[pg]

I think it's just as well not to allow comments on one's site. If someone wants to say something about something you've written, they can say it on their own blog or on Twitter. When it's something of theirs they're writing on instead of something of yours, they think twice before being jerks: most people won't create a whole blog post just to make a trollish comment, and someone whose Twitter stream is a series of nasty remarks is not going to have a lot of followers, unless he's very witty.

Unfortunately, although I don't have comments on my site, as the moderator of a forum I get them de facto in the comments threads here. It's a uniquely unpleasant situation. In a way it's worse than having comments on my site. On my own site I could delete nasty comments, but here if I do I'll be accused of censorship.

Frankly, I'm stumped. I've occasionally thought of banning paulgraham.com, but people would accuse me of censorship if I did that too.

[patio11]

You know the "send in the puppet" trick for dealing with abusive customers? (Pretend the customer is talking to a puppet, your only job is to manipulate the puppet such that the customer and the business reach a mutually satisfactory conclusion. If the customer curses a blue streak at the puppet, no biggie, the puppet doesn't care.) If you feel like comment threads are getting you down, send in the puppet. Hah, silly trolls, spending all that time tearing into a puppet. The puppet doesn't care.

[kalid]

Thanks for posting that tidbit -- it's a nice way to separate yourself from the conversation. Really, we shouldn't feel attached to what we write (we are not our works) but it's difficult to fight that part of human nature. I think this is a clever, practical antidote.

[philk]

The correct solution is just to ignore them. Sure, they're saying nasty things about you, but no-one's saying anything about them at all.

[pg]

It's hard to leave a mischaracterization of your ideas unanswered on a forum where people know you participate. I don't worry what people say about me on other sites, because I don't even know what they're saying. But here I do know, and everyone knows I know. Which means in effect someone can call me out here, by phrasing a comment in such a way that if I don't respond it seems like it's because I have no response to make.

I think perhaps getting rid of points will mitigate this problem though.

[patio11]

On the theory that a little absurdity helps keep everything in perspective:

The problem is you think that you know that people know that you know that somebody thinks you don't know what you're talking about, but you don't know that people know that you know that somebody thinks you don't know what you're talking about, and in fact it is quite possible that people think that you know that they know that you know what you're talking about, so if you just thought that people think that you know that they know that you know what you're talking about, then it wouldn't matter if they think that you know that they know that you know what you're talking about at all, which has the side effect of mooting whether they know that you know that somebody thinks you don't know what you're talking about.

Oof, my parser just blew the stack. Short version: you're well-liked here and have objectively extant accomplishments elsewhere (presumably a source of more happiness than the aggregate opinion of the HN community). The existence of people who disagree with you does not diminish either your general well-likedness or your other accomplishments. Don't worry about them -- the rest of us certainly don't.

[radu_floricica]

> by phrasing a comment in such a way that if I don't respond it seems like it's because I have no response to make

I dare say not many people here would fall for that, and you shouldn't really care about those who do. Most are still surprised you take the time to answer as much as you do.

I'd say the problems with points are different though. From the way my comments are voted recently I noticed three things:

- the upvoted comments are those which fit the common opinion, and upvoting them is used to express it.

- the ones I honestly considered good and original stay at 1-2. I have absolutely no idea if they made an impact whatsoever.

- from the way scores fluctuate I'm guessing some amount of downvoting

Overall I tend to believe that HN is more and more aggregating _opinions_ instead of _ideas_.

[nostrademons]

http://xkcd.com/386/

It'd be nice if people recognized that sometimes when folks don't respond, it's because they have better things to do, and not because they agree with what's being said.

[philk]

Sure, but if you respond there are two categories of people:

a) People who generally like you and your essays, who will continue to agree with you, and

b) People who don't like you or your essays, who will take it as further evidence that you don't know what you're talking about.

and by replying you're just making the people from category b) post more.

But here I do know, and everyone knows I know

Not really. There's no "this post was read by pg" flag next to it. If you don't reply, at worst people will think you just couldn't be bothered to respond, which isn't a bad thing.

[edw519]

It's hard to leave a mischaracterization of your ideas unanswered on a forum where people know you participate.

Yes it is. And here's something I learned by accident...

Many times I have been challenged by something I said. Often a great point, but just as often something totally illogical. I always felt compelled to engage immediately or else I'd look like I was acquiescing to the other.

Then a strange thing happened. I got so busy that I could only visit a few times per day. So when I returned to a thread I had commented in, I was challenged, and others had responded instead of me. And their responses were often much better than mine would have been.

So now that's my default. I let others respond for me simply because I'm not here. And I've been very pleasantly surprised. For every jerk, there are 10 people ready to downvote or comment.

There's a natural tendency to stick up for yourself, so it's tough to let it go and give others a chance to do it for you. But give it a try anyway. Have faith in this community. When you're too busy to respond, we've got your back.

[mhartl]

I second this. Recently I posted a story about a project I'm working on (Rails Tutorial, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138149), and someone made a trollish comment I felt obliged to rebut. I was pleasantly surprised to see other HN readers come to my defense with comments and downvotes. I did end up responding, but I probably shouldn't have, and next time I'll probably sit on my hands and see how it shakes out.

[NathanKP]

I have no reason to allow nasty commentors to post on my site. If someone posts relevant, meaningful criticism I leave it. If someone is basically just insulting me or using profanity I delete it. I don't care if people think of it as censorship, because it is my site. Like you said if they want to post something nasty, they can do it on their own blog, and while they are at it they will probably link to me so that I get more visitors and Google PR.

That is my theory on allowing and/or censoring nasty comments.

[cookiecaper]

I've learned to be careful about whom I discuss things with. If you talk to the wrong crowd, all you're going to get is unreasonable and angry people. People have to be primed and qualified before you share too much, or else they will react violently to your message.

I don't think that there's any problem with disagreement or common and civilized discussion. The problem arises when the discussion turns into a contention, and the contention gives into resentment, bitterness, name-calling, etc. Once something has devolved that far, it is generally irredeemable, so if you things heading down that path I think it's more often better to just leave it, even if the original comment is inflammatory and accusatory, because those people have already forsaken reasonability and intelligence (usually as a response to being stumped), and what's the point in discussing a thing with one like that, or one whose biases are immovable and emotional?

[jjs]

Perhaps you simply need to better enforce the HN Guidelines: Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

If someone posts something that you strongly suspect they wouldn't say in person, suspend their account until either (a) they verifiably attach their real name to it, demonstrating their willingness to say it without the cloak of pseudonymity; or (b) they retract the offending post.

[netcan]

Isn't HN the de facto comment area for many sites? I mean, that's what HN (obviously not just HN) is, isn't it? A place to discuss & discover content. Doesn't that solve the troll's problem generally (not just for your site)?

I agree with you to some extent, you are much more likely to get good, interesting responses on something "of theirs," just not sure its solvable.

[tsally]

Can't you just have the YC alumni ban or temp ban people from HN when they post nasty comments? Seems like you accomplish two goals: (1) You don't have to read nasty comments about your writing and (2) you help slow the decline of HN. If it's a site wide policy and someone other than you is doing it, you'll probably be able to avoid accusations of censorship.

Of course, that only works if the comment falls into the obviously nasty category. I suspect the comments that annoy you the most fall into the subtlety nasty category.

[pg]

Actually what I've been thinking of doing is have the users do that, by flagging comments for incivility. I haven't decided yet exactly what to do, but I'm ready to try something, because it is a sitewide problem. As we get more users, I'm seeing more comments that are nasty or fluff (or both).

[cookiecaper]

I think that's a great idea. Most sites don't go nearly far enough to maintain decorum or civility, in my opinion. Acerbic discourse makes the communities inaccessible and scary, and usually results in site-wide bullying by the holders of the majority viewpoint.

I strongly encourage strict civility enforcement. I'm looking forward to its implementation, especially since so few places do it. Reddit constantly ostracizes and mocks its users whose beliefs may differ from its mainstream users; for instance, if you look at /r/christianity, many threads are eventually invaded by /r/atheist, and they upvote comments like "There is no god so don't worry about it", and downvote all of the serious responses that a peruser of /r/christianity would want to see. They leave abusive comments on the responses by Christians. The place is brimming with hostility for alternate viewpoints.

I see this kind of thing creeping into HN, too. I've noticed recently a large increase in the number of unworthily downvoted comments, and end up upvoting these to increase their scores though I otherwise wouldn't have done so. It seems to me that people here are beginning to fall into the same thought process that seems to eventually take over every "social news" site, where users with differing beliefs or opinions, no matter how articulately or thought-provokingly expressed, are oppressed by the tyranny of the mob.

So, please, I implore you to keep incivility off of HN to whatever extent possible. Strict moderation is key, imo. Let the naysayers say on; do what's needed to preserve the utility and pleasantness of the community. There are plenty of places online for the abuser and flamer to find refuge; let HN be a beacon of intelligence, helpfulness, and civility. It's especially needed among tech/programming communities.

[tsally]

Excellent. This should help, although unfortunately such a system is only as good as the average quality of the user-base.

That's why I advocate selecting a group of trusted users to do it instead. Its non trivial to select this group correctly, but I think the end result is more effective. Over time you can expand this group based on the users that have the highest percentage of civil comments. Once you get the ball rolling, the group simply scales as the site gets larger.

[marltod]

On Digg I have noticed that the top rated comments are pretty good. There are a few top comments that are obvious rebuttals to trolls but the original troll comments are not in the top comments. I would rather not see the troll or the rebuttal comment, but I still want people to get credit for calling out the troll.

[m_eiman]

If someone wants to say something about something you've written, they can say it on their own blog or on Twitter.

That sounds like an idea for yet another Twitter app: make a widget that displays a Twitter search for a blog post specific #tag, e.g. #m_eiman12 for by 12:th post. This will make it harder to be anonymous (not difficult, but at least a few more steps), and with an added filter to allow "deletion" of unwanted tweets should help keep it civil.

Even better, from a usability and SEO perspective, would be to use the actual URL of the post instead of a tag, but most URLs are probably too long. Maybe with a shortened URL, but they're Evil. Having a link makes it trivial for followers of commentators to find and read the post in question.

[rms]

What would the consequences be if you dramatically amped up the censorship here? Certainly it would improve discourse at the expense of inspiring lots of hatred...

[ytinas]

You think doing a lot of censorship would improve discourse? What do you mean? Just remove snarky comments? Fine, but those get strongly down voted anyway. Comments someone in charge doesn't agree with? Then it isn't discourse.

EDIT: I realize your comment was in response to PG's, but what is considered a "censor-able" comment? I've seen some discourse on here where someone legitimately called PG out. As I recall, the person turned out to be wrong but they weren't trolling (at least not at first) even though they were accused of it from the start. Should this have been censored?

[varaon]

It might also inspire unrest à la reddit when the HD-DVD keys were posted to the site.

[yardie]

I think it was Digg that failed at removing the keys. I remember Kevin giving a speech about failing to listen to his users.

[quizbiz]

So you don't consider the huge comment threads in response to your articles value-added?

[manish]

I first read the comment, then saw who has written it. I was shocked its PG. This is the person who wrote essay named trolls. I thought PG is oblivious to trollish comments.