The Unofficial Hacker News FAQ

jacquesmattheij.com

22 points·weinzierl··5 comments

> Though it shouldn’t be the case, but there definitely seems to be some evidence for it disagreeing with prominent HN’ers that have a large number of fans is another way to get downvoted, that shouldn’t happen but there is definitely evidence for it.

This makes me sad. I have experienced that... so I just stopped placing such comments here. The toxicity of the community is just too high here. You can either agree with the crowd, or be forced to leave. Your experiences or arguments don't matter.

Indeed. Groupthink here is very strong, but also peculiar in that HNers like to acknowledge and lament their participation in the hive mind, while simultaneously perpetuating it.

I have the same feeling regarding the meta group on Stack Overflow (and some other prominent ones).

There is so much hatred, looking down on people who ask a question that I decided to never get back there anymore (and the two bugs I found are lost). This is truly a toxic environment (and apparently happy with that).

What I find amazing is that many of the people who behave like 4 yo playing in the sand when in meta give fantastic answers on the regular site.

This appears to have been posted in response to my list of undocumented Hacker News features (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973).

This FAQ is from 2011 and reading through it, I'm not sure how much is applicable in 2018, or not otherwise covered in the current FAQ/Guidelines. Hacker News has changed a lot since then. (particularly after Paul Graham stepped down)

This is from 2011 and contains broken links (in section "How do I know if my comment has been replied to") and links to (now) malicous sites (in section "how do I search Hacker News?")

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