EDIT: Also, I was thinking of r/politics, where they have a neat rule: Mo self-posts M-F. It would be interesting if we followed the same dictum and allowed all sorts of meta on the week-ends but were strict about content on week-days.
I've been running my own social network for the past five years, and in my experience it's been the meta-posts that are the ones that actually cause the drama.
Person A and person B have a little innocuous spat, but sort it out amongst themselves.
Self-righteous person C decides that person A committed a heinous atrocity and that it's symptomatic of a deeper festering infection in the site as a whole, and they make a meta-post about it to call people out. Next thing you know what was a minor, inconsequential, and ultimately solved issue becomes a site-wide rally-point for false outrage.
It sucks. HN is better than that, and the OP needs to chill before dragging the entire site into a false tempest in a teacup.
Edit: Oops, the OP is you. I wrote this reply thinking you agreed with me. Oh well!
The simple fact of the online world is that people express their true feelings which are always harsher, more negative, more hostile than their offline polite/fake feelings, so the online world is a harsher, more negative place. Some people who live in it perpetually also want to fix it. As soon as they fix it, however, all the users will just flee to a more anarchic site because the human spirit craves freedom and the internet liberates us to express our genuine hostility and negativity without being socially punished.
People love the strong emotions of the Apple vs Android debate. The emotions are the POINT of the socializing. The strong feelings are the PAY OFF, and if you don't let people have their feelings, you'll just have a tumbleweed town.
Raganwald's online utopia will be a dead and boring place. Not even Raganwald himself would go there; there would be nothing to get all self-righteous about. Nothing to complain about on his dramablog.
If Raganwald actually wanted a perfectly sanitized experience, he would go to a forum that provided it. But actually he doesn't. His purpose in life is to find a forum without that sanitization and promote it on there. The promotion itself is a pay off for him: in terms of the feelings he gets from the socialization and in terms of the traffic he gets to his blog.
Don't people enjoy expressing strong emotions about online freedom, startup life, the ethics of various companies, and many other subjects on the front page as well? Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names?
Yep.
>Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names?
No. Why do you want to Jesus-ify Hacker News? Isn't this a place for Hackers? How many Hackers go through life trying to avoid offending people? Blunt criticism and ranting is part of Hacker culture.
The censors and net-nannies may succeed in shutting down discussion about certain topics, but they aren't going to succeed in their quest to sanitize the internet. As soon as a place becomes sanitized people flee.
You're just a miniature form of the Grand Inquisitor, upset at the sin you see all around you. To save the poor sinners from their sin, you start a crusade. You appeal to the most powerful people--the authorities--to join you in shutting down this sin. For the good of the users.
Why are you so fucking hung up on civility? What is it about you that can't handle a little incivility? The smartest people I know are not civil in private conversation. Their real opinions are full of strong emotions and incivility. They scrub their personality clean in public to avoid being ostracised or punished, but when anonymous and online, they let loose because all humans crave authentic expression.
This authenticity is too raw for you to bear so you make these pathetic pleas for "civility" as if Victorian England was a good place. You want to return to some ridiculous sanitized culture where people sip tea and drop their monocles at the slightest provocation.
This is no way to live. Instead of being a culture crusader, a net nanny, why not examine the roots of your discomfort with incivility? Why can't you handle incivility? This is an area of psychological growth for you. Learning to accept your own negative feelings as well as those of others. Learning to enjoy the negative feelings.
"My son, we all have inside of us two strong dogs to help us hunt, to keep us company, and to protect us. One is warm and loveable and friendly, it helps us love and find friends and enjoy games. The other is mean and vicious, it protects us from enemies and it helps us hunt for meat."
"The two dogs battle for control of our heart, and the one who is winning controls our feelings."
"Which one is stronger, Dad?"
"The one you feed, son."
----------
I'm not feeding you, my friend. I will give both of your comments upvotes for the effort.
You want to live in a traditional society where people are stifled and controlled through social norms that outlaw all kinds of strong emotions and passionate human expression. You want to clamp down on the very stuff of life that most humans find most meaningful.
It's so delicious that you think this kind of parable could ever affect someone like me. To me, you are nothing but a small minded Christian moralist--an old spinster who tours the Salons condemning biscuit-eaters for their impropriety. "How rude! Why, why, you should be ashamed of yourself!!"
You think you aren't feeding the wolves like me, but you are. The drama you create is better food for me than any boring nerd fight like Android vs. Apple and so on.
Entrepreneurs are generally Type A personalities. Do you really think people here buy into your 19th century Victorian sensibilities? Fuck your idea of civil society. You are a rube--an uncultured pseudo-puritan. Your thoughts on culture and society are a fucking joke. In any venue other than the pseudo-intellectual blogosphere, your thoughts on culture would be laughed at.
Our values are so orthogonal that you actually feel morally superior when I attack you. This is how different we are. I insult you; you feel like Jesus for weathering my insults with Christ-like passivity. Pathetic.
This sort of bilious, spittle-flecked juvenile chest-thumping teenaged-courageous-loner noise is precisely why venues like Hacker News, despite the presence and attention of a good many smart people, have been rendered such sterile wastelands.
No matter how much you enjoy the game, it's not getting us anywhere. Your righteous incivility is, ultimately, profoundly _boring_.
All passions are boring to those on the outside. To enjoy the incivility, you need to join in. Now that you've jumped in, you must be having fun.
If HN decides to censor tech fights like Stack Overflow, I won't mind at all. As long as we can engage in meta-drama, my dramatic e-penis will have plenty of material to engage with.
>No.
Sure we can. Your comments have set off emotions in me. Behold: I can still be civil, because doing so is in the guidelines of the forum and I'd like to support the relative oasis of civility that exists here. I don't feel any need to break them because I'm quite able to make my point without doing so. I'm a member of multiple fora (trading, mountain biking) and just don't need to make any of them fit what I think they should be. If they have written or unwritten rules, so what? When I drive in a foreign land, it's just easier to drive on their side of the road than insist that mine is better because it allows more self-expression.
Ever heard of "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"? Avoiding both insults and violence is probably a good strategy, until we really need them.
Civility is completely in the eye of the beholder and I'm pretty sure what Raganwald considers civility would be considered by most Hackers to be a lame net nanny kind of censorship that misses the forest for the trees.
To me, strong opinions and emotions are not uncivil. Even commenting on individual people is not uncivil. I put civility on a similar plane as intellectual honesty and argument in good faith. I don't consider civility to be self-censorship to conform to the stifled emotional norms of Puritan America--where the slightest amount of passion or strong opinion causes all kinds of moral crusaders to condemn you and teach you with their ridiculous religious parables.
Not me. PG. The principles I'm trying to adhere to on this particular forum mirror PG's. He set up the forum and asked that people be "civil". His word. You're the one wants something different to that [1], not Raganwald. And if you now say you support civility but reserve the right to redefine it, you're straying from the dictionary definition:
(Synonyms: civilian - polite - courteous - civic - mannerly)
> I'm pretty sure what Raganwald considers civility would be considered by most Hackers to be a lame net nanny kind of censorship
I don't know anything about Raganwald or his principles. But his post got 650 upvotes. While I'd never claim that proves "most" HN-ers prefer his position, you're making claims about him, the perspectives of "most" HN participants, most hackers, etc...entirely unsupported by proof. And you're redefining words to suit your argument.
[1] "Why are you so fucking hung up on civility? What is it about you that can't handle a little incivility?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4709310
It's not that I think this place would be better with less civility, it's mainly that I think this place would be better without self-righteous whiners complaining about incivility and demanding censorship.
In life, I believe there is a time and place for both civility and incivility. I also think different people have different standards of politeness. Overall, I would say hacker news is extremely civil to the point of being a haven for tight ass stifled pedants who contribute nothing aside from nitpicking and out of proportion Wikipedia-style anal retentive rule policing.
There are too many cops and not enough protestors. Everyone wants to be the douchebag who posts "correlation != causation" or "you said a dirty word! How rude!" and no one wants to be a contributor with a PULSE who actually writes something original or interesting or informative.
I have literally written up cited essays for HN and the typical response is some fucking idiot who wants to nitpick without giving an ounce of good faith or original brainpower.
I would much prefer a forum full of passionate hackers with strong opinions who express original ideas in an uncivil way, than a forum full of raganwalds whose purpose in life is to be a Boy Scout and follow all the rules while watching their neighbors like a hawk ready to report them to the Scout Master.
There are so many people on HN who make no original contribution other than policing other members. They get a lot of up votes because there are a lot of people who enjoy being holier-than-thou. But this does not contribute anything intellectual to the forum--I think it drives the most original contribution away. At the very best, it makes this place a fake environment full of passive aggression. At the worst, it chokes off any interesting discussion which is by nature controversial and passionate.
I echo PG when I say that it's a slippery slope. There's no value N for incivility that someone won't take to N+1. Besides, why are you the person to measure how much incivility should be allowed? Just be civil. Not hard.
> self-righteous whiners
> tight ass stifled pedants who contribute nothing
> anal retentive
> douchebag
> some fucking idiot
> Boy Scout
> holier-than-thou
> passive aggression
Is that a little incivility? That's just a bunch of angry attempts at belittling others, based entirely on your perspective and zero facts. We can fill HN up with that, but I'm not sure it would improve the place.
> I would much prefer a forum full of passionate hackers with strong opinions who express original ideas in an uncivil way
1) Doesn't compute. HN is full of passionate people. Raganwald seems to be one, but you reject what he's passionate about. So must people only be passionate about your ideas, or others?
2) You've told me various times how you would prefer this or that. It's not about you.
So, summary:
Your points are all about what type of boy-scout-god-fearin' bad men are restricting your self-expression, and how you'd prefer a forum which was a free-for-all. There are many fora for self-expression and ranting and just sticking it to the man. But rather than posting there, you stick with the one with a stated civility policy and alter it to suit your preferences. I think that's what you accused Raganwald of. You're doing what you despise.
It's okay to follow some rules. These ones are so easy to follow and it doesn't affect my day at all to do so. I'd rather find the real issues in the world and fight those, or break rules that really matter.
Don't assume you know me, my background, my religious beliefs (or lack thereof), why I'm doing something or anything that has no basis in fact. It sounds nice and angry, but all you're doing is arguing against some picture in your head, but diluting your core argument about the facts. Besides, you might find I'm closer to your opinion on most of the issues you post about. Just not this one.
In any case, this is my last post on the issue. Bigger fish to fry.
I'm a long-time user of HN, reporting my experience, and so it is about me, just as much as it is about raganwald's desire for people to be even more civil than they currently are.
P.S. I'm not literally calling anyone Christian. Equating a behaviour to Puritanism is a rhetorical device to illustrate a point. I think you and I may be communicating on completely separate dimensions...
> If you think there is any objective fact to be had here, you're crazy.
FACT: PG asked us to be civil.
FACT: the dictionary defines civil.
FACT: you're not being civil according to that definition. A moral relativism escape attempt doesn't change that.
FACT: Raganwald's post requesting more civility got 650 votes and stayed on the front page for ages. There are many who would like more of that.
FACT: many other websites don't mind how aggressive you are.
FACT: you're resorting to name-calling and generalisations rather than arguing the point.
FACT: you said this:
>> Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names?
> No.
Well, I think I can claim as a fact that we can have a debate while I remain significantly more civil than you have. I don't think it would have been a better one if I hadn't.
Perhaps there is some gradation of civility, where you are holier than I am, but the question for HN is not who is the holiest, the question is where the threshold is, and what action to take.
My argument is that censorship is far more objectionable than the problem it supposedly solves.
Let's grant that you're more civil than I am. Does that make you RIGHT? Does that make you BETTER THAN ME? What is your payoff for that? Are you going to Heaven and I'm going to Hell?
pg asks people to be civil, therefore civility is more important than intellectual contribution, civility is more important than quality content? Civility becomes a higher value than the PURPOSE of the forum? No.
Civility is at best a 3rd order value. The primary value of the forum is interesting content, and lame ass Wikipedia editors DO NOT provide that.
I'll take 1 tptacek, who is passionate enough to tell complete idiots to STFU, rather than 100 perfectly civil but dry and worthless unoriginal pedants who quote the Bible and worship rule books.
"NEENER NEENER I'M MORE CIVIL THAN YOU!" Congratu-fucking-lations. That's really not much of an accomplishment is it?
3 binary dimensions:
- original / trite
- civility / rude
- correct / incorrect
leading to 8 kinds of people
1. original, correct, civil
2. original, correct, rude
3. original, incorrect, civil
4. original, incorrect, rude
5. trite, incorrect, civil
6. trite, incorrect, rude
7. trite, correct, civil
8. trite, correct, rude
7 is the most destructive force of all, because trite things get automatic upvotes. So if we must have these "Tell HN" posts, we should direct our attention to people who are civil, technically correct, trite, and miss the forest for the trees.
The greatest enemy of 7 is 2, and so if you outlaw rude people you outlaw 2 causing 7 to proliferate like a catchphrase on reddit.
2 may be somewhat objectionable, but since originality and correctness are higher values than civility for Hackers, their presence should be tolerated. Tptacek is arguably one of the most valuable HNers around and if 2s were suppressed he would no longer be here.
3 and 4 drive discussion and so are basically valuable. While 4 can be obnoxious and you wouldn't want to have a beer with him, at the very least his inaccurate but original sayings do simulate interesting discussion and provoke 1 and 2 to post.
A lot of very tremendous posts were motivated by the horrible statements of a 4. So 4s do have a kind of value.
Anyway, the worst thing this forum could do is encourage 7s and outlawing rude people would basically give the forum over to 7s. All the 1s and 3s would flee--civil people don't fight back against the invading zombie horde.
There's a space-time component to this, so like most logic diagrams it throws a monkey wrench into the works. Suppressing rude comments may actually coerce folks (like me) into trying to be more civil than they might. This can actually breed more 3's from 4s for instance.
For example:
> Let's grant that you're more civil than I am. Does that make you RIGHT? Does that make you BETTER THAN ME? What is your payoff for that? Are you going to Heaven and I'm going to Hell?
Well, no. There's no relationship between civility and being better/worse/heaven/hell/correct/incorrect. Why would you even ask that unless you're casting about for a strawman?
> "NEENER NEENER I'M MORE CIVIL THAN YOU!" Congratu-fucking-lations. That's really not much of an accomplishment is it?
A worthy accomplishment would be a more rational discussion, which might be easier to find if there was less bile to wade through. Are you sure you speak to people in real life like this?
>Why would you even ask that unless you're casting about for a strawman?
It's called making a point. My points fly way over your head. I'm making a point through insinuation, suggestion, and demonstration.
>A worthy accomplishment would be a more rational discussion, which might be easier to find if there was less bile to wade through.
If you wade through the bile you're doing it wrong. The bile is part of the message. You have to drink it.
How does one communicate an abstract intuition to a robotic mind?
You are the type of person who reads Heraclitus and says, "He's contradicting himself!" Or you read Kierkegaard and say, "This is logically offensive!"
My whole point is that there is more to Hacker Culture than dry, trite, known knowns that can be widely agreed on as objectively correct. When you try to make a culture or community fit into some dictionary definition you strangle it.
I was also trying to communicate that civility is not the highest value of Hackers. Who really gives a shit if you're civil? That is very minor compared to whether you are original, interesting, right, or even wrong. Even having wrong comments here is more important than having civil comments. Wrongness is therefore a higher value than civility. An HN without people saying things that are wrong would be a terrible place.
The death of community happens when only the known knowns are allowed to exist. Tolerance for creativity must include tolerance for cultural creativity and novel emotional expression that is often judged heretical or ugly by the mass mind. When the mass mind ceases to tolerate the ugly and works to stamp it out, the mass mind ceases to grow.
There is no excuse for someone who comes to HN and just insults people in a really derivative way. That is not a contribution. These posts get downvoted quickly. But if someone stimulates thought and outrage by skirting the rules and is even able to get upvotes, why should she be censored because she fails to conform to some guy's interpretation of the dictionary?
I don't want a free for all. I want a curated experience that censors unoriginal thought. I want to censor people who are intellectually dishonest, who are trite, who are repetitive, who are pedantic in an unoriginal way. I want to do this because I believe this activity is a higher expression of Hacker Culture than the expressions expressed by reganwald.
The faction in my camp may be a minority. You may still want to burn us like the witches we are for--omg--being uncivil. Afterall, pg said incivility is bad and pg knows everything right?
In conclusion, when I said "congratu-fucking-lations" I was trying to communicate that being civil is not a contribution. It's not a worthwhile accomplishment or anything to be proud of. Getting 600 upvotes by echoing this sentiment is also not an accomplishment and also does not induce civility. In the example of myself, this "Tell HN: Be civil" comment actually induced incivility because I find this kind of trite shit offensive.
The bile is not someone who tells an idiot that he's an idiot.
The bile is the Jehovah's Witness who comes to your door and tries to convince you to be a holier-than-thou douche bag.
After being preached at I feel so dirty that I have to go buy a Bible just so that I can tear it up, light it on fire, then douse the flames with my urine.
Get that creepy moralizing away from me and from HN.
Hail Satan.
The discussion that surfaced the supposed incivility was about consumer electronics. Maybe there's a time and place to cast off our robes, wail at the moon and set fire to the castle, but...iPads? The counterculture is getting naked because of gadgets? I understand that we seek modern proxies for long-gone tribal battles, but I stopped arguing about whose toys were the best when the Amiga didn't take over. I'm still sad about that.
Civility doesn't exist in a hierarchy of which values are most important. It's orthogonal to originality, like choosing to wear shoes. You can do the same job whether you're civil or not. No relationship, so stop trying to link it. You keep bringing up irrelevant issues, creating links where there are none and fighting strawmen, all so you don't have to explain your supposed incapacity to argue a point (or even rile someone up) using less inflammatory language. I understand you think your language is the secret sauce of your message, but you're probably capable of using different language to similar effect.
At some point you'll find the bad people you're wailing at live in your own head, not on HN. You're still making personal appraisals based on an impossibly thin stream of information, and therefore drawing vibrant (but wrong) images of who you think you're talking to. I mean, go for it if it helps you work stuff out, but you're arguing with a mirage.
Since you insist that you're incapable of conducting a discussion without insulting the (imagined) other, all I do by continuing is offering you more opportunity for that. Or as Raganwald said:
"The same is true when we see someone else violating these precepts. The downvote (and flag, where available and appropriate) are the right tools for the job. Most of the time, calling someone out for diluting the discourse simply adds to the noise while simultaneously feeding the troll."
I think PG's stated principles helped build HN. I don't know why you want to dilute them when everywhere-but-HN is already the forum you're pushing for.
The question is whether the forum should censor topics that raise strong feelings about that ball.
Pg said that flat insults without intellectual content (e.g. "you're gay") are not an issue because they quickly get downvoted.
I believe in a curated forum, I just think meta-drama brought up by attention whores is the worst sort of drama--NOT the "uncivil" arguments about various platforms.