Comment by billpatrianakos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by billpatrianakos | Hacker News Reader

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billpatrianakos

I hate start meta discussions about HN but I think the negativity has a lot to do with the community changing a bit around here. The thread about DuckDuckGo a few days back exemplifies this and there was a discussion of it just yesterday. Basically, people want to be heard and the best way to do it is to be a contrarian.

A few years back I joined HN and was so intimidated by all the smart people here that it took a long time before I started commenting. Now, if you're not paying attention it's easy to mistakenly assume that the smart people "know better" and will comment with their opinions on how they'd do XYZ better. A lot of the threads I saw back then had people giving contrarian opinions and getting lots of attention for it. So for the newbie it's most likely easy to assume that's how things are done around here and that's how you prove your intelligence/expertise. But the thing is, what often looks like a contrarian view is often a question or an alternative way to do XYZ that isn't really saying XYZ is bad or wrong at all.

So I think it's a case of monkey see monkey do mixed with a misunderstanding of popular comments, who their authors are, and missing context. Everyone wants to be the smartest person in the room. HN can be an intimidating place because of how seriously exceptional a lot of people around here are. Hell, I still feel like a moron half the time when I comment. Egos get in the way of accepting that instead of being the smartest you should learn from the smartest and seeing that you don't have to say anything at all. In fact, saying nothing is often the smartest thing to do. How does that saying go? Something like "Shut up and let people assume you're stupid instead of opening your mouth and confirming it"?

I can't speak for others, but I'm skeptical by nature. When someone puts an idea in front of me, my first reaction is to find where the idea doesn't hold up. I immediately start poking at it.

It's not necessarily a negative reaction, and it doesn't mean I'm not going to buy into the idea eventually. It just means I don't take it at face value.

I used to get frustrated that people would see that kind of reaction as negative, but I've gotten better at mitigating that kind of reception over the years. And the people I've worked with long term have come to find ways to use it to all of our advantages.

For example, on a couple of development teams, I've ended up as that "unofficial lead debugger" for everyone's code. One mistake I work to avoid in debugging is thinking "Well, the problem can't be here, I know this part works." Cause, you know, that's inevitably where the problem is. :-)

I enjoy your style of curious investigation of a subject. It leads to my greater understanding of stuff.

But there's a big difference between that and between people who are just bashing.

There is a biblical reference [1] and also some quote attributed to Mark Twain [2] on keeping silent.

I don't consider myself a fool, or ignorant, but choose to remain silent most of the time because of the exceptional insight many have, and I love HN for it. i just skip over the negative stuff and look for those nuggets of insight so prevelent here.

[1] http://bible.cc/proverbs/17-28.htm

[2] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marktwain122650.h...

I consider myself somewhat new to HN, but here's what I think about it. I'm likely to be wrong, but it may be at least partly the reason.

First, it seems very useless to say “This is cool, I like it”. We know these types of comments, which often remain around the bottom.

Much easier is to write a useful objection that would grow into a thread and is likely to add to the discussion. You can point out a factual mistake, doubt something—you just need to stay more or less on topic.

The problem is often, though, in how the objection is phrased. One can say something like: “This is very good work, but [objection phrased as a question]. But still, [x] is a nice idea.” I always try to object like that. However, it takes time. If the person appropriate for the feedback is unlikely to read HN, politeness doesn't seem to be worth it. We also need to account for cultural differences. Then, many of more technical people here seem to be not very sensitive to politeness level, but very sensitive to factual mistakes.

So we end up with comments that look frank, but are useful and start discussions.

New people probably want to comment in the same spirit to attract attention and build up karma, but they may assume that frankness is the key. (What for one is a plain simple comment, for another may look like a blunt statement.)

So we end up with comments that often look frank and aren't very useful.

Everyone wants to be the smartest person in the room.

It's a shame, because it never used to be that way. And if ever it was, it was in a positive "look, I made this!" way.

To me, the fact that a story like this would even get to #1 on HN says more about how HN has morphed. Would we have seen this 4 or 5 years ago? Unlikely IMHO.

The paranoid SEO articles really put me off.

I'm not understanding what you're referring to. Can you give a link or other example? You piqued my curiosity.

Today is Saturday, so maybe that has some effect on placement.

Earlier discussion on the negativity meta-question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755228

A certain level of contrarian dialogue is healthy for any community; I do, however, agree that there's a lot of negativity for the sake of being heard.

Absolutely. To put what you said another way, it's one thing to put forth an opposing view for the sake or starting discussion or playing devil's advocate and quite another to do so for the sake of looking smart while being under the impression that if you disagree you're automatically smart-looking. All opinions are welcome here as we all know but it's not too difficult to tell genuine disagreement from look-me-I'm-smartism.

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