Anything I post critical of Android and Microsoft on Hacker news gets voted up. Most criticism I post about Apple gets voted deeply sub-zeroed or for submissions, flagged and removed. And it has gotten much, much worse the last 6 months.
Hacker News is definitely turning into the monoculture Paul Graham said (here on this site) that he wanted to prevent. At this point I feel the value of having a discussion about matters here has dropped sharply and is continuing to do so.
What's the point of commenting when it will get minus'ed, despite backing your comment with verifiable data? Meanwhile the ones saying something equivalent of "I disagree (but I have no argument)" gets top votes. What's the point of submitting stories when you know it will get flagged and censored?
A culture of censorship and self-affirmation. Do really I want to be a part of that?
What is interesting is that I observe the deepest abuse of the moderation system after morning has hit the US continent. During European working hours this place is usually quite civilized. At this point Hacker news seems to contain at least two widely different cultures. I sense a clash or divide of some sort coming in the near future.
Thinking about it, my feelings right now tells me that this place has turned into a smaller, but much worse mob-rule than reddit ever was. And I quit reddit because of the completely uncritical mob-rule found there.
Time to do some reflection around my online-habbits. I hear Google+ is a great place for reasonable hacker-type discussion these days.
It may be that everyone is tired of endless Apple-related discussions and speculations, based on virtually no 'official' information. Unfortunately, because Apple prefers to say nothing, everyone else on the internet thinks that their personal opinions are an adequate substitute. Although I don't bother to look at these stories myself, it may be that others have got tired of reading them.
I prefer to read positive and educational stories that appear on Hacker News, and stories that are unlikely to be noticed by many given their location - if people posted and commented on these more than on the latest speculation and gossip, or on stories from sites that already get more publicity than they deserve, Hacker News might be a more rewarding place for everyone...
> I realize the Sanfran wannebe hipster-crowd here like their shiny iGadgets and want to reaffirm their own worth by appraising the company which they have attached their identity to, but this is getting a little bit out of hand and quite frankly, rather silly.
Looking through your post history and for your previous account, it looks like over half of your posts concern Apple with the vast majority of them having a negative slant. If people are moderating you down (I haven't) it's probably because they either disagree with your arguments or doubt your sincerity. Unless you're trying to argue that reality has an anti-Apple bias.
Note that I personally would classify myself as having a somewhat pro-Apple mindset, but I see plenty on HN who are very clearly pro Google/Android. No such monoculture exists.
> Hacker News is definitely turning into the monoculture Paul Graham said (here on this site) that he wanted to prevent.
It happens to all websites with upvotes and downvotes system for comments. Before Hacker News I've seen it happened to habrahabr.ru (russian website with similar audience, invite-only).
To have been upvoted, you need to say things everyone agrees with. If you are in minority, then you are downvoted. But talented people are in minority. Rich people are in minority. Business owners vs. wage earners are in minority. So, any community with driven-by-majority censorship quickly degrades to a totalitarian sect. A community built to select good ideas, to filter them out of dirt, must encourage outstanding people who are in minority by definition, not discourage them by downvoting.
That's why I'm against downvoting. Upvotes are OK for me, but I don't like the idea of downvotes on HN. They limit my ability to express alternative point of view here. They make me mimic "the grey mass". Probably it's not the system PG intended to build.
I hear you, felt a bit dirty myself on HN for the first time today.
Earlier today I posted what was obviously a controversial comment on a previous story, got lots of down-votes, fine.
The bit I find strange is that other comments on unrelated stories got down-voted near simultaneously. My other posts weren't that great or anything, but I've posted stuff of about the same quality before & generally been up-voted (or ignored).
My little anecdote could well be coincidence (& probably is) but my point is that in any community there are those who like to engage in petty vendettas, and there are some who are just jerks.
Keep the faith good sir. You obviously _are_ a 'real nerd' (judging from your blog posts), and looks like you're doing just fine with that :)
I too have seen this pattern of downvoting comments by the same author (i.e. me). It seems that some people here are disagreeing with a comment and then punishing the author my downvoting other comments by the same author.
On the other hand, there are people doing what I do - sometimes I will disagree with the point that a person makes in a thread, and I downvote them, but as I found their point well-argued, though ultimately wrong, I will then search their history to find a post that I can upvote to balance out the karma...
The problem with down-voting over disagreements is that the person who made the post now knows that someone disagrees, but has absolutely no idea why.
I participate in discussions because it is a great opportunity to learn. If I have said something that is wrong, I would really like to know why. I might even agree with you. Karma serves absolutely no purpose. The loss of a point means nothing. Insightful discussions, on the other hand, hold a lot of meaning and value.
If you disagree, formulate a thoughtful reply. Save your down votes for the obvious spam.
Likewise. It's been going on for a while. When it first started I was wondering if it would pass or if this is a strange attractor of these types of sites or what-have-you. Now, I am disappointed. Every now and again it appears like someone will downvote a lot of my comments without comment.
It's the "without comment" that is the poison here, IMHO.
It's not necessarily malicious. It could be someone checking out your other posts to see where you're coming from, and then finding out that in turns out they disagree with all of your recent comments.
I agree, but that would probably be rare, especially across threads. The culture here for a while (HN in its "prime") was that if something merited a downvote, then it merited a comment articulating the dissent. We didn't have too many trolls (a few, but not many), so most of the time it was better to stimulate the discussion by posting your explicit disagreements.
In fact, it was common to upvote people who presented an interesting opinion even if you disagreed with it.
Now it's common to see someone downvoted into the gray without a single response. In short, if somebody has to ask "why the downvotes?" we're doing it wrong. (Presumably trolls know why they are getting downvoted.)
While that's true, it does seem like a pattern. I've been downvoted in recent days for offering someone praise for a sharing something useful. I can't help but shake my head as I know it's someone who doesn't like something I said on another post and is following me around.
It's the "without comment" that is the poison here, IMHO.
The dilemma here is that most people don't want to read petty squabbles. So if a poster says something you think is really stupid and offensive, commenting is likely to devolve into a back-and-forth that earns a pile of downvotes from everyone else.
I realize there's a difference between a single downvote for a post and a series of "punishment" downvotes, but the same idea applies.
It occurs to me that a nice feature for hacker news would be to have a comment box on the user profile page which would allow the equivalent of private messages. That way instead of the alternatives being (a) downvote, (b) public response and sometimes (c) email; you could resolve the conflict with the person via private messages.
So if a poster says something you think is really stupid and offensive
If I think a poster is trolling, I'll ignore him/her. I encourage others to do the same. Trolling is no fun if somebody doesn't take the bait.
If the person doesn't seem to be trolling but is just posting something "stupid and offensive," call him/her out on it and say why. The poster may not realize how "stupid/offensive" the post is. That's the value of this community. You can learn here.
Often, it's really hard to do this without starting a petty meta-argument. It can be hard to call someone out and maintain focus on the topics people actually want to read about.
For example, I have downvoted people for complaining about getting downvotes. Sometimes I explain, if I can do it in a way that I think adds real value to the discussion, but really: it's in the guidelines. Nobody wants to see someone complain about downvotes and then see me complain about the complaining, which can easily start a flamewar. So I downvote and move on.
Another example is prefacing a sentence with "look,". This is almost always condescending and unnecessary in written communication. If I really think people would appreciate an explanation of why this is condescending I will explain, but usually doing that will distract from the real discussion.
Sometimes really lazy posts with blatant logical fallacies and lack of substance get a downvote without a comment. Because really, if there's no substance then what is there to comment about?
I recall reading that HN's karma algorithm dampens the effect of rapid downvoting somehow, precisely to mitigate this sort of karma vendetta. Anyone know for sure?
Keep up the good work and don't let idiots like these distract you.
If there is one thing that characters like that achieve then it is that in the longer term they will come to hate themselves as much as the world around them.
Just skimming that article I notice that this person:
- didn't bother to check out the limitations of the site whose users he criticizes.
- does not like to compete on a level playing field
- hates his customers
- thinks that anonymity is a shield from behind which you can say things that you would not say in person with impunity
Not much good can come from that, eventually such behavior leads to self destruction.
Keep in mind that any fool can break a window, but only experts can make glass.
Please don't let crap like this get you down, it isn't worth it. I'm kind of surprised that it got the attention that it did here but that may be the kind of attention that normally is reserved for road accidents.
Don't feel bad. I have to admit, I too was thinking that your project description was pretty detailed but somehow lacking, until I learned about the 1000 character limit, which "Mr. Case" forgot to mention or wasn't aware of. So I think it is really not your fault, but a shortcoming of Tinyproj, similar to the somewhat vague "timeframe" field. Considering the maturity of Tinyproj I'm confident that Kyle will iron out these wrinks.
There will always be an opposing force to your success. Success means working against entropy and winning, not the easiest job in the universe. Since you've founded a few companies you probably know this quite well already.
I think this particular opposition is minimal and can be easily and completely disregarded though.
You posted a project description that you thought was sufficient for the kind of person you were looking for and you got a good response and you fixed your problem. Now somebody says you're doing it wrong.
Was I wrong in my assumption that the original author wasn't "ousting" Eric as the fake nerd, but the users on his site? I'm 99% sure that comment was aimed at what the anonymous user called "every douche with a checkbook" and aimed at business types who want to make a quick buck of software.
I think if you reread the article, specifically the parts relating to TinyProj, he even mentions that the project simply needs to be curated more carefully. (Whether or not that's true is a whole new beast).
Edit: I see now that I was mistaken. The site was created by Kyle Bragger, and a critiqued ad posted by Eric.
A few nits: The first link in the article comes to this thread, which I suspect is not what you wanted. "Oust" doesn't mean what you think it does. Who is this entrepeneur who only gets mentioned once, but was apparently helpful? Did you really have to use txtspk?
The thing to do in these situations is to comment right on the blog and explain the reasons your post was "vague." Perhaps the blogger (Case) didn't know? Perhaps he can correct his post?
Failing that, you can then call out "hack bloggers who run off on rants before they check facts (blah blah blah)" in a post of your own if you want war, or chalk it up to a bad day for Mr. Case if you want peace.
You were probably unfairly targeted because you're not yet a very clear writer. Keep practicing. The post you're upset about was a reckless rant that hit more than one inappropriate target.
"... So, when someone, anonymously, says something like this: “I’m sure I’m not the only programmer that can sniff out a fake nerd.” – Edward Case And tries to oust me call me out as that fake nerd. Well. Ya. You’ve got a lot to learn about people on Hacker News. Generally, we know our shit. ..."
Of the posts that I dislike, ad-hominem criticism, the singling individuals are the least helpful, especially when posted by an anonymous coward. I can't tell if this is valid criticism or a rant from a random programmer trolling because the source plays the man, not the problem.
A more helpful article might have been discussing the natural tension between entrepreneurs and programmers. Startup founders are usually the union of both, but I've noticed ideas pitched from programmers (as opposed to entrepreneurs/founders) tend to downplay the importance of everything else related to the business. Startups aren't just code. There are a multitude of conflicting issues that need attention. There might be some valid criticisms, but that's all they are. Don't beat yourself up over a random post on a bulletin board from a an anonymous source from a tabloid.
"I was limited to 1000 characters on Tinyproj. I did have more detailed requirements. The 1000 char limit was a pain, I have to say, and I was going to quickly give up on Tinyproj."
It's not so bad, is it? 1000 characters should be enough to give a general idea of what kind of application you have in mind. Interested developers will contact you, and from there the details can be communicated.
You can't let what people say on the Internet bug you. The Internet is retard central station and there will always be people who don't like you, disagree with you, or think you're a fake. Or maybe they don't but they want to piss you off for the fun of seeing butt rage. You're better off if you just assume everyone is retarded and/or trolling. The fact that you're writing about him probably pleases him. Don't be surprised if he comes in here and says "u mad bro?"
Why you're expecting something good form a "market place"? Even Zarathustra spake that it should be avoided. So, "walk proud, William Blake" if you've decided to come here. ^_^
You have basically two strategies - being what you are or being a karma-whore. First one is better in the long run.
Anything I post critical of Android and Microsoft on Hacker news gets voted up. Most criticism I post about Apple gets voted deeply sub-zeroed or for submissions, flagged and removed. And it has gotten much, much worse the last 6 months.
Hacker News is definitely turning into the monoculture Paul Graham said (here on this site) that he wanted to prevent. At this point I feel the value of having a discussion about matters here has dropped sharply and is continuing to do so.
What's the point of commenting when it will get minus'ed, despite backing your comment with verifiable data? Meanwhile the ones saying something equivalent of "I disagree (but I have no argument)" gets top votes. What's the point of submitting stories when you know it will get flagged and censored?
A culture of censorship and self-affirmation. Do really I want to be a part of that?
What is interesting is that I observe the deepest abuse of the moderation system after morning has hit the US continent. During European working hours this place is usually quite civilized. At this point Hacker news seems to contain at least two widely different cultures. I sense a clash or divide of some sort coming in the near future.
Thinking about it, my feelings right now tells me that this place has turned into a smaller, but much worse mob-rule than reddit ever was. And I quit reddit because of the completely uncritical mob-rule found there.
Time to do some reflection around my online-habbits. I hear Google+ is a great place for reasonable hacker-type discussion these days.