6 ms·

HN generates emotional friction[1], is filled with shallow but clever sounding dismissals[2] and is filled with low quality discussions on high quality articles

by waivek 8y ago

HN generates emotional friction[1], is filled with shallow but clever sounding dismissals[2] and is filled with low quality discussions on high quality articles[3]. [1]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/787775131682758657 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/787775131682758657 [2]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1068457691171958785 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1068457691171958785 [3]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/731198734726356993 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/731198734726356993

everdev 8y ago
> low quality discussions I'd put your citations of tweets clearly expressing personal opinion as devaluing the conversation. I typically find highly rated comments on HN as useful in adding new information or perspective to an article or discussion.
- gav 8y ago
  I agree. I would argue that I get a lot more value out of the comments than than the linked content. The only major issue I have with the comments on HN is that early ones get a lot more upvotes, causing later--but just as valid--points of view to be lost.
  - koolba 8y ago
    The early bird gets the worm and the early comment gets the karma. Maybe a dynamic system that randomly shows an order weighted on upvotes in the past X minutes. That’d give fresh comments a chance to compete.
    - Varcht 8y ago
      When a discussion is interesting enough for me to want to follow it, I will search the page for "minutes ago" to find the newest posts. It might be nice if new posts were highlighted for some amount of time.
      - dang 8y ago
        That's on our list.
      - insin 8y ago
        I have a user script for that [1]. If you visited a story's comments before, it will highlight new comments and can auto-collapse threads without new comments. Otherwise, it gives you a slider you can use to highlight the X most recent comments. [1] https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/18066-hn-comment-trees https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/18066-hn-comment-trees
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Hacker News temporarily lifts new comments towards the top for a couple of minutes to give them a chance of being seen.
- grawprog 8y ago
  I have to agree. The rules can seem a little ridiculous and somewhat arbitrary seeming here sometimes, but i have to admit, HN probably has the highest level of discourse on most articles I read here, sometimes better than the articles themselves, than most other sites i tend to browse. I read with showdead on and i find sometimes it's somewhat insightful to read a dead comment and figure out why. Sometimes they're completely infactual, spammy or rude but other times it's hard to figure out why. Above all though, I learn things here all the time. There's some really knowlegeable people here and the range of topics that gets covered is more diverse than you might think. I can't remember exactly when, a few weeks ago at least, i remember seeing an article about brewing tea or something on here and there was an extremely in depth discussion on the subtlties of tea and effects of brewing. There was some chemistry thrown in there and some oddly specific knowledge. It was great. I don't think i've ever learned so much from a discussion on tea before. Also, just some of the personal anectodes and life stories i've read here really blow me away sometimes. I've browsed a lot of different sites, the community of people here seem to be unlike most other sites, even similar ones. There's a fairly high level of snobbishness and disconnect from some oddly ordinary aspects of life...and honestly sometimes I worry this site is full of sociopaths.... But, it's a pretty cool community of people that reminds me of the days of the old internet in ways that a lot of other sites don't. I never really feel like I'm wasting time even reading comments here, because the amount of accumulated knowledge and experience just seems to be a lot higher than pretty much anywhere else I browse regularly.
  - dang 8y ago
    If you can dig up the discussion on tea, I'll ask Craig to add it to the next highlights list (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=hacker%20news%20highlights https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...).
    - grawprog 8y ago
      I think it may have been this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654982 It seems familiar. That was the most recent I could find. I'm honestly not too sure. That discussion's pretty good too if it's mot the same one. There were a few articles about tea that came up in my search.
Insanity 8y ago
I don't immediately see the relation to his random tweets almost a decade later?
wnevets 8y ago
>You are blocked from following @paulg and viewing @paulg's Tweets. Learn more rofl
_yawn 8y ago
I honestly can't tell if this is a shallow dismissal or if you are proving your own point by being the most upvoted comment.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by waivek 8y ago

everdev 8y ago

> low quality discussions I'd put your citations of tweets clearly expressing personal opinion as devaluing the conversation. I typically find highly rated comments on HN as useful in adding new information or perspective to an article or discussion.

gav 8y ago
I agree. I would argue that I get a lot more value out of the comments than than the linked content. The only major issue I have with the comments on HN is that early ones get a lot more upvotes, causing later--but just as valid--points of view to be lost.
- koolba 8y ago
  The early bird gets the worm and the early comment gets the karma. Maybe a dynamic system that randomly shows an order weighted on upvotes in the past X minutes. That’d give fresh comments a chance to compete.
  - Varcht 8y ago
    When a discussion is interesting enough for me to want to follow it, I will search the page for "minutes ago" to find the newest posts. It might be nice if new posts were highlighted for some amount of time.
    - dang 8y ago
      That's on our list.
    - insin 8y ago
      I have a user script for that [1]. If you visited a story's comments before, it will highlight new comments and can auto-collapse threads without new comments. Otherwise, it gives you a slider you can use to highlight the X most recent comments. [1] https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/18066-hn-comment-trees https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/18066-hn-comment-trees
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Hacker News temporarily lifts new comments towards the top for a couple of minutes to give them a chance of being seen.
grawprog 8y ago
I have to agree. The rules can seem a little ridiculous and somewhat arbitrary seeming here sometimes, but i have to admit, HN probably has the highest level of discourse on most articles I read here, sometimes better than the articles themselves, than most other sites i tend to browse. I read with showdead on and i find sometimes it's somewhat insightful to read a dead comment and figure out why. Sometimes they're completely infactual, spammy or rude but other times it's hard to figure out why. Above all though, I learn things here all the time. There's some really knowlegeable people here and the range of topics that gets covered is more diverse than you might think. I can't remember exactly when, a few weeks ago at least, i remember seeing an article about brewing tea or something on here and there was an extremely in depth discussion on the subtlties of tea and effects of brewing. There was some chemistry thrown in there and some oddly specific knowledge. It was great. I don't think i've ever learned so much from a discussion on tea before. Also, just some of the personal anectodes and life stories i've read here really blow me away sometimes. I've browsed a lot of different sites, the community of people here seem to be unlike most other sites, even similar ones. There's a fairly high level of snobbishness and disconnect from some oddly ordinary aspects of life...and honestly sometimes I worry this site is full of sociopaths.... But, it's a pretty cool community of people that reminds me of the days of the old internet in ways that a lot of other sites don't. I never really feel like I'm wasting time even reading comments here, because the amount of accumulated knowledge and experience just seems to be a lot higher than pretty much anywhere else I browse regularly.
- dang 8y ago
  If you can dig up the discussion on tea, I'll ask Craig to add it to the next highlights list (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=hacker%20news%20highlights https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...).
  - grawprog 8y ago
    I think it may have been this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654982 It seems familiar. That was the most recent I could find. I'm honestly not too sure. That discussion's pretty good too if it's mot the same one. There were a few articles about tea that came up in my search.

Insanity 8y ago

I don't immediately see the relation to his random tweets almost a decade later?

wnevets 8y ago

>You are blocked from following @paulg and viewing @paulg's Tweets. Learn more rofl

_yawn 8y ago

I honestly can't tell if this is a shallow dismissal or if you are proving your own point by being the most upvoted comment.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]