time. Many of us have figured out that we'd much rather be good to one another with our time than to spend it stroking our egos by seething with rage about everything.
I think you meant righteously so. You are saying to discount facts and logic because the person saying them offended your sensibilities. You're just building a bubble of ignorance around yourself by discounting everything unseemly.
The reason why you find 'geek culture' hostile is because geeks tend to value merit more than you value morality. The computer does not care if the n log n algorithm was created by an evil genius or Ned Flanders, and neither do geeks.
There is tons of creative and worthwhile content on 4chan than you'll ever know and will deny exists (or has a right to exist). At the end of the day, there's more humanity on display at 4chan than HN.
It's interesting to me that the Hacker School "rules" post, that essentially boiled down to the same thing (Don't Be a Jerk), is filled with positive comments:
I have a german blog who totally pushes this attitude forwards. It's called 1337core.de. A self-irony netculture blog. It is much about hacking, script kiddies, anonymous, fail netpolitics. Kind of stupid but my stupid thing.
But seriously i think this problem comes from the lag, that we don't see the people we are talking about in front of us. It's just a device. No feelings. We hate in this machine and get no direct feedback. We have to learn that the people we are flaming about are living in this world and can propably read it. I have made this mistake a couple of times but i learned and use it alone for joking.
If you want to understand this problem you have to understand psychology, the interface-feedback-problem and group dynamic.
Honestly I think this is just the impression one gets because nerds do more of everything online combined with the fact that they tend to know a lot about specific things.
Look, there are absolutely a lot of asshole nerds out there. A lot of guys who went through hell in high school and turned into comic book guy as a defense mechanism and just never grew up (a lot of people from all walks of life never grow up). Okay, but I don't think those people are representative of geek communities. I think by and large criticism is constructive and nerds are supportive of beginners. Maybe we don't sugarcoat things as much as would be to some people's taste, but that's not an asshole quality in and of itself. Rather I think the impression comes from the fact that it's hard to ignore assholes, and there are always going to be a number of them in any large community. People say HN is overly critical, but I think if you look carefully most of critical posts are actually fairly even-handed and not overtly mean; but if you have 20 of them all coming from different angles, and you sprinkle it with a few true asshole remarks, the resulting impression can be quite harsh.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadFor 1, the reason we have so much of this is because of the anonymity of it all. It's quite easy to criticise others in an abusive manner when nobody/barely anybody knows who you are. In real life that wouldn't happen to such a degree.
Watching someone else's over-reaction is a very easy source of entertainment. Reality TV is a great example of this.
I am thinking about what other people would want to read, not how you personally might feel about what I say. I expect that leads to things said that would not be said if I were speaking directly to you, such as in an email, for instance.
I don't know if that fully explains offensive and angry posts, but that could simply be a matter of someone having a bad day and wanting the world to know it.
Most of the people I work with (professionally and personally) are perpetually self-critical despite being very intelligent and more than capable. The humility comes from growth over time and being able to remember doing work they'd consider terribly flawed today. If you're working with arrogant people, they're probably not growing and it'll make it harder for you to as well.
Your input matters to us! botbully.JoSh uses your grievances to better pinpoint and exploit your areas of weakness over time.
NOSTER. Coined and minted - because nerds are overly acronym-shy, I think
I don't mind being insulted if it comes with a helpful suggestion. I LOVE IRC channels where you get the answers: "You're shit for asking that question, but the answer is X".
In other words, IME, you can 'cut through the bullshit' w/o being a dick and you'll achieve better outcomes. Plus, you won't be a dick.
I don't know if this is true, but the stereotype of geeks is that they lack "emotional intelligence". I think it's important to recognize the people we talk to on irc, news lists, etc. are people too and it's important to be truthful & helpful, not just needlessly hurtful.
It can easily be argued that nerd culture takes this too far, reaching for the metaphorical cutting blade long before it is truly necessary. I'd agree with that statement, in fact. But nerd culture's refusal to treat it as a non-option is one of the major reasons we've proven so effective at getting things done and, in so doing, effecting change. Is this dickish? Sometimes, yes; even often. That doesn't mean it's never appropriate.
On purpose? :)
On several occasions, I've seen a poor soul post a project on here that represents a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. There will be enthusiastic support, constructive criticism, and often too many haters. I'd love it if the haters left -- maybe all head off to hate picnic or something where they can spit pickles at each other.
Perhaps a basic issue is that people say things in online commentary that they wouldn't say face to face. I think that's fundamentally wrong and mostly accidental -- a result of people's cognitive models not catching up to what's actually happening. Thanks for listening :)
The same thing can be said for mediocrity and outright regressions.
>people say things in online commentary that they wouldn't say face to face.
This is definitely often true, but not usually. I'm nicer online than I am in person, because in person I can smile, apologize, and make goofy faces to blunt honest criticism. Online, all I have is smileys and exclamation points, which make you read like a wide-eyed idiot, but don't always make you read like a nice wide-eyed idiot:)
If you participate here -- myself included -- this is a message to heed.
ftfy.
(You should go back.)
If you read the comments for ANY blog post submitted, you will see how it has become a giant game to discredit everything the author says. I think it's good to be skeptical, and as nerds we have plenty of skepticism to go around, but there are ways to be do it with a little more taste and respect.
I've been looking at some of the profiles of the main cynics I see time and time again and they have like 6000 karma, but only 3 submissions in their entire lives. Crazy to think they just get all of that karma from tearing down other people's work while not creating anything themselves.
Protip: just because you realize the irony of your post doesn't excuse you from being part of the problem as well.
Finance: saying "you fucked up" means "I respect you enough to offer honest criticism, and here's what you did that I don't like."
Tech startup: saying "you're awesome" means "I'd slit your throat for a 0.05%[0] more in equity. You're awesome because I'll get promoted at your expense."
[0] A nickel. As in, Shadow from FF6 and "He'd slit his mama's throat for..."
Besides, the worst fights I see among programmers are over trivial matters of opinion anyway. Ever seen people fight over indentation styles, or the proper way to merge upstream changes into a local git repository, or whether functional or object-oriented programming is the One True Way?
The anger in these debates isn't teaching anyone a damn thing, except that the color of someone else's bike shed is really, really important to some people.
1) "I really didn't like the way you did X. It broke Y on my browser, $Browser."
2) "Oh god, why did you chose to do this like this? It's broken and stupid"
I hope that people don't nerd rage after (1). I guess they might, and if they do that's a problem.
Though in all seriousness, I've seen closed questions provide a lot of good information on something in their answers despite people feeling the question wasn't a good fit. In some ways it's like closing a question is a form of what the article is talking about, though I do understand the need for those rules on there.
Being "constructive" does not mean being congratulatory, shoulder-patting, praising, or anything like that. It means that the feedback itself should provide some kind of value, preferably for the benefit of the project creator.
"What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
Meta discussions can also be OK.
The infamous "does the world really need another X", almost invariably deserves the answer "yes, why not?".
Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
As the article stated, comments in the form of "Y U MD5 STOOPID" is never OK and generally don't do anything to raise the level of the discourse. As a general guideline, comments designed to make the commenter look good or smart or superior do not usually improve the quality of the discussion, even though mods sometimes tend to reward this behavior for some reason. They shouldn't.
> Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
By my reading, these two statements contradict each other. The quote you claim is not constructive seems to me to be saying the author sees no value in the hypothetical contribution, as it offers no additional power and less convenience than what he already uses, and therefore he won't be using it. Isn't that exactly what say is constructive in the second statement I quoted? If I'm misunderstanding you here, can you explain what I'm missing?
Asserting that a project's existence is unjustified is a bold and unfriendly claim. Saying that it's simly not for you is another matter entirely.
"I have found my own solution to this problem that involves piping these commands together, so this project isn't for me, but good job for creating a simpler solution for people who don't necessarily need control over every step of the solution, but rather just care about the final result."
This indicates why it's not useful for the poster, but it acknowledges that not everyone is a CLI genius and that the new solution could work for people with different tools requirements.
> I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
I think you're confusing critique with mentorship. What you're expecting is something wise to be said, or at least something useful to you. Critique is not necessarily like that. Critique is encompassing pretty much everything that others answer you freely, like it or not.
It is a vital skill to be able to filter through feedback, take the useful parts to heart, and shrug about low, nasty, useless comments. To learn from mistakes and do better next time. Why is that bad?
Sure, we should attempt to stop the low/nasty/useless feedback, but that's not so clear cut as we'd like it to be. Until we figure out a clear line, I'd prefer honest (and sometimes nasty) feedback over a culture of non-stop shoulder patting.
"To learn from mistakes and do better next time. Why is that bad?"
You said both things. Attempting does not mean you will always succeed. You could still fail but it does matter that you tried. And sure, you learn from mistakes and do better. So I would say that don't screw the attempting part. Also, you are probably being a little hard on this post by saying "shoulder patting".
No one is suggesting a never ending hug fest of positive comments. But criticism should be constructive. You might not care that all feedback is on the level of idiotic YouTube comments, but that's a toxic environment and it's causing harm to the Internet. A bunch of projects would have more volunteers if they weren't such hateful environments.
And that, IMO, is the problem. Whatever it is that draws us to computers seems to select very well for poor empathy. I've spent 20 years actively trying to be more empathetic, and I still suck at it. For people who don't care, you wind up with the kind of behavior TFA talks about (and that I see echoed in your response).
Every excuse I've ever seen comes down to "I didn't care enough about the other person's feelings to put any extra effort into my communication." We aren't robots. Feelings matter.
We're talking about the nasty, mean-spirited, no-holds-barred evisceration of each other by hiding behind the guise of criticism.
Take a few days ago:
"GitHub Gracious Helps Female Programmers Cower in Fear"[1]
Nobody is saying you have to agree with everything GitHub does re: sexism, or that they are above criticism. Nobody is saying you should be patting everyone on the back and giving gold stars for effort.
But what is that, really? You couldn't just say "this is wrong and doesn't help" or "your solution makes the problem worse"? No, author in this case had to go with the most needlessly inflammatory, mean-spirited, and downright asshole-ish comment possible.
Presentation matters. Criticism wrapped in vitriol becomes just vitriol, and vitriol wrapped in criticism still doesn't become good criticism.
Disagree away, but the way the geek community behaves it's clear many members take a perverse glee in eviscerating each other via "criticism". We revel in others being wrong, and we positively wet ourselves at the opportunity to point out this wrongness with gusto and vitriol. This perversity is what the author was railing against, not your ability to disagree in general.
[1] http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-helps-...
As if it would help you prove your point, that's completely braindead. What you describe is just a different form of shooting the messenger; you don't like the way they said it so you ignore what they said. For example if I point out your solution is N^2 and you're an idiot for doing it that way instead of N log N you may not be an idiot, but the solution is still a bad one.
If vitriol is the motive for the criticism then by banning the vitriol you've also lost the criticism. This is really a huge problem for Hacker News; by banning unkind critics they've lost a lot of actual criticism. The result is HN exists in a bubble of trends and fads because the people who take glee in deflating them get banned.
> [GitHub Gracious Helps Female Programmers Cower in Fear]... author in this case had to go with the most needlessly inflammatory, mean-spirited, and downright asshole-ish comment possible.
This is a good example, but not of what you think. The content of the blog is reasonably and calmly presented, but if you throw that away because of the flame title then you've lost that.
Yes, and rightfully so. I have no problems with the author's views, I have every problem with people being assholes and douchebags with each other.
I have zero qualms about missing the thoughts of people who haven't the least modicum of respect for their fellow man. I don't care how smart you are, at the end of the day intelligence, or being right, is not the measure of a human being.
> "you don't like the way they said it so you ignore what they said"
Yes. Like I said, presentation matters.
The antisocial, the arrogant, the whatevers of the world who cannot massage their thoughts into something worth communicating will rage impotently at the fact that no one is listening to them. Us nerds have a bad habit of letting this turn into a superiority complex, but no matter how superior you might feel, still no one is listening.
At the end of the day, we're each only on this lonely rock for a short amount of time. Many of us have figured out that we'd much rather be good to one another with our time than to spend it stroking our egos by seething with rage about everything.
I think you meant righteously so. You are saying to discount facts and logic because the person saying them offended your sensibilities. You're just building a bubble of ignorance around yourself by discounting everything unseemly.
The reason why you find 'geek culture' hostile is because geeks tend to value merit more than you value morality. The computer does not care if the n log n algorithm was created by an evil genius or Ned Flanders, and neither do geeks.
There is tons of creative and worthwhile content on 4chan than you'll ever know and will deny exists (or has a right to exist). At the end of the day, there's more humanity on display at 4chan than HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5639430
While this one is full of people attacking the guy, basically proving his point.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322696
(I feel older now to realize I've been on here for two years, long enough to remember the previous submission)
But seriously i think this problem comes from the lag, that we don't see the people we are talking about in front of us. It's just a device. No feelings. We hate in this machine and get no direct feedback. We have to learn that the people we are flaming about are living in this world and can propably read it. I have made this mistake a couple of times but i learned and use it alone for joking.
If you want to understand this problem you have to understand psychology, the interface-feedback-problem and group dynamic.
Look, there are absolutely a lot of asshole nerds out there. A lot of guys who went through hell in high school and turned into comic book guy as a defense mechanism and just never grew up (a lot of people from all walks of life never grow up). Okay, but I don't think those people are representative of geek communities. I think by and large criticism is constructive and nerds are supportive of beginners. Maybe we don't sugarcoat things as much as would be to some people's taste, but that's not an asshole quality in and of itself. Rather I think the impression comes from the fact that it's hard to ignore assholes, and there are always going to be a number of them in any large community. People say HN is overly critical, but I think if you look carefully most of critical posts are actually fairly even-handed and not overtly mean; but if you have 20 of them all coming from different angles, and you sprinkle it with a few true asshole remarks, the resulting impression can be quite harsh.