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Hacker News Guidelines

(news.ycombinator.com)
446 points tonmoy | 5 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.241s | source
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naillo ◴[24 Aug 23 17:24 UTC] No.37251836[source]▶
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.

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dang ◴[24 Aug 23 18:14 UTC] No.37252568[source]▶
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.

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EA-3167 ◴[24 Aug 23 18:29 UTC] No.37252760[source]▶
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

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1. lostlogin ◴[25 Aug 23 00:55 UTC] No.37256538[source]▶
> 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.

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2. EA-3167 ◴[25 Aug 23 01:11 UTC] No.37256634[source]▶
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.

3. kbenson ◴[25 Aug 23 02:10 UTC] No.37257055[source]▶
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.

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4. phone8675309 ◴[25 Aug 23 14:31 UTC] No.37262142[source]▶
This is where a good moderation team can really help.
5. bakuninsbart ◴[25 Aug 23 16:07 UTC] No.37263312[source]▶
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.