HN is the only place I can read comments that are genuinely disagreeable. And I know that sometimes that falls into some personalized negativity but it’s useful most of the time.
The other thing I appreciate about HN is it helps me practice writing.
Once graduating from University, there aren’t many built in ways to get regular writing practice and HN comments are it for me.
It’s useful for someone to be wrong on the Internet.
I’ve learned a lot from watching constructive disagreements between other people. Regardless of whether they’re “right” or not, healthy disagreements sharpen our perspectives.
Cue joke about the way to get an answer on the internet is to post a wrong answer.
Tactical wrongness is an underrated parenting technique too.
There are many forums with disageeable comments, reddit and others. At least on HN it tends to be constructive disagreement more than nastiness.
Blogging?
It is also another good option but I find HN better in the sense that there are usually more chances of somebody responding to your comment/ ask post in HN in a similar minded way as compared to blogging if you are like me who has interests in lots of things.
Also, I haven't really started a blog, or atleast I haven't stick to one (I make multiple mataroa accounts etc.) but its just that HN comments feel easier to me to type into and they are also generally more preferable to me atleast right now.
It also forces you to make sure you write so that you are understood. This gets rid of a lot of writers block because you are determined to make sure you are understood, almost like a mission. Otherwise, this place doesn’t work. It would be a giant LinkedIn showboat-off.
It is always surprising how people misinterpret things you wrote. Lots of time people reply to an emotion, “not” jokes don’t work well in writing. If you write first sentence to negate it in the paragraph breaks really fast.
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I write a blog sometimes - iambateman.com/articles - and it’s great. But for daily writing I find it challenging to keep it up.
For very small values of disagreeable.
The line is closer than you think. Cross it and your words just disappear.
I find downvote-to-oblivion to be more irritating than beneficial.
I particularly dislike it when comment sections erupt into downvote wars on anything that varies from the prevailing opinion in the room, irrespective of whether it makes a logical argument or contributes information or insight to the conversation.
My primary peeve is the righteous confidence that comes with ignorance.
What happened to humility?
This is a forum attached to a billion dollar Silicon Valley startup incubator.
Everyone here wants to look like the next Steve Jobs in front of YC, no one wants to look like Steve Wozniak.
>Everyone here wants to look like the next Steve Jobs in front of YC, no one wants to look like Steve Wozniak.
I think it's interesting that this wasn't the vibe that was here around the time of the first few YC cohorts. Everyone posting here was chatting as if they wanted to embody the Richard Stallman/Wozniak prototypical hackerman. I think once YC grew and this became a place to network with successful industry insiders rather than tech savvy ultra-geeks doing it for the love of the game that the tone changed hard.
Like the thought.
Fun part is that most likely being Wóz would get you to be hired or partnered with because guys running the show think they all are Jobs.
I'd say--- to a good approx--- everyone here in the comments wants to work like Wóz & sound like Jobs.
(Very few are actively looking to be hired, and those that are would rather post a frontpaging deepdive blog than practise their commentary?)
> HN is the only place I can read comments that are genuinely disagreeable.
Only true if your general argument is still in line with the HN zeitgeist. You are allowed to disagree so long as you dont disagree on core topics. HN has the same problem reddit does in that a voting system in general necessarily introduces censorship and lack of diversity of discussion. While people here don't karma farm (or karma guard) as aggressively it takes almost nothing to end up shadowbanned/instant-flagged/etc for having a disagreeable standpoint.
In other words, as long as you aren't right of center you can disagree all you want. Even a trivially libertarian viewpoint is met with significant ire.
Voting systems in general are a massive problem in social media. They don't stop the truly bad actors but they drive away the exact thing that prevents you from being caught in an echo chamber (of which HN is an example of).
Kind of find it annoying people down vote things they disagree with.
I down vote only things I find that should not be posted like as-persona or something I really know is just wrong.
Of course there is a bit of blur between something being wrong and something we disagree.
Basically anything that doesn't follow the comment guidelines. Once e.g. a comment becomes personal, I downvote it for being unrelated to the subject
> HN has the same problem reddit does in that a voting system in general necessarily introduces censorship and lack of diversity of discussion.
The alternative is to be like 4chan, though. I'll begrudgingly admit that there are pros, but the cons definitely outweigh them.
> The alternative is to be like 4chan, though
4chan's problem isn't the lack of a voting system, the problem comes from the complete anonymity of its users, the lack of friction to post, and the near complete lack of moderation standards.
The very best online online communities I've ever been a part of - and continue to participate in - tend to have two major things in common. First, there has to be some sort of friction to join the conversation. Second, there are moderation standards, and these standards are only enforced with active and engaged moderators, and not by easily-gamed populism-driven systems.
>The alternative is to be like 4chan
False. The alternative might be something like spacebattles.
I'm no longer inclined to present a counter view on this site, even with references. It's as close to a polite version of Reddit as it could get without becoming Reddit.
The last libertarian post I saw wasn't getting downvoted and it was by a guy who wanted to set up meetings with cartels to improve the efficiency of their drug dealing business.
Excellent comment. Disagreeable comments can be sincerely held, supported, but this means little if you do not hold the prevailing opinion with the downvoting/flagging/almost impossible-to-read feint grey text, which is often where the gold is! Weekends are definitely better for more open conversation.
Regarding the grayed-out-text phenomenon, my way around this has been to use the Stylebot extension on Chromium- and Gecko-based browsers and apply the following CSS to HN pages:
div div a, div p a { color: darkblue; } div.commtext.c5A { color: #5A0000; } div.commtext.c73 { color: #730000; } div.commtext.c88 { color: #880000; } div.commtext.c9C { color: #9C0000; } div.commtext.cAE { color: #AE0000; } div.commtext.cBE { color: #BE0000; } div.commtext.cCE { color: #CE0000; } div.commtext.cDD { color: #DD0000; } div.commtext.c5A a, div.commtext.c73 a, div.commtext.c88 a, div.commtext.c9C a, div.commtext.cAE a, div.commtext.cBE a, div.commtext.cCE a, div.commtext.cDD a { color: darkred; } div div pre { color: darkgreen; }
