[detst]

[Meta-comment warning]

This comment is in the same category as the one PG talks about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920

I don't want to pick on you because there might be a place for your comment but it's not at the top; we need to stop voting these to that position (I'm not encouraging down-votes).

[sliverstorm]

Firstly, sspiff isn't dismissing the article. sspiff is making a meta-comment about the article's choices in presenting itself.

Secondly, if it shouldn't be at the top, what should be? I think you are looking at spiff's comment in a vacuum and saying, "This is not platinum-quality comment material!". But there isn't any platinum-quality comment in this page of comments yet. You can't upvote the rightful comment to the top if it doesn't exist yet.

[detst]

I'll concede that this wasn't the best place to make the point (I'll make it again, along with others, including PG). Perhaps I did look at spiff's comment in a vacuum and took advantage of this post being near the top of HN, but this is something that bothers me and clearly does PG, too. Yes, there are not any "platinum-quality comments" but let's remember that this is a recurring problem and that I'm not trying to pick on sspiff.

While it is not outright dismissal, it is dismissive in nature, and again, my primary issue is with voting, not necessarily the comment. I think we could still ask, quoting PG, "Yeah, we know that [Intuit isn't a startup]. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article?"

[and now it's getting down-votes after your comment despite PG making it clear time and time again that this is a major problem for HN]

[mgkimsal]

I think we could still ask, quoting PG, "Yeah, we know that [Intuit isn't a startup]. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article?"

-----------

For the time being, yes, it is. And given that it wasn't an article being linked to, but a site that included ebay and intuit under the banner of "startups", yes, this might be the most interesting point of the site people want to discuss.

[detst]

> For the time being, yes, it is.

It's a hypothetical not a question of the present state of things but either way, I disagree. Rachel's comment [1] (I understand it wasn't present when I made my first comment), while terse, is more interesting, more likely to foster interesting discussion and doesn't have the dreaded HN "middlebrow dismissal". And I have no doubt HN can come up with much, much better. The point being, it became a "magnet for upvotes" and nothing better ever had a chance to reach the top to encourage more interesting discussion.

> but a site that included ebay and intuit under the banner of "startups", yes, this might be the most interesting point of the site people want to discuss.

That's unfortunate; I've found HN to be a place to find great tangentially related discussion to otherwise uninteresting posts. That doesn't happen by accident; we need to foster it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5736869

[sliverstorm]

rachelbythebay's comment is an interesting choice. The core idea could make for an excellent launching point of discussion, but worded so tersely it comes off as very dismissive, which is exactly what you are trying to rally against.

it became a "magnet for upvotes" and nothing better ever had a chance to reach the top to encourage more interesting discussion.

This is an interesting way to think of it. I think we could agree that the most valuable comments will not necessarily appear until the article has aged a bit. Clearly HN tries to combat this by moving certain new comments to the top for a little while, but perhaps something more dramatic is needed. Perhaps for a certain period in the thread's life, for example, distribute comments with positive scores using some random seed such that higher rated comments will generally be near the top to avoid wading through a morass of poor quality, but any one (positive-scored) comment might be at the top for any given refresh.

P.S. I don't think you deserve the downvotes you are getting. I obviously don't exactly agree with you, which is why we are having this discussion, but I think you raise valid concerns and make them in a reasoned and articulate manner.

[DanBC]

But that's the problem.

It's very easy to make a quick, correct, point that avoids discussing any of the content of the article. That comment will get upvotes, and will be top of the list, and will continue to get upvotes, and thus will stay near the top of the list. It self-perpetuates.

[dinkumthinkum]

I get that this is an issue that bothers PG. I also get that this particular comment you're singling out might be an example of it, but I'm not sure. However, I'm not convinced that every instance that looks like the alleged problem is really a problem in itself and, perhaps I am in a minority, do not believe this sort of thing is the downfall of HN.

For me, I think the issues that make discussions go "downhill" are less to do with criticism and much more to do with prevalence of group-think. I don't think the prevailing wisdom that pointing out fundamental errors of facts of faulty arguments is a bad thing, even if they are not the main point of the article. I think there is edifying value in such criticism. Now, it is true that an article may have value beyond it's minor or major inherent fallacies and errors. Criticism is not censorship and it does not prevent others from reading and discussing other parts of an article if they are interesting and fodder for good conversation. Nevertheless, I don't think being overly generous or charitable necessarily the best method or should be enforced via an algorithm or community brow beating. No one wants inane Reddit conversations but I don't think most want sterile group-think or hug sessions either.

HN has all kinds of users with different backgrounds and some users are very knowledgeable and critical and we can learn a lot of have great discussion regarding the criticism as the more traditionally positive style conversations. If we eliminated this sort of discussion from HN, I think it would make things much worse than better, Valley group-think would rule the day. One thing I think users that come to HN expect is good information either in the articles or to find the proper information in the comments. If we let erroneous information stand because of we want to be nice or follow Atwood's "ruthlessly civil" or whatever the hell his ideology is, I think we would less a great benefit of HN discussions and users, particularly less experienced ones, would be worse off. If I'm new, and I see an HN submission that says eBay and Netflix are startups and that clearly is a significant part of the article and as well there are many comments on HN, but with no contention of that issue anywhere to be found, I may well think that the community consensus is that eBay is a startup.

On other articles that get submitted, I may conclude that the smart people on HN think all manner of pseudoscience and homeopathy are generally accepted, if I wasn't aware of there being new a impetus to avoid criticism.

I personally don't want what is suggested by this random author: http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2013/03/mrs-feynmans-advic...

>Is your problem that the hearty self congratulation mutual admiration society on Hacker News (now there's a middlebrow dismissal!) thinks that something you like isn't as new and shiny as something you don't care about?

(oddly enough I think that article is relevant to the original topic) I think that comment is somewhat unfair to HN but if we are not careful and are to act to hastily toward criticism we may just end up with a "mutual admiration society." Let's no do that. :)