[deadbabe]

Anecdotally, I think anyone who reads HN for a while will realize it to be a negative, cynical place.

Posts written in sweet syrupy tones wouldn’t do well here, and jokes are in short supply or outright banned. Most people here also seem to be men. There’s always someone shooting you down. And after a while, you start to shoot back.

[xanderlewis]

(Without wanting to sound negative or cynical) I don’t think it is, but maybe I haven’t been here long enough to notice. It skews towards technical and science and technology-minded people, which makes it automatically a bit ‘cynical’, but I feel like 95% of commenters are doing so at least in good faith. The same cannot be said of many comparable discussion forums or social media websites.

Jokes are also not banned; I see plenty on here. Low-effort ones and chains of unfunny wordplay or banter seem to be frowned upon though. And that makes it cleaner.

[sethammons]

I've been here a hot minute and I agree with you. Lots of good faith. Lots of personal anecdotes presumably anchored in experience. Some jokes are really funny, just not reddit-style. Similarly, no slashdot quips generally, such as "first post" or "i, for one, welcome our new HN sentiment mapping robot overlords." Sometimes things get downvoted that shouldn't, but most of the flags I see are well deserved, and I vouch for ones that I think are not flag-worthy

[goles]

I wonder how much of a persons impression of this is formed by their browsing habits.

As a parent comment mentions big threads can be a bit of a mess but usually only for the first couple of hours. Comments made in the spirit of HN tend to bubble up and off-topic, rude comments and bad jokes tend to percolate down over the course of hours. Also a number of threads that tend to spiral get manually detached which takes time to go clean up.

Someone who isn't somewhat familiar with how HN works that is consistently early to stories that attract a lot of comments is reading an almost entirely different site than someone who just catches up at the end of the day.

[fragmede]

some of the more negative threads will get flagged and detached and by the end of the day a casual browse through the comments isn't even going to come across them. eg something about the situation in the middle east is going to attract a lot of attention.

[flir]

I think it's the engineering mindset. You're always trying to figure out what's wrong with an idea, because you might be the poor bastard that ends up having to build it. Less costly all round if you can identify the flaw now, not halfway through sprint 7. After a while it bleeds into everything you do.

[chiefalchemist]

> Anecdotally, I think anyone who reads HN for a while will realize it to be a negative, cynical place.

Sure, sometimes. But usually it's

Truth seeking > group thinking

There's a fine line between critical and cynical. Sometimes that line gets crossed. Sometimes the ambiguity of text-only comms clouds the water.

[darby_eight]

> Anecdotally, I think anyone who reads HN for a while will realize it to be a negative, cynical place.

I don't think this is particularly unique to HN. Anonymous forums tend to attract contrarian assholes. Perhaps this place is more, erm, poorly socially-adapted to the general population, but I don't see it as very far outside the norm outside of the average wealth of the posters.

[holoduke]

Really? Mmm i think hn is a place with on avarage above intelligent people. People who understand that their opinion is not the only one. I rarely have issues with people here. Might be also because we are all in the same bubble here.