PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN

Is it possible that we're overvaluing decorum? While the battles going on over ideas on social media are base --- there is still progress. Ideas are being put through the grinder and being put on display for all sorts of people who might never have had that opportunity a few short years ago.

It's quite possible, that while it's hard to watch, it is just the growing pains of a whole new chapter in the evolution of human thought. One that isn't restricted to sophisticated and polished elites.

Maybe the real problem is our aversion to an all out brawl, rather than the fight itself. It's possible that younger people will just be able to deal with it better -- learn how to better cope with and ignore distractions like trolls etc.

I have a slightly different take on this one.

Maybe the problem is the aversion of the all out brawl... but the deeper problem is "who gets to brawl"? In an era of sock puppets and low effort comments, I've thought of a system where only those who at least regularly make very good arguments are allowed into the main event brawl so to speak.

I've thought of this in two ways. Either you have a free for all section on the website all are allowed into and then select from there, or you actually search for users on other websites and try to recruit them.

If you give users incentive to be better so they "get selected", they will respond to that. Then once you get them in you have to reinforce that somehow, and while slashdot made a lot of mistakes, I really like the random mod and metatagging system it used for that. The particulars aside, just doing something to keep the users from devolving is the important part.

>Is it possible that we're overvaluing decorum?

Yes.

Speaking as a minority who sometimes gets downright livid with the responses here to issues where social-issu technology intersect that are simply phrased eloquently and with “proper decorum” but are still pretty deleterious and exclusionary in their markedly disparate impacts and results for people like me-as more emotionally charged (rightfully, I will defend staunchly) comments criticizing such thoughts and opinion turn grey and ultimately get flagged into non-existence.

I'd answer that first question with an emphatic "no", since we already know what happens when decorum goes out the window - we have most other popular forums with a political section to look at. Feelings are hurt, personal attacks come up next, good faith dies, all of those things are anathema to deep discussion. I am aware of no place online, or in real life, where discussion and trolling (or big egos) can coexist.

You don't need sophistication and polish to not be a dick. That's the low water mark, here. Not big words, just please, thankyou, and a willingness to entertain thoughts you disagree with and explain your own.

Some things are urgent and demand outrage. While the Declaration of Independence might at first glance appear to be an example of decoram, it was not. What it said is that we are done entertaining your ideas and will now start to kill those who try to stop us from putting our ideas in place. Outrage is sometimes appropriate.

> our aversion to an all out brawl

This is presuming a lot in the idea that you can keep the "brawl" purely online and at no point leak out into the wider society.

The lesson from everything from the Arab Spring to Hong Kong protests to BLM to mass shooters citing forum posts is that you can't.

> Speaking as a minority

Thank you for speaking up. I often think of HN as ivory tower. It feels great for people who have zero urgency to address social issues because those social issues don't affect them in any way. In fact, those social issues might give some of us an undeserved advantage.

It's not a surprise when you consider PG's own desires to forever be in an ivory tower and to blame any criticism of his own faults on angry mobs. He's never wrong in his own eyes and it's pretty clear that comes from a position of privilege.

HN does achieve one goal: I do love it as a place to discuss intellectual ideas. It does come at a cost of largely sweeping social issues under the carpet.

I would love to see an HN with many of the same rules but where membership is truly diverse and where minorities outnumber the privileged. An HN started by a minority and that would not have PG's DNA. I imagine it having everything I love about HN and perhaps a lot less of what I dislike about HN.

I’ve thought once or twice about starting such a forum, but it’d probably be a bad idea because I have an incredibly fuse which probably won’t do well for the community as a forum leader at large. And at this point in time-a historically low tolerance for any manifestation of some of the bad-faith but eloquently delivered “talking points” from people who hold court in various ivory towers. That alone convinced me it’s not a good idea; plus PG’s general advice of not starting a forum overall is probably good advice for anyone who cherishes their mental health these days.

And the end of the day: There are other areas in real tangible life that I’ve decided to focus this energy and righteous indignation towards that are far more fulfilling, but I will still call things out here on HN where appropriate about these types of intersecting issues, and I will take the downvotes but I’m not gonna stop getting right up in people’s faces and challenging some of these things when they come up.

Not on Hacker News, they're not. There is no point in the history of this website (and I'd argue, most if not all social media sites) where outrage has accomplished anything productive or time-sensitive.

Agreed that nothing is urgent here. It's intentionally an ivory tower. Which is great if society already treats you well.

Veiled insult aside, the point of a discussion forum is for discussion. If something is not conducive to discussion, it doesn't belong there.

It's not a veiled insult. It's just an accurate description of what HN is. Outrage can be conducive to discussion if you're willing to listen to what some people's lives are actually like. I've had many great discussions that start out with someone outraged. A great way to continue that discussion and get down to the interesting issues is "you sound really angry, tell me why". And then you have to be willing to listen. If you're not willing to listen to angry people about social issues, don't expect to contribute to improving social issues. It's fine that HN has chosen not deal with those things. But then HN should have no problem being called the ivory tower it is.