Re:Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
by _delirium on Sunday October 31, 2010 @04:49AM
(#1852871)
I haven't found anonymity to be very well correlated with politeness on tech discussion forums I'm on. Some of the most abrasive ones are filled with people posting under their real names, and folks like rms, Theo De Raadt, Ulrich Drepper, and a bunch of the comp.lang.lisp crowd have no problem flaming you under their real names.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
by maxklein on Sunday October 31, 2010 @05:27AM
(#1852926)
But that's real life. The goal is to make the conversation here equivalent to how people talk in real life, not be more polite than that.
Re:Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments
by awakeasleep on Sunday October 31, 2010 @06:26AM
(#1853008)
In a way I understand what you're saying, but I feel our environment influences how we interact with each other-- anywhere. For example, rules can be added to give structure to a debate. The whole debate format, while artificial, exists to increase the utility of 'real life' discussion.
It seems to me anything we can do to boost the interesting aspects of this community are fair game, and they augment real life itself.