Quiet Hacker News (2017)

I personally have gotten more value from comments on HN rather than the links themselves, but I guess it depends on the topics one is interested in. Comments are also helpful to avoid reading articles that are not so relevant or just plain wrong, which happens once in a while.

My solution has been to just keep the links I want to open, but keep them for later (ideally, have less than 5 such links per day). A day after or so, if I still think it's relevant (beyond the title which is no longer new to me), I do open both the comment section and the link. This is especially effective when I find myself reading too much about certain topics that I know are toxic.

The author is right that sometimes a thread will descend in to the usual tired old arguments[1], but the value I get from reading people's comments far outweighs how annoying I find the tedious stuff. I've learned a ton of stuff from the comments here over the years.

[1] Which I'm guilty of posting every time there's a front end dev topic. :)

I find the value of the comments varies a lot by topic. Comments are good in areas where there are at least a few domain experts who frequently visit. This is HN at its best.

Outside of that it's much more of crapshoot. The trouble is that if nobody has any particularly deep knowledge of the subject then it's a case of the blind leading the blind. People will make arguments that sound reasonable and those will gather the most upvotes. Even if they're wrong or nonsensical in the context. It can be worse if people think they know about a subject purely because it's adjacent to (or looks similar to) something they do know about. Then you get strong but uninformed opinions.

In this environment a domain expert can be at best ignored or even downvoted if their comments seem to go against the grain. So they are in the position of either having to do the "do you know who I am?" dance (which some people don't like) or hope someone does it for them.

I write HN comments somewhat regularly (like once a week), but my approach to it is more or less a "note to self". I use the comments to mostly describe my observations and thoughts. It's pretty much a monologue. When I'm technically replying someone, that's because my thought was based or inspired by that comment, and I don't actually expect that person to read my reply. I usually ignore most of the responses to my comment too. But I try (and enjoy) to make my comment helpful or useful to someone, in a "my two cents" manner.

That's my two cents.

Every article I read, for better or worse, has been filtered. The following describes my filteres when I am simply enjoying articles posted on HN (My filter's are different if I am researchinig a topic):

The first filter is whether the article makes it to the front page of HN. This is followed by a quickly formed opinion about whether the title captivates my interest. If the first two filters pass, then I will take a couple of minutes to skim the comments section and decide if I want to read the article. In this way I leverage the minds of others as a final filter. If the article passes every filter, then that means that I have remained motivated to invest my time in reading the article myself. I open each article that passes all of the filters in a new tab and move on to the next title of interest. Once I reach the bottom of the page, I have the set of articles that I will read throughout the day. It is true, that I let other peoples' opinions influence what I read, but I justify this by reasoning that it would be impracticable for me to read every article that makes the front page of HN. This will cause me to have a biased perspective on things, but for me the strategy is one of practicality. I did read this author's article by the way. I think that the project is creative and interesting. Thank you for posting!

For anybody wanting to achieve the same effect while using the official HN site, you can use the following as a custom user style:

  tr.athing + tr {display: none;}

This will just turn the home page in to a list of links, without any of the links for comments, upvote counts, etc. on each item.

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/MSsblMm.png

I worry that the plasticity of my brain is decreasing as I age. I've begun to notice that my attention is increasingly difficult to manage. I haven't blamed HN (yet) but I certainly emphasize with the author.

Tangentally, as a young adult I had severe ADHD/ADD. I stopped taking meds for it after is ceased causing a negative impact on my life towards the end of puberty. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to my personality and creativity if I started meds again. Would I be the same, gain an unfair advantage or excel at things I've given up on?

Great that he found out what was making his experience on HN bad and was able to change that and contribute to others that feel the same.

I personally enjoy browsing HN's comments section to read opinions conflicting to my own's, and evaluate their arguments. It's a habit acquired to preventing falling for confirmation bias. I rarely post something in response.

>If I still had social media accounts, I would absolutely be making quiet(instagram/twitter/facebook).com to remove the notifications, gamification, noise and what have you, I think they’re all brilliant tools whose utility has been downtrodden by companies obsession with having our attention.

I would support a project in that line with as much contributions as I could. This seems really important. What I did on youtube was that I blocked the recommendation-bar on the right side with UBlock and had a plugin that redirected https://www.youtube.com to https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions. This made my relationship with youtube healthier.

Please add (2017) to the title.

I prefer reading the comments because there's no ads and it loads quickly. I could use an RSS reader, but then I wouldn't see social media notifications (new messages from my girlfriend) happening in other tabs in the background, so I prefer to use a browser. Flame wars are something I try to avoid in comments sections. Writing tl;dr summaries for new articles is something I enjoy, and earns me quite a few upvotes.

Lets see, how shall I disagree with the author and make it sufficiency unreasonable...

For me the similar train of thought triggered when I was part of a [highly informal] network of bloggers. Everyone went out of his way writing articles to the best of their ability. Some had similar topics like social media today but rather than a picture of a cake with "I've made a cake!" under it the blog post would describe the recipe, its evolution and tried to get at the very essence of cake and the baking thereof. The difference with forums and comment sections (where the same authors would post) is that the later have guaranteed readership. If your blog sucks people will drop your feed in favor of something else.

Anyway, the article reads like someone who badly needs to get over his preconceived ideas about RSS, like so many people around here. Hacker news, Facebook, Twitter, etc are cakes made in a factory, they are not your personal cake recipe that you've carefully calibrated over decades.

Hating on RSS is like telling your grandma who spend the whole day in the kitchen that all that cooking is really a waste of time and you prefer a happy meal or a whopper. Then you pull out your phone and say, don't worry! ill just order a pizza!

I've been here since 2015 and one thing I've noticed in the past couple of years is that simply browsing HN gives me a kind of dopamine fix. When I'm in a 'browse HN zone', I voraciously consume any and all content, often times just lightly skimming everything. This can sometimes go on for hours at a time and I'll often go over feeling extremely fatigued and having remembered little of it. This is somewhat similar to the author, because I've noticed the same arguments over and over again, enough that I get a kick out of watching oftentimes the same people bickering over the same viewpoints. As I'm so accustomed to all the bickering, I simply just consume them without thought anymore.

Weirdly, I get more pleasure out of using reddit nowadays because I can focus on subs related to my hobbies, discussions around how to get more enjoyment out of a particular activity rather than just jamming large amounts of general knowledge into my brain.

>There’s an obvious trend as to which comments section I am mostly drawn to: ones with inflamed arguments

I have been lurking /r/programming and HN for over 4 years (still not that long compared to many) and this is a trend I definitely see. Which is a shame because this goes at the cost of much more interesting discussions.

It's not necessarily a bad thing to prefer the comment section. But yes it's addictive and a quiet-mode would probably allow people to form their own opinions from the source, before viewing the debate.

To me anything that - reduces the hive mind effect and promotes diversity - is a good thing...

Those are the exact same reason why I have stopped reading any threads that aren't technical. And of course politics. Almost any thread that has even a hint of politics will always turn into an echo chamber. Where anyone who doesn't agree with the echo chamber will be down voted.

The thing about somebody out there always disagreeing with any position or opinion you post and nitpicking details is certainly true, and can be disheartening, but framed another way it's awesome training for improving your written communication.

Being able to post anything you like and never having anyone nitpick it would be a little bit like playing tennis with a friend who is much better than you but goes very easy on you and still lets you win. It might feel good, thinking that you're always hitting winners, but you're really not. And you're not improving.

Look at the best comments and commentors here and on places like twitter. What makes them good? It's that they make their points extremely tersely and unambiguously. You can disagree with the point, but you can rarely nitpick or 'well actually' the way in which it's made.

It's frustrating sometimes when people do this, you often feel like saying 'you know what I mean by that' - but the truth is people don't - you've been ambiguous and communicated the point not as well as you could have. It's frustrating, but it's actually pretty good training to learn from these nitpicks, because clear, terse written communication is a really important skill that's useful in a lot of places in life outside of discussions on forums like HN.

I understand what the author is getting at. I myself have read links about new tools and frameworks and might think afterward, "that's pretty cool". Then I'll read the comments section where often I might fall into the trap of hoping others share the same opinion and maybe feel a little hurt and offended when those hopes are dashed. That is simply the nature of any social media platform. And it's probably healthier to let the comments section act as an additional resource on the topic, and one that might challenge our own way of thinking. In this way, comments are not agents of decline in our critical thinking. They are instead, part of its growth process, providing us with differing perspectives that should themselves be evaluated on their own merits and incorporated into our own thinking about the original topic.

I myself can't imagine this site without the comments, especially for additional links that are often provided relevant to the post. They are a great place to deepen one's own investigation of an interesting topic. And I've often been led to other parts unknown to me when reading them.

"...test an underlying contributing factor that I believe led to all this: a reduced trust in journalism and Internet content on the whole. The comments sometimes were more fulfilling, informative and truthful than the link itself - not to mention advert/tracking free."

This was a fascinating thought, that I didn't expect to read most of the way through the blog post. I think it is a very good sign that the author was able to consider two quite different perspectives on the same topic: that the comments were a cyclic predictable pattern capturing his attention for the wrong reasons, and that at the same time the comments were potentially valuable as a source of truth and trustworthy information.

Fascinating, and I see some parallels to my own usage of HN. I will sometimes 'vet' an article I'm not sure of, by reading the quality of the commentary to assess the potential quality of the article. I certainly recognise the pattern of ctrl+clicking numerous links to read later when time permits.

I'm very new to Hacker News. I joined earlier this year when someone told me my blog post made page 1 of Hacker News (I've never heard of it prior). However, I find that I enjoy reading the discussion in the comments more than the actual posts. Of course, I focus on the engaging discussion posts and skip over any that don't contribute any value....

I sometimes find myself reading comments without reading the article. When I do this I usually find half the arguments conflicting with one another, this usually causes me to go read the article. After that, it is usually very obvious that most people did not read the article and are commenting based on the title. They asked questions that are clearly answered in the article, make a completely unrelated comment because the thought the article was about something else, or they will make a statement that is disproven in the article. This type of stuff is hard to police, and I find myself guilty of it. I would say HN is streets ahead of anywhere else in this regard(Facebook, Twitter, Reddit... ), but it still happens quite a bit and it definitely detracts from the interesting discussions that sometimes happen. These interesting discussions are often better than the articles themselves, so I will continue to wade through the mindless dribble to find these bright spots.

> Reading the comment section of HN for so long has taught me a valuable lesson that I will take away with me: no matter what you do, say, think or feel, there is someone out there that does, or merely wants to, have the opposing action, speech, thought or feeling. And that’s absolutely fine, and how the world should be - home to a diverse set of views and opinions, but not to the detriment of your desire to build, share, create and form your own opinions.

I used to welcome opposing views for the simple reason that I whatever beliefs or values I hold, I am probably somewhat biased towards them, and critical input is therefore something extremely valuable to me.

However, more and more, the opposing views are of the type described by the author above. People are less interested in actually broadening their horizon, in finding synthesis between thesis and antithesis. More and more, it's just about finding a position, digging in, and attacking the other with full force.

The author has a point, but one of the defining characteristics of HN (in my opinion) is that sometimes comments are more valuable than the actual link.

Some HN comments are incredibly insightful and well informed, and some threads have real historical value (i.e. the original Dropbox and Redis posts).

Does someone keep an archive of legendary HN comments that you could share?

There are good—I would even say “great”—comment threads, that are just as worth reading as standalone articles are. Threads where all of the comments are good, and nobody dares ruin the “mood” of productive conversation by butting in with the usual argumentativeness†.

• threads where the authors of the post do a “post-article interview” to add extra information in response to questions;

• threads on posts that are stories about something historical, where in the comments, a person involved in the history itself (not the author) shows up and tells more such stories;

• threads on posts about some cool thing the author made, where commenters point out other cool things the author has made; or point out other cool things that are complements to the original cool thing (rather than getting into a debate about replacements for the cool thing.) Threads about new works by prolific hackers (e.g. DJB), or prolific academics (e.g. Scott Aaronson), are good for this.

• threads on posts about choosing tool/technology X and the anecdata of its advantages/disadvantages for the author’s use-case; where the comments are from other people who either made the same choice, or a choice of comparable technologies Y or Z instead; and, rather than just being a partisan argument for their technology, they give a compare-and-contrast of the products in the product-space X occupies, giving a clinical evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of X, Y, and Z for the original author’s use-case, as if they were asynchronously collaborating with the author on a greater work.

As it turns out, all three of these, in one way or another, are “encores” to the post. Things that add value of the same kind that the post itself has.

...and then there are bad comment threads. Which is, IMHO, everything else. (Including this thread! I shouldn’t be in here!)

† I think it’s kind of like street art. Paint a beautiful mural on a wall, and nobody’s gonna deface it with boring old graffiti. Every graffito thinks themselves an artist, and so respects good art. Every HN debater thinks themselves a scholar, and so respects productive scholarship.

——

Honestly, I wish there was a meta-HN, with a lag-time of ~48hrs behind HN, that just linked to the ensuing discussions that turned out to have been worth people’s time to read, when judged by the same criteria that we use to upvote links (“gratifies intellectual curiosity”, etc.)

In combination with a “just the links” feed (as in this one, or just as in consuming HN via RSS), you’d both 1. get a really enjoyable experience, and 2. probably feel much less of a need to participate yourself. (I need this, honestly.)

My current cure to news binge is to use RSS inside emacs with elfeed[1]. Emacs has the great advantage to be quiet by nature. I use spacemacs[2] more precisely. So in the morning I simply type `SPC a f` then `g r`. That's it.

And very important I use HN feed filtered by number of points (thanks to hnrss.org): https://hnrss.org/newest?points=500

[1]: https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed [2]: http://spacemacs.org

I don't read many of the links on HN these days, but that's because such a high percentage are behind a paywall. I understand HN's policy, but a big chunk of what hits the front page is the NYT, and I have no way to read those articles. Greatly reduces the value of HN.

The reason I haven't completely left HN is because occasionally a personal blog article like this hits the front page, in which case I do read it, and only sometimes check the comments.

To relate my comment to the linked article: I'm saying links to paywalled articles have turned HN into a discussion forum rather than a place to discuss articles.

Imho, the ability to filter useful from useless information is very valuable and should be cultivated. What better place to do this than the HN comments section, since it contains both kinds of information? :)

Pretty much I fell into a similar rut.

I think HN should not allow voting until you open the link. However being able to flag should be kept regardless if you open a link or not. My favorite feature has been the favorite tag. Both as a reminder but also for sites flagged by work.

The flagging without opening the link is to make it easier to suppress the indirect but sometimes direct political tripe that filters in during election cycles. I don't think comments/stories are PAC managed here but it could happen one day.

I got towards the end of the post and found myself thinking thinking "I wonder how the comments feel about this"? He makes a fair point, but my rebuttal is that I do learn interesting things from the comments here, but it is important that you read the article and know that someone may feel different about it than you. It's important to stand by your convictions and not give into groupthink.

I think the "quiet" brand would be very useful on a service like Reddit.

Every now and then I open the active[1] section looking for interesting discussions, run a scriptlet to remove greyed-out comments[2], and add to a TTS software on my phone to listen to.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/active

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20006310

Not really using it, I sort the frontpage by (votes/comments) to filter 'Comment sections that will devolve into discussions (see: condescending, pedantic arguments)' and their links: http://xash.in/hn/

> I simply open the comments and am able to deduce the gist of the link through the unfolding arguments.

Hold on, the HN comment section is sometimes a tire fire of people who don't know what they're talking about giving their uninformed opinions.

You need to read the articles to see whether the comment section is addressing points made in the article.

(This is why I disagree with mods about posting links to paywalled content. Some of those paywalls are now hard to bypass so the comment threads are full of people who haven't read the article.)

> There’s an obvious trend as to which comments section I am mostly drawn to: ones with inflamed arguments.

I come here because of the value of some comments but this, above, as soon I can feel a flame wars starts, is the reason I stop immediately reading comments on a topic.

> After all this I noticed a reduction in critical thought, my ability to form my own opinion on topics

Having felt similar, I've committed myself to only check out the comment section after I've gone through the damn article itself.

Why, most of the times I read the first few comments then decide if I'll click the link. Unless I can tell the content is what I want from the title and the domain.

People on HN are quite good at calling out bullshits from articles.

I like reading comments, for the chunks of the poster's life they reveal.

I found this small script quite useful https://github.com/lrusnac/hn-notifier

This is weird. I usually find something in the comments more insightful than the articles. I've gotten pretty good at skimming over the dross, though, I suppose.

If one could also upvote the articles from there, it would be perfect. A weird thing is that if that page is very successful, not many comments will show up here. :-)

Yes, this is a good idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Could we have a dark mode please like the post itself?

Yet here we are, browsing the comments. :)

This is awesome. If HN could provide a toggle/option that turned off comments, that'd be great.

>The front page is more than enough to keep you entertained for the day.

Glad I have this guy telling me how to live

My experience on here basically mirrors OPs perfectly. I’m definitely going to try this out.

I usually skip past posts that have more than a couple dozen comments. That helps a lot.

Why build a server when a browser extension with three lines of CSS will do?

lets post comments he won't read :d... like ,thanks :D

That has to be one of the best advertisements of all time!

I find the n-gate summaries to be much more informative.

HN has biased mods and since it's only 1 board, we only get to see what mods want us to see.

Curated content is okay, but I got a feeling theres lots of fake news.