The more we tolerate this here, the more it will become the norm.
HN's most attractive feature from day one has always been the positive, intelligent, supportive community. Those are not traits you tend to find in your typical 9-5 programmer (in my experience, at least), and are the exact opposite of what you find in the communities that most of our early adopters fled from (Slashdot was already hopeless by 2007, and programming.reddit.com was already headed that way).
But those other communities are dying, and this place has taken over their role as The Place to Talk About Tech Stuff. So we see a lot of their users coming across, bringing with them the general depressive negativity and inclination to snark and hostility. This behavior sometimes doesn't get swatted down fast enough nor ruthlessly enough and bad comments are left to stand. People see these comments and think they're acceptable. And the standards erode.
There's not much to be done about it, unfortunately. We can't kick everybody out, and it's not yet quite bad enough to form a new community and abandon this place to the rabble.
Still, it's worth at least trying to fight. Flag ruthlessly, downvote comments that don't belong here, based on tone rather than disagreement. Upvote the few good things that do in fact belong here. Write good comments and otherwise behave the way you want to see others behave.
I think that there is a clear distinction between pure negativity and "snark" or sardonicism. It is possible to be genuinely, objectively critical of things without being arrogant or sarcastic. Criticism is a necessary facet of discussion, and is indicative of a thoughtful community. "Asshole-sim" is not. I'm of the belief that the discussion on HN tends towards the former.
>This behavior sometimes doesn't get swatted down fast enough nor ruthlessly enough and bad comments are left to stand. People see these comments and think they're acceptable. And the standards erode.
>Flag ruthlessly, downvote comments that don't belong here, based on tone rather than disagreement.
I'm unsure of what you're advocating for. Are you for expunging the hyper-negative, misogynistic near-spam of Reddit, or for doing away with negativity entirely? (My hunch is latter, as fighting spam is trivially excepted and needn't be argued.) The latter is incredibly dangerous and will work to the detriment of the community inasmuch as HN, as a community of generally-intelligent individuals, is capable of analyzing a story to a greater extend than most news organizations or communities; and some sort of assault on negativity would remove the ability for one to introduce warranted skepticism or to dissent from general discussion. Skepticism, contrarianism, criticism, etc. are incredibly valuable tools and are fundamental to HN and to discourse in general. One should not have the merits of their ideas judged solely on the "tone" articulated by them, and HN should certainly not seek to create institutionalized positivity.
"Skepticism, contrarianism, criticism, etc. are incredibly valuable tools and are fundamental to HN and to discourse in general. One should not have the merits of their ideas judged solely on the "tone" articulated by them, and HN should certainly not seek to create institutionalized positivity."
Completely agree with you. I've seen way too many comments that where downvoted only because of the tone (even though the content itself was very relevant), or because it expressed a dissident, politically incorrect idea. When I see such a comment being downvoted, I automatically upvote it, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with the content. I don't hang out here to read opinions I'm already agreeing with. I'm far more interested in intelligently argumented opinions that contradict mine. So, no it's not fun to be bashed by the sarcasms of someone else, but if the opinion contained in the bashing is relevant, then we should just suck it up, and answer to the content.
You're mistaken. A comment with good ideas presented in an insulting/snarky/offensive tone should get downvoted here. In that rare case, it's often helpful to write a comment explaining why it was downvoted (perhaps even with a link to the guidelines), and encourage the poster to rewrite it in a tone that fits the room it was spoken in.
Some people will understand, rewrite, and become productive members of the community. Others will get offended, write back with an angry rant about censorship or something, and with luck find themselves hellbanned. Those are the people who just aren't ever going to be welcome here. Fortunately, the rest of the internet seems designed for them to fit right in.
Anger, silly jokes, one-liners and memes are all over that thread. The fact that so much of it will still be there at the end of the day is the problem we're facing.
Compare to the discussion on this item, with people stating real arguments using entire paragraphs. Plenty of disagreement, certainly some negativity, but mostly civil (or greyed out).
So no, we're not trying to get rid of negativity. We're just trying to maintain a place where adults can hold civil conversation.
Thanks for the link. I remember the first time i made a really silly comment without reading the full story i was put into place (downvoted ruthlessly) by the community and i knew i had done something terrible. This is the post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2825177. From then on i really took sometime without commenting on hn not because i was angry, but because i was scared of being downvoted. It taught me i needed to get my facts right before commenting on hn however much harm i never meant to cause.
You're right this is a cycle I've seen time and again online. I've been using the Internet since before the web, and seen this cycle again and again... newsgroups becoming popular, the negative argumentative types moving in, folks who weren't that way getting dragged into the negativity (I know I've been dragged there myself), then they just become festering shells of what they once were as the nice people move on and just the negativity remains to harshly parody the original community...
The same has happened with web community after web community I've enjoyed only to see them get popular... slashdot was good once. Heck, there was even a time when you could get a civilized conversation in TechCrunch comment threads.
Slashdot's current state really breaks my heart. Even with the occasional drive-by troll or the "apk" lunatic (what's his deal anyway?) things were tolerable, but lately it seems some of the older posters have lost interest and moved on (maybe to HN? Ha!) or have reverted to petty squabbling and deliberate obtuseness. I mostly go there to read comments from the veterans who've stuck around over the years and only recently bothered with creating an account. Thankfully there are still nuggets of gold among the threads.
There's a tricky Goldilocks zone when it comes to any forum and the biggest challenge is not treating it as a personal blog. You share ideas, yes, but the very platform demands you give up some control. Of how your ideas are perceived, what feedback you get and even weather those ideas are welcome in the first place. And all communities change... away from a Beowulf cluster of X and into the cloud, I suppose.
Trying too hard to hold new members to the light of older burning candles will cause them to flicker out or if you just let them burn willy-nilly, you risk starting a fire.
I'm hopeful we're not all doomed to walled gardens the likes of Twitter and Facebook just to avoid negativity raining on our parade (of course even they're not devoid of doom and gloom either, but "blocks" do give you an umbrella of sorts).
Slashdot used to be full of field experts discussing ideas and tech, you could see discusions on there from genuine industry and academic luminaries. Most of them have long since left as it devolved into negativity, trolling and fanboyism.
I stopped going there when it became obvious the the first posts on many topics were no longer genuine. Not only were the subject-matter experts gone, but the 'discussion' was being led by paid reputation managers who had prepared statements on various things.
> HN's most attractive feature from day one has always been the positive, intelligent, supportive community. Those are not traits you tend to find in your typical 9-5 programmer
I guess this is because HN attracts people that aren't just programmers but also entrepreneurs. A good hacker has to figure out worst-case scenarios. A good entrepreneur, on the other hand, has to look for value in everything to find business opportunities.
Also, many of the issues that the OP touched are serious that need to be addressed by the community (i.e. sexism). Discussing this issues doesn't make us negative people, is just that those are real problems that need to be solved.
HN's most attractive feature from day one has always been the positive, intelligent, supportive community. Those are not traits you tend to find in your typical 9-5 programmer (in my experience, at least), and are the exact opposite of what you find in the communities that most of our early adopters fled from (Slashdot was already hopeless by 2007, and programming.reddit.com was already headed that way).
But those other communities are dying, and this place has taken over their role as The Place to Talk About Tech Stuff. So we see a lot of their users coming across, bringing with them the general depressive negativity and inclination to snark and hostility. This behavior sometimes doesn't get swatted down fast enough nor ruthlessly enough and bad comments are left to stand. People see these comments and think they're acceptable. And the standards erode.
There's not much to be done about it, unfortunately. We can't kick everybody out, and it's not yet quite bad enough to form a new community and abandon this place to the rabble.
Still, it's worth at least trying to fight. Flag ruthlessly, downvote comments that don't belong here, based on tone rather than disagreement. Upvote the few good things that do in fact belong here. Write good comments and otherwise behave the way you want to see others behave.