I think these criticisms aren't just relevant to HN, they apply to all social media and online conversation. Even (group) email can become quite toxic if people don't convey their emotion well.
I have been on HN for 15 years, I have spent far too much time on this site. Eventually you learn which topics will be "toxic" and avoid them (if you want to). To some extent it just maturity (or lack there of) but I actually think HN is far less toxic outside of some specific topics than other sites.
The topics that are liable to become flame wars change over time, currently it seems to be anything "Crypto" or "Online Advertising" as people have very strong feelings on both sides. I'm certainly still guilty of getting drawn in at times, especially when I feel I have a horse in the race. There is always insightful comments in these threads too.
Fortunately HN is designed to detect topics that are getting out of hand (far more comments than up votes) and they drop of the homepage quickly massively reducing the exposure. Exactly where this thread is already going.
I think the best decision HN made was not breaking the site into categories or "Sub-HNs" where specific toxic topics can grow and mutate, everything is forced though the front page ensuring a level of self moderation.
After 15 years on the site I have no intention of leaving it.
I'm a very sparing user of social media, but after work I do love to play games. I play games with people I know IRL as well as a litany of people I've never met - true to my old 90's and 00's gamer days. Now, there's Discord.
I was pretty skeptical the first time people implored me to join a Discord server, but I've found some communities are very dope. I've discovered that managing peoples behavior online is like trying to herd sheep in a straight line. The flock always goes forward, that much is constant. There are sheep on the left and on the right side of the herd that push the herd onto a new trajectory, a lot of the time I don't think they even know what they're doing, but if you take a step back you can watch it occur in real-time. A leader, who likely doesn't know they're a leader, starts acting in a certain way, which causes the shift. Then another leader clashes with that leader by proxy, which is what I describe as the other side of the herd. These bounding behaviors almost never keep the flock constrained, they cause the flock to split.
These leaders are disposable though. They're placeholders for culture, language, collections of experience, values, etc that people identify with. It takes having conversations with troublemakers and making their effects known in plain language. Some people will get it, moderate their behavior despite their culture, language, collections of experience, values etc and some won't. Those who won't will either leave on their own or get banned.
Health, specifically diet/exercise, are also on this list of topics that typically get pretty toxic in my mind. Where the volume of voice outweigh the experts in the crowd.
> I think these criticisms aren't just relevant to HN, they apply to all social media and online conversation.
I believe the reason is that epistemology (generally: theory of knowledge, seeking/determining what is actually(!) True) is not just hard, but it goes counter to the natural workings of the human mind. If the topic of a thread is a psychology paper dealing with human perception, bias, this sort of thing (an abstract discussion of the phenomenon), few people have difficulty realizing and acknowledging that this is a fundamental problem, in/with reality. However, if the topic of discussion is an object level matter, particularly culture war issues (but even technical ones, as the author notes), the mind seems to run in a different mode - gone[1] is the knowledge that the mind is subject to imperfect thinking, replaced by ~"perception is reality". And, one's intuition might suggest that intelligent people would be less prone to this problem, but substantial evidence[2] suggests that this is not only not necessarily true, but that intelligence exacerbates the problem (if one is usually more often correct than others, it is perfectly reasonable that their default confidence level in being correct would increase).
What I think is also interesting: it seems to me that this one fundamental idea could be one of the main root cause problems with human interaction on the internet (or, in general, really), a topic most people seem to be very interested in - but oddly, these same people almost without exception (in my experience) have zero (or less than) interest in identifying plausible root causes of the problem and contemplating/brainstorming solutions - the exact opposite of what one's intuition might predict. I have yet to encounter a single human being that is even marginally seriously interested in this idea (and many(!) who recoil from it), and I have talked to hundreds of people about it, often in meetups and other places where the general problem with people getting along, fake news, etc is literally the sole topic of conversation.
I am not optimistic that humanity can solve a problem that their mind does not grant them access to (assuming my theory has some truth to it).
This is the tamest and most well moderated forum I've experienced on the internet. For goodness sakes, I made a snarky comment about an NFT marketplace and was firmly warned about it by dang.
> The topics that are liable to become flame wars change over time, currently it seems to be anything "Crypto" or "Online Advertising" as people have very strong feelings on both sides
Oh yes, I've kept a very high opinion of this forum and its commenters once I skipped right past the daily 250+ comment posts about COVID-19 that have plagued us for 2 years. When it comes to tech, this place is an absolute treasure, but there's few things as odious as tech nerds improvising themselves as politicians, epidemiologists, microbiologists, logistics experts and activists just because they know how to use Google and follow some people on Twitter.
The bitcoin craze wasn't even close to being as bad as the past two years.
"My dad told me that he wants to dabble in programming, but MySQL isn’t compatible with his laptop. My response? "Yeah there’s no way that’s true. MySQL will work on anything." Instead of taking a look at this laptop and working on the problem with him, I just told him that he's wrong and he doesn't know what he's doing (basically)."
I catch myself doing this, without realizing it far too often. It's good to catch yourself and try to change.
> "These are typical, HN-esque responses that may get upvotes online, but they hurt personal relationships."
As a regular, I disagree completely. Comments that point out that something is wrong and have the empathy to try to help and identify a solution are much more upvoted that cynical ones that just point out that something is wrong without much caring for the other part.
If you dig up HN only paying attention to potentially toxic comments, you will find them. It doesn't make HN toxic. If you create the habit of reading yesterday's posts, giving them enough time for the best comments to be upvoted and settle at the top, you will see much much less toxicity.
It seems to me that the author is trying to get away from a certain behavior and, in the process, everywhere they look they just fit what they see in that exact behavior. Like when Woody Woodpecker is hungry.
Online, people who don't think before they post are able to post more often than people who do. As a result, the average social media post is stupider than the average social media user. Worth remembering whenever Twitter dumbassery drives you to despair."¹²
This covers it all, in my opinion. By the time someone is done posting a six paragraph long analysis that includes sources, a dozen of less pertinent comments will have been posted.
This is what the downvote feature and the flag feature are for.
Ideally, all of us are downvoting cheap humor and unrelated online trends ("first!", etc.)
It's not only an unfortunate happenstance; often it's a deliberate tactic. "Gish gallop" and "flooding the zone" are two of many terms for it. It's trivial for one troll to tie up a dozen good-faith interlocutors with wild claims of their own and demands for proof of others'. It's very hard to devise or enforce rules that would prevent such behavior (far easier to police the reactions), so it's common on practically all forums. For various reasons related to what kinds of people are drawn to computing and what behaviors are rewarded there, it's inevitably going to be even more common here.
Idiocy Saturation: I find this to be very true in many parts of the internet. What keeps me coming back to HN, though, is the outstanding signal-to-noise ratio in the comments that seems like the exception to this rule.
I value the very constructive and thoughtful discussions that happen out here. It can add a lot of value to the originally posted link! (And honestly there are many times where I have felt that the HN discussion was more interesting and profound than the article or blog post, itself...)
An idea for combatting less-thoughtful more-frequent posting: allow at most one post per day. If one gets but one chance to express something, the choice of topic and the care taken in expression may be more thoughtful.
(Or maybe one post and one reply to a response; otherwise, nobody would get a question answered in a timely manner.)
For a community as diverse as Hacker News, I've found it to be anything but toxic. The quality of posts is generally high and the people who comment tend to keep things on topic and impersonal. Personal attacks and jabs are not common and people don't just say things for the sake of winning arguments.
Of course, I don't click on every single story - I stick to the things that interest me, which admittedly are narrowing as of late, unlike in my early 20s.
The main thing I've noticed on HN is that having a contrarian mindset is rewarded, even in situations where it doesn't add to the conversation. If you read the two examples the author gave, he's actually being reflexively contrarian, not a know-it-all. In my opinion, that's the "toxic" behavior he's trying to identify, not personal attacks or glib jabs.
It can be a little more toxic than I'd like, but I don't find the issue to be how nice people are about correcting others' mistakes. Instead it's the undercurrent I occasionally see of reactionary politics and weird misinformation. It's not usually horrible, but I tend to stay away when the subject turns to politics or social justice.
Did HN do any kind of survey to demonstrate their user demographics?
And it is absolutely toxic on certain topics, particularly anything economics related or that challenges capitalism and the "line go up" mentality of the VC culture. If you offer anything that criticizes that at all, you're in for an earful.
The toxicity is there it's just subtle and disguised. Here's a typical one you see on HN that is used directly to escape moderation:
"I find it odd that even when someone tells you the logical outcome you still deny it."
"It's baffles me and is so interesting to see someone behave this way even though it's not logical."
It's this intellectual arrogance where the commenter acts like he's some sort of hyper intelligent savant observing creatures of lower intelligence that is completely toxic. Whenever I see that type of garbage comment, I think dude... the other person just disagrees with you stop talking about him like he's some animal your observing in a laboratory.
I made the same realization in myself, but unfortunately in my 30s rather than my 20s. Engineering, whether software or hardware, is all about thoroughly understanding a problem and dissecting it to the nth degree. The better you are at this, the quicker you notice the problems with an initial, creative idea.
"It's easy to be a critic."
If left unchecked, all that is done is the refinement of a skill that is able to find the potential hurdles/blockers in any problem space.
However, when part of a balanced team this attribute can save time going down dead-end paths. But it requires a yin to the yang - a perpetual optimist that won't take no for an answer.
For those of us that are on the analytical end of the spectrum, it is important to realize that noticing an early issue does not equate to the problem space being a waste of time that is unsolvable.1 Instead, use your super-power for good to accelerate finding the efficienct solution to the problem that some has identified and clearly expressed (which is itself itself a super power; and you may have just found your startup founder).
You really have to separate your life from comments on hacker news. Did a website really make you decide to be a dismissive jerk to your girlfriend and father? I'm glad you are at least recognizing your behavior and hopefully taking steps to improve.
Hacker News is the absolute pinnacle of non-toxicity on a site that allows essentially everybody to contribute. If everybody is going to have a voice, somebody is going to be offended by it. If you consider this toxic, you consider message boards in particular and the internet itself in general toxic.
For all its faults, it's still the best place to discus things; including controversial topics. My experience on other platforms is significantly less good.
I guess that with thousands (tens of thousands?) active users there's no real way to filter out all "toxicity", and neither should we. Some people are just a bit more abrasive, or state things a little too absolutely, or are a little bit too critical.
I think part of building an inclusive and diverse community also means accepting that people aren't perfect, and not be overly sensitive about this. Of course there are limits, but sometimes people get a little bit over-sensitive about "toxicity". You do have some amount of choice whether you "take offence" or not. Part of that is just adjusting your expectations, and also reminding yourself that they probably mean well even if they're coming off as a bit of an ass. Exceptions apply, of course, and of course there are limits: personal insults are right out, as are condescending dismissals and such. But someone being a bit too arrogant? Meh.
Part of the problem is that unlike a coworker or friend with whom you have a relationship, almost everyone here is a "stranger": you never had a beer with them, or went bowling, or whatever. So less-than-great interactions stand out as a single data point for an entire person, rather than a single data point among many. Add to this non-native speakers, different cultures, etc. and it's easy to become dismayed, especially if you spend "several hours/day". Remember that negative interactions register much stronger, too: for every HN conversation where I end up being frustrated there are dozens where this didn't happen.
Kind of a recently I had a friend get published in Nature, have her work featured on the BBC, and inevitably that was posted here to HN. The work was actually revolutionary, something that in college I had been taught was impossible, she had made closer to being possible.
There were basically 2 types of comments on HN: "Don't get your hopes up, they only got this to work on mice" and "is it ethical to do this kind of research in mice". Valid comments sure, but these are equally valid for every single research endeavor performed on any animal model, and no discussion was given to the technology that had been discovered/invented that could save countless lives for the rest of human history.
Since then, it's been harder for me to take criticism here very seriously.
The key to HN is not to take non-tech-specific controversial things (like this thread) seriously.
If the author wants only the non-toxic parts, stay with threads on Boeing plane safety (where aeroengineers chime in), startups (where the CEO answers), Zig (the language designer is always here), Rust (some folks from the core team are always hanging around), or some weird detail of a processor/GPU/TPU/AWS/low level M1 processor reverse engineering.
Also don't talk about cryptocurrencies, no matter if it's good or bad.
Yeah, that's been my approach. I definitely steer clear of anything politics or politics-adjacent here, because I've found a lot of the conversation pretty disappointing and often toxic.
Anything about crypto, Apple, Google, Tesla, etc all have a mixed bag of good content and hater-type comments that make me eye roll and move on.
But for all of that, this is still my favorite social media site.
The original threads on the Boeing 737-MAX safety incident had plenty of toxicity. Many people here were outright angry that such a massive screwup could be allowed to happen, and made sure to let everyone else here know about it, in the strongest possible terms. Arguably, that "toxic" anger helped save lives by making it apparent to outside observers just how serious the problem was.
I like this kind of post. Here we've got somebody thinking it through trying to be a better human. Nothing wrong with that. We're all better for having done some of that work.
It's too easy to give a glib answer, and feel justified because you're right.
I work hard to post helpful, constructive, conversation-advancing remarks instead. I fail regularly. But sometimes I get it right.
Some simple moves I make to help me be more positive:
Remove the word 'you' from my comment. It's rarely helpful to put words in someone's mouth, or deconstruct another comment. I try to limit my comments to my own ideas. It's so very easy for others to read 'you did blah' and feel indignant. I don't want to generate that. Looking for the word 'you' in my post is a red flag that the post isn't advancing the topic.
Accept criticisms, and respond in a meta way if at all. Getting bogged down in a dictionary definition or arguing who's statistic is more pertinent is low-leverage discussion.
Ask questions as often as making declarative statements. Offer new information and ask if it helps illuminate the topic. That adds something, opens the way for further dialog, and admits a topic may be more nuanced.
Anyway, thanks to those that helped me understand that winning karma points is not the real point.
I think you're blaming your own personality problems on HN. I'm sorry that you wrote your Dad off without helping him, but it's completely appropriate that a commenter here will tell you you're wrong without sitting down and helping you. We're not your "Tech Brothers", but your Dad is your Dad, so treat him as such.
Stepping back a bit: why are you telling people they are wrong if the goal is not to help them? Why are you commenting on this site if all you want to do is say people are wrong without providing further feedback? Serious question, not intended to be snarky at all.
Disclaimer: I am relatively new to HN, although I've lurked on-and-off for years.
My impression so far largely aligns what the author is saying. I see a lot of comments along the lines of "so this is the internet, it's no worse than other communities" and such. The weird thing is that response seems to come with a sort of rejection of what the author's point is. It's no worse, but it's not a lot better either. I've noticed that there is definitely a gap between the stated goals of HN (which I read carefully when I finally decided to create an account) and the reality of how people interact. There are plenty of rude comments and responses that do not follow the guidelines.
In case it's of interest, my education is software engineering. I feel that I had a similar experience to the author's. For a little while, I had too much of a know-it-all attitude and that sometimes lead me to being rude and dismissive of others. In my experience, that's really common with engineers. I imagine in other highly educated profession5s too.
I'm not intending to complain, just sharing my viewpoint as another person out there looking here. I think this community can do better and very often does not live up to its goals. But, despite that, I still find a lot of value here and I try to bring my own positivity and ignore the toxicity.
Take a look at any article that is even tangentially related to anything in crypto. You'll find a battleground of people who are die hard skeptics refusing to engage with any idea in the space. HN has always had some skepticism, but this specific topic made the more toxic side of HN extremely apparent to me. Whatever you believe about any idea, you should be willing to engage with the idea if you're going to comment here.
I hope what we all take away from this article is that we should take a step back, sit with the idea of a post, and before trying to belittle someone else's argument maybe we validate the things we agree with and question the things that are a bit unclear. It's fair to disagree and have a retort to something, but I've seen a lot of people jumping straight to a pretty aggressive, dismissive stand on here.
The die-hard crypto believers are even more bothersome than the crypto skeptics. I might well believe that zero-knowledge proofs might turn out to be the foundation of some new cutting-edge technology, or whatever. But if you just tell me the equivalent of "dude, these Bored Gorillas will change the world!!1!" that's just not very interesting on a social or intellectual level.
Apologies for being skeptical, but why would someone talk to their wife in the same tone that they write HN comments? When I'm commenting anywhere on the internet, I say what I have to say and don't worry about whether someone will read the comment, and if they do, whether they'll like what I said. My only goal is to write out things I think are true. Talking to my wife involves a rather different set of objectives.
Just because you don't know people on the internet personally doesn't mean you shouldn't care about how they would feel when reading your comments. That doesn't mean you have to treat everyone on Hacker News like your wife, but having empathy and courtesy is something that should be part of all conversations, regardless of target audience.
I've noticed that HN tends to mirror my mood. If I'm feeling creative, I'll read posts of people creating something. If I feel irritated I'll find a rantable topic. Etc...
Sonehow my brain picks stories and comments that fit me at that time. If HN gets toxic, it means I have to dial back.
Today, we have access to such an overwhelming amount of data that you can fill a day's worth of media consumption just on the subset that fits your current mood or preconceived belief. Therefore, the world always appears exactly as we think/hope/fear/believe it to be.
It's like when you go to a bar and the DJ is playing songs that just perfectly reinforce your mood. Except we are the DJ and our record collection is infinite.
Now I try to remind myself that my mood will affect the media I see and vice verse. I try to deliberately focus on media that is actually nourishing and not just confirming whatever I'm feeling.
I get a lot of interesting ideas from HN, the comment quality here is unprecedented if you can look past some of the more invested perspectives.
But, for the most part, HN is my way of keeping up with trends in tech/development. And, lately, we have been seeing a lot more articles that aren't strictly tech but also science and life. And honestly, I welcome those.
HN reminds of what IRC used to be like back in the day. You make the discourse what you want it to be. I'd honestly not take a platform like this for granted.
[+] [-] samwillis|4 years ago|reply
I have been on HN for 15 years, I have spent far too much time on this site. Eventually you learn which topics will be "toxic" and avoid them (if you want to). To some extent it just maturity (or lack there of) but I actually think HN is far less toxic outside of some specific topics than other sites.
The topics that are liable to become flame wars change over time, currently it seems to be anything "Crypto" or "Online Advertising" as people have very strong feelings on both sides. I'm certainly still guilty of getting drawn in at times, especially when I feel I have a horse in the race. There is always insightful comments in these threads too.
Fortunately HN is designed to detect topics that are getting out of hand (far more comments than up votes) and they drop of the homepage quickly massively reducing the exposure. Exactly where this thread is already going.
I think the best decision HN made was not breaking the site into categories or "Sub-HNs" where specific toxic topics can grow and mutate, everything is forced though the front page ensuring a level of self moderation.
After 15 years on the site I have no intention of leaving it.
[+] [-] _ktx2|4 years ago|reply
I was pretty skeptical the first time people implored me to join a Discord server, but I've found some communities are very dope. I've discovered that managing peoples behavior online is like trying to herd sheep in a straight line. The flock always goes forward, that much is constant. There are sheep on the left and on the right side of the herd that push the herd onto a new trajectory, a lot of the time I don't think they even know what they're doing, but if you take a step back you can watch it occur in real-time. A leader, who likely doesn't know they're a leader, starts acting in a certain way, which causes the shift. Then another leader clashes with that leader by proxy, which is what I describe as the other side of the herd. These bounding behaviors almost never keep the flock constrained, they cause the flock to split.
These leaders are disposable though. They're placeholders for culture, language, collections of experience, values, etc that people identify with. It takes having conversations with troublemakers and making their effects known in plain language. Some people will get it, moderate their behavior despite their culture, language, collections of experience, values etc and some won't. Those who won't will either leave on their own or get banned.
[+] [-] mey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistermann|4 years ago|reply
I believe the reason is that epistemology (generally: theory of knowledge, seeking/determining what is actually(!) True) is not just hard, but it goes counter to the natural workings of the human mind. If the topic of a thread is a psychology paper dealing with human perception, bias, this sort of thing (an abstract discussion of the phenomenon), few people have difficulty realizing and acknowledging that this is a fundamental problem, in/with reality. However, if the topic of discussion is an object level matter, particularly culture war issues (but even technical ones, as the author notes), the mind seems to run in a different mode - gone[1] is the knowledge that the mind is subject to imperfect thinking, replaced by ~"perception is reality". And, one's intuition might suggest that intelligent people would be less prone to this problem, but substantial evidence[2] suggests that this is not only not necessarily true, but that intelligence exacerbates the problem (if one is usually more often correct than others, it is perfectly reasonable that their default confidence level in being correct would increase).
What I think is also interesting: it seems to me that this one fundamental idea could be one of the main root cause problems with human interaction on the internet (or, in general, really), a topic most people seem to be very interested in - but oddly, these same people almost without exception (in my experience) have zero (or less than) interest in identifying plausible root causes of the problem and contemplating/brainstorming solutions - the exact opposite of what one's intuition might predict. I have yet to encounter a single human being that is even marginally seriously interested in this idea (and many(!) who recoil from it), and I have talked to hundreds of people about it, often in meetups and other places where the general problem with people getting along, fake news, etc is literally the sole topic of conversation.
I am not optimistic that humanity can solve a problem that their mind does not grant them access to (assuming my theory has some truth to it).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory
[2] A word that causes tremendous discord when humans are discussing object level matters
[+] [-] brightball|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sph|4 years ago|reply
Oh yes, I've kept a very high opinion of this forum and its commenters once I skipped right past the daily 250+ comment posts about COVID-19 that have plagued us for 2 years. When it comes to tech, this place is an absolute treasure, but there's few things as odious as tech nerds improvising themselves as politicians, epidemiologists, microbiologists, logistics experts and activists just because they know how to use Google and follow some people on Twitter.
The bitcoin craze wasn't even close to being as bad as the past two years.
[+] [-] thefourthchime|4 years ago|reply
I catch myself doing this, without realizing it far too often. It's good to catch yourself and try to change.
[+] [-] soneca|4 years ago|reply
As a regular, I disagree completely. Comments that point out that something is wrong and have the empathy to try to help and identify a solution are much more upvoted that cynical ones that just point out that something is wrong without much caring for the other part.
If you dig up HN only paying attention to potentially toxic comments, you will find them. It doesn't make HN toxic. If you create the habit of reading yesterday's posts, giving them enough time for the best comments to be upvoted and settle at the top, you will see much much less toxicity.
It seems to me that the author is trying to get away from a certain behavior and, in the process, everywhere they look they just fit what they see in that exact behavior. Like when Woody Woodpecker is hungry.
[+] [-] nosianu|4 years ago|reply
(and the entire comment really, to the and including and especially the last sentence)
Uhm... this is the kind of response the blog post was talking about. Kind of funny, your comment, only that it isn't.
[+] [-] akshayverma99|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Karawebnetwork|4 years ago|reply
Online, people who don't think before they post are able to post more often than people who do. As a result, the average social media post is stupider than the average social media user. Worth remembering whenever Twitter dumbassery drives you to despair."¹²
This covers it all, in my opinion. By the time someone is done posting a six paragraph long analysis that includes sources, a dozen of less pertinent comments will have been posted.
This is what the downvote feature and the flag feature are for.
Ideally, all of us are downvoting cheap humor and unrelated online trends ("first!", etc.)
¹https://twitter.com/G_S_Bhogal/status/1492256294023143426
²Apologies for the wording, I personally would have avoided using "stupid" and "idiocy"
[+] [-] minkzilla|4 years ago|reply
Anyone know of any website that implements this or something similar?
[+] [-] notacoward|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlkuester7|4 years ago|reply
I value the very constructive and thoughtful discussions that happen out here. It can add a lot of value to the originally posted link! (And honestly there are many times where I have felt that the HN discussion was more interesting and profound than the article or blog post, itself...)
[+] [-] pklausler|4 years ago|reply
(Or maybe one post and one reply to a response; otherwise, nobody would get a question answered in a timely manner.)
[+] [-] givemeethekeys|4 years ago|reply
For a community as diverse as Hacker News, I've found it to be anything but toxic. The quality of posts is generally high and the people who comment tend to keep things on topic and impersonal. Personal attacks and jabs are not common and people don't just say things for the sake of winning arguments.
Of course, I don't click on every single story - I stick to the things that interest me, which admittedly are narrowing as of late, unlike in my early 20s.
[+] [-] boc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtranscendence|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] escapedmoose|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dboshardy|4 years ago|reply
And it is absolutely toxic on certain topics, particularly anything economics related or that challenges capitalism and the "line go up" mentality of the VC culture. If you offer anything that criticizes that at all, you're in for an earful.
[+] [-] deltaonefour|4 years ago|reply
"I find it odd that even when someone tells you the logical outcome you still deny it."
"It's baffles me and is so interesting to see someone behave this way even though it's not logical."
It's this intellectual arrogance where the commenter acts like he's some sort of hyper intelligent savant observing creatures of lower intelligence that is completely toxic. Whenever I see that type of garbage comment, I think dude... the other person just disagrees with you stop talking about him like he's some animal your observing in a laboratory.
[+] [-] zalebz|4 years ago|reply
"It's easy to be a critic."
If left unchecked, all that is done is the refinement of a skill that is able to find the potential hurdles/blockers in any problem space.
However, when part of a balanced team this attribute can save time going down dead-end paths. But it requires a yin to the yang - a perpetual optimist that won't take no for an answer.
For those of us that are on the analytical end of the spectrum, it is important to realize that noticing an early issue does not equate to the problem space being a waste of time that is unsolvable.1 Instead, use your super-power for good to accelerate finding the efficienct solution to the problem that some has identified and clearly expressed (which is itself itself a super power; and you may have just found your startup founder).
[+] [-] m348e912|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commandlinefan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Beltalowda|4 years ago|reply
I guess that with thousands (tens of thousands?) active users there's no real way to filter out all "toxicity", and neither should we. Some people are just a bit more abrasive, or state things a little too absolutely, or are a little bit too critical.
I think part of building an inclusive and diverse community also means accepting that people aren't perfect, and not be overly sensitive about this. Of course there are limits, but sometimes people get a little bit over-sensitive about "toxicity". You do have some amount of choice whether you "take offence" or not. Part of that is just adjusting your expectations, and also reminding yourself that they probably mean well even if they're coming off as a bit of an ass. Exceptions apply, of course, and of course there are limits: personal insults are right out, as are condescending dismissals and such. But someone being a bit too arrogant? Meh.
Part of the problem is that unlike a coworker or friend with whom you have a relationship, almost everyone here is a "stranger": you never had a beer with them, or went bowling, or whatever. So less-than-great interactions stand out as a single data point for an entire person, rather than a single data point among many. Add to this non-native speakers, different cultures, etc. and it's easy to become dismayed, especially if you spend "several hours/day". Remember that negative interactions register much stronger, too: for every HN conversation where I end up being frustrated there are dozens where this didn't happen.
[+] [-] deltaonefour|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idrios|4 years ago|reply
There were basically 2 types of comments on HN: "Don't get your hopes up, they only got this to work on mice" and "is it ethical to do this kind of research in mice". Valid comments sure, but these are equally valid for every single research endeavor performed on any animal model, and no discussion was given to the technology that had been discovered/invented that could save countless lives for the rest of human history.
Since then, it's been harder for me to take criticism here very seriously.
[+] [-] xiphias2|4 years ago|reply
If the author wants only the non-toxic parts, stay with threads on Boeing plane safety (where aeroengineers chime in), startups (where the CEO answers), Zig (the language designer is always here), Rust (some folks from the core team are always hanging around), or some weird detail of a processor/GPU/TPU/AWS/low level M1 processor reverse engineering.
Also don't talk about cryptocurrencies, no matter if it's good or bad.
[+] [-] servercobra|4 years ago|reply
Anything about crypto, Apple, Google, Tesla, etc all have a mixed bag of good content and hater-type comments that make me eye roll and move on.
But for all of that, this is still my favorite social media site.
[+] [-] sjg007|4 years ago|reply
Or Covid.
[+] [-] zozbot234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddingus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 years ago|reply
It's good to want to be a better person, though.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|4 years ago|reply
I work hard to post helpful, constructive, conversation-advancing remarks instead. I fail regularly. But sometimes I get it right.
Some simple moves I make to help me be more positive:
Anyway, thanks to those that helped me understand that winning karma points is not the real point.[+] [-] tinalumfoil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blurker|4 years ago|reply
My impression so far largely aligns what the author is saying. I see a lot of comments along the lines of "so this is the internet, it's no worse than other communities" and such. The weird thing is that response seems to come with a sort of rejection of what the author's point is. It's no worse, but it's not a lot better either. I've noticed that there is definitely a gap between the stated goals of HN (which I read carefully when I finally decided to create an account) and the reality of how people interact. There are plenty of rude comments and responses that do not follow the guidelines.
In case it's of interest, my education is software engineering. I feel that I had a similar experience to the author's. For a little while, I had too much of a know-it-all attitude and that sometimes lead me to being rude and dismissive of others. In my experience, that's really common with engineers. I imagine in other highly educated profession5s too.
I'm not intending to complain, just sharing my viewpoint as another person out there looking here. I think this community can do better and very often does not live up to its goals. But, despite that, I still find a lot of value here and I try to bring my own positivity and ignore the toxicity.
[+] [-] nscalf|4 years ago|reply
I hope what we all take away from this article is that we should take a step back, sit with the idea of a post, and before trying to belittle someone else's argument maybe we validate the things we agree with and question the things that are a bit unclear. It's fair to disagree and have a retort to something, but I've seen a lot of people jumping straight to a pretty aggressive, dismissive stand on here.
[+] [-] zozbot234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bachmeier|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperman1|4 years ago|reply
Sonehow my brain picks stories and comments that fit me at that time. If HN gets toxic, it means I have to dial back.
[+] [-] munificent|4 years ago|reply
Today, we have access to such an overwhelming amount of data that you can fill a day's worth of media consumption just on the subset that fits your current mood or preconceived belief. Therefore, the world always appears exactly as we think/hope/fear/believe it to be.
It's like when you go to a bar and the DJ is playing songs that just perfectly reinforce your mood. Except we are the DJ and our record collection is infinite.
Now I try to remind myself that my mood will affect the media I see and vice verse. I try to deliberately focus on media that is actually nourishing and not just confirming whatever I'm feeling.
[+] [-] pm90|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skilled|4 years ago|reply
But, for the most part, HN is my way of keeping up with trends in tech/development. And, lately, we have been seeing a lot more articles that aren't strictly tech but also science and life. And honestly, I welcome those.
HN reminds of what IRC used to be like back in the day. You make the discourse what you want it to be. I'd honestly not take a platform like this for granted.