>specifically, across an array of psychological situations and tasks, adults display a negativity bias, or the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.
This is a human problem and it happens everywhere.
> And they are heavily moderated against negative discussion/ragebait.
So? You have to do that because it takes one toxic person to poison the well. HN is aggressively moderated to get rid of articles and opinions that don't belong too. Without it, it would be just a constant stream of self-promotion and politics.
The point is that in certain other places, someone (the moderators) worked to nourish a positive culture and it worked. HN didn't and it shows. I don't think that negativity is necessary to keep the forum interesting. Especially given that HN's negativity really isn't all that insightful. A lot of negative takes are bad, and many of them are written without reading the article, or by cherrypicking a single sentence and attacking that.
There's a lot of scientific evidence that negative and controversial content has multiple psychological effects of high emotional arousal, triggers the confrontation effect and toxicity breeds retention.
We're more likely to keep arguing here when disagreeing than to agree and add much.
And again, this isn't limited to internet but irl too.
It depends how you want to measure engagement and activity. Quality of discussion is something to consider. It's very difficult to have a proper discussion when all of the responses are the same expected replies to low-effort ragebait.
pixl97|1 month ago
And they are heavily moderated against negative discussion/ragebait.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3652533/
>specifically, across an array of psychological situations and tasks, adults display a negativity bias, or the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.
This is a human problem and it happens everywhere.
redserk|1 month ago
nospice|1 month ago
So? You have to do that because it takes one toxic person to poison the well. HN is aggressively moderated to get rid of articles and opinions that don't belong too. Without it, it would be just a constant stream of self-promotion and politics.
The point is that in certain other places, someone (the moderators) worked to nourish a positive culture and it worked. HN didn't and it shows. I don't think that negativity is necessary to keep the forum interesting. Especially given that HN's negativity really isn't all that insightful. A lot of negative takes are bad, and many of them are written without reading the article, or by cherrypicking a single sentence and attacking that.
epolanski|1 month ago
We're more likely to keep arguing here when disagreeing than to agree and add much.
And again, this isn't limited to internet but irl too.
redserk|1 month ago