Ask HN: Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative?

<p><pre><code> Quality of HN Comments Over Time | . . | . . q| . . . . u| . . . . . . a| . . . . . l| . . . . . i| . . . . . t| . . . you are here --&#62;. . y| (that's all) |________________________________________________________ S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D '08 '09</code></pre>

A little, probably. There are good days and bad days. I was particularly struck by the harshness of this one:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=925034" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=925034</a><p>and also that such a huge number of people piled on to vote it up.<p>In fact, that makes me wonder: could it be the voting that makes the tone of the site seem more negative? There are often nasty comments lurking at the bottom of a thread with 1 point or less, but they're not very noticeable. Whereas this one + 49 points (currently) = an angry mob.

There are a lot of complicated and interesting things going on here. I just wish I had more time and data to dig into them.<p>One thing I have noticed is a consistent desire for the community to "meta discuss" how the board is doing -- much to the annoyance of others. (yes, this is a comment about meta comments, which makes it a meta meta) I'm not sure any of these conversations have kept the board from getting worse quicker or not -- it's impossible to measure something that didn't happen.<p>There seems to be common "games" you can play on boards like this, whether you're into game-playing or not. Edw519 has a tendency to come up with pithy quips that the majority of readers would like, thereby gaining his comments a lot upvotes. People who comment early get the "pile on" effect.<p>I know PG has tweaked the algorithm some to combat this, but all it's really done for me is to put rather worthless comments up above more interesting ones, so for me it makes the board less valuable.<p>At the end of the day, I think 3 things: 1)karma matters, whether you like it or not, 2) people play games with karma, and 3) you can only play so many quality-enhancing games: as the crowd grows outlying players are left with "cheap and dirty" games which work every so often.

I'm a refugee from Reddit. That place has become too immature and ignorant. It's hard to have a courteous, intelligent discussion there; it very easily degenerates into name-calling, arrogance and dogmatism. It feels like middle school all over again.<p>Hacker News' voting system is very Reddit-like, so it will also become Reddit. Expect Hacker News to become more immature as it grows in popularity.<p>Here are two changes that can be made to Hacker News to keep it from becoming Reddit:<p>* Discourage controversial or dramatic posts. For example, the latest brouhaha about American Airlines and Dustin Curtis was very dramatic, but its educational value was lower than some other less-dramatic posts on Hacker News. I think it's okay to have content like that on Hacker News, but there should be some damping effects to keep the controversial stories lower on the list. Otherwise, Hacker News will be taken over by knee-jerk, reactionary thinking instead of deeper, more nuanced, intelligent discussion. Technical gossip will supplant technical news.<p>* Provide two ways to vote: vote up if you agree, and vote up if you think the content is valuable. It's important not to conflate the two into one vote up button.

<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924943" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924943</a><p>It is because of this thread that I probably won't participate in discussions here anymore. The extreme negativity and personal attacks make me feel as though I'm not a welcome voice here.<p>I miss the hacker news from two years ago, when I doubt wmeredith would have been supported so highly for a nasty personal attack.<p>On the other hand, I understand Michael Arrington a lot better now.

Quick caution: there's selection bias here bigtime. If you read the comments on this thread, Hacker News is clearly in urgent danger of becoming Reddit. Of course, this post is designed to attract people worried about Hacker News becoming Reddit.

Eh, I get the sense that sometimes people will just grab any news story that hasn't been posted yet and post it hoping to get voted up points. I haven't been around all that long, but it seems like the signal to noise ratio is getting a lot higher even during the short time span that I've been on here.<p>Not only that, but you get twenty blog articles submitted pretty much all talking about the same thing every time, and it can just get draining. I think people get aggravated when they start reading the same thing over and over. "Release early/iterate often" has been the subject of no fewer than one top-page article nearly every day, and though it's good advice, I think by this point we get the message. Once the main point of an article is understood, people start to pick apart and criticize the smaller points I guess.

Oh shut your dirty trap, you whiny moron.<p>&#60;/sarcasm&#62;<p>I still find HN to be a friendly, positive environment. Let's keep it that way!<p>Edit: Wow. Either starting your comment with a joke is somehow no longer OK, or nobody else agrees with me that HN is still friendly and positive. I've been reading HN everyday for a very long time. I think these negative trends are mostly just an illusion due to the novelty wearing off for newer users. <i>"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"</i> (<a href="http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>)

It's perhaps not helpful that HN is also full of pedantic know-it-alls (I count myself among that group).<p>A community of self-made people tends to self-select for a certain personality type.

I haven't been around HN long enough to really notice a shift in the negativity of comments, but I have been around long to realize I could very easily become part of the probably that a lot of you talk about: signal to noise.<p>I keep coming back to HN because of the caliber of minds that offer up advice, criticism or personal thoughts on a daily basis for little in return. I envy the amount of collective intellect that HN users have, and yet therein lies the problem - I envy it, so I want to be part of it.<p>I'm considered the most intelligent person in my family and in my previous job I was the "goto" guy for the tougher questions, the hard assignments or just general advice on your random everyday things. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with this sense of worth. You're admired, needed even, and feel like you have something to offer.<p>On HN, however, I often feel like I have something to SAY, not necessarily something to contribute. This realization has made me very cautious about posting unless I really feel like I can add value to the conversation. Commenting, as I understand it, should really be about just that - adding value.<p>Having said that however, I also think there is room to embrace newer users who don't really understand this mechanic. Down voting a comment to oblivion doesn't help with educating those who really don't understand why they're being down voted, whether or not it's a troll or just a misguided newbie. Repeat offenders are a different matter and I can't really offer up suggestions on how to handle them, but for the newer members of HN who just happen to confuse something to add with something to say - hopefully giving them a casual nudge in the right direction will really with keeping HN on track.

I think we need more erlang threads to drive the quality up

The Law of Hacker News Comments: Any sufficiently long comment thread will converge on a semantic argument.<p>Prediction, the comments in this post will converge on the semantics of the word "negative".

I don't know... comments here have always had a dose of healthy skepticism. Now, if I never again read a comment starting with "meh", "yawn" or "shrug", I will die a happy man.

You're definitely right. Worse, I can feel the increase in negativity and trolling influencing <i>me</i> to become a more negative contributor myself.

I think part of it is the extra traffic too: 10 comments pointing out the same criticism within a few minutes of each other. And you can see the rush in posting it.<p>Personally I have a few names I like to read commentary from and so keep an eye out for - then skim the rest.

I agree entirely. I rarely do more than skim the comments anymore, because too often it just turns into a contest for one-upsmanship and ego stroking. There are people on here that will take any opportunity to argue about any topic.

It had to happen- there's relatively fewer pg, patio11, raganwald, wheels, tptacek, swombat, etc., and more of this: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=903880" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=903880</a>

I've noticed it. Especially the anti-37signals comments. I got -4 for saying I agreed with DHH about something.

<i>If</i> the proportion of negative comments is growing and <i>if</i> this is a symptom of karma lust, it's a pretty interesting event. The assertion being that as karma wealth grew, the system has became more volatile. There are some complaints about swarming in up-votes, but this thread deals with increasing down-votes. The question now becomes will a higher frequency of down-votes bring about smarter comments so as to avoid down-votes, or will the system become unhinged?<p>..I wonder if any systems act similarly? ;)

HN should charge people for the right to post. Even $1 a month would go a long way towards separating out the yokels from those who actually have something to contribute. I'd pay it.

I do not post very often, as I frequently seem to have little to add to the already proliferate content. But it seems somewhat telling to me that my biggest recent gain in karma was directly related to a comment on Dell that seemed a bit of a zinger.<p>Most of my other sparse comments were questioning a premise, offering my .00002 cents worth, and typically neutral to positive in tone. I think. (Or at least that was my intention).

While quality may have been varying, it's still fantastic compared to the mire that exists outside. We're lucky.

I agree. I had a submission killed recently, even though it was getting voted up very quickly and (IMHO at least) completely relevant; a few people flagged and said it was 'garbage' without bothering to open the PDF referenced in the article. Doesn't make me feel like posting again.

I've noticed it as well. I'm not sure if this is due to an increased amount of criticism or if the quality of the articles posted has gone down, warranting more criticism.

I think there are certainly times when things may go a bit far, but that's to be expected with such a volume of people - largely independent thinkers. A few might even be overtly negative or bellicose. I try to call it like I see it whether endorsing or critical, with no regard for being ingratiating for much the reasons PG points out here: <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/discover.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/discover.html</a>

Times are tight, so while more unemployed folks are desparately tearing revenue out of their businesses, the business growth is seeing less of the capital fired back in as growth.<p>Suspect YC comments will be more optimistic with perceived wealth increasing and folks spending more of their hard earned $$<p>I'm optimistic, but I have food in my belly at this moment, and a warm place to sleep tonight. That combination falls under the "rich" category at the moment.

I'm going to look through my comments to see if I'm contributing to that. Admittedly, it's tempting to react when I see something I disagree with.

Agreed. This is kind of the reason PG did away with numbers on comments a little while ago but brought them back after a lot of criticism.

I haven't noticed it myself but I like seeing inconsistencies picked apart. It's constructive. If I disagree with someone they might get some value out of understanding why their idea/argument doesn't jive with me. I think it's only negative if you approach it with an accusatory or condescending tone. Otherwise it's exactly what a lively discussion should be.

As a place grows in size, it changes in structure. There are always growing pains. Some places handle the transition better than others. Small, close-knit communities where people know each other well function very different from large communities where most people don't know each other well.

Another idea is to hide the karma number beside posts and comments. You still position the higher-ranked ones near the top, but no number is displayed so that it doesn't influence your vote as much (the bandwagon effect).

If you're convinced that the world is getting worse and less civilized, it means you're getting old.

Could this have something to do with startup failures?<p>Multiple failures might put people in a bad mood.

Comments get upvoted for different reasons. Split the karma into sections like funny, insightful, cool, whatever.. then u can weed out the crap.

The reason that now it is a race to see who can write the first criticism or who can pick out the first inconsistency, is because people think that they will be upvoted for that.<p>So, we just have to start changing what people get upvoted for.<p>I think we should create a small group of supermoderators who have 10x voting power.

It's just you....twit.

I was going to leave a rude comment in response to this as a joke, but someone beat me to it. What a jerk.<p>(By the way, me saying "What a jerk." is a joke. (To prevent more downratings.))