[point]

Well said, yet completely wrong. People are thinking this stuff, so why should they not say it? The internet is different from real life - everyone with an opinion lands here, and can give their honest opinion. Let them give it, for those of us who grew up in the old polite days, this may be strange, but it's the new world! We are entering a time of REAL freedom of speech, and now that you are confronted with it, do not run away.

Look at YouTube comments, that's how the world really is like. You want to regulate this away? You think you actually can? Welcome to the new world, it's not worse, it's just different. Insulting people is the rock 'n' roll of 2009, if you can't deal with it, well, there's a cable plugged into your wall that you can simply pull out.

Times are changing, folks. Profanity, insults have become way cheaper, because anonymity also has. Arrington may complain, and all the people in this little community of ours make shake their heads and nod sorrowly and agree that something has to be done, but do you realise exactly how small your community is? You are reaching nobody, and nobody can hear your voice.

What we have is a herd of elephants thundering down a slope, heading towards a world of extremely democratic and free speech, and a bunch of rabbits form a council on the side and decide that they choose that the elephants should all start walking the other way.

Pointless, I say! Change sometimes goes your way, but sometimes change goes the way you don't like. This time it is that way, and very frankly, all these beard stroking and discussion about this will have little effect.

So, we can't just all grow up, because the internet is young. It will stay young, so if you want a place where everyone is grown up and civil, build a gate and hide behind the walls.

And don't forget to tap hard on the walls when the rock 'n' roll music of the neighbours gets too loud.

[unalone]

Look at YouTube comments, that's how the world really is like.

I think the better way of putting it is "Look at the Internet; that's how the world really is like." YouTube is not the world. Many people never comment on YouTube. (For the record, look at the comments on classical music. They're cultured and sophisticated an learned. Piano virtuosos comment on amateur videos giving tips. Isn't that incredible? My favorite pianist comments on videos on YouTube. That's marvelous.)

Insulting people is the rock 'n' roll of 2009, if you can't deal with it, well, there's a cable plugged into your wall that you can simply pull out.

Kind of a bizarre way of putting it. Isn't the idea that if you can't deal with insults, you just make a community with fewer insults? Freedom and all? Freedom from insults is also a potential solution.

You are reaching nobody, and nobody can hear your voice.

Right now, my professor is having a discussion about the suicide on Justin.TV, a YCombinator company. So here's one classroom that's been affected by something that I read on Hacker News.

What we have is a herd of elephants thundering down a slope, heading towards a world of extremely democratic and free speech, and a bunch of rabbits form a council on the side and decide that they choose that the elephants should all start walking the other way.

Wow. Not at all. If you think trolls are as powerful as elephants you've got to take another look at the world around you. If 4chan is considered powerful, then Google has to be looked at too. I'll take a million trolls to a company that's making a lot of people billionaires and is doing some social good with their work, too. I think the billionaires have a bit of elephant in them too.

This time it is that way, and very frankly, all these beard stroking and discussion about this will have little effect.

It's that way until somebody reading this decides to fix the problem. The cool thing about the Internet is that one person can change it all. And Hacker News is an incubator: it's a place for smart people to talk about things.

It will stay young, so if you want a place where everyone is grown up and civil, build a gate and hide behind the walls.

It's already old. The most-visited sites online are sites like CNN and Fox: the ancient bogies of the media. They won't last forever, but the sites that replace them will not be the Gawkers. The replacements will be just as civil and just as everyman-friendly.

And don't forget to tap hard on the walls when the rock 'n' roll music of the neighbours gets too loud.

Online it's more, "If the music gets too loud you can always create an alternate universe where you dictate all the rules."

[point]

You don't get what I mean. YouTube is representative of the general internet, and by extension, the general attitude of people. The cool thing about the internet is that one person cannot change it all. Everyones voice is equal. Nobody can change it.

CNN and Fox are not civil and friendly. They are heavily filtered - they don't allow their readers to say anything.

And please stop patting your back that this community is so smart. It's just a bunch of HTML makers who want to become rich by joining Paul Grahams incubator. Slashdot has people with real indepth knowledge about topics commenting, here it's just a bunch of opinions from people without deep knowledge.

The entire premise behind this community means that it's not smart - it's a bunch of college kids with ideas gathering here. There's a lot of talk, a lot of ideals and little real knowledge and experience.

So stop patting yourself on the back - go to usenet, you'll see real smarts. The comments here are really not that smart.

The problem is that when your measuring yard is reddit, even this place seems smart by comparison. What other sites do you visit that you use to measure this place by? Do you have an appropriate yardstick?

[unalone]

You don't get what I mean. YouTube is representative of the general internet, and by extension, the general attitude of people.

You don't get what I mean. There is no general Internet. There is only the Internet. Youtube is no more indicative of the entire Internet than MetaFilter is. The places I frequent look much more like Metafilter, in fact.

CNN and Fox are not civil and friendly. They are heavily filtered - they don't allow their readers to say anything.

That's what I mean by civil. They're popular because they don't let external sources muck themselves up. And it's working for them.

And please stop patting your back that this community is so smart. It's just a bunch of HTML makers who want to become rich by joining Paul Grahams incubator. Slashdot has people with real indepth knowledge about topics commenting, here it's just a bunch of opinions from people without deep knowledge.

The one Slashdot article that stuck in my mind was the article where CmdrTaco called the iPod lame upon its announcement. I don't frequent the site because the articles that don't interest me, but the few times I've read the site it seems like the people are no smarter than people anywhere. The Slashdot people merely have more time to kill.

"Smart" isn't the right word, though the people here certainly are smart. "Mature." That's the word I want. A bunch of people with ideas who don't steamroller over each other.

The entire premise behind this community means that it's not smart - it's a bunch of college kids with ideas gathering here. There's a lot of talk, a lot of ideals and little real knowledge and experience.

Ideals are what matter. They always are. The people that move the world forward are very rarely the people who've spent 20 years doing generic work, it's the people who think they can do everything, then do. Hacker News has got some old and experienced people, and it helps temper the community out.

So stop patting yourself on the back - go to usenet, you'll see real smarts. The comments here are really not that smart.

Usenet? I've been there a few times. 99% of it is spam. What's more, it's ugly spam. I've never seen a Usenet interface I like. And I'm one of those people who thinks that a part of intelligence means flocking to something that feels good to use. Pretty sites attract people who care about pretty, and I care about pretty.

The problem is that when your measuring yard is reddit, even this place seems smart by comparison. What other sites do you visit that you use to measure this place by? Do you have an appropriate yardstick?

I measure everything against everything. I don't compare HN to Reddit: I don't care much for Reddit. I compare it to Tumblr, SomethingAwful, Metafilter, Slashdot. I compare it to the blogs I read. There's not much more I can compare it to.