[redserk]

I'm tired of this point being repeated. This is not universally true. I'm in communities where the more active discussions are not ragebait.

I'd say HN's problem is rooted in that many folks participate in malicious contrarianism.

[pixl97]

>I'm in communities where the more active discussions

And they are heavily moderated against negative discussion/ragebait.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3652533/

>specifically, across an array of psychological situations and tasks, adults display a negativity bias, or the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.

This is a human problem and it happens everywhere.

[redserk]

How can you know the moderation style of the spaces I visit, when I haven't even linked them here?

[pixl97]

Because you exist on the planet Earth with humans.

For any forum to remain positive the following occurs.

1. the forum population is tiny and self controlling.

2. There is a lot of moderation to keep it from turning into a burning garbage dump.

3. There are no other choices, the above two is all that exist.

[redserk]

Again, how can you make these assertions without even knowing what these communities are?

[pixl97]

Are your communities non-human?

[redserk]

Yes.

[nospice]

> And they are heavily moderated against negative discussion/ragebait.

So? You have to do that because it takes one toxic person to poison the well. HN is aggressively moderated to get rid of articles and opinions that don't belong too. Without it, it would be just a constant stream of self-promotion and politics.

The point is that in certain other places, someone (the moderators) worked to nourish a positive culture and it worked. HN didn't and it shows. I don't think that negativity is necessary to keep the forum interesting. Especially given that HN's negativity really isn't all that insightful. A lot of negative takes are bad, and many of them are written without reading the article, or by cherrypicking a single sentence and attacking that.

[SoftTalker]

I'm a bit confused, you say that "HN is aggressively moderated" and in the next paragraph seem to imply that they don't do enough?

If anyone wants to get a taste what an unmoderated HN would look like, check out /new and see how much garbage is submitted.

[nospice]

I'm saying it's aggressively moderated in some respects (off-topic content, politics, etc), but it's not moderated to root out a certain breed of snarky, I'm-smarter-than-you negativity. Many other forums police that second part and are doing just fine. This includes forums dedicated to technical hobbies.

In fact, computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics are pretty uniquely toxic and we keep rationalizing it.

I remember working on a technical blog post for my company, trying to anticipate many of the possible HN rebukes and proactively address them as much as we could. And I remember having a conversation with a PR person who was genuinely taken aback by the hostility we've come to expect in our industry.

[pixl97]

>HN didn't and it shows

You don't get tech without negativity. And honestly HN is very tame compared to most forums when it comes to the deeply negative.

The problem with maintaining (only) positivity in tech is you turn into $large_companies marketing department. We have to step up and say security flaws exist. That companies outright lie. That some idea (when it comes to programming) are objectively bad.

Hence why the OP is here on the thread talking about what negativity means in this particular case, because it also counts criticism.

[nospice]

> You don't get tech without negativity.

This is something we tell ourselves to rationalize bad behavior. How come that 3D printing forums or woodworking forums or car maintenance forums can exist without toxicity, but tech somehow can't? There are people pushing products everywhere. You can ban marketing content or set ground rules for it.

Further, performative cynicism really isn't that helpful. It's not insightful to hear that every company is evil and greedy, every personal project sucks, every scientific study is wrong, and every blogger is incompetent.

[epolanski]

There's a lot of scientific evidence that negative and controversial content has multiple psychological effects of high emotional arousal, triggers the confrontation effect and toxicity breeds retention.

We're more likely to keep arguing here when disagreeing than to agree and add much.

And again, this isn't limited to internet but irl too.

[redserk]

It depends how you want to measure engagement and activity. Quality of discussion is something to consider. It's very difficult to have a proper discussion when all of the responses are the same expected replies to low-effort ragebait.