I am dead serious about both of those. I'm actually convinced that HN is absolutely and completely devoid of humor. I've actually never seen anything like it.
Given that the topic of downvotes constitute the vast majority of this entire topic and most of the threads, and that the only place pg has bothered to respond was regarding the brokeness of downvoting, it's quite obviously not an insubstantial point I was trying to make.
A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't terrible, although it was only a little bit funny.
I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually interested in. I believe the problem with throwaway jokes is that they're so easy. Among 1,000 average readers, perhaps 5 of them have an insightful comment about, i.e. a new feature in R6RS Scheme, but 500 of them could easily post a silly joke about parentheses. Result? If you try to talk about Scheme you get 495 jokes for every piece of expert commentary. Not cool.
(Realistically, there are many other kinds of comments that are problematic in this way. For example, it's easy to religiously stick to one big general paradigm and zealously apply it to everything, so you wind up with some of that. It's easy to attack people instead of confronting complicated ideas, so you wind up with some of that. I think it's just a consequence of less-informed but social people trying to find an angle by which to contribute. Sometimes I'm guilty of this myself!)
Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff.
Which is a general policy that ensures you'll never see a joke here (screamingly funny or not). I don't think I know anybody who can produce jokes that fit your requirements at any rate even close to 100%. So I would assume, rather than risk it, why would somebody bother if some dude is just going to come by and downmod it anyways? The downvote surpresses the desire of people to even want to try.
I'm not saying that all jocularity is equal. Jokes about "your mom" probably deserve a downvote (and depending on the vulgarity maybe a flag). But somebody making a witty retort, while perhaps not deserving of praise should probably be left unmolested. I've heard more jokes at a convention of priests than I see regularly on HN.
Put another way, a downvote for a harmless comment is the real life equivalent of somebody making conversation with you, inserts a subtle attempt at humor, and you then proceed to glare at them, turn around and walk away. It's not helpful. But I do understand not wanting to respond back in a humorous way either, otherwise we end up with 4chan and all the irrelevant absurdity that comes with going that direction.
However, due to this kind of behavior we end up with a possible HN as it could be (which may be perfectly fine by you, I don't know), of stuffy pedantic and pretentious pseudo-conversationalists who'd rather police a message forum than actually contribute something useful or interesting (or gasp even marginally funny). Maybe that's the goal, I don't know. But it makes for boring reading and conversation.
> A good example is yesterday, there was a post that got a lot of upvotes before it died -- it was an image with a 6 by 6 matrix of programming languages, and each slot had a funny image macro-y picture showing how proponents of language X felt about language Y. I flagged that thread. (If it were a comment, I would downvote it.) Well, why did I do that? It wasn't terrible, although it was only a little bit funny.
You flagged that thread? Are you serious? I think that's outrageous!
I've seen this same image before, and I was crying laughing at it. It also could have spawned a useful discussion on perception of platform choice when building software. Customers can be users of software too, and in my experience, what language you use can positively or negatively impact perception of your product and company. The opportunity to have some interesting discourse on that topic is now dead.
> I did it because there are literally a million places on the internet where I can look at pictures that are a little bit funny, and only a handful of places where I can have a serious discussion about things that I am actually interested in.
But it wasn't a picture of LOLCATS or or a guy getting hit in the crotch with a frisbee or some such. It was at least marginally related, in theory, to the kinds of discussions we should be having on HN. I perfectly understand your desire to seek out interesting and relevant discussion to your particular areas of interest. If something doesn't fit your areas of interest, feel free to not participate, don't penalize us that do want to participate.
For example, I don't think a thread on R6RS is particularly interesting or useful to a startup-oriented tech discussion forum -- marginally used language discussions should be left on the language maintainer's own forum. But if I saw a topic on the front page about it, I'd leave it absolutely unmolested because somebody thought it was interesting enough to deserve upvotes and it has about the same theoretical relevancy to HN as did the image matrix of language choice perception.
> Based on my experience in other places online, it looks like a really, really, really slippery slope, so I err on the side of throwing out all fluff.
Yes, I absolutely agree with you. I can understand the continuous meta-discussion here about how to keep HN from sliding down the reddit->digg->4chan slope. But I think we have to be aware of, and meta-discuss how to keep HN from going the opposite direction, that of becoming so rarefied that any nonconforming comments are immediately stifled and the entire board dies except for a small group who enjoy spending their time in a self-selected echo chamber.
I also personally have absolutely zero interest in startup and business discussion, which puts me far outside the target audience for very many articles here, although I leave them alone since that's the stated purpose of the site. So I recognize that my tastes may not represent HN any better than yours, if such a thing can be measured.
Is it ethical, then, for me to flag articles which I think are not worthwhile posts? I'm not sure. Your comments make me reflect on whether that's an OK thing to do or not. I do wish there were a downvote button on posts, that means "I don't think this should be highly rated, but I don't think it should be killed either." I would prefer to use that.
One thing, however. Your stated policy is: "If something doesn't fit your areas of interest, feel free to not participate, don't penalize us that do want to participate." That seems like a principled and friendly approach. But I'm not sure it scales. The front page (and the comment threads) only have so much bandwidth. Taking a "tolerant" approach without a big redesign to allow some kind of filtering means that the result will be simple majority rule, leading to a lot of very general interest posts about politics, current events, business, and technology. I know that many posts which would interest me greatly would then be buried on page N; judge for yourself whether this is the case for you.
Now, it would be awfully judgmental to say that's a bad thing for a website; after all, it's providing a whole lot of people with the sort of thing they want to read. But there are so many websites that provide that kind of discussion already that I wonder if a "rarefied" niche site isn't a more valuable place in the greater ecosystem of the Internet.
I voted your comment up because it made me think hard about the consequences of my actions.
True, but there's an obvious intersection of the things we are interested in. We just have to figure out how to play friendly concerning the other things in our interest sets.
> Taking a "tolerant" approach without a big redesign to allow some kind of filtering means that the result will be simple majority rule, leading to a lot of very general interest posts about politics, current events, business, and technology.
Well, the good news is that HN has posting guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Despite what certain members of the HN community would have you think, these aren't "rules", but they do serve a useful function in focusing the site on a core set of topic areas. I don't think there is much danger of HN becoming reddit in that sense. HN effectively acts like 2 or 3 narrowly focused subreddits on reddit.com.
> Is it ethical, then, for me to flag articles which I think are not worthwhile posts? I'm not sure. Your comments make me reflect on whether that's an OK thing to do or not. I do wish there were a downvote button on posts, that means "I don't think this should be highly rated, but I don't think it should be killed either." I would prefer to use that.
Well, to my understanding, posts that are completely out of guidelines should be flagged. If somebody submits a post with a link to his blog about his Camaro, it's probably okay to flag it ;) A post to something like http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/ should probably just not be upvoted if you don't care for it.
I could even see a downvote for something like the referenced post to the programming language perception matrix. But like I said, it could be an interesting driver of discussion.
> Now, it would be awfully judgmental to say that's a bad thing for a website; after all, it's providing a whole lot of people with the sort of thing they want to read. But there are so many websites that provide that kind of discussion already that I wonder if a "rarefied" niche site isn't a more valuable place in the greater ecosystem of the Internet.
Well, I think the reason most people come here is for the rather constrained topic set and the emphasis on interesting discussion (not to mention being populated with a very interesting mix of people). But it would also become very uninteresting in the general sense if it become a forum for academic discussions of programming esoterica.
> I voted your comment up because it made me think hard about the consequences of my actions.
That's really what all my pining away is on this thread, I appreciate you taking the time to do so. I'm a bit shocked and amazed to see a population of people here that are unwilling to do the same. I understand they are peeved at being called out for bad etiquette, but I find the discourse on this site amazing when the mechanisms for the discourse are working properly.
Apart from it being untrue, (you can find some unfunny jokes in my comment history that escaped downvotes for instance), it's a good thing that there are some places where every topic or thread doesn't collapse into a witty-retort-fest.
> The downvote surpresses the desire of people to even want to try
And thus HN people collectively adjust the shape of HN to taste.
> who'd rather police a message forum than actually contribute something useful or interesting
What you've just said is that because jokes are frowned upon, nobody will contribute anything useful or interesting. I don't think that follows, and the knowledge that if you post something, the reply is unlikely to be a one line attempt at humour encourages longer more thoughtful comments.
> Maybe that's the goal, I don't know. But it makes for boring reading and conversation.
No, it makes for very interesting reading and occasional actual conversation rather than banter.
> The opportunity to have some interesting discourse on that topic is now dead.
Dead here. You could post it at reddit and see what happens. You seem to be present at HN, so presumably you like it, yet only be in favour of downvoting spam and offensive stuff. If you do that, it's not HN anymore it's a general news aggregator. It can't be at the same time about a restricted set of ideas and topics selected by the votes of the people who are here, and also open to everyone to comment anything on any topic, that's contradictory.
> I perfectly understand your desire to seek out interesting and relevant discussion to your particular areas of interest. If something doesn't fit your areas of interest, feel free to not participate, don't penalize us that do want to participate.
Or, you could find somewhere else where LOLprogrammers comics are relevant, and don't penalize 'us' who don't want to participate by trying to change here so that is relevant here as well.
Given that not-everything is OK here, there will be people who don't fit in, don't like what is posted and don't like what is excluded. If that's not what you want, the choices are to find or start somewhere else where the limited subset of things more aligns with you, or to break open every niche and limited site until everywhere has everything as an allowed topic.
I'm not trying to say that everything I like should be allowed and you should go away, I'm trying to say that people who are present are shaping HN with votes and sometimes I agree and sometimes I don't and if and when I disagree more than agree it will be time for me to change or leave. Until then I throw my votes into the mix as well and see what happens.
> Yes, I absolutely agree with you
You so don't, you've argued against everything he said.
> a small group who enjoy spending their time in a self-selected echo chamber
Isn't that inherent the very nature of a group that can't discuss everything?
I don't think that's what I said at all, but If I was confusing I apologize. I'll try and say it succinctly, if people go out of their way to post something reasonably interesting or thoughtful, but possibly counter to a commonly held viewpoint, it tends to get downvoted around here. Those downvotes are a way of saying "you are not conforming to the group mind, shape up". A thoughtful or interesting post doesn't have to be long. Short, pithy ones are just as interesting, yet also get downvoted for not conforming to the group mind.
For example, on the validity of argument ad hominem: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021182
This was immediately downvoted, yet it's a wildly interesting contradictory thought and mildly funny as well. It's concise, witty and provokes the common perception regarding such arguments. My conjecture is two fold:
1) It's clear that a population of HN members simply didn't understand it and thought it was purely a joke, and annihilated it (because what people don't understand they tend to attack). Nobody who didn't get it took the time to write a three word reply "why is that?" - instead resorting to the downvote.
2) Given that this seems to happen quite a bit around here, a person who finds themselves habitually downvoted will perceive that negative community response, not as a process of a social normative function (after all, the community guidelines desire interesting comments, if a person is supplying interesting comments, they are already "normal") but as a process of rejection by the community and will simply stop providing input to the community.
This has two effects:
1) An interesting voice will no longer be heard, the quality of the discussion will become artificially limited by a social majority.
2) Since only comments that conform to the social majority's viewpoints survive, comments will only reflect the social majority - ergo an "echo chamber" will form.
> And thus HN people collectively adjust the shape of HN to taste.
If the taste is a bunch of people trading the same ideas around over and over again, it's not very useful other than to confirm their own preselected ideas and assumptions. We get smarter when our ideas are challenged by dissenting or contradictory voices. It helps us evaluate our viewpoint and beliefs. The reason an echo chamber is bad, is that no new viewpoints ever enter to "stir the pot" and force people to reevaluate things and become smarter and grow. If HN is to become an echo chamber, then it's better to not have HN at all since everybody already knows everything. The taste of an echo chamber is stale. History tends to cherish the revolutionaries far more than those that maintain the status quo. At any rate, they add flavor to the mix.
> No, it makes for very interesting reading and occasional actual conversation rather than banter.
I agree that, in the general sense, banter is not what HN is for. But I think forums are better if people can feel a little bit free to express their opinions and personalities a bit and not be constrained to an academic discussion all the time. The tempo of this site is fast enough, and the general population seems to be experienced enough, that short comments can still contain lots of meaning (like my example above).
> If you do that, it's not HN anymore it's a general news aggregator. It can't be at the same time about a restricted set of ideas and topics selected by the votes of the people who are here, and also open to everyone to comment anything on any topic, that's contradictory.
I don't think there is a lot of danger of that happening, as this meta-discussion is demonstrating, the HN community is vastly interested in the quality of the site.
In addition, the topics of discussion are reasonably constrained via guidelines.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
Now, these aren't rules per se, but they state what the intended theme of the site should be. I don't think there is much danger of seeing Ron Paul and Kucinich posts swamping the front page any-time soon. But a post about a new law affecting business in say South Korea is on topic. It may not be to you if all you care about is say, discussions on Scheme, but it is to me since Korea is a technology oriented place to do business and such laws may have interesting ramifications for startups elsewhere. I'm in business, I'm in technology, and I may do technology related business in South Korea.
> Or, you could find somewhere else where LOLprogrammers comics are relevant, and don't penalize 'us' who don't want to participate by trying to change here so that is relevant here as well.
That's like saying "don't penalize us who don't want to watch reality T.V. by putting it in the programming queue for the station I just happen to be watching! I'm powerless to change the channel or turn off the TV! It makes me to upset I'm going to write a letter to the station and demand that they remove all reality TV from their programming lineup!"
It's nonsensical and silly.
A submitted topic is like a virtual salon, if you don't like the nature of the conversation in that salon, feel free to try the next room, don't burn down the building.
>Given that not-everything is OK here, there will be people who don't fit in, don't like what is posted and don't like what is excluded. If that's not what you want, the choices are to find or start somewhere else where the limited subset of things more aligns with you, or to break open every niche and limited site until everywhere has everything as an allowed topic.
I'm reading that to mean that the lurking downvote patrol trolls here are the ones that don't fit in, yet don't seem to be able to "move to another salon without burning the previous one down". Again, just because you may not be interested in doing business in South Korea, doesn't mean that the people participating in that thread aren't. Feel free to move along, don't deep-six the discussion for everyone else who is interested.
> You so don't, you've argued against everything he said.
You apparently ran out of steam and couldn't be bothered to read the rest of the statement. Here, I'll paste it here for you again. "I can understand the continuous meta-discussion here about how to keep HN from sliding down the reddit->digg->4chan slope. But I think we have to be aware of, and meta-discuss how to keep HN from going the opposite direction, that of becoming so rarefied that any nonconforming comments are immediately stifled and the entire board dies except for a small group who enjoy spending their time in a self-selected echo chamber."
> Isn't that inherent the very nature of a group that can't discuss everything?
No, I think you need to lookup the meaning of the term "echo chamber". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)
In short, they are something to be avoided because they limit rational thought.
I don't really see how you can characterize it as "discussing the problems with the downvote." I would characterize it instead as "taunting people who downvote things."