6 ms·

Killing the mean and stupid stuff is great... but wish someone would kill the genuine but dismissive and negative stuff too.

by compare 12y ago

dang 12y ago
Unfortunately, I don't know of any objective and fair way to do that. That doesn't mean we don't care about the problem, though. We do care about it and are working on it, and I've been looking at the data a lot. Ultimately, though, the solutions are going to have to mostly involve the community. We'll probably be posting about this more in the coming days.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 12y ago
  Well, now that you're outed and running the place, let me tell you exactly what I think you should do: 1. Click over to whatever textbox allows you to edit the site guidelines. 2. Clarify the "what's on topic" clause. 3. Add a "criticisms must be constructive", perhaps deriving it from Paul Graham's "colleagues working together to uncover the truth" wording from the Pending Comments announcement. Start by spelling out the norms you want to see here, and we can all work to move the site in that direction without having to nail down the statutory language or figure out what 100 lines of lisp will best implement them.
  - compare 12y ago
    Every pessimist imagines their negativity to be extremely constructive and the "best" possible response. See the comment I just replied to above :)
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Most pessimists aren't being overtly un-constructive. But there are some very common species of negative comments that are clearly that: for instance, glib or sarcastic dismissals; and uncivil, hostile, or accusative criticisms.
      - compare 12y ago
        True, those are a good target. I'm thinking of the more dangerous types though, where the person genuinely thinks that their negativity is highly valuable, when it isn't. Those are everywhere on the "Show HN" threads. Elsewhere too. The Internet loves to hate. Hmm, seems like I'm being all talk. I'll just put my demo online, within the next couple weeks.
  - britta 12y ago
    Yes, we need more detailed guidelines. I was talking about this over in one of the pending comments threads (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304), but "be civil", no name calling, and "no classic flamewar topics" are also way too vague. They're not a clear and enforceable code of conduct.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Wikipedia has some norms that, if imperfect, actually do seem to impact the site. "Civility" is a norm that seems to have a significant impact, and it's hard to think of a case in which incivility --- which is prominently featured every day on HN --- is ever worth hosting here. "Assume Good Faith" is another norm that seems to cut pretty closely to what Paul Graham was trying to say with his "collegiality" norm.
      - britta 12y ago
        Yeah, that's an interesting example. Wikipedia spells out "civility" in great detail - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Avoiding_incivility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Avoiding_in... has friendly human-readable advice to prevent incivility, like "Not sufficiently explaining edits can be perceived as uncivil" and "Other people can misread your passion as aggression". And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Identifying_incivility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Identifying... provides a reasonably comprehensive list of types of incivility, to help identify what breaks the guideline. And then there's a stated process for dealing with serious problems.
        tptacek 12y ago
        Wikipedia's impressive documentation goes hand-in-hand with a Wikipedia community problem --- lawyering. Spelling norms out in that level of detail risks making a sport of out spotting and "enforcing" the norms. Wikipedia's problem-solving mechanisms are impressive and effective for a project with a single coherent goal, but they aren't good at fostering community. In fact, they do the opposite thing: they artificially factionalize the community, which holds together despite and not because of those mechanisms.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    100 lines of lisp? That's like, a billion lines of C? ;-) I agree with Thomas(!), clarification of the guidelines would go a long way. There are certain topics that bring out the flamewars more than others, and those should get particular attention. Most things political, sexism, nutrition (weird but true), and so on. Most of all I think it's important to reinforce the idea that you can disagree with someone even on deeply held beliefs and still be civil about it. Moral certitude does not make it ok to be mean.
  - edanm 12y ago
    Great idea. To avoid Wiki-style lawyering (as noted in other comments), I think the guidelines could really be kept incredibly small. I think pg's "colleagues working together to uncover the truth" line covers 90% of what HN discussions should be. I'd also add "no comments that don't add information/low signal comments", to avoid "+1" style comments and humour. I'm not sure most of the community agrees with me, but I don't like such comments here. Reddit optimises for fun being on Reddit and reading comments, HN optimises for getting the most on-topic information in the least time.
    - britta 12y ago
      Wikipedia's wikilawyering culture generates and maintains the extensive guidelines there, instead of the guidelines generating that culture. (Like with most projects, people don't read the documentation first.) It'd be great if a tiny set of guidelines were enough for HN, but that's very optimistic about people being able to pick up on implicit rules & values. A well-written set of reasonably detailed guidelines would make explicit what the majority of decent HN commenters already agree that HN should be.
- mst 12y ago
  Decisions like that are pretty much always subjective. Moderation is, in large part, about taste. Count the number of upvotes the comments saying that people appreciate your taste are getting, and remind yourself that we've already declared faith in you even in non-objective situations. (note that this is the standard pep talk that has to be delivered to moderators everywhere from time to time, and indeed that my friends periodically deliver to me when I'm worrying the same way you are :)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- spitfire 12y ago
  Will there be any intermediate solutions before slow/hell banning people? FWIW I was slow banned years ago and it still hasn't been removed. It may just have been a moderator having a bad day, but the message when it's left there is clearly "You're not welcome here.". That's a message you might not want to be sending to people who are saying what you can't say.
- noir_lord 12y ago
  Congrats on the new job. If you fix the Font Stack in news.css so that it is font-family: sans-serif; You will have my eternal gratitude, I'll also accept font-family: verdana, sans-serif; ;) Good Luck with the new role.
  - dang 12y ago
    I missed this in the rush yesterday. This kind of thing will be Kevin's call, not mine. Thanks for the good wishes.
Pacabel 12y ago
Why is that? Sometimes the only reasonable and legitimate response to certain ideas and claims is to dismiss them. It's much the same for negativity. Sometimes a negative response is the best one. Highly sanitized, politically correct, feel-good discussion is pretty much pointless to engage in. The best value and insight often comes from asking the hard questions and pointing out flaws that are painful to acknowledge. It might not feel pleasant all of the time, and it might not make people happy, but engaging in discussion in a way that some people may consider "negative" or "dismissive" often gets the best results for everyone involved.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  We have more choices than just "dismissive/negative" and "highly-sanitized/feel-good", though. For example- "This is broken as it exists, for reasons A-E. However, if you did things X-Z, it would work much better and be much more interesting." Sure, that takes more time. But honestly, if your main priority with your post is that you can write it quickly, you're probably not making a meaningful post anyway. I wonder if an "are you sure" type button could help improve posts. Maybe it could say "Does this contribute to the conversation?", just to remind people what the point of posting really is.
  - rainedin 12y ago
    There's some software called CoFind: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S108480450090105X http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1084804500... Which was a bookmarking tool, that enabled you to create your own scoring system with multiple facets. Like the Slashdot: Insightful, Funny... You can't have too many of these as it can get unweildy (probably why Facebook settled for the Thumbs up), but it could help. Especially for a community that sees the outcome value and are prepared to learn and contribute towards community moderation. Up and down votes are so ambiguous that I'd almost suggest they are practically pointless. The 'Mee too' and 'I don't agree' votes really need to be filtered out into something else. Perhaps into a 'Consensus' facet. Add to the mix 'Topicness' : 'On topic', 'Off topic'; 'Niceness': 'Pleasant', 'Rude' etc. Word cap each comment too, so they remain to the point. Essays can be linked to.

Killing the mean and stupid stuff is great... but wish someone would kill the genuine but dismissive and negative stuff too.

by compare 12y ago

Killing the mean and stupid stuff is great... but wish someone would kill the genuine but dismissive and negative stuff too.

dang 12y ago

Unfortunately, I don't know of any objective and fair way to do that. That doesn't mean we don't care about the problem, though. We do care about it and are working on it, and I've been looking at the data a lot. Ultimately, though, the solutions are going to have to mostly involve the community. We'll probably be posting about this more in the coming days.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 12y ago
Well, now that you're outed and running the place, let me tell you exactly what I think you should do: 1. Click over to whatever textbox allows you to edit the site guidelines. 2. Clarify the "what's on topic" clause. 3. Add a "criticisms must be constructive", perhaps deriving it from Paul Graham's "colleagues working together to uncover the truth" wording from the Pending Comments announcement. Start by spelling out the norms you want to see here, and we can all work to move the site in that direction without having to nail down the statutory language or figure out what 100 lines of lisp will best implement them.
- compare 12y ago
  Every pessimist imagines their negativity to be extremely constructive and the "best" possible response. See the comment I just replied to above :)
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Most pessimists aren't being overtly un-constructive. But there are some very common species of negative comments that are clearly that: for instance, glib or sarcastic dismissals; and uncivil, hostile, or accusative criticisms.
    - compare 12y ago
      True, those are a good target. I'm thinking of the more dangerous types though, where the person genuinely thinks that their negativity is highly valuable, when it isn't. Those are everywhere on the "Show HN" threads. Elsewhere too. The Internet loves to hate. Hmm, seems like I'm being all talk. I'll just put my demo online, within the next couple weeks.
- britta 12y ago
  Yes, we need more detailed guidelines. I was talking about this over in one of the pending comments threads (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304), but "be civil", no name calling, and "no classic flamewar topics" are also way too vague. They're not a clear and enforceable code of conduct.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Wikipedia has some norms that, if imperfect, actually do seem to impact the site. "Civility" is a norm that seems to have a significant impact, and it's hard to think of a case in which incivility --- which is prominently featured every day on HN --- is ever worth hosting here. "Assume Good Faith" is another norm that seems to cut pretty closely to what Paul Graham was trying to say with his "collegiality" norm.
    - britta 12y ago
      Yeah, that's an interesting example. Wikipedia spells out "civility" in great detail - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Avoiding_incivility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Avoiding_in... has friendly human-readable advice to prevent incivility, like "Not sufficiently explaining edits can be perceived as uncivil" and "Other people can misread your passion as aggression". And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Identifying_incivility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Identifying... provides a reasonably comprehensive list of types of incivility, to help identify what breaks the guideline. And then there's a stated process for dealing with serious problems.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        Wikipedia's impressive documentation goes hand-in-hand with a Wikipedia community problem --- lawyering. Spelling norms out in that level of detail risks making a sport of out spotting and "enforcing" the norms. Wikipedia's problem-solving mechanisms are impressive and effective for a project with a single coherent goal, but they aren't good at fostering community. In fact, they do the opposite thing: they artificially factionalize the community, which holds together despite and not because of those mechanisms.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  100 lines of lisp? That's like, a billion lines of C? ;-) I agree with Thomas(!), clarification of the guidelines would go a long way. There are certain topics that bring out the flamewars more than others, and those should get particular attention. Most things political, sexism, nutrition (weird but true), and so on. Most of all I think it's important to reinforce the idea that you can disagree with someone even on deeply held beliefs and still be civil about it. Moral certitude does not make it ok to be mean.
- edanm 12y ago
  Great idea. To avoid Wiki-style lawyering (as noted in other comments), I think the guidelines could really be kept incredibly small. I think pg's "colleagues working together to uncover the truth" line covers 90% of what HN discussions should be. I'd also add "no comments that don't add information/low signal comments", to avoid "+1" style comments and humour. I'm not sure most of the community agrees with me, but I don't like such comments here. Reddit optimises for fun being on Reddit and reading comments, HN optimises for getting the most on-topic information in the least time.
  - britta 12y ago
    Wikipedia's wikilawyering culture generates and maintains the extensive guidelines there, instead of the guidelines generating that culture. (Like with most projects, people don't read the documentation first.) It'd be great if a tiny set of guidelines were enough for HN, but that's very optimistic about people being able to pick up on implicit rules & values. A well-written set of reasonably detailed guidelines would make explicit what the majority of decent HN commenters already agree that HN should be.
mst 12y ago
Decisions like that are pretty much always subjective. Moderation is, in large part, about taste. Count the number of upvotes the comments saying that people appreciate your taste are getting, and remind yourself that we've already declared faith in you even in non-objective situations. (note that this is the standard pep talk that has to be delivered to moderators everywhere from time to time, and indeed that my friends periodically deliver to me when I'm worrying the same way you are :)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
spitfire 12y ago
Will there be any intermediate solutions before slow/hell banning people? FWIW I was slow banned years ago and it still hasn't been removed. It may just have been a moderator having a bad day, but the message when it's left there is clearly "You're not welcome here.". That's a message you might not want to be sending to people who are saying what you can't say.
noir_lord 12y ago
Congrats on the new job. If you fix the Font Stack in news.css so that it is font-family: sans-serif; You will have my eternal gratitude, I'll also accept font-family: verdana, sans-serif; ;) Good Luck with the new role.
- dang 12y ago
  I missed this in the rush yesterday. This kind of thing will be Kevin's call, not mine. Thanks for the good wishes.

Pacabel 12y ago

Why is that? Sometimes the only reasonable and legitimate response to certain ideas and claims is to dismiss them. It's much the same for negativity. Sometimes a negative response is the best one. Highly sanitized, politically correct, feel-good discussion is pretty much pointless to engage in. The best value and insight often comes from asking the hard questions and pointing out flaws that are painful to acknowledge. It might not feel pleasant all of the time, and it might not make people happy, but engaging in discussion in a way that some people may consider "negative" or "dismissive" often gets the best results for everyone involved.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
waterlesscloud 12y ago
We have more choices than just "dismissive/negative" and "highly-sanitized/feel-good", though. For example- "This is broken as it exists, for reasons A-E. However, if you did things X-Z, it would work much better and be much more interesting." Sure, that takes more time. But honestly, if your main priority with your post is that you can write it quickly, you're probably not making a meaningful post anyway. I wonder if an "are you sure" type button could help improve posts. Maybe it could say "Does this contribute to the conversation?", just to remind people what the point of posting really is.
- rainedin 12y ago
  There's some software called CoFind: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S108480450090105X http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1084804500... Which was a bookmarking tool, that enabled you to create your own scoring system with multiple facets. Like the Slashdot: Insightful, Funny... You can't have too many of these as it can get unweildy (probably why Facebook settled for the Thumbs up), but it could help. Especially for a community that sees the outcome value and are prepared to learn and contribute towards community moderation. Up and down votes are so ambiguous that I'd almost suggest they are practically pointless. The 'Mee too' and 'I don't agree' votes really need to be filtered out into something else. Perhaps into a 'Consensus' facet. Add to the mix 'Topicness' : 'On topic', 'Off topic'; 'Niceness': 'Pleasant', 'Rude' etc. Word cap each comment too, so they remain to the point. Essays can be linked to.