Hacker News Guidelines

The only one I subtly disagree with is "comments should be substantive". What it discourages I think is comments like "thanks" or other really 'unsubstantive' comments. It's true that maybe it adds noise, and in many cases are maybe supposed to be inferred without explicitly saying. But I think discouraging this slightly leans behaviour towards snark vs not. (If you see comments like "thanks" you're less likely to be snarky than if you see 'substantive' but maybe too harsh critiques in the comments that appear because "cool project!" isn't allowed.)

Personally I like to make it a point to break this rule from time to time to reduce this pattern.

Yes, but it also discourages "cool story bro", "ok boomer", "no cap" etc

Same. I think it's especially important to thank someone when they might otherwise assume you'll want to pick apart with their response to you, after you've asked them to write it.

One feature I've thought of would be for someone in a conversation thread to know if the other participant upvoted their last comment. Giving someone an upvote and not replying would send a strong positive signal without taking up more space.

That is okay Comment from dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37030249

I agree, though I think for posts deserving a "thanks" it's not too hard to make it substantive. For example, if I wanted to thank you for this comment, I might say something like this:

Thanks, that's very helpful. You make a good point about comments like "cool project!" not being allowed, which could cause the overall sentiment to feel skewed negative when it might actually be well received. That said, it can feel noisy and unhelpful to see a thread full of empty comments, so what if we had a thumbs up button or something that people could use to register "cool project" ? Maybe not practical, but just thinking through the problem a bit.

I'd really love a separate "thanks" interface element that only the person you replied to can use.

You can be substantive in your thanks making or praises. And if you cannot then maybe its OK that it doesn't get expressed as a one word 'thanks' post.

I personally don't think this causes the community as a whole to lean snarky - that one might be a pre existing condition rather than the format.

I also think the occasional rule breaking is good, 'I don't have anything substantial to say but your project means a lot to me and I'm grateful' is substantial in a way that default 'thanks' is not anyway.

In the specific instance of a "thanks" message, I'll somewhat regularly send an out of band message to say thanks for helpful replies(or general comments). It doesn't pollute the threads for others, and I'd like to think the added cost of a personal note gives the reader a sense of the value I found in their writing.

I'm yet to have any pushback on sending a thank you note, but who knows maybe it will upset some people in the future ;)

Which - I guess - also deserves a "add some contact details to profile" note.

I think the idea is that if you can't make a substantive comment, you refrain from commenting at all.

It's a weird dynamic to have in a web forum, where people are essentially engaging in text-based conversations, but casual, emotive speech is discouraged because that's what Redditors do, and every keystroke brings us closer to Eternal September.

SushiHippie already said it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37252326), but pg made this point way back in https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html (2009):

Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling.

Whole subs on Reddit are essentially rendered worthless because the comments are all low-effort, meme responses. This is one of the only places I've been online where the discussion of Prigozhin's death wasn't just 500+ "Fell out of a window" comments.

THANK YOU

I like to do a simple “thank you because X” where X is an encouragement for others to read the link (usually that’s what’s thanked, anyway).

Isn't that (partly) the point of the upvote button?

Good news, you can! "Thanks" is 100% substantive!

From dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37030249

That suggestion about upvoting might work. It has less of a human element than a typed/written reply though (instead of someone typing text to express positive intent, it's someone incrementing a number to express positive intent), and it does sound more desolate/lonely from that perspective. Although I don't know how much it matters.

Here's an exchange from a book I thought of while typing this comment, to illustrate my meaning.

`But he could not resist the temptation to speak and to awaken a little human warmth around him. “A pity for the car,” he said. “Foreign cars cost quite a bit of gold, and after half a year on our roads they are finished.” “There you are quite right. Our roads are very backward,” said the old official. By his tone Rubashov realized that he had understood his helplessness. He felt like a dog to whom one had just thrown a bone; he decided not to speak again.`

That sounds like a wonderful idea. Thank you for suggesting it, and for doing it as well.

This. Perhaps even with a very short note attached, visible to the person you're thanking but not visible in the main thread.

You have my updoots good sir

> But I think discouraging this slightly leans behaviour towards snark vs not.

who are you thanking? the mechanics of HN means that a uesr would have to actively search around for a response, so odds are your thanks simply goes the ether.

I would really like an /r/worldnews clone with joke comments forbidden.

100%. Whenever I read somebody's response on an article, the first thing that lights up for me cognitively - "is this a reddit-level comment?".

How many times have you seen a deeply nested Reddit thread where each reply is maybe a single sentence long, and they're all low hanging word puns? Just completely worthless threads that are all noise.

I disagree, there is an upload button which delivers the equivalent of thanks. I don't think it's too much to ask that an expression of gratitude also take the time to include something meaningful.

This is one of the biggest differentiators from Reddit.

I partially "solved" this by bookmarking the page showing my most recent comments and their replies so I can skim it before going to the front-page. I understand the reasoning behind the functionality but there is a lot of knowledge in replies so I wouldn't want to be without it.

Thanks.

> Whole subs on Reddit are essentially rendered worthless because the comments are all low-effort

This might be a feature - some events are ripe for ridicule and jokes, and Reddit having has areas where this is completely the norm provides a forum.

But when you want to know what chainsaw to buy, how to make a specific ESP chip work or some other random thing, Reddit also provides.

You have to avoid getting sucked into its cesspits.

You're right about that, it's honestly unfair for me to refer to Reddit as though it's a monolith. r/AskHistory is as good as it's ever been, r/WhatsThisBug is always fun, and lots of little niche subs are just vibrant communities.

Unfortunately when it comes to the major news subs, the big issue isn't polarizing politics, it's just people using the headline to spout memes.

The problem is that since reddit has places for both where it's entirely appropriate to act in specific ways, them both being on the same site often leads to it leaking from one area to another to poor effect.

Useful and/or somewhat serious subreddit can have submissions derailed and useful content buried by meme comments, and meme subreddit can have someone be too serious and upset or disheartened when people don't engage on what they see as an important or cool thing (or not even that people don't engage, but that any discussion is derailed by the community as a norm).

It's great that I can go to one place for almost anything (kind of, they're getting a little pushy and scummy with the monetization), but sometimes the community is also a downside.

> I think the idea is that if you can't make a substantive comment, you refrain from commenting at all.

me too. how many of our grandmothers repeatedly said, “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

it’s wild to me to see how much The Internet has tried to pretend it can escape from things humans figured out were important a century ago. in a lot of ways we’ve collectively fooled ourselves into believing the people who came before us were all stupid.

i mean, so many of the failures we’re seeing from companies or large communities have turned out to be our own hubris pretending as if The Internet wouldn’t have super basic, reaaaaally basic human problems like, “if you’re not nice, 1) people will be rude back and 2) a community full of assholes will _shockingly_ be a shitty place.”

this is basic shit that even a social halfwit knows when they go out in public, but we (myself included) are hilariously relearning and pretending like it’s a deep revelation.

if we can’t post anything nice, don’t post anything at all. we act liek this is complicated.

A lone "thanks" doesn't seem to contain very much human element in it either, though; that just feels like somebody wanted to make a comment but couldn't be bothered to provide detail. What specifically are they thanking? Does the link make their life a little better (and if yes, how, so that others could emulate making more people's lives better)? If it was in reply to a comment, did they just read it or actually try whatever it was?

I think I dislike it because it reminds me of the busy exec replying with a single word, and that is definitely lacking in humanity.

That's true. Curtness does often sound negative. That's a good point I hadn't considered.

There is the 'threads' link at the top of the page, which shows you all your recent comments and their replies.

I almost always have something more than “thanks” to say. Like, “Good point about the enfabulator, I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks.” Or, “Oh yeah, I will have to try that way. Seems very promising. Thank you.”

whether it's allowed or not is probably less pertinent than whether it'll get downvoted. I've never seen a flagged comment that was just "thanks", but I suspect I probably have seen a heavily downvoted one, although I can't think of a specific example

That's been the case for nearly a decade. It's what Reddit is, dopamine-via-upvotes, and there's no easier way to get upvotes than make uncreative dad jokes. You're free to move to the offshoot communities as the people that have chosen to split are unlikely to do "average Redditor" things

This is where a good moderation team can really help.

If people truly use /r/worldnews for entertainment, I guess that is fine, but I highly suspect quite a few people use it to gather information or form an opinion, and that is highly problematic.

Not only are the vast majority of opinions propagated there terrible, the topics and framing of articles is highly biased and astroturfed. I think I can pretty accurately spot Reddit/twitter politicians in the wild, and it is always kind of sad, because there is so much conflicting propaganda coursing through their heads that little of the unique person supposedly holding those views shines through. The reason I can spot it is because I was there as well a couple of years ago, but luckily was able to cut out those toxic influences from my life.

Isn’t /r/anime_titties the serious world news sub? AFAIK worldnews is crap due to bad moderation.

I've never gotten in trouble for saying thanks. :) (Like anywhere)

A thanks (especially from the person the thanked comment is responding to) can serve as a validation that the information provided was useful and appropriate, which an upvote alone fails to convey.

From my own recent history, this subthread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37115294>.

That's why dang raises awareness that this is allowed, because most of the people (i guess) downvote because they think it is against the guidelines.

fair