[zemo]

> the difference is on hn, shitposting, trolling and straight up being offensive is strongly discouraged.

you can be deeply offensive on hn if who you are offending is people outside of what hn considers to be its own audience. hn posters will defend the harm their software does to society all over town. people on this site care only about decorum; the syntax of kindness without the semantics.

[dang]

The site guidelines say "Be kind" for deep reason, and we attempt to encourage that in every way we know how. I don't know who you think "hn considers to be its audience" but the answer is: anyone with intellectual curiosity. That's basically everyone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm biased of course, but I also see more of this place than anyone else does (at least I hope I am, since I get paid for it), and comments like yours do not reflect the community at all accurately. "People on this site care only about decorum" is a cheap shot, and—speaking of syntax without semantics—is a cliché at this point too. People in this community care about considerably more than that. ("Syntax without semantics" is a great phrase, though. Did you come up with that? I like it.)

The denunciatory generalization you're making seems to me an example of unkindness, and so a little ironic whilst denouncing others for unkindness. I don't like seeing anyone unjustly accused.

If you, or anyone, has a good idea about what we can do to make this place more kind, I'd love to hear it (as long as it doesn't reduce to "ban my ideological enemies", which turns out to be what a lot of people would prefer, but is not viable given the mandate of this site).

[zemo]

> I don't know who you think "hn considers to be its audience" but the correct answer is: anyone with intellectual curiosity.

That's what the HN organizers think it is and want it to be, but I don't think it's an accurate reflection of how HN users actually behave. It's prescriptive, not descriptive.

> People in this community care about considerably more than that.

I've been here many years and that has not been my experience. I come here to look for updates on libraries and tools I use and to hear about new libraries and tools. In the years I have been here, I have found this to be the most nihilistic, false-equivocating social media site I have ever encountered. What I have witnessed all too often is that admissible HN opinion talk stops at "what makes a computer program well-constructed", and very rarely considers "how might computer programs cause harm to their users and to society". Often times when people say "hey maybe that use of technology is harmful to [group of people not well-repesented on HN]", that discussion is immediately downvoted into oblivion. When it comes to software criticism, that is, the well-reasoned consideration of how software affects society, HN gets an F. HN doesn't care. HN would look at a Java program for a police torture system and would say "it should be written in Haskell" instead of "maybe we shouldn't be building instruments of torture". Maybe a given individual user wouldn't, but that's how the votes would land.

> If you, or anyone, has a good idea about what we can do to make this place more kind, I'd love to hear it

Sure. Here's a few.

Remove all visible scores from the site entirely. The idea that a person is aware of points given to them for saying the correct thing incentivizes saying things that get points, not saying things that improve the discussion. I'm not saying that no system of tracking the success of comments should exist. I'm saying that currently, the mechanics of HN allow people to see their own karma and are rewarded for saying things within the HN zeitgeist with more karma. The karma system precludes the Overton window from shifting.

It's a discussion board. There should be no point reward for comments posted. The reward is the replies you get from others.

Experts and beginners are given an entirely equal footing, but beginners outnumber experts in every topic; that's what makes them experts. If all of the experts in a topic think one thing, and all the beginners think another thing, should the beginners always win because they are more numerous? Hmm.

One solution might be to implement something akin to pagerank, but on a topic level. E.g., if a thread is posted about Ants, a user that had participated in a lot of past discussions about Ants should have their upvotes/downvotes weighed more heavily. There are doubtless other solutions, and since I'm not in your codebase I'm not sure what solution is actually reasonable.

Separately, make posts a limited resource. The mechanics of this are, I imagine, proper difficult to get right. Very very difficult. Some ideas that would have to be tested: You can only post if you have a post token. You're awarded a post token every six hours, even when you're gone. You can hold a maximum of four post tokens. Add in some mechanic where users can cause other users to gain post tokens. Some concepts along that line: When you reply to someone, they are awarded a post token (or a portion of a post token). Upvotes grant either post tokens or portions of post tokens. If a user really loves a comment, they can give one of their own post tokens to the person that made that comment. Users in their first week are given only 1 post token a day.

[throwaway675309]

"What I have witnessed all too often is that admissible HN opinion talk stops at "what makes a computer program well-constructed", and very rarely considers "how might computer programs cause harm to their users and to society". Often times when people say "hey maybe that use of technology is harmful to [group of people not well-repesented on HN]", that discussion is immediately downvoted into oblivion."

Could you cite some specific HN submissions where you've observed this behavior? I honestly cannot recall a single one.

[dang]

I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to respond to this in detail but I really appreciate your taking the time to share your perspective and your ideas.

[mr_toad]

> defend the harm their software does to society all over town

I accept there are people who feel that an argument in defence of certain types of software is in bad faith, and an argument made deliberately to hurt and exclude others.

It’s not much of a leap, given that harm obviously exists to many in society, and software isn’t helping, or at least that some people get much more benefit from it than others.

However, not everyone believes that software harms people. Not everyone believes that that harm is deliberate. Not everyone believes that anything can be done, and even if they do it’s probable that they have differing ideas on what is to be done.

I get that when people see problems, and they see others ignoring those problems, or arguing with them, that they feel that those other are being callous, cruel and disrespectful. As the saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

I sympathise, but I can’t agree. There are so many solutions to the world’s problems and so few who agree on any of them. I can’t just assume that everyone who adopts a contrary position is deliberately being cruel, deliberately acting out of selfishness or deliberately acting to exclude and suppress other views.

[ryandrake]

A good concrete example of this are MBAs, one of HN’s favorite punching bags. With any article about something bad or stupid happening in a tech company, eventually someone will prop up an anonymous MBA straw man to blame and start beating on it. You’ll see vitriol targeted at MBAs that will get you a cooling-off ban if directed towards Rust programmers or entrepreneurs.

[rantwasp]

what about an rust developer with an MBA? /s

when you see a strawman point it out. people may not like it, you may get downvoted but... something about being the change you want to see.

for example: I routinely get down-voted every time I say something positive about cryptocurrencies. Should I stop telling people my opinion when the overall sentiment on HN is pretty negative when it comes to the likes of bitcoin and ETH?

[rantwasp]

nope. I disagree. I make a living from writing software and I will not defend the harm software does to society. I will go even a step further and say that I will not work in any place where it's clear that net result of the software produces does more harm than good.

people on this site care more than just decorum. sweeping generalizations like this rarely hold water.

[8fGTBjZxBcHq]

Yes exactly! This is a much better description than I was able to come up with.