What I think HN has taught me is that for any X you feel strongly about, if you actually were in a community that was evenly divided about X, you wouldn't know it. Instead, you would feel yourself surrounded by enemies. Why? Because we notice what we dislike more strongly than what we like. We remember painful experiences more than pleasurable ones, and it's painful to read comments opposing our strongly held X's. So people feel like the community is biased whether it is or not. Unfortunately they feel this the most about the most divisive topics.

I arrived at this view because I have a different perspective than most users. It's my job to monitor the site overall, plus pay attention to the complaints people make about it. From such a position one quickly notices how many complaints about HN contradict each another. For example, for any political X, some people are certain that HN is overwhelmingly X. But those claims can't all be true, so there has to be some distortion at work here.

Edit: here's an example I just ran across: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11990458. (I'm not mentioning that to single one user out; it's a common phenomenon, and this is just the first example I saw after writing the above.)

> What I think HN has taught me is that for any X you feel strongly about, if you actually were in a community that was evenly divided about X, you wouldn't know it. Instead, you would feel yourself surrounded by enemies. Why? Because we notice and remember painful experiences more than pleasurable ones, and it's painful to read comments against one's strongly held X's. So people feel like the community is biased whether it is or not.

This doesn't actually address the issue I feel there is in that HN is a fairly small group of people from a particular demographic. A site called "hacker news" with a heavy focus on technology and startups is surely likely to have some bias compared to a random sampling of the general population.

Any post added gets voted on and only a small number of the posts that get posted will get any real traction, do you feel there's no bias in the type of things that get to the front page?

As a quick example, how many of the frontpage articles do you really disagree with? Which ones are strongly against what you actually believe? I've just had a look and honestly there are none. Everything fits very comfortably with my general beliefs.

I have never felt like I was surrounded by enemies here.

It isn't that HN is a random sample of the population, but that on most divisive issues (e.g. politics or programming languages) it's much more divided than people think it is.

Re disagreements and conflict, I'm talking about the comment threads, not the articles. I don't think articles really excite agreement or disagreement at themselves (except about whether they should be on HN in the first place—another divisive topic), so much as provoke it in the threads.

Re not feeling surrounded by enemies: that's great, but note that the "feel strongly about" qualifier is a necessary condition for this effect.

I think it helps that HN has a common factor to bind us together. Professional Techies may be able to disagree in a less flamboyant style in most situations because at the end of the day politics is mainly seen in the light of how it affects the tech industry as a whole.

While there are also some folks that are undoubtedly passionate about their particular political views, they mainly get well thought out replies as to the argument they are presenting for and against... even if some people get a bit passive aggressive with the down voting.

I believe that this has shifted over time. It used to be that people had to put up with opinions that they didn't like from neutral sources. Now more people live in media bubbles, so honest disagreement is extremely jarring.

That's my belief as well. And I doubt that we appreciate the extent to which this has happened.

If you get complaints from both side then you're doing OK.

Dang is speaking about scenarios where there is no /r/ForHillary or /r/The_Donald to intermingle yourself with. You get both sides in one thread and are confronted with ideas that you may not agree with - or that you vehemently disagree with. Not that people "come to HN to see opposing views". Rather that they must see opposing views when browsing a thread. Then you get a bunch of conflict from both sides.

As an example, HN often has socially-related posts that hit the front page, such as today's Voice Modulation in the Interview Process (not actual title). This gets people from two very different sides that are informally split, depending on who you ask, as "overly politically correct regressives" and "stupid racist [___]phobic bigots". A bunch of conflict that detracts from the study/topic happens when those two groups butt heads.

You're assuming that there's a very wide range of people that visit HN, you can't get viewpoints from people that don't visit the site. I'd be surprised if a highly tech focused site called "hacker news" didn't have a strong bias towards certain demographics and viewpoints.

You'd be surprised.

Well I've just checked the front page and it seems extremely focused on a small range of issues. So I'm currently unsurprised.

Is there an article about the huge benefit of for-profit journals? How abortion is an affront to God? How ISIS is trying to do some good in an area?

Are you really suggesting there's really no bias towards certain demographics or viewpoints?

You could add articles against drug legalization, articles from a conservative (i.e. not libertarian or liberal) basis, articles against increasing city density, articles in favor of cars and suburban living, articles in favor of strong intellectual property laws, articles on the religious ideas and uses of technology, etc.

There's a definite demographic that posts here, and it is very much an echo chamber.

Here is an example of what I claim is not the case. We see angry arguments about all of those topics on HN. They're not even infrequent.

My claim is that you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us in your position) perceive HN as an 'echo chamber' on such issues precisely because it isn't. I imagine there are small biases on some of them, but people exaggerate this into "groupthink", "bubble", "echo chamber", etc., not because that's how it is but because that's how it feels.

It is an echo chamber for some of the threads, for other - people agree to disagree.

> Are you really suggesting there's really no bias towards certain demographics or viewpoints?

No one's suggesting that, but the fact that you had to pick those odd examples to make your point is evidence that on many common issues (which I hesitate to name because even naming them makes sparks fly) this community is deeply divided. And when people complain about HN being biased against their view, it isn't ISIS or abortion they're thinking of.

Are you two disagreeing about something, by any chance? :)

> Well I've just checked the front page and it seems extremely focused on a small range of issues.

This is by "design". These are almost the only things that are on-topic here and we mostly like it this way. I'm sure you know.

If only there were some kind of survey mechanism on the site to test the various hypotheses. ;-)

I got a few updates on my thoughts just a few minutes ago.

I value rational corrections even if I just think parts of it is correct; in some cases I've also come to changed my views somewhat.

Almost always the top reply critiques the article and it's top reply critiques it. We're an opinionated bunch, it makes sense to me.