There is a large percentage of users on HN who are neither tactful nor socially competent.
I've been here for 6+ years and while much of the time the discussions can be insightful, many other times you get people who are overly aggressive and downright mean because they're either unable to control their jealousy or throw away all decency for the pursuit of Truth and Accuracy.
I really don't know if it's because of something like Aspergers, or that maybe hackers tend to be overly analytical and take pride in that over being civil. I find myself complaining about it from time to time.
This is the norm here.
Edit: OP, "A Dribbling, Selfish Jerk" should be the title of your blog from now on.
We're also "living a lie", that is, we've fooled ourselves into thinking that we're participating in an actual conversation, when in fact this is just a near-anonymous, non-synchronous message board. Without most of the social cues that we get when we're in a face-to-face conversation, the result is something that very easily becomes pedantic or insensitive.
It appears to be a hardware limit - humans can only consider a given number of other humans as individuals. Everyone else composes "the others" and are treated less favorably.
"or that maybe hackers tend to be overly analytical"
Another reason is that someone could be having a bad day and since making a comment is so quick with little friction the bad comes out. In general I'm guessing that a slew of the wrong type of comments would get you banned so consistent behavior like this would not be tolerated (and would be downvoted).
>I've been here for 6+ years and while much of the time the discussions can be insightful, many other times you get people who are overly aggressive and downright mean because they're either unable to control their jealousy or throw away all decency for the pursuit of Truth and Accuracy.
For me, plain stupid I can cope with, but the worst offenders are the seemingly benign types, that go passive-aggressive on you.
I'm just amazed someone is a sad enough individual to take time out of their day to write a nasty email to someone they don't know. Don't sane people just close the browser window and move on?
I snapped and wrote to Gruber once, pointing out exactly how he was factually wrong about some Android issue. I believe he continued to write and be wrong about it.
Clearly a waste of my time. I was at least polite, though.
I agree. On the scale of things that would make me write 'f- you' to someone, not linking to a video at the start of a post is, I would have thought, fairly close to the bottom of said scale.
I actually think you got unlucky with this one. I've been fortunate enough to get a few posts onto Hacker News over the years and I've never received any remarks like the one you had.
Once bitten, twice shy (though also it appears twice on the front of HN so not all bad ;) however my experience is that most of the discussion and feedback from Hacker News is very good and that which is rude or genuinely unfair gets downvoted pretty aggressively. That doesn't of course account for private messages but for one reason or another I don't tend to receive those.
Were I to have written this, I would have included a link to the post in question. That seems a pretty obvious traffic acquisition strategy to me. When you write a followup about how this post was included on the front page perhaps that will be a point under "The Bad" :-P
The few times I've been on the front page of HN I've had a fairly consistent 1000 visitors per hour, FWIW.
I was on the front page the day I released my "blog" website. I ended up being on the front page for a few hours, but that is partly because I released on a Saturday evening. The traffic was shocking.
I didn't end up with any really bad feedback. In fact, I was immensely pleased with the feedback I received and the commentary I had here on HN. I think it was obvious to those who visited that the site was brand-new and rusty. I considered adding a comment area to the site, but I decided against that for several reasons I don't want to get into here.
I also thought I missed out on the social media stuff, but I don't think I did. The traffic was very healthy from social media because people wanted to share my article, and I don't think that any real reminder would have caused people to share that would not have. I did add social sharing buttons on the site for about a week and the sharing decreased during that time. Also, there was a lot of traffic from "other" social media outlets, so how many buttons would I really need?
Congrats on front-paging again. It really is a nice feeling.
I'm surprised that he got fewer than 1000 hits. I always thought that HackerNews and Slashdot (probably much larger, I guess) would send way more people, for some reason.
I guess HN traffic is quite targeted and valuable to some people though.
I'm sort of surprised by this too. Perhaps it comes down to titles and time of day? Most of the posts I've had hit the front page get >20k hits the first day, but I also word my titles carefully (no linkbait, but make it catchy) and time the submissions when I know that the maximum number of people will see them.
I've been on the front page a few times and got around 10,000 to 20,000 visits from it. It often brought many more comments on the posts that made it than when people find it another way, but I saw no real increase in social sharing. Opposite that, if a post makes it to a fairly popular subreddit, I get a lot less comments from that kind of traffic, but on the other hand the posts will tend to be picked up again by other blogs or sites. I found that interesting.
If you make a comment that's downvoted, it gradually becomes invisible to the extent that people have to select it to view it.
I know from experience that either people do just that and then downvote or else downvote unread.
Either way it smacks of kicking a dog when it's down.
It seems anomalous that when a comment is upvoted no one knows it except the person voting and the person getting the vote but when you're downvoted everyone knows it.
We were on the front page briefly the other day (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4916201) and got about 2,800 visitors. The comments were largely helpful and the experience a positive one overall.
On the other hand, nobody succeeded in earning the $2,500 bounty yet.
Surely it's all relative? Sure, 20,000 people in a day might not be a lot when compared to 'total people using the internet every day' or even 'total people looking at HN every day' but it's a huge number when compared to 'total people looking at my blog on an average day'.
20,000 isn't that high, but it's specific traffic - people coming from one source who are generally in the same niche group.
Compare this to something like the frontpage of Reddit for a guest and you'll see a lot higher than that... but from a very broad audience.
Compare this again to something like Facebook, if your site has been shared across (and not just some humorous image that has been reuploaded and shared).
Imagine if you used that post to say "Here is why this webhost sucks, rah rah rah", and then funneled them into another company. Imagine if you hired sock puppet accounts to upvote your comments both here and on other social sites, if you are either an affiliate or a web hosting company you have the potential to make a lot of money off the right traffic source.
That's similar figures to what I got when one of my sites got to the top. It would be interesting to see the fall off rate of # of visitors based on its rank on the front page.
I've honestly struggled with how to give feedback to other users on HN. It's not hard to be civil, but my automatic reaction is to look for things to criticize, not because I'm overly critical, but because I assume that's the purpose of submitting your work to HN in the first place...if you're confident enough to do so, I guess I just assume you have a decent amount of self-validation going and more patting-on-the-back is going to be less helpful than critique.
*
Having read your original post on HN, I noticed you didn't actually fix the problem that the rude user complains about. The rude user is definitely out of line, but are you really much better by just dismissing their point as simply "sheer mind-numbing stupidity"? Is the user wrong because he/she was an asshole or just wrong period? Because I think the user had a good point: you refer to an off-site video that you don't show until the very end, and you don't even link to the indepth NYT article that includes the video, which would be common courtesy for any SEO specialist.
There was nothing broken. Why should he fix it? Putting the video at the top would result in people watching the video, then ignoring the words, because, hey, they just watched the video. Putting it at the bottom makes it an extra treat for those who put in the effort to read the words.[1]
And that is exactly the problem with feedback online. Instead of assuming something is the way it is for a reason, people assume it is that way because the author, who spent who knows how much time thinking about things, was too selfish to cover my own particular need.
I think selfish is the right word for how people view it. If it was just incompetent, people would be more willing to help. But people take it personally, and that implies people see open hostility.
On the other hand, when competence in the author and humility in ourselves is assumed, the dialog is much more interesting and useful. Instead of just shredding the work, helpful language and reasons for the concern are used.
1. I have no idea if this is the author's actual thought process, but when I viewed the page, I immediately thought, "Wait, it makes sense for the video to be at the bottom. Anywhere else would be highly distracting to the article."
[+] [-] kyro|13 years ago|reply
I've been here for 6+ years and while much of the time the discussions can be insightful, many other times you get people who are overly aggressive and downright mean because they're either unable to control their jealousy or throw away all decency for the pursuit of Truth and Accuracy.
I really don't know if it's because of something like Aspergers, or that maybe hackers tend to be overly analytical and take pride in that over being civil. I find myself complaining about it from time to time.
This is the norm here.
Edit: OP, "A Dribbling, Selfish Jerk" should be the title of your blog from now on.
[+] [-] jt2190|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrogers65|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
[+] [-] larrys|13 years ago|reply
Another reason is that someone could be having a bad day and since making a comment is so quick with little friction the bad comes out. In general I'm guessing that a slew of the wrong type of comments would get you banned so consistent behavior like this would not be tolerated (and would be downvoted).
[+] [-] pretoriusB|13 years ago|reply
For me, plain stupid I can cope with, but the worst offenders are the seemingly benign types, that go passive-aggressive on you.
[+] [-] pbateman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TillE|13 years ago|reply
Clearly a waste of my time. I was at least polite, though.
[+] [-] kerno|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petenixey|13 years ago|reply
Once bitten, twice shy (though also it appears twice on the front of HN so not all bad ;) however my experience is that most of the discussion and feedback from Hacker News is very good and that which is rude or genuinely unfair gets downvoted pretty aggressively. That doesn't of course account for private messages but for one reason or another I don't tend to receive those.
[+] [-] mahmud|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kami8845|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noelwelsh|13 years ago|reply
The few times I've been on the front page of HN I've had a fairly consistent 1000 visitors per hour, FWIW.
[+] [-] kerno|13 years ago|reply
Thanks for the tip! I've made that edit now, can't believe I overlooked that. Too much Christmas cheer in my system!
[+] [-] dizzystar|13 years ago|reply
I didn't end up with any really bad feedback. In fact, I was immensely pleased with the feedback I received and the commentary I had here on HN. I think it was obvious to those who visited that the site was brand-new and rusty. I considered adding a comment area to the site, but I decided against that for several reasons I don't want to get into here.
I also thought I missed out on the social media stuff, but I don't think I did. The traffic was very healthy from social media because people wanted to share my article, and I don't think that any real reminder would have caused people to share that would not have. I did add social sharing buttons on the site for about a week and the sharing decreased during that time. Also, there was a lot of traffic from "other" social media outlets, so how many buttons would I really need?
Congrats on front-paging again. It really is a nice feeling.
[+] [-] kerno|13 years ago|reply
Thanks for your congrats - it does feel good, although I'm sure some of that is the pre-Xmas drinks!
I'm surprised that when you added sharing buttons that sharing decreased - do you have any idea why?
[+] [-] thomasbk|13 years ago|reply
I guess HN traffic is quite targeted and valuable to some people though.
[+] [-] daeken|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dendory|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barking|13 years ago|reply
I know from experience that either people do just that and then downvote or else downvote unread. Either way it smacks of kicking a dog when it's down.
It seems anomalous that when a comment is upvoted no one knows it except the person voting and the person getting the vote but when you're downvoted everyone knows it.
[+] [-] businessleads|13 years ago|reply
On the other hand, nobody succeeded in earning the $2,500 bounty yet.
[+] [-] epicjunction|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
Comment systems are baffling, and it's an important problem that needs some work.
Don't say what it is, but did they use a real name or an obvious psydonym or pseudoanonymous?
[+] [-] jacques_chester|13 years ago|reply
If you think 20,000 visits in 24 hours is a lot, it's not. It just isn't. It hasn't been since 1998.
But the audience is valuable.
[+] [-] crntaylor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thejosh|13 years ago|reply
Compare this to something like the frontpage of Reddit for a guest and you'll see a lot higher than that... but from a very broad audience.
Compare this again to something like Facebook, if your site has been shared across (and not just some humorous image that has been reuploaded and shared).
Imagine if you used that post to say "Here is why this webhost sucks, rah rah rah", and then funneled them into another company. Imagine if you hired sock puppet accounts to upvote your comments both here and on other social sites, if you are either an affiliate or a web hosting company you have the potential to make a lot of money off the right traffic source.
[+] [-] pohungc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treskot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|13 years ago|reply
*
Having read your original post on HN, I noticed you didn't actually fix the problem that the rude user complains about. The rude user is definitely out of line, but are you really much better by just dismissing their point as simply "sheer mind-numbing stupidity"? Is the user wrong because he/she was an asshole or just wrong period? Because I think the user had a good point: you refer to an off-site video that you don't show until the very end, and you don't even link to the indepth NYT article that includes the video, which would be common courtesy for any SEO specialist.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|13 years ago|reply
And that is exactly the problem with feedback online. Instead of assuming something is the way it is for a reason, people assume it is that way because the author, who spent who knows how much time thinking about things, was too selfish to cover my own particular need.
I think selfish is the right word for how people view it. If it was just incompetent, people would be more willing to help. But people take it personally, and that implies people see open hostility.
On the other hand, when competence in the author and humility in ourselves is assumed, the dialog is much more interesting and useful. Instead of just shredding the work, helpful language and reasons for the concern are used.
1. I have no idea if this is the author's actual thought process, but when I viewed the page, I immediately thought, "Wait, it makes sense for the video to be at the bottom. Anywhere else would be highly distracting to the article."
[+] [-] skurmedel|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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